Cliff (John Ratzenberger): None of the girls have what I'm looking for, Normy.
Norm (George Wendt): What's that?
Cliff: Low standards.
The Sam and Diane Show was the primary attraction on Cheers! by this point in the series' first season.
And in the episode that first aired on this night in 1983, "No Contest," Sam (Ted Danson) had entered Diane (Shelley Long) in the annual Miss Boston Barmaid contest — without her knowledge — and she had been named a finalist.
It wasn't exactly a beauty pageant like Miss America, but the winner possessed decidedly more than barmaid skills, if you know what I mean, and the finalists tended to do a little flirting with the emcee, the judges and the audience.
Of course, a restaurant's staff does plenty of schmoozing anyway so I guess that could be considered a barmaid skill.
Diane loathed such contests and was prepared to withdraw until she learned that there would be reporters from major news outlets at the contest. She changed her mind, believing she could use the contest as a platform to air her grievances.
And she made plans to disrupt things.
At first she appeared to be sincerely trying to win the contest. It was being held at Cheers! and Sam clearly wanted someone from the bar to win. It was, after all, the 45th annual contest, and no one from Cheers! had ever won.
Sam had no idea what Diane planned to do if she won so he gave her pointers on how she should look during the competition.
But he found Diane's index cards on which she had written certain things she wanted to say in her victory speech. Things like how degrading she thought such contests were. That wasn't what Sam wanted to hear in his bar on such a noteworthy night.
Better to lose the contest than to allow that to happen.
So Sam set about sabotaging Diane — or at least he tried to — with a little psychological warfare. He casually mentioned Diane's tendency to get a facial tic when she was nervous.
Reminded of that, Diane began to twitch, but she managed to turn that to her advantage by making some remarks about overcoming obstacles — and she won the contest.
She was about to deliver her speech when the emcee began giving her the prizes that came with her victory. None really wowed her until the final one — a week in Bermuda for her and a friend.
She gave up on her plan.
Later, after everyone had left the bar, Diane lamented that she had "sold out womankind for a trip to Bermuda."
"Most people would have done it for the dry cleaning," Sam replied in a reference to one of the other prizes.
The really funny thing is, there was probably a lot of truth in that.
As a side note, this episode was one of many Cheers! episodes to feature famous people in cameo appearances. On this night, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill was featured in the show's opening segment.
