Cheers Got a Lot of Mileage Out of Sam and Diane Simply Flirting Like Kids

Today, we look at how a classic early Cheers episode showed how much mileage the show got out of Sam and Diane just sort of being kids together.

This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.

This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

Now, obviously, the early years of Cheers were dominated by the “Will they or won’t they?” relationship between Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), but I think it is interesting to see just how much mileage the show got out of specifically the almost childish flirting between the two of them.

Sam Malone, of course, is a manchild, a former athlete who drank his way out of professional sports only to sober up and run a neighborhood bar he owns in Boston, but it is interesting to see how much of Diane Chambers’ life is ALSO that of a sort of delayed adolescence. When the show begins, she is a graduate student engaged to the professor she is working for as a teaching assistant before he abandons her at Cheers, where she gets a job as a barmaid and commences her grade school flirtations with the bar’s owner, Sam (while also being enemies with the other waitress at the bar, Carla Tortelli, played by Rhea Perlman).

Like I’ve said before, when dealing with classic shows, I have a whole year to tackle them all, so I’m going to start with more standard great episodes before delving into the episodes that require more knowledge about the show to really get. In other words, I’m going to do more typical great episodes before I spotlight the ones that play AGAINST type.

In Cheers‘ “Diane’s Perfect Date,” written by the legendary David Lloyd (already a two-time Emmy winner for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series for two classic episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and directed by the equally legendary Jim Burrows, Diane returns from a weekend at Marth’s Vineyard, and it is clear that her date was a dud. She and Sam begin to bicker about their respective choices of dates, so they offer to set each other up with someone “perfect” for them.

Sam, though, gets it in his head that Diane is slyly trying to ask him out by setting up Sam with his “perfect date” – HER! She describes the woman she is setting up Sam with as brilliant and good-looking. So Sam prepares for their night out, but then Diane arrives at the bar with a date for Sam! Somehow, the show managed to make the gorgeous Gretchen Corbett look less gorgeous that she was (she plays a kinesiologist who is clearly intended to not be traditionally feminine enough for Sam’s tastes), and Sam scrambles, finding a stranger in Cheers’ pool room who he offers to pay to take Diane out and pretend to be a friend of Sam’s. The man, Andy (Derek McGrath), goes along with it, and at first, he is so charming that you think it is going to work out, until he casually mentions that he’d like to avoid a specific restaurant because he killed a waitress there, and then you know the evening is going to be a MESS.

And a mess it was, but in the end, after Diane and Sam survive, they have an adorable back and forth after Sam admits that he thought she was trying to go out with him. She shows him pity, which he gets angry at, and then she notes that Sam clearly is carrying a torch for her. He says that she is carrying a torch for him. She then says that if he admits he is carrying a little torch for her, then she will admit that she is carrying a little torch for him, but when he admits that he is carrying a little torch for her, she says she ISN’T carrying a little torch for him. It’s just so silly and childish, and yet it is so engaging. The pair are obviously adorable together.

The end of the episode is almost a piece of metafiction, as the barflies, led by George Wendt’s Norm Peterson, and the other bartender, Coach (Nicholas Colasanto), all argue over whether Sam is more into Diane or if Diane is more into Sam. It’s just charming and awesome.

Lloyd was nominated for an Emmy for the episode, but did not win (the show’s creators, Len Charles and Glen Charles, won for the Cheers pilot). Burrows was not nominated for this episode, but he won the Emmy for directing the Cheers Season 1 finale (which I’ll presumably spotlight this season, as well…but maybe not. I only have 12 Cheers episodes to pick through, after all!).

Derek McGrath was a lot more restrained here than he was in later Andy Andy appearances (Sam can’t think of a last name for Andy, so he just calls him Andy Andy). It worked a lot better than his later appearances.

Okay, if I’m going to have 348 more of these, I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!