Airdate: 9/26/85
Sam returns from
Italy furious – intending to stop Frasier and Diane’s wedding. he goes to the
wrong church and gets arrested, only to be freed, make that “purchased,” by the
local magistrate. Frasier returns equally irate – he got jilted at the altar,
and he reasons that Sam is to blame, going so far as point a gun, albeit a
unloaded one, at the man. Diane has returned, once agan trying to make
spiritual sense of the madness, by cleaning and cooking for nuns at a local
abbey. Sam goes after her, finally fessing up that he crossed a ocean for her.
Still she waits for a sign from above, and gets one: Sam’s hasty return to
all-female habitation to look for the men’s room.
But there’s sad
news at Cheers these days. Coach has passed away, but his pen-pal, a wide-eyed
hayseed from Indiana, has arrived looking for work. Sam agrees to hire the
over-earnest boy, and it looks like it’ll all work out. Even Norm is
celebrating the end of his efforts to get Vera pregnant. No, she isn’t; she
just stopped making him try.
Season 4 opener
ties up all the loose ends from season 3. Obviously the emotional highlight
here is the death of Coach. Interestingly, the producers decided no to make
such a big deal of it. They, probably wisely, chose to have the character die
unceremoniously; the only references to his passing come from Sam, who tells
Woody the news, and during the exchange between Sam and Diane at the abbey. In
a sense, a greater emphasis on the situation could be seen as exploiting it.
And Cheers was never a show to dwell
on the melodramatic or potentially mawkish – it’s a choice in tone that may
have been too intense for the show’s tenor (think of the lack of ceremony on
the show’s finale). And I think Nick Colassanto would’ve wanted it that way.
FYI: Woody’s
first line: “This is amazing! Hundreds of bottles. Red and white wine glasses.
Nawgahide stools. Brass rails. Big city bartender with a joke at the ready!”
Cold open: Sam
explains what happened to him in Italy (see above synopsis).
Norm’s opener:
Sam: “What to you say, Norm?” Norm: “Any tawdry thing that’ll get me a beer.”
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