This episode makes me cringe. It's not completely a bad episode, but the I really just don't understand Sam sleeping with Rebecca's former professor. Out of all the beauties he went to bed with, how does he do that? It just comes across as unbelievable to me and does not seem to go well with the character. It isn't really even so much the fact that she is older as much as it is that she really just really isn't that great looking. I don't believe that it is because he wanted advice on how to buy back Cheers. He really didn't push that too much. To sleep with her, I think it should have taken her buying back Cheers for him.

Remember these aspects of the Sammy philosophy. There are 3 types of woman he never dates: married; underage; or comatose. He never, for example fooled around with a friend's wife (most of his friends' wives were real uggos.) In the sack, everyone's the same age and nobody's lonely.

Now, Alexis Smith may no longer have been a great beauty, but she was hardly ugly. She was handsome for a woman her age. Sam didn't just go out with gorgeous women, some were actually plainer than others. (e.g.: Diane's friend Amanda, played by Carol Kane. Or when he chatted up Cliff's date, Sally).

Plus, he didn't sleep with her with the intention of using her. He has more integrity than that: it was just cheap, meaningless pleasure.