Friday, September 6, 2013

Cheers 8.13: “Sammy and the Professor”


Airdate: 1/4/90

Rebecca’s old college professor, Alice Volkman, comes to Cheers to reunite with her – not so overachieving former pupil. Actually, Rebecca the student isn’t much different from the way she is now: indecisive, and always trying to impress people by telling them what they want to hear. This still nettles Volkman, who never had a problem going after what she wants, and now that includes Sam, whom she beds on more than one occasion when the point of their meeting was supposed to be how to buy back a bar. Rebecca’s furious, and wants to call her instructor a slut, but even that ain’t so easy. She finally gets her validation when she gets back a long-in-the-writing term paper on the Carter administration; it gets an A.

Slight but charming story reminiscent of one from the Diane years, and of course Lothario Sam gets in on it – the main difference being that Volkman is an older woman – not really one of Sam’s “bimbos,” and there really isn’t much chemistry between the two of them (but then, there probably isn’t supposed to be). Subplot has Carla faking receipts willy nilly when she gets audited buy the IRS. When the fed shows up, it goes okay at first, until Norm inadvertently gets her in hotter water than she already is.

Cold open: “Where does the time go?” is Woody’s innocent query, but it escalates into a bleak, sobering meditation on death by Frasier, which brings everybody down.


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