Cheers

Cheers

Episode 5: Coach's Daughter

Episode 6: Any Friend of Diane's

By: Carlos Uribe

Cheers is a show about a bar called Cheers in Boston.

Spoilers Ahoy!

From now on, I'll be covering two episodes at a time.

The first episode I'm reviewing is “Coach's Daughter”. The episode revolved around Lisa, Coach's daughter, and her fiance, Roy. Lisa wasn't a very well developed character for most of the episode, only becoming more than a two-dimensional character in a very well-done scene between Coach and Lisa in Sam's office. Roy isn't as developed as Lisa, but he is given a comical personality that instantly sets everyone to dislike like him. The one exception is Diane, who tries to hold off hope that there is a good man behind Roy's insensitive and abrasive personality. She tries to defend him until she ultimately realizes that he's irredeemable. Even his fiance, Lisa, doesn't like him very much. Roy is a character who the audience isn't supposed to like and he fills that capacity very well. It is a bit funny that one of his negative aspects is that he lets the women pay for the dinner. In today's world, this is more common and has sadly become socially acceptable. The joke is supposed to be that Roy isn't a good man, but in today's world the joke is more on Cheers. As times change, so do customs and Cheers appears old-fashioned with this joke.

If even Lisa has a hard time liking Roy, why is she marrying him? It's because she has low self-esteem. She stands him because she doesn't believe she is actually beautiful and because she's afraid that no-one else will want to marry her. She wants to be a wife and a mother. She is willing to put up with Roy's behavior because she doesn't believe in herself. These insecurities come out in that scene between Coach and her while their alone in Sam's office. It's a single scene that manages to make Lisa be more of a character beyond just being Coach's daughter. It's a scene that was very well-written and helped to make Coach also feel more like a character. That scene was excellently done. The episode also had a sub-plot where Diane kept trying to draw caricatures of the bar's patrons, only to fail at this task. It's also the second episode in a row where she seems entranced by one of Sam's baseball stories. The episode itself was solid and good-but Lisa's character could have been better developed throughout the episode.

The second episode I'm covering is “Any Friend of Diane's” which revolves around Diane's friend, Rebecca. Rebecca is introduced as an intellectual, snob who has recently broken off a long relationship. She's looking for a common man to have an afternoon of sex. She comes into the bar and as soon as she sees Sam, she has set her eyes on him. He's just the kind of person to give her what she wants: meaningless sex to distract her from her emotional loss. Diane realizes that Rebecca is currently emotional fragile and that Rebecca would later regret this action. There's also a part of Diane that is unconsciously jealous of the idea of Sam sleeping with Rebecca. She tries her best to stop Sam from going out with Rebecca but ends up failing. She needn't have worried since Sam ends up fleeing the hotel room because Rebecca wouldn't shut up about Russian poetry. He found her to be dull. This leads Rebecca to believe that she isn't attractive. In order to build up her self-esteem, Sam and Diane pretend to go out at the end of the episode.

While Rebecca doesn't get developed beyond her insecurities, her presence in the episode is what provides the conflict. Diane acts like a prude simply because she doesn't want Rebecca to do something she'll regret. It should be noted that Diane was kind of annoying this episode, as she's constantly judging and insulting Sam. While there is chemistry between Diane and Sam, sometimes they take their banter a bit too far. This was one such episode where the banter got in the way of making Diane a likeable character. Considering that she was advocating for the right thing, this was a problem for the episode's overall quality. The episode might have revolved around Rebecca, but it was ultimately about Sam and Diane's developing relationship.