So the other day, while searching for random funny YouTube links, I happened along Cliff Clavin's epic performance on "Jeopardy!" from "Cheers" (watch it all the way through and tell me Cliff didn't deserve the money; none of those people were ever in his kitchen), and it got me thinking: What other "Cheers" clips could I find?"Cheers" was, is, and will likely always be my favorite traditional three-camera sitcom.(*) It had great characters, great dialogue (set-up/joke/set-up/joke isn't nearly as annoying when the jokes are this funny), an ensemble that meshed perfectly together, one of the few great endings for a long-running great comedy, and one of the best theme songs ever.
(*) I recognize that this is a generational thing to an extent. If I was a little older, I might favor "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" or "Taxi" (or, if even older, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" or "The Honeymooners" or "I Love Lucy"), but "Cheers" was the one I grew up on.(**) A while back, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Emmy-winning scribe and jack of all trades Ken Levine, along with another critic 10 years my senior. The other guy mostly wanted to hear stories about "M*A*S*H," while I kept asking about "Cheers." Fortunately, Ken was gracious enough to indulge us both. (And if you go to his blog, linked above, you can read plenty of those stories yourself. The man's a giver.)
(**) I should also say that I could be convinced that "Seinfeld" was the better comedy of the two, but even though it used the proscenium stage and a studio audience, its structure was so far-removed from what we think of when we think of those classic sitcoms that I could argue it was, like "How I Met Your Mother," a single-camera sitcom in three-camera drag.
But I'm getting off-point here. And that point is to link to a bunch of classic "Cheers" clips while they're still available. Some are quite long (Woody's home movie runs more than 9 minutes), others very brief (Frasier demonstrating his bad boy qualities), but all represent the many different ways "Cheers" was so wonderful for so long.
- A montage of Norm's best one-liners
- Sam is trying to get his GED so Diane will stop making fun of him for being a high school drop-out, and Coach teaches him a study technique
- Sam moonlights as a sportscaster, but just can't find his niche
- Frasier inaugurates his bachelor party with a demonstration of how down he is with the young people's music
- Frasier gets fed up with women falling for Sam and tries to show that he's a bad boy
- Robin Colcord's day off
- Dirt-poor Woody tries to impress wealthy girlfriend Kelly with the gift of song
- Thanksgiving at Carla's house
- When Woody's parents pressure him to come home, the gang makes a home movie to prove that Boston's a safe, wholesome place to live
- John Cleese gives Sam and Diane some marriage counseling
- Vintage Sam and Diane dysfunction
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