What if Shelly Long doesn't leave Cheers?

Cheers is one of my very favorite shows. I'm not a "Diane years" or "Rebecca years" person. I love Cheers and I think that her leaving the show was a great thing.

The Sam and Diane story was played out. Her departure opened new stories. By adding Rebecca, we had Sam and Rebecca stories... but more interestingly, her not being interested in him and her attempts to be involved with others. Add to that smaller things like Woody (and Kelly). Frasier etc. Great stuff.

 

I like the Cliff character but I hate how the wrote for him sometimes.

I don't mind the living at home virgin part but sometimes they portrayed him as a soon to be serial killer and it was just a bit annoying.

Still a funny character though

 

I'm in season 8 right now, and so far I'm bored by the first 5-6 episodes of it. I like Robin Colcord but Sam still trying to bed Rebecca is getting tiring

 

From memory I think its Season 8 or 9 that they drop the whole Sam trying to get Rebecca into bed thing.

 

....then she doesn't make a bunch of crappy movies that quickly ended her run as a star.

 

John Ratzenberger improvised lots of Cliff's facts.

 

MASH

 

Fixed.

 

REBECCA: This is Buster! I thought you were gonna make the switch!

SAM: Well, I did, but they were tearing at each other, and it got confusing. I was trying to separate them and protect my goodies at the same time.

 

I get that it was funny to stick to the "Cliff is a virgin who has never had a date aside from Wendy in high school" narrative, but we were supposed to act like the Halloween episode never happened in Season 3 where Cliff and the mystery woman finally met face to face at the end and danced to Moon River, or the episode where he dated Sally, the gal who went from a plain jane to attractive once she put on makeup? I get it, it's a sitcom, and most have inconsistencies and overexaggerate things for the sake of comedy, but that one just seemed weird considering we saw him with women in prior episodes. Cliff was just more funny and sad as the loser who could never get a date, I suppose.

 

Something I think they lost in the Rebecca years is the ability to do the occasionally more sensitive moment. Like the episode where someone in the bar is harassing Cliff for always making things up, then he chops through the karate blocks at the end.

Rebecca's persona wound up being more cartoonish, and the show more purely comedic.

 

very true

Seemed like none of the chracters could show jeart

 

Just watched the end of season 9

Seeing Sam Malone talking to "Elvis" on tv was a awful jump the shark moment

In season 10 now

I like the post Diane episodes but it's a lot more zany

You really have to look at it in two different ways

The Rebecca years were your typical "sitcome comedy" type show but the Diane years were more of a real life thing

 

That's why I prefer those seasons. The "heart" of the early seasons tends to bore me. Some episodes barely got a laugh out of me.

 

Diane? Cheers went under when coach died.

 

There are plenty of moments. That whole storyline with Cliff and that postal worker from Canada, for instance.

 

"What is..Cliff Clavin" is one of the greatest episodes in television history.

 

Rumor was Shelly was gonna come back during season 9 but that was quikcly shut down

 

She left at the right time. But hadn't she left I think they can stretch it till S7.

 

We would be spared some of the awful movies Shelly Long made.

 

Well, nobody pointed a gun at your head forcing you to watch them.

I know I didn't.

 

I can see why Shelley Long left Cheers. The will they/won’t they back and forth between Sam and Diane was getting tiresome. Sadly, the scripts, she was offered after she left were the kind of things Goldie Hawn had tossed into the bin. Shelley did return to TV years later in a sitcom with Treat Williams called Good Advice. Unfortunately, it was worse than all the films she did.

 

I saw an old promo for that a couple of days ago while watching old collections of Australian TV commercials from the 90s. It didn't look good.

 

She got to play Carol Brady in those “Brady Bunch” movies. Right up there with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in “Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” a decade after they left “Mission Impossible”.

 

The two Brady Bunch movies are pretty damn good. It's only the terrible TV that aired on FOX where Mike Brady becomes president that is bad (Yes, You read that right)