Cheers Cast 10.12: Go Make

3 responses to “Cheers Cast 10.12: Go Make”

1. Great discussion. Congrats on finishing the Sam-Rebecca-pregnancy arc (and on your birthday)! This half-season storyline essentially went nowhere, and it’s difficult to understand what the point of it was or if they always intended for it to end this way. As you mention, it’s hard to imagine how the show could have stayed the same if they had a baby, especially on top of how Frasier and Lilith are always in the bar despite having a toddler.

   Speaking of which, I had to laugh at how Frasier said they needed a break from parenting, given that they’re always in the bar anyway. And then after they make a big deal of leaving the bar to take care of Frederick who has chicken pox, Frasier is right back in the bar in the very next scene! Too funny.

   The guys being tricked by Paul to go jump in the water, and Frasier being the only one to go through with it, reminded me of The Heart is a Lonely Snipehunter in Season Three, which also involved a nighttime excursion where Frasier was the butt of the joke.

   I wonder if this episode sets a record so far in the series for the most sets and on-location scenes away from the bar. There’s the cold-open location shot, the location shots of Sam and his son playing ball in the field, the two hotel-room sets (which may have really been the same set?), the Sam/Rebecca apartment in Rebecca’s imagination, and the car scenes. (Having said that, I just remembered there’s some episodes yet to come that may match or exceed that record, including the Season Eleven episode where Sam is trying to find a place to sleep.)

   It’s a memorable episode too for the relatively serious and poignant aspects of Sam realizing it’s not time to have a child. One of a handful of moments of reflection for Sam throughout the series.

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2. Rebecca’s daydream was definitely the worst scene in the episode. It’s just not funny and mean-spirited. I did take the “but we have *love*” to be a sarcastic thing the imaginary Rebecca and Sam say to each other, to deliberately provoke the other, and ironic because they both agreed their relationship was *not* built on love. But that’s a lot of legwork on my part, and again, it’s not funny. Now I do think Alley’s way of saying “shuddup!” is so over-the-top and surprising, they creators must have liked working that in. Not nearly enough to save that scene.

   But the highlights were definitely Sam with “Who keeps saying that?”, Lilith’s “I can always think of something worse”, and the bride’s “Aw, a bunny!” That delivery is a rent-free in my head moment because it’s adorable!

   Welcome to the other side of season 10. It’s all downhill from here. (Because downhill is supposed to be a good thing, where the traveling becomes easier than uphill. Well, unless Sam has to deal with John Allen Hill. Where was I going with this?)

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3. Great discussion! I really enjoyed Vicki’s perspective, and her comment that aspects of the episode are “cartoonish” hit a sentiment that I’ve thought latently but couldn’t voice until she said that. However, my thoughts on the cartoonish aspects go in a different direction. I think Sam’s daydream of his son and the situation in the hotel with the father are cartoonish and mean in spirt. They do show Sam the difference between what he wants and what he fears, but those parts themselves make me cringe. I’m going to dissent on the analysis of Rebecca’s daydream. That scene delights me. I find it oddly refreshing, perhaps because Rebecca’s (pun slightly intended) fertile imagination is a contrast to Sam’s conventionality (the adult-looking son has an old-fashioned paper route; he’s saving for a baseball glove). You guys mentioned The Honeymooners. I think the scene is an oddball combination of that, a little bit of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Ted Danson and Kirstie Alley’s fantastic character chemistry in playing farce. Sam’s concern is having a child to carry on his identity and youth; Rebecca’s is having a relationship or place where she belongs. The storyline started that way: Sam workshops his mating approach at the bar by telling a woman that he is looking for someone to have the baby, give it to him, and go away. Rebecca has been shopping for a more high-falutin’ job but ends up back at Cheers, where she tells Sam that she’s back because nobody wants her. Rebecca has always been clear-eyed about Sam, so she’s not going to imagine them in a romantic scenario but plays off of their recent, ultimately uncharacteristic fighting in contrast to the lovey-dovey bride and groom. I think from a narrative perspective, they are two characters trapped in the wrong story, which is how they’ve been in the season thus far. I love Sam and Rebecca as a pairing of some unique sort, but I’ve considered the time they’ve spent in this baby plot line to be a waste of two great characters, individually and together. I think this little skit in the middle of the episode brings that to a crisis point (and one that I find very funny because of Alley and Danson’s comedic chemistry), and so the next scene poignantly unwinds that story mistake as best as possible and returns Sam and Rebecca to being, as Vicki described so well, best friends that really do love each other. One thing I wish from this skit/scene is that Ted Danson and Kirstie Alley had done other comedic roles together. I could imagine them having a kind of William Powell/Myrna Loy ongoing screen collaboration. Overall, what I found most frustrating about the baby storyline isn’t just that the show seemed to be trying to find something to do with Sam and Rebecca, but that they had already found what was, in my opinion the ideal: the two of them as differently-minded business partners. That was a genuine comedy set up for storytelling. I wish they had kept with that for all of season 10; at least they get back to it at times in season 11. Anyway, that’s my defense of Rebecca’s Daydream. I thought Rebecca getting her towel caught in the hotel room door was a silly joke, but it does mirror Rebecca getting her dress (I think?) caught and pulled off in the Cheers door in the S9 finale when she and Sam first decide to embark on this saga. I like the parallel. I think you mentioned a similar bookend effect with the kiss. For the others story, I agree with the commenter that mentioned that Frasier’s experience in the polar bear dip is par for the course, going back to his first odd-man-out role in “The Heart is a Lonely Snipehunter,” among others. Okay, that’s all. Thanks for the great discussion and the food for Cheers thought!

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