Original subtitles

[narrator] The golden age of television.

I Love Lucy didn't just change American television,

it invented American television.

[narrator] Back when one screen brought everyone together.

Watching television was a family event.

[narrator] The shows that shaped us.

The Brady Bunch was part of the American soul.

It's timeless.

[narrator] The familiar faces.

Ralph Cramden was loved on The Honeymooners.

Pow! Right in the kisser!

He was a presence.

[narrator] The unforgettable moments.

Dynasty captured the essence

of what the 1980s were about in America.

[narrator] These are their stories.

[man] Cheers is the pinnacle of how great the sitcom can be.

[narrator] This is TV We Love.

♪

It's 1982.

Ronald Reagan is the president.

The U.S. was in a deep recession, high unemployment.

America's still in the Cold War,

and there's the war on drugs going on.

[narrator] For relief, gym goers sweated out

to Jane Fonda's workout

and dance along to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

And in that setting,

a show premiered about an average Boston bar.

♪

♪ Sometimes you wanna go ♪

♪ Where everybody knows your name ♪

Cheers is one of the best sitcoms ever made.

You disgust me. I hate you.

-Are you as turned on as I am? -More.

Cheers was just funny as hell.

I am running with scissors.

♪ Because you're Kelly, Kelly ♪

I am too stupid to live.

But when Cheers premiered,

it certainly was not the hit that we come to know it as.

Glen and Les Charles

were the creators of the show along with Jimmy Burroughs.

A few years before Cheers was developed,

Glen and Les Charles and Jim Burroughs

were working on another show on ABC, Taxi.

And in 1982, NBC is in really, really bad third place.

Many people were predicting, in fact,

that NBC was going to go out of business.

So this was a great opportunity for Glen and Les Charles

and Jim Burroughs to form their own company and create a show.

The quality of their work was so well known

that they were able to secure a series order from NBC.

A 13-episode order blind before the show

was even really created and put together.

And so they set out to create

a setting that could be the core for the show.

We were really big fans at that time of Faulty Towers,

and we'd kind of been thinking of the idea of a hotel.

But realized that even in a hotel,

where do some of the most interesting scenes take place?

The bar.

It occurred to us that very few shows had ever focused on bars.

It was a great place for people to meet there and they celebrate

there and console themselves when they had a tragedy.

And just a great focal point for human drama and comedy.

When they were deciding where to set

their fictional bar, the producers were thinking,

"well, sports bars are very popular.

So let's pick a city that has a real

affinity for its sports teams.

And they fell in love with Boston as an idea.

Les Charles was in Boston doing research,

looking at different bars.

And at the Ritz, the concierge said,

"there's a really great bar in Boston called Bull & Finch.

It's amazing." And they went there

and just knew immediately this is the feel,

and kind of bar that they wanted.

And what they came up with was Cheers.

The idea of Cheers is that it's owned by Sam Malone,

an alcoholic and a former athlete.

He's the epitome of charisma, the ultimate playboy.

My mother told me to watch out for guys in bars.

Well, then let's get out of this bar so you don't have to worry.

And Diane is this hyper-educated,

highly pretentious,

yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap talking constantly.

Back in college, I held a party

where everyone came as their favorite Elizabethan poet.

I remember I chose Christopher Marlowe

because I was deeply into Dr. Faustus at the time.

And the crux of the story is

the attraction between Sam and Diane,

who come from two different worlds, and the way it affects

the rest of the patrons and workers within the bar.

I've never met an intelligent woman that I'd want to date.

On behalf of the intelligent women around the world,

may I just say...

And so when they were casting Cheers, they were looking

particularly for pairs of Sam and Diane.

Initially, the character of Sam Malone

was written to be a football player.

So the studio wanted Fred Dreyer

because he was a former football player.

But the Charles brothers and Burroughs

really loved Ted Danson on Taxi.

This young woman came to me this morning

with a hairdo that her high school must have found boring.

And I gave her this.

Ted Danson was an absolute gift from the gods

because it is so hard in Hollywood to find

a leading man who is handsome and could do light comedy.

But the interesting thing

is that Ted Danson is so unlike that character.

I never went to bars. I never picked up somebody.

You know, if the woman was standing opposite me,

buck naked, I'd go, "oh. Oh, me?"

But he was able to pull it off.

And they had to rework that character

because he doesn't really have the build of a football player.

So they made him a relief pitcher for the Red Sox,

which Ted Danson fits that build perfectly.

The producers were considering Julia Duffy

as his possible Diane.

But we kept hearing from independent sources,

you got to see this new lady in town,

Shelley Long, she's perfect for your show.

And when Shelley was paired with Ted,

I think that they could really see the spark.

-Don't you ever hit me again. -Like hell.

They just enjoyed playing with each other.

And it really took off. And we, the three of us

huddled and said, there's no choice here.

And now they had to find the other main cast members.

Cheers assembled one of the all-time greatest

ensemble casts in television history.

They got Nicholas Colasanto, who played Coach, a beloved

character, wonderful character, the bartender.

Coach is this beacon of just earnest naivete

that I think the bar really needed.

And some of that innocence is explained

by him having been hit in the head by some fastballs.

Well, sometimes I took one right in the old melon.

That's why he is that way.

But you need to be really smart

to play a dumb character. And that was Nick Colasanto.

And we wanted a volatile waitress.

That's a contrast to Diane.

Does not suffer fools gladly and has had a very rough life

and a chip on her shoulder as well.

[screaming]

And Rhea is not very much like Carla.

She's a little bit like Carla, but not very much.

She's a very nice lady and a lovely actress.

Rhea once said to us, Carla's not mean, she's just honest.

Thank God I don't have an alcoholic personality.

You don't have a personality.

The character Cliff is so interesting

because it didn't originally exist

for the show in the original script.

John Ratzenberger, he came in originally

to audition for the role of Norm.

And he left the audition,

came back into the room and said,

have you thought about having a know-it-all?

You know, a real Boston know-it-all.

And he was just the man for that.

If a pig had thumbs in a language, he could

be trained to do a simple manual labor.

You mean they'd be part of the workforce?

Yeah, yeah. They give you 20, 30 years of loyal service.

Then at the retirement dinner, you could eat them.

But the bar feels a little incomplete without Norm there.

Les Charles once worked as a bartender

and the character of Norm is based on one of the regulars

that he knew as a bartender.

And he was always there at closing time.

[laughs] Having just one more beer and it was the same.

Very much like Norm, we would get, every time the phone rang,

"if that's my wife, I just left."

And then George Wendt was cast in that role.

And what made Norm's character so special

is he didn't look like a television star.

He didn't sound like a television star.

He looked like your neighbor. And he looked like a guy,

ultimately, you want to have a beer with.

And he has the fantastic entrances

where everyone calls his name.

-Afternoon, everybody. -[all] Norm!

-Afternoon, everybody. -[all] Norm!

-Afternoon, everybody. -Norm!

That was it, Woody. Last chance, I'm out of here.

That first season of Cheers, the staff was very, very small.

It was Glen and Les Charles, Jimmy Burrows,

and me and my partner, David Isaacs, and that was it.

And we learned so much from the Charles brothers.

The Charles brothers are the best writing team

I have ever seen.

And Jimmy knows how to deal with actors.

I had the great pleasure

and privilege of working with Jimmy Burrows.

So I understand firsthand

what it's like to work with a director like that,

who knows how to take what a performer is doing

and giving them just the right note

to take that comedy or that beat to the next level.

And he's a whiz with the cameras and the technical aspect of it.

And he was able to really create a terrific-looking show.

And the Cheers theme song, Where Everybody Knows Your Name,

is one of the most classic openings

to any TV show in history.

It was written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart-Angelo.

The producers asked Portnoy and Hart-Angelo

to write the Cheers theme song.

And they submitted three songs. And the third one

they liked, so they revised the lyrics.

And they settled on that catchy phrase of,

Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

The first seven-note intro is instantly recognizable.

♪ Making your way in the world today ♪

♪ Takes everything you've got ♪

The story kicks off with Diane Chambers

walking into the bar with her professor boyfriend.

They're just stopping for a drink on their way

to start their new life.

Sumner, this is crazy.

Diane, we're about to be married.

-I know-- -Married! Congratulations!

But he abandons and dumps her there.

So she takes refuge in the bar and Sam gives her a job.

I do need a job. And I'll find one.

And you can bet that it won't be waiting tables.

-What are you qualified to do? -Nothing.

Shelley Long is a fabulous actress.

And there's really great chemistry

between her and Ted Danson.

Everyone knows that hate is not the opposite of love.

Indifference is.

Well, whatever you say. I really don't care.

But they do also break from that for some really great moments.

Cheers. Yeah, just a sec.

Is there a Rudy Pantuso here?

-That's you, coach. -Speaking.

I saw the pilot of Cheers. And I thought it was very funny.

But when Cheers premiered in September of 1982,

it certainly was not the hit that we come to know it as.

It was literally the least watched thing

on all of television, according to the Nielsen ratings.

It was a flop.

[whooshing]

When Cheers first went on the air, it failed

spectacularly in the ratings.

There were some weeks where it was literally

the least watched thing on all of television.

We were saying, what are we doing here?

No one's watching this.

As someone who had to make a lot of decisions

about programs that didn't do very well

in their initial runs, I don't know if a show

like Cheers would succeed today

if it had the ratings out of the gate

in its first season that it did.

But even though we were not getting great ratings,

I just felt this was something special.

It was a show that we were incredibly proud of.

There was incredibly strong, smart writing.

But also phenomenal characters that you grow to love.

Ultimately, mine is Sam Malone, the driving force of the show.

You know, I haven't seen Christy since Woodstock.

-You were at Woodstock? -A friend of mine told me to go

down there, he said it's a great place to pick up chicks.

Should've known you weren't there for the music.

There was music at Woodstock?

And Shelley Long is underrated for her physical comedy.

There's one episode where she was on a motorcycle

and she comes in with this windswept hair

and she just owns that moment when she enters the bar.

And Norm and Cliff are so funny.

I mean, it doesn't exactly take a Phi Beta Kappa

to stick a brush in a bucket and slap it on a wall, does it?

I mean, any monkey can do that, huh?

Oh yeah, as opposed to the high level of skill

and precision it takes to shove a postcard through a slot.

I love the episode, The Boys in the Bar.

Cliff... hasn't had a date in quite some time.

Where there are a couple gay guys in the bar who make

it known that they're there but they don't say who they are

and it sparks paranoia among people like Norm and Cliff.

Oh yeah, Norm. Well, how come we've never seen

this Vera you're allegedly married to, huh?

Really smartly written.

Yeah, the guys I was talking about are still here.

-Right, guys? -Right.

And Cheers would have people come in.

They weren't main characters of the show.

They were just people who came into the bar.

Paul Krapence was one of the bar flies at the stool

and his one-liners became a fan favorite on the show.

You did good, kid, but I still think

I got a more reliable system.

Yeah, I could really use one. What's yours?

I just bet opposite whatever you pick.

Norm and Cliff were friends of mine.

So I was sort of part of their little subset

and I did more than 50 episodes, ultimately.

So even though our ratings were terrible the first year,

at the time, the president of NBC

was Grant Tinker, who was just a wonderful executive.

And he felt, you know, unless we have something better,

then let's stick with this.

His feeling was give them quality and they'll find it.

Most good shows, in my opinion, take more time

to find an audience than not-so-good shows.

And also Cheers was definitely championed

by TV critics and it won awards.

Shelley Long for Cheers.

And the winner is Cheers.

[cheers and applause]

I think that alerted a lot of people to, wow,

this is a show that won the Emmy and I've never seen it.

And so people having heard word of mouth that the show was good,

started tuning into Cheers and falling in love with it.

The moment I'm proudest of from season one is the last one.

It's the very last moment.

And that was when Sam and Diane finally kiss.

You disgust me. I hate you.

-Are you as turned on as I am? -More.

[audience laughter]

That was just such a great moment.

Seeing Sam and Diane in mortal combat

that ends in full-on mutual lust.

And the audience went nuts.

That moment is, I think,

one of the great moments in the history of television.

It was the first show that had

an actual will-they-or-won't-they.

The way Ted Danson and Shelley Long,

the way their characters were written,

and the way they slowly came together after squabbling.

It was perfect.

It certainly influenced many programs that came after it.

Sam and Diane, as a will-they-or-won't-they couple,

has become a generic element of the sitcom.

Most TV shows before weren't terribly serialized.

Every episode was self-contained because you never

know if people have been able to watch the previous show.

And there's no means of ready access

for them to go re-watch an episode that they missed.

But in the 1980s, that was like an act of trust

in the American audience they'd be able to follow this along.

Cheers really was a master class

of how to keep your characters changing

and evolving in ways that were new

and did keep the audience wanting to see more.

And our ratings were vastly improved

when The Cosby Show premiered.

The Cosby Show was a phenomenon.

And it brought lots of eyeballs to NBC on Thursday night.

So The Cosby Show led into Family Ties, which led

into Cheers, which led into Night Court,

which led into Hill Street Blues.

And so Cheers was critical

to the success of must-see TV in the '80s on NBC.

-Hello, Sam. -And then Kelsey Grammer

brought another whole level to that show.

I'm Dr. Frasier Crane. I'm sorry I startled you.

Kelsey Grammer initially

was only supposed to be in three episodes.

I always thought of him as a male Diane.

Very pompous and overly erudite.

And it was interesting that early on, the audiences

did not like him because he was coming between Sam and Diane.

But we saw that we had lightning in a bottle

with this guy and just kept writing more and more.

There was not a line you could throw at him

that he wouldn't elevate.

I am running with scissors!

And eventually was brought on as a full cast member.

Well, Sam, Diane and I really must be going.

But it looks like we'll be seeing each other again.

But during that period of time, Nick got sick.

He had certain heart issues.

And if you look at his last episodes,

Nick does not look well at all.

You could see his health kind of declining.

He was getting skinnier.

The cast was told he has heart disease.

And we don't know how long he'll have.

But it's not looking good.

And he died at the end of that season.

It really felt like the first time you lose a family member.

So yeah, it was very sad.

It hit the cast really hard.

He was very beloved. They were very close.

[Shelley] He was just a dear, dear man.

And meant a lot to us, and especially to me.

He was one of my closest friends on the set.

Oh, Coach. I'm gonna miss you.

How do you replace somebody like Coach?

There are people who think that that was the end of Cheers

[whooshing]

After Nicholas Colasanto passes away,

the producers knew they would need a new regular

that could work in the bar.

There wasn't any discussion of replacing the actor

and just keeping Coach as is and just putting someone else in.

Or replacing him with a similar aged individual.

When we lost Nick, we knew we wanted youth on the show.

We wanted to go younger.

The network thought that was a good idea.

And they had created the idea of this character

that they were gonna name Woody. He wasn't named after the actor.

That was the name that they already had in place.

Excuse me, my name's Woody Boyd.

I mean, how many Woodys have you met in your day?

Woody Harrelson came in

and there's just something special about him.

He brought all of that genuine,

honest to goodness, Indiana energy.

And we needed that energy, that innocence.

He was amazing.

I'm a friend of Coach's, is he around?

The producers chose not to do a specific episode

about Coach's passing.

When Woody Boyd is introduced,

he comes to the bar to meet Coach and Sam just says,

I'm sorry, Woody, I guess you hadn't heard.

No, Coach passed away a couple months ago.

Coach gone! I can't hardly believe it.

There's a moment of somberness, but they just treat

Coach's passing happened in that interim

for the people in the bar and for the viewers.

I don't remember him mentioning a Woody.

We never met. We were kind of like pen pals.

-You exchanged letters? -No, pens.

And he just revitalized the whole show.

Not to mention which he's just fall down funny.

-You got a spot right there. -Yeah, yeah, right.

You're not going to make me look like a dope.

Woody really scratched a lot of the same itch that Coach did

though, in terms of the naivete to the point of stupidity.

But every once in a while had something really sharp to say.

You know, when I left home,

my father gave me some very sound advice.

Never trust a man who can't look you in the eye.

Never talk when you can listen.

And never spend venture capital on a limited partnership

without a detailed analytical fiduciary perspective.

It just adds to the comedy

because we're not used to that coming from Woody.

And Lilith is a brilliant character.

We wrote an episode for Kelsey, and to start off that episode,

we were going to see him on a bad date.

And that bad date was just going to be a one and done

appearance by Bebe Neuwirth.

I thought that we might have a drink or two,

thereby lowering our inhibitions a bit

and enabling us to go back to your place

and have a physical encounter of some sort.

Well, we won't.

And there was that magic. There was that chemistry.

There was something we had never seen on the show before.

And so we thought, let's bring her back.

She just owns the screen when she is on there as Lilith.

Her line readings are so funny.

The way that she can imbue such kind of sardonic

disdain into simple words.

If you ever open that gateway to hell you call a mouth

in my direction again, I'll snap off your extremities

like dead branches and feed them to you at gunpoint.

There's a whole lineup of iconic Cheers episodes.

I do love Thanksgiving Orphans. That is a good one.

-It's Thanksgiving, Carla. -That was a favorite.

We still get a lot of love for that

every November that rolls around.

It's a really funny episode.

Thank you, Carla.

Hello, everyone.

And the food fight is obviously iconic.

Kiss your butt goodbye.

[everyone yelling]

And it does have the only appearance of Vera, sort of.

Norm's wife Vera is one of the most

famous never seen characters on television

where there'll be references to what this character is doing.

Norm's on the phone with Vera very often,

but they never cast a Vera.

And then you hear Norm welcoming Vera from off screen

and Shelley Long throws a pie at Ted Danson and he dodges it.

And then an actress walks in with pie all over her face.

Everybody, this is Vera.

So we do kind of have Vera on screen

for one brief moment there.

But we've never seen her face on the series.

Eventually Cheers became

one of the biggest shows on television.

And the show that everybody was talking about.

But Shelley Long decided to leave the show.

-[applause] -Thank all of you.

I was surprised because it was doing so well.

She was doing so well. The show was obviously a hit.

She was very, very popular.

She'd done five years as Diane Chambers

over 100 episodes.

And Shelley Long had a movie career,

and it was about to take off big time.

And also she did feel like the Sam and Diane relationship,

we've done everything we can do.

They fought and then they got together,

and then they were together and then they broke up.

I mean, there's only so many ways you can do that.

But there was a lot of concern

that the show would go in the tank without Shelley.

I mean, it's half of the core of the show

is going to be walking off.

So yeah, of course it would be so scary to say what's next.

None of us knew what was going to happen.

The producers were hoping that Shelley Long,

right until the last minute, might have a change of heart.

So when they shot the fifth season finale of Cheers

and they also shot a different ending to the scene

where Sam and Diane get married

in case Shelley changed her mind.

You saying to me that you want to marry me?

I do! Are you saying you want to marry me?

-I do! -I now pronounce you

-man and wife. -[yelping]

It was a way to keep spoilers from being revealed.

Had the word gotten out that it's definite

that Sam and Diane break up,

it might've leaked out before the episode aired.

So after the in-studio audience left,

they continued filming a scene in which

Sam and Diane essentially just break up,

and Diane goes to fulfill her dream of writing a book.

And that was what aired.

Have a good life.

Ted Danson's delivery of that line is so fantastic.

It's like I'm getting choked up just thinking about it.

Like, he knows that she's gone, and I felt that too.

I felt that too. Yeah.

I've actually never said this even out loud,

certainly not on camera, but um...

I'm really sad they didn't get together in the end.

Everyone at Cheers was very worried when Shelley left.

She was so integral to the show for so many years

that to lose Shelley,

we didn't know whether the show could survive that.

[whooshing]

It was controversial when Shelley Long

chose to leave Cheers.

It was truly, I think,

one of the hardest decisions of my life.

There were a couple of TV critics who said,

that's the end of Cheers,

when Shelley walked out the door.

Because everyone believed that Cheers was Sam and Diane.

It was the Sam and Diane show, Sam and Diane.

How do you do a show with just Sam and no Diane?

They didn't try to recast Diane

and I think that was a good idea.

We wanted her to be a very different character.

We didn't want her to be just Diane Chambers 2.0.

-How do you do? -A-who-a?

And Kirstie Alley was just a breath of fresh air.

Get over here. She's supposed to be with me.

-[humming] -Kirstie Alley, everybody.

Kirstie's first day on the set?

Well, I thought it would be awkward for everybody,

so I dressed like Shelley.

She was wearing a blonde wig like Shelley.

And we just knew like, okay. Okay, she's going to be fun.

But it took us a while to really find

how to write that character.

She introduces this very serious, confident woman.

That was really going to put Sam in his place.

You know, Mr. Malone, we've known each other

only seconds and I'm already tired of you.

We just couldn't figure out

what the magic was and what the funny was.

And then one day, Kirstie Alley showed us

that she could swallow a cigarette

and then push it back out of her mouth fully lit.

Ah-ha!

Hey, where's the pool table? Wrong room.

[audience laughter]

And we went, "oh, we can use that."

And more important than that,

she showed us that she could cry.

Maybe you could send me a postcard from the Caribbean

and address it to me at,

oh, I don't know, YWCA Skid Row.

[audience laughter]

And not since, I think, Lucille Ball.

Man, what a great cry.

Has there been a more wonderful and varied set of cries?

I am too stupid to live.

When the writers saw how well she could fake cry

and how she could be really good at playing a mess,

they realized that's who she is.

We all just said, that's it.

Have this beautiful, seemingly together woman

be a complete and utter mess.

And she was really, really funny.

So Cheers was not slowed down by the loss of its leading lady.

And in fact, people amazingly gave Rebecca Howe a chance.

Talk about a stroke of luck.

But there is a group of people who feel,

ah, after Diane, the show is terrible.

And then there's other people who came upon Cheers

in the fifth, sixth, seventh season with Rebecca.

It just jump-started the series in a way.

It became less of a romantic comedy.

And we leaned more into the bar

and all of the characters and their relationships.

Like Norm gets more of a soul episode.

Enough foreplay. Let's be sheep meat.

Did I tell you that I was married?

Congratulations. Let's celebrate with a roll in the hay.

And then Frasier and Lilith take off

as the main romantic couple.

Which is just comedic gold.

I'm beginning to wonder if you're fit to carry my seed.

I'm beginning to wish you kept it.

My favorite episode that I wrote was Frasier's bachelor party.

And something really cool in that episode,

Frasier comes into the bar and he has a speech.

I was listening to a rock & roll station on my way over here

and there was a passage in one of those tribal songs

that I feel, well, is the keynote for this evening.

Everybody have fun tonight.

[audience laughter]

Everybody Wang Chung tonight.

[audience laughter]

And it got a really big laugh.

And my partner David and I loved writing Carla episodes.

Tell me the truth.

Or my curse on you is gonna be your tongue

is gonna swell up so big

you're gonna have to buy a seat on the plane for it.

[muffled] How gullible does he think I am?

[audience laughter]

Ken and David wrote the most episodes.

And they have really owned the whole Gary's bar rivalry.

[screams]

There are sheep in my office!

Ah, Cheers. Where good times go to die.

We wrote all of the bar wars episodes.

-What are you trying to say? -Don't rip off the tape!

-[audience laughter] -[camera clicks]

Those are where Cheers goes to war

with Gary's Old Town Tavern.

And hilarity of course ensues as things get more and more

ridiculous in the battle between the two.

We just shut down Gary's Old Town Tavern

on one of the busiest bar nights of the year.

At a certain point, we were reaching

34 million people every Thursday. Stunning.

The year we were number one was the year that Roseanne

goofed up the Star Spangled Banner in San Diego.

[dramatically off key] ♪ For the land of the free ♪

And it cost her just enough points in the ratings

that we were able to be number one.

But once we got it we didn't let go.

But there were all kinds of problems going on

behind the scenes with Kelsey Grammer.

Kelsey is a very sweet man, but he was troubled.

He was using drugs and stuff.

And that occasionally impacted his work.

And it did come to a head a couple of times

where producers were really concerned

that he may either lose his life

or be incapable of continuing to work on the show.

[whooshing]

Kelsey Grammer was fantastic as Frasier

but his substance abuse issues

and some of his other personal demons

became ongoing issues on Cheers.

But he also had a very tough life.

[Joseph] His father was murdered.

His sister was murdered.

His stepbrothers died in an accident.

And it seems like in trying

to cope with some of this tragedy he had some

unhealthy coping mechanisms as he tried to navigate that.

It's remarkable I survived some of that.

I might be asleep on one of the benches in the Cheers set

and then when it was my turn I'd just stand up and go do it.

The cast was very supportive

and loved him and took that to heart.

And they respected his comedy acting ability.

I mean I don't know if anybody was funnier

on the show than Kelsey.

It just shows what a family they all were together

on and off the show.

He's such an endearing person

and so incredibly talented

that they were willing to deal with that.

And from then on he really got it together.

He came to work, thick or thin.

And was always great.

And the last three years of the show

it was quite an experience.

The characters are all given their time to shine.

-Let me buy you a beer. -Eh.

The character work that was done on that show

-is unparalleled. -That's what made the show.

You wanted to see what was gonna happen to each of them.

You have activated the internal laser beam motion detector.

-[beeping] -What's that mean?

[audience laughter]

Come over for a little action.

I'm stuck in the middle of Star Wars.

"Lilith is Pregnant," is one of the standout episodes.

I am mother.

My man's seed is nourished within me.

[audience laughter]

Touch my breasts my friend. I am lactating.

It's so different than what we'd seen before from Lilith.

And you get Woody Boyd entering into a relationship with Kelly.

-Will you go out with me again? -Well, sure!

Probably my favorite Woody scene was singing "Kelly Kelly Kelly."

♪ Kelly, K-E-L-L-Y ♪

♪ Why? Because you're Kelly, Kelly, Kelly ♪

-[audience laughter] -♪ Kelly, Kelly, Kelly ♪

♪ Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly ♪

♪ Kelly, Kelly of mine ♪

♪ Mine, mine, mine ♪

And my character became more integral to the show

because they figured out what to do with him.

Ever since my wife left me,

I've been sort of desperate for female companionship, you know.

So there were storylines created around me.

The episode in which there's a party at Cheers...

Carla made one of her specialty drinks last night.

Things got out of hand.

And everybody got so drunk, they forgot what happened.

Carla knew that she'd had sex with somebody,

but she couldn't remember who it was.

Oh, Sammy, Sammy, please.

Please, tell me it was you.

And then I come into the bar.

[audience laughter]

Hey, sexy.

-That was very funny. -[indistinct singing]

[audience laughter]

[screaming]

It was a glimpse into my character that perhaps

could have been enlarged the next season,

but we didn't go to the next season

because Ted wanted to move on.

Ted felt that that was enough.

And, mmm...

it's hard to say that he was wrong.

We did like 250 episodes of Cheers.

So Ted Danson was having this kind of come to Jesus moment.

How much longer do you want to play this character?

How many more stories do you think the show has in it

before it becomes repetitive?

And he was going through some personal turmoil at the time.

He had infamously had an affair with Whoopi Goldberg.

It ended his marriage.

And I think that just a combination

of doing the same old thing at work

and having the rug pulled out from your personal life

was the impetus finally to end the show.

And I know they really, really, really tried to keep him.

They apparently offered him plenty of money

if he was willing to come back.

But he kind of said, "I've done 11 years,

and this is probably the right moment for me to step off here."

They knew they couldn't continue the show without Sam Malone.

It's, it would never be the same.

America's favorite bartender confesses the decision

to stop starring in Cheers was agonizing.

Danson says he's, quote,

"not leaving Cheers as a career move.

That would be a stupid career move," end quote.

I think everybody, all the writers,

Jimmy and Glen and Les, were concerned

because they knew how important it was to get that finale right.

The fans were just sort of skeptical

and waiting to see what we would do.

And luckily, they had a chance to really

go out in style with the big return of Shelly Long as Diane.

The producers knew they wanted Shelly Long

for the series finale, and it makes all the sense in the world

for her to be back in the finale.

[whooshing]

I was so happy to see Diane come back

in the series finale of Cheers.

It's funny. It's a little strange.

It's different than it was before,

but it feels very familiar.

There had been a lot of loose ends when she departed.

It was left on such a tenuous note,

with her saying to Sam, I'll be back in six months,

and him saying, have a nice life.

So it was a must-see event for everyone.

And the ratings for the finale were massive.

Over 80 million people tuned in

to watch the ending of Cheers.

And it's such a nice plot line.

Can it be? Is it really her?

Diane Chambers has won an award and is in the news

and is back on the radar of the Cheers gang.

Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania are too soft to be heard.

Forgive me, gals, if I forgot someone.

God, is it her.

It was great to see Shelley Long

come back in the bar, looking wonderful.

-Hello, everyone. -[screams]

The night that the show aired,

all of us were in Boston, and we were at that Cheers bar.

[reporter] Hey, there's Woody,

the absent-minded bartender working the crowd.

And outside, they had set up a large jumbotron,

and there were like 20,000 people.

You would hear a joke and 20,000 people laughing.

Can you do me one little favor, please?

This isn't what you used to mean by favor, is it?

And ultimately, Sam and Diane get back together.

Sam is going to leave with her to go to California

and sell the bar and be done with the bar,

and leave all his friends.

And while on the plane with Diane,

both realize this isn't right. This isn't gonna work.

And... has to apologize to all his friends.

I'm sorry about blowing up like that.

I hope you understand where that was coming from.

Yeah, it's all right, Sam. We understand.

I mean, here you are, washed up ballplayer,

-alcohol problem. -Sex problem.

-Lost your one true love. -Twice.

No apology necessary.

And it's just a beautiful moment when he turns the lights out

and pulls the blinds down and tells that last set

of feet coming down the stairs into the bar.

Sorry, we're closed.

[Jim] It's poetic.

It was like, wow.

11 years and it's over.

It's a lot of hugging and crying.

[Woody] And we realize it's our last exchange together

on Cheers and we were sad, you know, it was heavy.

And I cried, I cried that day.

Haven't even yet got to...

what happens after the show is over?

[announcer] Live from the Bull & Finch,

the Cheers bar in Boston, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

All the cast of Cheers were at the Bull & Finch bar

in Boston watching the final screening.

And then the cast had to go do The Tonight Show live.

Unfortunately, the cast showed up early

for that taping and just started drinking.

And when you watch the footage of that Tonight Show,

they are hammered.

Kurt-- Krusty, you know, you are my best friend,

but we all need to say this to you.

-Yes. -[all] You're stupid!

Jay Leno is trying to wrangle this cast

into something that could possibly make the air.

-It was magic. -[Rhea] Talk about it.

-All right, dammit. -Talk about it.

Can I get you all another drink?

It was like, oh my God, this is such a train wreck.

You can feel the tension from Jay Leno as he's trying

to corral these people who are celebrating this

decade-plus-long accomplishment of being on

one of the most popular shows in television history.

[Jay] Kelsey, you got a show coming up, right?

Yeah, I have a show coming.

At the end of Cheers,

they decided to do Frasier as a spinoff.

Which was really a popular show, and ran for 11 seasons.

You expect me to give up my study, the place where I read,

where I do my most profound thinking?

Ah, use the can like the rest of the world.

And there's a very long tale of influence

that Cheers has had on so many shows that have come after.

Any show that came after that took place

a lot in a bar, Cheers gets credit for it.

How I Met Your Mother is a perfect example.

[all] Swarley!

And Cheers still gets referenced

in media that's being produced today.

Cheers, Sam and Diane,

guy and a girl on a TV show dig each other, but never say it

because if they do, their ratings would go down.

[announcer] We now return to Cheers.

-[all] Norm! -And Peter, yay! Yay!

How's life in the fast lane,

-Mr. Peterson-- -Griffin!

I can't find the on-ramp, Woody.

He was talking to me, Norm.

Quit stealing my punchlines, you fat drunk.

So Cheers is a show that continues to be discovered

even by younger generations.

It's the pinnacle of how great the sitcom can be,

and one of the greatest shows of all time.

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[vibrant jazz music]

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