Why isn't Cheers more popular today?

[oldguywithsticks]

Originally Posted by DavG

It's a lot of things:

1. The later years are of a poorer quality. MASH probably suffers in syndication because the last 5 years aren't up to par, either.

2. Pop culture tends to overload on a property, only to then dismiss it. Cheers was really the big sitcom of the 1980s and early 1990s. Then it birthed Frazier, which also ran for a cajillion years. People had had enough.

3. The bar as a singles scene was a thriving institution in the 1970s-1980s. People went to bars to pick up strangers, or be picked up by them. The premise is a bit outdated.

4. Television has changed, and in some ways evolved, greatly since Cheers' heyday. Each great sitcom evolves the genre, making it tougher on the older ones to find an audience. Cheers advanced the writing and romantic dynamics, for sure. It set the bar higher.

Then Seinfeld came along and did the same thing. Except it also expanded the humor. The writing was faster, more free-wheeling and less formal. They got away from the tired setup/punchline formula, and the advice -> honesty -> confession -> resolution plots that drove most sitcoms in prior years. (In fact Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David did DVD commentary on their original pilot, and commented that even their early shows seem painfully slow, by comparison to where they took it 2-3 years in.)

Great points, hard to argue, which I won't. I do have something to say about how the later seasons (I'm assuming 9-11) are of a poorer quality. Cheers is in my opinion the most consistently great sitcom of all time, I find all 11 seasons to be fantastic and have their own charm. Even Frasier, my all time favorite show, had its bad year (Season 8), Cheers didn't.