Cheers Celebrated Its Transformation Into an Ensemble W/ a Classic Christmas Episode

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https://popculturereferences.com/che...stmas-episode/

We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at how Cheers’ Season 6 Christmas episode marked the show’s transition into a true ensemble comedy series.

The early years of Cheers were dominated by the “Will they or won’t they?” relationship between Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long).

Sam Malone, of course, is a manchild, a former athlete who drank his way out of professional sports only to sober up and run a neighborhood bar he owns in Boston, but it is interesting to see how much of Diane Chambers’ life is ALSO that of a sort of delayed adolescence. When the show begins, she is a graduate student engaged to the professor she is working for as a teaching assistant before he abandons her at Cheers, where she gets a job as a barmaid and commences her grade school flirtations with the bar’s owner, Sam (while also being enemies with the other waitress at the bar, Carla Tortelli, played by Rhea Perlman).

When Long left the series, the central plot of the series was now gone, but luckily, the show had developed such a strong supporting cast (George Wendt as beloved but perpetually down-on-his-luck barfly, Norm Peterson, John Ratzenberger as know-it-all mailman Cliff Clavin, Woody Harrelson as naive bartender Woody Boyd, Kelsey Grammer as jaded psychiatrist, Frasier Crane, and Bebe Neuwirth as Frasier’s psychiatrist wife, Lilith Sternon-Crane) that it just embraced the ensemble comedy that was always there behind the Sam/Diane relationship.

Kristie Alley joined as Rebecca Howe, the new manager of the bar (which Sammy had sold to a corporation after his breakup with Diane), and she slowly but surely devolved into a pathetic mess of a character, but in the early years, she was a prototypical corporate rising star who tried to run Cheers like a traditional business, which conflicted with the laid back nature of her employees, particularly Sam.

That was the main plot of this episode, “Christmas Cheers,” where Sam is pissed that Rebecca is making them work Christmas Eve, but then he freaks out when he learns that she got everyone presents, and that Carla and Woody had gotten Rebecca presents.

He tries to find a store open on Christmas Eve night, but fails, but meets a very attractive flight attendant who is willing to sell him some ear muffs she bought for herself. He agrees, and they also arrange some sexy time later that night, but accidentally, the flight attendant (who isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed) actually gave Sam the diamond earrings she bought for her mom. Rebecca loves them, and Sam now thinks that Rebecca will sleep with him (a recurring plot for WAY too long is Sam trying to **** Rebecca), so he agrees to pay the $500 for the earrings, and calls off his rendezvous with the flight attendant, only to learn that Rebecca’s invitation to her place after work was extended to EVERYONE.

Meanwhile, Norm is working as a mall Santa, Cliff is trying to win a contest for who can collect the most cans for needy people (the winner gets to go to Disneyworld) and Frasier is being a Scrooge about the holidays until he briefly believes one of the Santa Clauses that Norm is celebrating Christmas with is the REAL Santa Claus. He obviously isn’t, but even BRIEFLY believing it brings back Frasier’s Christmas spirit.

They all celebrate by watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV (the whole thing is based on a then-topical joke about It’s a Wonderful Life playing everywhere because it was out of copyright at the time. They all pretend that they hate seeing it so many times, but they secretly all love watching it. I don’t know if I’ve written about how that was resolved, but if not, I will).

It’s a very cute episode, written by the iconic Cheers writing team of Cheri Eichen and Bill Steinkellner, who have been married since 1982!