Welcome to Night Vale - The Best Worst ep 1: Cheers

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Find The Best Worst wherever you get podcasts!  Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-worst/id1800270997 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/32aFGAy4PVGvA7U9bLqtZg?si=eIMGsyvPRvWixxnv5hMQGQ\ RSS feed: https://feeds.libsyn.com/570025/rss Cheers 1982-1993 270 episodes Let's start things off with a place where everyone knows your name. To support the show and get access to our biweekly "The Middlest" episodes, join our patreon. A production of Night Vale Presents. Hosts are Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink Editing by Grant Stewart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville.com. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know

all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you right now is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th. So make sure you are still subscribe to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool nightbale merch? Go to Welcome to Nightville.com, click on store, and we have

all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, beach towels, and if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com and click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe.

And hey, thanks. Hi, everyone. Joseph Fink here with a surprise announcement. We have a new podcast made by me with Make Bashwinner, voice of the Nightfield Credits, and Deb, the Sentient Patch of Hayes. It is called the best worst. In it, we go through some of the most beloved shows in television history, watching first the IMD be worst rated and then the best rated episodes. What can we learn by watching great television at its best and at its worst? What you were about to hear is our first episode, which covers the classic sitcom, Cheers. So, join us to explore the golden age of television at its best and at

its worst. The best worst is available wherever you listen to podcasts. Takes everything you've got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of the best worst, a celebration of the best and the worst of the television we love. Hi, I'm Meg Bashwinner. And I'm Joseph Fink. And we love TV. So we created the show to explore what we all love about popular TV shows by watching both the IMDB viewer best rated and worst rated episodes of a quintessential series. We were talking a little bit last night about why we decided to do the show. And since this is the first episode, I thought it might be good to get into that. We have shifted how television works now. It's all on

streamers and everything is seven episodes long. And if it's a huge head, it might get as much as three seven episode seasons. And people really don't watch it. Like we don't have a, we're out of the monoculture, right? So we all are not watching the same episode of television. Like the show we're talking about this week is Cheers and at its highest ratings. It had 33.3, 33.9 million viewers to a show. Which is over 10% of the country watching the same show at the same time. It's all just watching Cheers. So it's, yeah, it's so vastly different from our television landscape today where like you have like maybe one friend who watches that one show that you guys can talk about as opposed to 10% of your country being able to just be like, did you see cheers last

night? It does feel like we replaced television with something that can be very good. Some of these shows are amazing, but it's not the same form. Like people stopped making this type of television, which was one of our primary forms of entertainment for a century. It really, this form of entertainment to me that this sort of the heyday of TV multi-cam shows that we're talking about sitcoms in front of a live audience was sort of bridging the gap between film and theater. It really was sort of like the middle ground place. And now I feel like there is no more of that middle ground place.

And there's just a canyon between the gap of film and theater when TV shows are now firmly in the film department. Unless you're watching TV shows like on Dropout. I feel like Dropout.com. Dropout.tv, a streamer that does its own shows. highly recommend. But they're much more theatrical than I think film-based. They're game shows and the like. So I guess, yeah, I guess game shows are what we have left in terms of theater on TV. So each of the shows on this podcast, in order to try to get to kind of the golden age of the

type of television we're talking to, they have to adhere to a set of rules. The main one is we want every show on this podcast to be at least 100 episodes, to really have existed for quite a while on television to really build up enough variety that the best and the worst episode will have this huge gap between them. Just to give you an idea. The TV show we're talking about today is Cheers, which had 275 episodes. So that's quite a lot of episodes. And if you're looking at a TV show that was massively successful, like looking at Secession,

I'm just Googling it now. Listen to me, Google. How many episodes? They had 39 episodes of Secession. So a very different thing. Yeah, I mean, Cheers had 29 episodes. episode just in its first season. The other thing we're doing is we're excluding premieres and finales because those tend to have inflated ratings on IMDB. And we're looking to watch each

television show at its absolute best, not necessarily at its most important or cliffhangery. Let's get to today's show, which is, as you said, it's cheers. Cheers. Which ran for 11 seasons, and as we mentioned, 275 episodes. It premiered in 1982, and it ran until 1993. And it ran until 1993. And Cheers. I watched it as a kid growing up. Did you watch it? You didn't really watch TV as a kid growing up. I didn't watch a lot of TV.

My parents were pretty anti-TV. So I knew Cheers. I never watched it. I think if you had asked me before we did this, I would have told you Cheers was like a 70 sitcom because it was always sort of in my head. It was sort of a hazy, like, classic sitcom that existed sometime before I was born because I just wasn't aware of it while it was running.

I was aware of it while it was running. So you said that your parents were very anti-TV. I could say that almost like a third parent in my household was the TV. So yeah, so I watched a lot of TV and watched a lot of like the heyday NBC must-see TV that was really the bread and butter. We used to watch the Frasier and syndication every night at dinner. We absolutely did watch Frasier. That's the weird thing. I love that you're yeah, we can watch Frasier because it's like pseudo-intellectual. I had no idea that Frasier was a spinoff. I didn't know that Frasier. was ever in another show. Yeah, the spinoff of Cheers was Trazier. I also just found out, while looking into Cheers Today, that there was another spinoff, which was, which I think is called,

let me look at what's called, but it's about Carla's family. And it went, read for 13 episodes, was canceled, I believe, midseason, and many of the Italian-American audience found it very derogatory. So there's that. That's interesting.

I would have never guessed. I think that Carla was supposed to be Italian-American. Yeah. I didn't think about it. ethnicity. She doesn't play a super Italian American in the episodes we watched, so I just didn't think about it. Carla Tortale.

Well, they never mentioned her last name, but I love that they basically called her Carla Tortolini. Yeah, Carla Tortolini, La Sani and Gabu-Goole. While you look that up, I'm going to introduce the first episode we're talking about. This is of 275 episodes of Cheers.

This is, according to the fine folks on IMDB, the worst episode, and it is season 10, episode three, Madam LaCarla. A little behind the scenes, we had to re-record this episode due to sound issues, so we actually have recorded a few episodes after. So I apologize if I introduce this theory in another episode, and I forgot. But I want to introduce this theory. I have, and we will test it, going through this podcast, which is in a show that has

run for a while, let's say 10 seasons. I think the best episode will always be in the middle. third somewhere in like season three to six somewhere in there because that's when shows tend to really hit their stride they've worked out the problems but they haven't hit a while or they're repeating themselves yet and the worst episode will either be season one when they're still trying to figure themselves out or more likely in one of the last two seasons when they're really kind of everyone involved is done and this fits that it's in season 10 out of 11 but just something to to keep an eye on as we move forward if these follow that rule.

So, yeah, so we sat down and we watched Madame La Carla, Medeam La Carla, I think it's madame because we're evoking the psychics. All right, so the summary of this episode is that we have our A plot where Carla's psychic has decided to retire and name Carla as her successor. And we sort of work through what that means for Carla and what that means for psychics in general. And then our B plot is that Woody is in a play that has premiered, And he gets a bad review, and he feels bad about the bad review.

That is what we're working with here. I wouldn't say that the plot for either of these stories is strong. I think that's one of the issues we're running into. If we're thinking about, okay, why is this the absolute worst out of 275 episodes? One is it just doesn't have a lot of story going on in it. These both feel like not even B plots, but like C plots, just like one or two jokes in the background of another. an episode that's about something else. Also, it does feel a bit tired.

Like, the energy of the show, it just, it really is very low. When you walk into the bar, it's, like, sleepy. And there is sort of, it really is lacking dynamicism in this episode at all. The thing that Joseph and I giggle about is that Rebecca, Christiali is in this episode, and she is in the exact same, she's in two scenes. She's in the exact same spot at the bar doing the exact same thing both times. She's just sorting through a pile of mail. So there's, like, like, no, just like, kind of boredly.

she seems very bored. The rest of the characters at the bar seem kind of bored. And then the main characters of this episode are Woody and Carla, who are both beloved characters, but they are not the stars of the show. So we're written sort of, it feels like the whole episode is a B plot. The weird thing, though, is that even though they're both kind of, everything feels a little tired, it's also the show at its biggest budget. So one thing I noticed compared to the other episode we watched, the best one,

is the bar is so much more crowded with extras in this one. Like they really are throwing money at the show, even as everyone involved is getting a little kind of running out of new things to do with it. They're trying to make that up by like, okay, let's, instead of like a couple extras in the background, let's put a hundred extras in this bar and have people walking around constantly and doing things. And that'll make this feel energetic because it's no longer in the writing or performance. Yeah, that is sort of a signature thing of cheers is that it is set. the main bar room set is like in an active bar, like a, you know, a theatrical version of an

active bar. It's obviously not loud like a bar. There no one's interrupting Sam to buy a drink. Like there's, you know, that sort of thing isn't really happening there. But we are on, you know, in a theatrical version of a bar. And if you look, there is just 20% more extras in this. And it's, it gets to the point where it is distracting. Like there's a couple times in this episode where I turned to Joseph. And I was like, oh no, bad extra is bad. Because you see the extra in the background, just really pulling focus in a way that's not funny or good. It's just like just literally just pulling your eye away from the dialogue that we're endeavoring to hear. There's one scene where Sam and Carla have sat down to talk. And it really is just like a very

formulaic cut where it's like, cut to Frazier, cut to Carla, cut to the two of them, and an extra walks by. And then like the next line, it's the same. It's like cut to this, cut to this. And then an extra walks by. It feels like they're almost in a loop with the way that it is being directed there, which is interesting because it's directed by James Burroughs, who directed, if not all of the, did he direct all of the episodes of the show? If not he directed the plurality of them. Yeah, I don't know. He was listed as one of the creators because I think he directed the pilot. And he's also just a guy, if you look at his, his filmography, he just, he directs TV. That's what he does. He's directed so many television shows. And is one of the

pioneers of this sort of style of must-see TV. And this episode, it does feel a little bit tired. It feels a little bit formulaic. It doesn't feel sort of new. It definitely feels like it's on rails. So let's talk about the team behind this because we do have, we have James Burrow directing, who is an absolute pro. And then we have, how do we say his name, Feefe Sutton? Feefe Sutton. Writing, who is also, if you look at his work, just a pro. Like he's a guy who wrote television since the early 80s, wrote it all the way up until his last credit is like 2022. And so these are both people that know a lot about how to write television. In fact, this is not the last time we will hear the very unusual name Feefe Sutton this episode.

We'll get back to our man soon. So it's not a problem of lack of talent here. These are people who have delivered very good television in the past. I just don't think either of them had anything new to say with this material anymore. With this material, with these characters. And then also just the structure of how this show was made. The shows were filmed in front of a live studio audience on a Tuesday night. So Wednesday would be the day that they started working on the episode.

And then they would have final scripts in Monday. And so it really was very much. And they did 26 episodes a year, 26 weeks of this. So it really is something that is very much on a machine. It is designed to crank out. So maybe, you know, we can't fault them. They've made 275 of these episodes. They all certainly can't be groundbreaking knee-slappers.

they, but yeah, so it's, it kind of, to me, I think it's like sort of a good thing. If you can have, like, you can make so much that occasionally you make a bad one and it's still good and fine. Like, we're talking, we're talking about the negative things of this episode, but I think that it's still good and fine. And if this was on at 11 p.m. while you were trying to fall asleep with your antenna, pointed towards the best signal you could get for this on your black and white TV that's in your bedroom. I think that's great. I think you feel good about it. Yeah, I mean, it is not,

I think if we were just watching this through the entire series, just kind of for fun, I don't think we would think after watching this, that was the worst episode of Cheers. I don't think we would think it was very good. But as you said, it's still like a solid 20 minutes of television. It still does what it does. And that gets to one thing I want to talk about, which is the reason we start with the worst is to see if we can see what made this show so loved, even at its absolute worst. And I think you can see a lot of it in this episode. Yeah, it's good characters. It's good characters. It's a good ensemble and creating ensemble. So the first season of Cheers did not do great ratings-wise, which I think makes sense because we are these, this ensemble needs to gel.

It needs to create. You need to get to know these characters. and these relationships in order for that magic to happen in order to feel like you're in the bar with with them like you know these people. Of course, the first time you're there, it's going to feel weird. And the second time and the third time, by the time you get towards the end of the season, you really do get to learn about these characters and their relationships. And that's what makes it interesting is that you feel like you're in a bar. And they're funny. Like, it's, the jokes are formulaic and tropey, but the actors are beating them out and the directors are laying it out for you in a way that you find funny. The live audience is very helpful there so that you know when to laugh when a

joke's been told. So yeah, there is, I think what works about it is the sense of ensemble, both from as a viewer of feeling you're in the room with them and then also with the live audience, feeling like you have an audience with you, even if you are at home alone. I think we'll be talking about this a lot in this podcast, but this is very much, I mean, it's quite literally a hangout show. It's a show about people hanging out in a bar. And it's a show designed to make you feel like you're there hanging out with them, that even if you're not having the most entertaining experience of your life, you are hanging out with your friends. All your friends are there. They're talking. Maybe it's not the most interesting conversation they've ever had,

but whatever, you're here and it's nice to not, you know, it fills up the space. It's a classic, like, you have a 20 minutes and you don't want it to be quiet. So let's turn on this show. And it fills up that silence. And I do think there's a place for that. that prestige television that's really trying to create great art can't do by definition because it's just trying to do something different. A couple of things I noticed about Cheers just even in this episode that feel very different than modern television is the cold opens are so short and to the point. Cold opens now are kind of treated almost like their own short films. They have setups. They have this, you know, they might be like separate from the

episode itself and they're trying to do something. This cold open is literally like two lines and it's just a setup in a punchline and we're out. It's one joke. That was the part of the process of their writing process for Cheers was that they would give the younger writers, the more green writers, the task of the cold open. So it was like a way for them to sort of cut their teeth and have a little bit of a scene. And it makes sense because it's not narrative the way they do it. It is just literally tell one joke. That's it. I love that. I love including process into performance and having it be like, okay, this was a joke we liked this week. We couldn't find another spot for it that one of our greener writers wrote.

That you got the cold open. I think that's cool. One thing that I thought was really good was there was one joke in which Cliff was talking about seeing arsenic and old lace. And he described this lengthy story about his mother who he lives with, finding it hilarious, the older woman killing people and how he wakes up in the middle of the night and she's standing over him making this weird guttural sound in her throat. And it's just such a, it stands out in this episode because most,

most of this episode feels very placeholder. And that felt so weird and specific and interesting that I really liked it. I really felt like I could feel a writer just found a riff that they found kind of funny and went with it. It had a sense of personality that a lot of the episode did not. Agreed. I also think it was performed well too. And that's another thing about the show. The performances are strong. The acting is maybe not the most. We're not staying on the most firm, beautiful acting ground. But the try and the energy is there. and the quickness. It is a very specific style of performance, and I think they're all nailing it. This sort of style of performance is not going to work on secession. Like, Ria Perlman in this role, playing a comedic, you know, four-cam, three-cam sitcom actor would not work.

It would feel very wrong in another place. But in this place, they're all working really hard, and it's good. In this episode, some of it is a little bit tired. Like the Rebecca, like Kirstie Alley feels like, Like, if she could have zoomed into this performance, if she could have done this on a Zoom call, she would have. Yeah, maybe this isn't fair to Rebecca because I only saw her this. The other ones we watched were Diane. But she's so bad compared to Diane, at least, you know, like, Diane has this, like, she has great comic timing.

She's really there. And yeah, Christy Alley here is just bringing nothing. Like, you could have replaced her with a lamp in this episode. I mean, she's not given good material, but that's fair because she does nothing with it. Yeah. A couple other thoughts about this episode. There's just a dude there who looks kind of like Riker from Star Trek. He's got the same beard and the same kind of arched eyebrow and he's just there. No one ever says his name.

He has like two lines. I'm to believe he's a recurring character. Yeah, I think he, I think his name is Pete and he was in 42 episodes. But no one says his name. He's just, mostly he's just kind of disconcernedly staring at the camera behind people while they talk. He really is so distracting to me. Yeah, he does kind of feel like that extra is bad, but he's not an extra because he like has a name and lines and as a character, but they're just not using him. Again, it speaks to like, oh, we have more budget.

Let's bring in some more actors. We'll see if we can use them. And then you can't. You didn't. I mean, I don't think he was a popular character given his IMDP does not have like any pictures. There is no profile picture on his IMDP page. It's just that little like gray, gray silhouette. So I don't think that the guy who played Pete, despite looking a lot like Commander Riker ever did much.

else with his career, unfortunately. One thing to note is that this was a sequel episode to a season eight episode that also had Madame, Madame, how do we say that? It makes distracted. I'm looking at this guy's page. The guy for Pete. Is he Pete or is he? I'm pretty sure he's Pete.

You sure he's not? Lee? I am fairly certain. I've done, I did some research. I think he is Pete. Okay, good, good. all the Cheers fans out there that are listening to this are like, how dare you? Sorry, there were 275 episodes and I haven't watched Cheers since I was nine.

So Madam Lozora was in season eight and she actually was nominated for an Emmy the first time she was there. So this is sort of, I would assume, a sequel episode to a triumphant episode if it was the kind of episode that gets nominated for an Emmy. So you can see why they would want to bring her back. But I don't know. They just didn't really find anything to do with her. The actress who played her, whose name I did not write down, she was a English singer who died of a unlisted medical event soon after filming this episode. I think she does her best with the material.

She doesn't seem tired. She's bringing it as best she can. But whatever Emmy performance she gave the first time, they just didn't give her the same level of material. this time. My last note, we talked about this. So this is a show that started in the early 80s and ended in the early 90s. So it really, you know, it bridged some styles, some fashions. And the shirts in this episode are just deep early 90s, some really great early 90s fashion going on. Oh, yeah. There's a part where Carla and Sam are in the same shot. And the patterns on each of their shirts are absolute chaos. I'm like, What my little tiny black and white television set in my bedroom as a child would have done with this is just just chef's kiss. But yeah, the fashions, the fashions on Cheers in general are great. I think the costume design is always excellent. And I'm very impressed, especially the hair. We'll talk more about the hair in the next episode. But.

Okay, well, let's get to it. So we're going to get to our intermission, which is how was that theme song? This theme song is such a banger. This theme song is, I would put this in there as like one of the best theme songs at all time. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a strong argument that this is the best TV theme song ever made. You can't not sing along to it. Yeah, it's catchy. It fits the scene. I have some information about this theme song, if you would like.

I prepared a little bit of a history lesson because there is some interesting stuff here. Yes, and I will say that I had a friend of a friend who used to do this as his audition song, like his 16 bars. because he wasn't like a strong singer, but he knew that if he could hold the performance of this, like you can, you might not be the best singer in the room, but if you show up and do your 16 bars to this song, you're going to be remembered. And you're going to make the auditioners and the people in the room feel good and have a good feeling associated with you. So I think it's, if you're auditioning for theater in the early aughts, I think this is probably a really good choice, a nostalgia choice, especially if you're not a strong singer, but a strong performer.

So this song was written by Greg Portnoy, who was a songwriter. He had some songs recorded by Dolly Parton and Air Supply. He wrote some songs for the TV show Fame. He was hired to write the music for a musical called Preppies, which we are theater nerds, and I've never heard of that. So I don't think it went anywhere. But the opening song was a song called People Like Us. And the producers of Cheers heard it and wanted to use it for.

their theme song, but they legally weren't allowed to. It was tied to the musical prepees, and so they asked him to write a basically an exact copy that they legally could use. Fortunately, there is on Spotify here, I'm seeing a little EP that has these various drafts. So I can play you short clips of these to give you a sense of where, the evolution of this. So this is people like us from the musical prepees that they wanted to use. You know, never need to be told, Sabot Bear and a tank get you by. Don't paring yon, obey me, from a... You know, I can see why they felt that would be a good sitcom song.

This is My Kind of People, which was his attempt to write an exact copy of that. My Kind of People, root for the home team. Make it a living. Unfortunately, the producers of Cheers did not like that song, and so they asked him to try again, which is where he came up with this one, Another Day. Hey, that's another day. One more in the past. Good time slip away.

Too fast. Out there nine to five. Okay, Gary. And then there was a third attempt. that, I guess was bad enough that he did not even include it on his EP of Cheers Attempts. And then his fourth attempt was this song, which you'll notice sounds a lot like the Cheers song, but the lyrics are completely different. Singing the blues when the Red Sox Lose, it's a crisis in your life.

On the run, because all your girlfriends want to be your wife. and the laundry tickets in the wall. So obviously they could hear that that had a lot of potential, but they were also like, Gary, those lyrics are bad. And so he rewrote it, but they liked the demo enough that, as you can hear, they just basically had him recreate the demo. And that is the story of Gary Portnoy and the Cheers theme. He did not, as far as I can tell, do any other releases of note after that.

So good, though. But it's funny to hear the story of it, that it's written by committee, because usually stuff that's written by committee is terrible. But I think it really does work here. I think, yeah, he found the music. The lyrics were very on the nose. And then once they were like, take your foot off the gas of the on the nose lyrics and just go a little wider, you'll find it. Also, the inclusion of rhythm was good.

Adding some drum beats there. The first one was just a demo. So they just had them kind of recreate that demo, but with a band. And you could hear that they kept it pretty simple. Even the background chorus is just him tracked six times. He is the only vocalist in that theme song. He's all I need. It's a great song.

It's one of the great pieces of music in our time. Yeah, it's a modern classic. Let us get to the best episode of Cheers of 275. Meg, what is it? It's dinner at eight-ish, which is season five, episode 20. I just want to note that is solidly in the middle third. So far following my prediction there. Our synopsis here is that Frazier and Lilith invites Sam and Diane over for dinner to celebrate their first week of cohabitation.

But things start going wrong when Lilith finds out Frazier and Diane were engaged and she locks herself in the bathroom. Then Sam and Diane have an argument. Meanwhile, our B-plot is Cliff has agreed to babysit Carla's kids. And this is dinner at 8ish. I mean, when you say B-plot, it's literally like two scenes. There's a scene where he agrees to. and then there's a scene where the kids return him to the bar wrapped in, I think, toilet paper. And that is, that is it.

That is the entire beat plot. It is almost entirely set. This is an episode that is almost entirely set outside of the bar. Yes, we're off set, but we're in the same style set. We still are in a room. We're in a big wide room. It's fully a stage, and it's Frazier and Liliths apartment. And this episode is really successful.

I think this episode is really successful because of the performances, because we've got, we've got Sam and Diane, and who are established as characters. They are the leads of this show. And we have Frazier and Lilith, who are their foils. And Frazier is played by Kelsey Grammar, wonderful stage actor, and Baby New Worth, who is just an incredible, incredible stage actor. So there's so much performance talent, and it's performed very tightly.

The script is good. It moves. And it's very theatrical. this is very much like watching a play. I don't know the technical term for this, but it's the kind of farce where people are constantly slamming in and out of doors. You know the kind of farce I mean,

where it's like, I think on stage, it's often a country estate, but there's just a lot of people coming in out of doors. And they just, they wrote that. And when I say they, it's our Manfif Sutton is back. Having written the worst episode of Cheers, he also wrote the best,

which kind of speaks to, it speaks to the fact that the problems with Madame LaCarlow were not a problem. of talent because this is a guy who could clearly deliver a high caliber episode of Cheers as well. Yeah, I think that. I mean, the problems of Carla were just like, we're tired and the machine is keeping, the machine keeps rolling and we're still in the machine. We have to, it's not, it's that like Lauren Michaels thing with Saturday Night Live. It's like, we don't start the show because we're ready. We start the show because it's time or 10 o'clock or whatever. I'm butching this

quote and everyone is hating me for it. But we're not putting this episode up because we're done and We think it's perfect. We're putting this episode up because we have to because this is our film schedule. So, yeah, but this episode is, this episode is great. We get just the classic themes of cheers in this episode where there's the class dynamic between Sam and Diane, which is also played out between the class dynamic between Frazier and Sam. And even so between Diane and Lilith, because Lilith takes a higher status as she, she doesn't work in a bar.

She's a doctor. So there is that, that class dynamic that's happening there that is. one of the main premises of cheers. And then it's also the man-woman relationship thing that that we see here. So there's the struggle of Willis and Frazier's relationship as they move into cohabitation, the struggle of Sam and Diane's relationship as Diane grapples with the fact that Sam has literally slept with every woman in Boston. So there is that, those dynamics at play. So we're playing our hits here. We've got our good actors in a single set in a tight script talking about class and men and women romantic relationships. Like, we're, we're there. Yeah, I think that is one thing

that makes Cheers so specifically Boston, you know, in terms of feeling like Boston is that class thing. That feels like Boston because no one in the bar is black ever. Yeah, there is not a single white person, or not a single non-white person in Cheers at any point. But also, like, Boston is a place where there's Harvard, you know, Harvard's there, but also a lot of Boston is very working class. And, and so it is a show that really plays into that divide between Harvard Boston and working class Boston. Two issues there is that everyone involved in making this show went to like Yale or Harvard. Feefe Sutton himself went to Yale. So it's a show written entirely by Ivy League guys. It's a series about working class people that is maybe not written by working class people. And I think they

Well, no, it's written by TV writers. TV writers can come from a lot of different backgrounds. You know, there's not actually an education. requirement for TV writing. It's just that those are the people who get to be in the room. The other issue I have with how Cheers talks about class, and I think it's very evident here, is I don't think that Cheers is very good at faking intellectual talk. And I think the issue isn't because a lot of these people are very well educated. I don't think it's because they don't know what they're talking about. I think it's more that there's a little bit of condescending attitude of we want this to have broad appeal. So we have to write lines that sound like something

a smart person would say, but that the biggest dummy in the world could understand. Well, yeah, this shows reliant on tropes, which is what it's going to be for a sitcom in the 80s is going to be very reliant on tropes. To have what they believe is to be a mass appeal. I think the network note of the time is that we need mass appeal, mass appeal. And what mass appeal means is like this sort of watering down, dumbing down, the dumbing down style, which as a creator. I don't believe that to be important for mass appeal. I think what's important for mass appeal is to tell a good story. But at the time it was different. When we're looking at the creators of these shows, they all seem to be like the exact same guy. It's like, oh, you're born in

the late 40s, early 50s, and you're a boomer art type. And that is the plurality of who who is making these shows, who's directing them, who's writing them, who's producing them. It's a space that's pretty devoid of people of color. It's a place that's pretty devoid of women. And this is the culture from which this stuff is being creative. There's not a lot of perspective. No, and it's a sense that I think these people are like, well, we don't need anyone else because we know how to write everyone. There's a sense in the TV room, in the writer's room, that, you know, we are the default human model. And so therefore, we can kind of write everyone. And they struggle to write women. They struggle to right women, they struggle, they struggled to, you know, I think they had to resort to tropes and

archetypes because that's all they had for a lot of different types of people. Going through this episode, going back to the cold open, it's once again just a short bang, bang, and we're out. And one thing I really enjoyed here is that Ted Danson just goes ahead and laughs at the joke. He does not even try to hide that. He just, it's not like a Jimmy Fallon style break where he's trying to suppress it. He kind of laughs in character and it works. But I found it kind of enjoyable that Ted Danson's just like, yeah, it was a funny joke. I'll laugh at it. Yeah. I mean, Ted Danson is so good. These actors are very good. But Ted Danson is a special talent. Yeah. As I think is BB Newworth watching this episode as well. She's given less to two,

but it's just so dynamic on screen and so serious and just really, yeah, holds the moment. It's very physically dynamic on set. Yeah, I mean, Ted Danson has a thing that he has that, like, like Chevy Chase's physical comedy going, but he's also very good at verbal. Like he can kind of do both, which I think a lot of people struggle to be equally good at both. And I think he could, he had those, he was so tall that he had the, he was kind of gangly. And that made the physical comedy really funny. But he was also very good at the one-liners. Very good at the one-liners. And also, listen, there are four cameras on these people. They're playing to a live audience and four cameras. This is not an easy thing to do. Like this is, there is a, there is a

a lot of different things to consider here. And he just, he really, he's really very solid in it. Talking about physical comedy, that one thing I notice, I feel like modern sitcoms are a lot more verbal-based. There are a lot more about just here's a series of one-liners. And a lot of cheers is physical comedy. There's a lot of people tripping in this episode, people falling on couches. There's a really good piece of physical comedy early on between Kelsey Grammer and B.B. Newark, where they're fighting over how to present the magazines on the coffee table because they're both used to kind of having their way in an apartment. And she throws the magazines at him, which causes them to fly all over, but she also throws it so hard, she goes

flying back on the couch. And it's just this, it's like a single physical comedy beat, but they both are playing it to its absolute max. And it creates a very funny moment. Yeah. And that is the thing that we're working with here in this bridge between theater and film is where we are. And yeah, just Baby New Worth is standing Baby New Worth here. And I will continue to do that because I think she's just incredibly talented and an incredible stage actor as well. Yeah, I'll point out that I was looking at some fan notes about this episode online.

And someone pointed out that apparently a running joke later in the series is that Lilith has a terrible singing. voice. But in this episode, she sings and B.B. Newark just uses her regular voice, which was Broadway level. She had sung on Broadway. And so it's just a little inconsistency there is that in this episode, Lilith has a Broadway ready voice. Yeah. The other's, I mean, there's a scene around the piano. Yeah. Kelsey Gramer just sits down and plays the piano, which, by the way, there's also just such a classic sitcom apartment that they can fit in a Boston apartment, a straight up. It's a grand piano. It's like a, it's maybe not a concert grand piano, but it is. a grand piano. There's a piano in Cheers as well. In the last episode, the Madame LaCarla,

she sits down and starts playing the piano. Then Kelsey Grammer tries to give her some notes on playing the piano, which I think is, I think it's cool. I think it's cool to have a set that has stuff in it that people can use, like actual things happening here, as opposed to, I guess, yeah, these sets now that are all just in someone else's cold house that are all just being filmed at our neighbor's house across the street from us. Yeah, we had a TV. show filmed across the street from us for a month, which was not super fun, although we did once see Kristen Bell walk to her car. But I would just walk up and down the street every time I needed to get anywhere, and I would just be saying, build a set. Build a set. Because when you build

a set, you can do, you know, they work, they work that space to its maximum. Every part of that space is used. They're constantly using the props. There's a running joke where Ted Danson, his character is hungry and so he's just eating everything. And he does a lot of good prop work with just the various bowls of chips and breads and. And the thing with build a set is that when we build a set, we have room for the cameras, we have room for the lights, we have it tailored to what the actors and the seed needs. In TV now, you're in a house, you're in a department store, you're in a place or in a lot of them, like all the Marvel stuff, they are just, they have like three props and then they're surrounded by green screens. Even in scenes where you wouldn't think it, if they're

just like in a house that's still green screened because it's cheaper than renting house. Yeah. It's that, it's that neo-futurist theater thing where it's like, oh, you have to pretend to be tired. Just go run around the block. Like just we have these things. We have these things in our toolbox that we can use at our actual tools. We don't need to, you know, bring sand to the beach here. A note about the song that Fraser and Lilith sing together at the piano.

It's the song Our House, which was written by Nash of Crosby Stills and Nash. And it is, according to the internet. a song he wrote about living with Joni Mitchell, which is, I checked both their Wikipedia pages and there's no mention of them having a relationship, but I guess at some point they were living together. They all did, those Laurel Canyon days. They were all in there. It was one big pile. Some other notes about this episode, it's such a like different time that they're having a four-person dinner party, the two people that live there and they've invited two of their friends. And everyone is wearing full formal wear. Everyone's, the men are in suits, the women are in like,

dresses, heels, panty hose, full on. Yeah. They, they just, it is full formal for just like having friends over to your apartment. Yeah. Well, she has it catered as well. Yeah. Well, that is, so that's, that's sort of an ending punchline is that she secretly had it catered by, of course, a woman that it turns out, why am I blinking on Ted Dance's character that Sam has slept with because he slept with everyone. Yes. There's some fun jokes about being horny about dip. Yeah, there's some jokes about being horny about dip. The way the episode ends is like very, like, tropey and I bristle at where they end up locking both of the women in the bathroom and go upstairs and smoke cigars, which feels like so very of its time. Actually, it even feels further back than of its time.

It feels like that is like, it feels very, I love Lucy plot. I agree. It really let the episode down. It's this misogynist button to an episode that I think is otherwise playing pretty nuanced. in a sitcom format with everyone's feelings. Everyone has an opportunity to feel hurt and insecure. And they're playing with that and kind of letting everyone have that moment. And ending that with like women be yapping.

Let's lock them up and have a cigar. It just felt like it was letting down everything they had done up until that point. When it feels like of the time, it really should have been the other way around where it's like it really should have been the women locking the men in the bathroom and then going upstairs to have a cigar, like that's sort of. sort of second way of feminism thing, but that was just like completely not happening. And then nowadays it would just be like, they're just all quietly texting in different, different penthouses. Some other notes I have. There was, as I said, way fewer extras in this one, not just in the

apartment, obviously didn't have extras, but the bar. There was like two tables. Yeah, I think the idea when creating the show is that they wanted it to feel real. They wanted it to feel like a bar. They wanted it to feel like there was always something going on in the background that could be interesting. I think the notes given to the background actors were like, there's always going to be a camera on you. So make sure you're playing to that camera. And that is a difficult note to give an extra. But yeah, so there's there's not that in this episode. Yeah, my other note about this episode is that the blow dryer from the hair and makeup department was working over time. Everyone has like a proper blowout. Well, yeah, because this is season five. So this is late 80s. So we are in like the full swing

of what we remember us the 80s here. Yes, Kelsey Grammer's got a follow out. Ted Danson is like, it looks like he left the car wash in a convertible during the blow dry part and showed up on set. It truly is, it truly is great. Shelly Long's hair is like perfectly quaffed. B.B. Newworth, they were like using that diffuser on her. So it's good, some good hair work.

Any other notes on this episode? I will. I'm going to go back to the hair stuff. Again, talking about the bridge between theater and film. In a film, the sitcom, because it is in front of a studio audience, you do have to kind of go a little bit bigger with hair, makeup, and costume, just from a visual standpoint so that people in the audience can actually see, can see what the intent is of how these characters look. Whereas when we move to film and we move to TV nowadays,

there's so much more subtlety and look and costuming. And I like, I love the big, fun, fluffy hair and the blue eye shadows of this show. One thing I notice is about this is there's just no attempt to make it feel like real life. And that can be really enjoyable. Like, I think because we watch TV on high-definition televisions now, people who make TV feel a pressure to, like, really deliver like little details you'll notice in people's sets, people's houses, what people are wearing. And this very much just feels like a theater set and theater costumes. and that can be enjoyable because these people are here to perform for us.

Well, it's pre-reality TV. So it lives in a world before we were inside everyone's home, and we were inside everyone's office. It is pre-that time. So the hunger for reality didn't even really exist because we didn't even know that we wanted to eat it, right? So, yeah, it is this sort of fossilized world before we were inside Chloe Kardashian's bedroom. So watching this show for the first time, I think, since you were a kid, how did you feel? Like, did it change how you felt about it?

Well, yeah, I'm looking at it now from a lens of a person who is a creator of performing art and a maker of performing art. So I'm looking at it to sort of see what tools they're using and what methods they're using. And looking at it, the nuts and bolts of it from an intrigue. As a kid, I watched it just because it was on. And I was like, this is funny. And we're all together. We're sitting down and we're watching it and we're laughing. and then there's a tied commercial. And like that is just that or I'm, you know, I'm trying to fall asleep in my childhood bedroom. And I've got it, I've got three channels. And this is what is on one of them. So I was not putting my brain into it when I was watching as a kid. I was like just observing it. And now I'm looking at it from all the different things just because I think I find it is something so wonderful.

And I, as a creator, I'm in awe of it. And I want to be like, well, how did you do it? Can we, how can we look at it to take apart the pieces just to see? For me, I'd say that it basically met my expectations. Like, it was the show I thought it was, which is just this classic solid sitcom, this kind of platonic ideal of what a sitcom looks like, that here's a group of people. We've set up a space for them, and we have these rapid fire punchlines. I don't think it surprised me, but it also very much delivered on what I thought it would,

which is just this is the previous version of television that we talked about, this version of television that cranks out 29 episodes a year. This is it working at the height of its powers. These are people really working in that form. And speaking of that, the next show we're going to watch is from a different era of television. What's that next show? We're going to be looking at House, House MD. HouseMD. I'm excited about this because I never watched it on television, but it was definitely one of the ones I got on Netflix discs in the mail. I watch several seasons of House that way. And it's a very different form of this kind of deliver a solid product every week. But it's one that I was a big fan of.

I'm interested to revisit. Same. Cool. So if you enjoy this, please consider supporting us on Patreon. And that will give you access to our Patreon-only show. So we will be doing these episodes, the best worst, every other week. And then on the in-between weeks, we will be doing the Middlest. where we will be discussing the exact middle-rated episode of the show we discussed in the best,

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Everybody knows your name. There it is. For more, subscribe to the best, worst, wherever you get podcasts. And remember that we are currently entirely Patreon-supported. So join to get access to our bi-weekly, the Middlest episodes, where we watch the exact most average episode of the show we covered the week before. I love you. Goodbye. Hi, I'm here to tell you about Good Morning Night Vale. Welcome to Night Vale's official recap show and unofficial best friend food podcast.

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