When Cheers ended

Maybe I’m a natural to love Cheers. My parents watched it weekly. I still consider it my favorite show. I grew up even as the boys in the bar did not. I can go back and catch jokes that I missed as a teenager.

Plus, do you know anyone else who could open a restaurant called Melville’s Fine Seafood and not get sued for copyright infringement?

Cheers has never been far away. Not after it ended 25 years ago this month, not after going to the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston in 1991, not after wearing out videotapes we made of syndicated episodes, not after its spinoff Frasier ended, not buying every season on DVD, not after the whole series became available on Netflix. Along with the DVDs, my shelf holds a companion book, and my parents have a Cheers board game. To me, the show will never go away.

The older I get, the more I realize that Cheers never slumped because the show had two distinct phases, each with its own ending. The first era concluded with Shelley Long’s last episode, the second came when the series wrapped six seasons later when Ted Danson decided to leave and the show’s producers decided to end while the show was still strong.

For all the laughs, Cheers could turn serious, even maudlin. These two episodes best encapsulate the show’s balance of serious moments with relentless humor. The sad moments are often cutting and brutal. Take the speech Sam gives Diane after their wedding is called off. He wishes her a good life, she says she’ll only be gone a few months. He gives a very blue-collar speech about how they might never see each other due to any number of circumstances. She assures him that won't be the case.

As Diane walks up the steps, he somberly says, “Have a good life” as the scene shifts to a daydream of an elderly Sam and Diane flirting with each other then dancing to , a moment Sam and the audience know will never exist. The moment felt raw and real, the imagery of the couple dancing to an Irving Berlin tune might happen to any of us at the end of a relationship. Sam let the woman he loved go to pursue her dreams, but that did not make it any easier.

These days I find the stronger ending came with the departure of Diane and end of her relationship with Sam. The actual ending isn’t weak, but this one packs more emotional punch. Sam and Diane have already started on trajectories that cannot be reconciled.

In today's market of prestige television, that might have ended the series. Imagine if Cheers called it a series after Season 5. Its reputation would be no less stellar. But 1980s viewers might have rioted.

While Diana returned six years later for the series finale, it was a fluke, a last grasp at a relationship that long ago fell under the horizon. It’s why the end of the series returns to the bar and gives us a last evening with the gang – Sam and Diane’s story had already been told, so we might as well have a last beer with our old friends.

The final episode presents another sort of somber, life-affirming moment. The main cast sit around smoking cigars and talking about the meaning of life. Sam jetting off with Diane would never suffice as an ending – the bar mates gathering one last time without the crowds was the only way to go out.

I had held back any emotions until the last speech, where Sam and Norm had an exchange, Norm insisting he knew Sam would always come back, because Cheers was his only true love. The bar meant so much to all these people, and that enriched Sam’s life. Why else would a recovering alcoholic run a bar? Sam pauses and declares, “I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth.”

But that wasn’t the end. After telling a patron that the bar was closed, Sam does a last walk-through. That felt forced, but the next moment delivered the emotional payload every longtime Cheers fan deserved. Before Sam walks into the backroom, he adjusts a photo on the wall. It wasn’t just any photo, but a picture of Geronimo once on the dressing room wall of the late Nicholas Colasanto, who played the Coach. The show’s last moment was a subtle homage to Colasanto, who was the emotional core of the show’s early years and never forgotten by his castmates.

When it originally aired, I told my mom I was going to bed, then I cried myself to sleep, one of the few times in my life a show moved me to tears. It was spontaneous and couldn’t be helped. My friends now lived in reruns. Going to bed when I did, I missed the infamous Tonight Show episode that followed. I bet Jay Leno would like to have had that decision back. Taped live at the Bull & Finch in Boston (the bar used in the exterior shots filmed for the show), the cast members were all so drunk they could barely stand (see for yourself). It was too soon for that kind of reminder of the difference between Cheers drinking and real drinking.

I still felt the impact the next day. It distracted me to where Mrs. Roberts got mad at my inattention and switched me to the front of the room in World History class (I never told her or anyone else why before this post). In World History, I still got an A for the term and the year. I still refuse to apologize for letting end of Cheers affect me. The show always delivered the laughs, but few sitcoms knew how to handle serious moments so effectively.

All these years later, it’s hard not to imagine Norm and Cliff still anchoring the bar and Sam still behind the counter. If the last episode gave one lesson, it was that the bar was what Sam could never stop loving. Twenty-five years later, I can’t stop loving Cheers either.