Cheers 6.15: “Tale of Two Cuties”

Airdate: 1/21/88

In Carla’s absence a waitress is needed, but two girls fill in. One is Annie Tortelli (Carla’s daughter-in-law), whose husband’s insecurity over her employment and his “un” is transmuted into jealousy over what he perceives to be an affair between Sam and his wife. The other is a young girl personally endorsed by Mr. Drake, and right away Rebecca jealously concludes she’s his mistress. Bordering on psychopathic, she pries and wheedles her way into to get the truth, ultimately slapping he poor girl in the face. Drake enters to clear things up: she’s his daughter, leaving Rebecca to excuse her slap as being a nervous tic that requires medication to subdue. And Frasier’s reading of a murder mystery is spoiled by everyone else at the bar – he gets revenge with some spoilers of his own, including the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke’s father.

Carla’s babies are finally delivered (she’s in the cold open and the very end), so the title could very well also refer to her offspring. But of course it really covers the two wkaitresses, and the comedy of errors arising from Rebecca’s neurotic crush on Evan Drake, and Carlas son and daughter-in-law’s adolescent (in every sense of the word) marriage, fraught with everything from guilt to oversexualization. A melting pot f mayhem if there ever was one!

Spoiler alert! In addition to ruining the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, Frasier also does some damage to Citizen Kane and Murder on the Orient Express. You have been warned. And BTW, Woody’s doubt that Darth is Luke’s dad based on the difference in their surnames is anachronistically nullified in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, when we learn Darth’s real name is Annakin.

Cold open: In a completely silent scene (we’re behind the hospital glass) the Cheers crew is all gaga over a set of twins – that are not Carla’s. When corrected, they still go back to the original, and presumably cuter, set of twins.