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Carla cheers wedding8/31/2023 ![]() ![]() They brought in Kirstie Alley to play ultra-cool businesswoman Rebecca Howe, the steely brunette whose relationship to Sam would be very different from the one he’d had with Diane. Seen at the time as a sign of the show’s end, her departure inspired the producers-who secretly were tired of the Sam-and-Diane dance and didn’t want it to consume the show-to head in a completely different direction. ![]() At the end of season five, Long decided to leave the show to pursue a movie career. It’s that five-season mark that’s key to why Cheers stayed good throughout its run. The show always had at its core the idea of a reforming athlete-driven by the creators’ wish to tie the series somewhat to a popular series of Miller Lite ads airing at the time-and the brothers wished to add in a Hepburn-and-Tracy-style romantic-comedy element. Excited to work with the Charles brothers and Burrows, NBC gave Cheers a direct-to-series order, and the three used the time they’d received to perfectly hone their concept, going from a bar in a hotel (and a rough spin on Fawlty Towers) to a bar in Barstow to the Boston-set pub that ended up as the center of the series. ![]() Yes, he did experimental things no other multi-camera shows were doing at the time, like a long tracking shot through the bar to close out an episode, but his comfort with actors and his understanding of pace made even the more garden-variety episodes of Cheers delightful. Already well known for his work on several MTM sitcoms and, yes, Taxi, Burrows joined the Charles brothers to turn Cheers into a proving ground for all that could be done in the multi-camera format. The show’s other co-creator was a director, unusual in TV comedy, but he was arguably the greatest multi-camera comedy director in television history, James Burrows. To list all of the significant comedy writers who worked on the show would add several hundred more words to this piece. Their writing staff would include more than a few comedy legends as well, with many going on to great work on other shows. The MTM approach to comedy favored character interaction and pathos above all else, and Cheers may well have been the height of that approach, blending the darkly comic worldview of the Charles brothers with a hard-earned sentimentality. Several MTM hands moved on from the company to Paramount in the late ’70s, where they were responsible for creating Taxi as well. Bob Newhart was a production of MTM Enterprises, the company founded by Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore in 1969 to produce her aforementioned show, which grew into one of the foremost purveyors of good TV in the ’70s and ’80s. The series was co-created by Glen and Les Charles, brothers who theorized that they could write for TV and found themselves doing so in short order, working on The Bob Newhart Show and Taxi before moving on to Cheers. Cheers was content to make consistent, well-crafted, funny comedy week after week, and it did so thanks to a crackerjack team both in front of and behind the camera. But maybe that was part of the reason Cheers worked: Shows that break ground tend to burn hot and fast, making lots of news but also running out of whatever fuel was driving them. Sure, there was a romantic element added on, which would prove to be one of the most influential in TV history, but there was nothing groundbreaking that suggested the show would be as good as it was for as long as it was. But why? When Cheers began, it was hailed as the best new sitcom in ages-at least since Taxi, which its creators had all worked on-but it was also a fairly basic workplace hangout comedy about a bunch of people who spent their time in a bar. ![]()
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