Coach (Nicholas Colasanto): Beer, Norm?
Norm (George Wendt): That's that sudsy amber stuff, right? Been hearing good things about it.
I don't know when it became apparent to the creators and writers for Cheers! that the TV show was not really, as advertised, the story of the characters in a bar. Sure, that was the emphasis in the first half–season, but, in the end, it became the Sam and Diane Show — and remained that way until Diane left.
I guess it was just too tempting, a kind of Hepburn and Tracy dynamic brought to the small screen on a weekly basis. Television programs are like that, though. The audience responds to something — in this case, the sexual tension between the blue–collar bartender Sam (Ted Danson) and the refined college–educated waitress Diane (Shelley Long) — and the writers give the viewers what they want.
It's what they did with Happy Days. Fonzie was intended to be a minor player at best, but audiences responded to him, and he became one of the show's stars — arguably its biggest.
Likewise, the West Wing was originally intended to be about the people who toil in the West Wing of the White House. The president was not intended to be an integral part of the show, merely an occasional character. That changed in the first season as well.
I've always kind of felt that the episode of Cheers! that first aired on this night in 1983 — "Diane's Perfect Date" — was the writers' first real acknowledgement of that fact.
They were sneaky about it, though.
When the episode began, Diane was returning to the bar after a weekend with a date whose special skill was to state, in a very Rain Manesque way, the number of letters in the last sentence that was spoken. For example:
Diane: "He's able to tell you instantly how many letters there are in any sentence you say."
Walter: "Sixty–six."
Sam: "That's quite a gift."
Walter: "Fifteen. We've been at it all weekend."
Sam: "How many days did it seem like?"
Walter: "Twenty–four."
And then there was my favorite. It was when Walter was leaving, and Sam stopped him.
Sam: "How was Diane on a scale of a hundred?"
Walter: "Twenty–nine."
Later, when Sam and Diane were criticizing each other's dating choices, Sam ridiculed Walter's ability to count the letters in sentences.
Diane countered that the "coterie of Betty Boops you squander your time, money and hormones on" could not form sentences.
They agreed to set each other up with the perfect date for the next evening after Sam boasted that he could arrange for the best date Diane ever had.
Diane said she had someone in mind for Sam, too, and she took their wager seriously, but Sam didn't really have anyone for her. When he realized that she was really going to respond to the challenge, he sought advice from Carla (Rhea Perlman) and Coach (Nicholas Colasanto). Carla wasn't much help; she recommended an old ballplayer friend of Sam's who, Sam recalled, was dead. "So she has to drive," Carla replied.
But it was Coach, of all people, who planted the idea of pursuing Diane in Sam's mind. Well, it may have been percolating in his mind all along, but it was the first time I can remember Sam acknowledging (thanks to the writers) what, as I say, just about everyone else already knew.
Coach said he thought Sam would be the perfect date for Diane, and Sam rationalized that that must be Diane's intention — to present herself as Sam's perfect date. He decided to return the favor.
But Diane really did have someone in mind — Gretchen (Gretchen Corbett), a "woman of substance" who was a grad student in kinesiology. When Diane asked about her date, Sam had to come up with one and made a frantic dash for the backroom, where he found a guy named Andy (Derek McGrath) and paid him to be Diane's escort for the evening.
It turned out that Andy had just been released from prison after serving time for manslaughter. Upon learning that, Sam suggested that they double date.
After dinner — and an apparently harrowing ride on Andy's motorcycle — the date came to an end, and Sam and Diane confronted what everyone already knew — that they were attracted to each other.
That conversation was only beginning.
