"Sam, it's Cheers. It's a romantic bar. As many people fall in love here as get sick." - Nicholas Colasanto as Ernie "Coach" Pantusso
Cheers: The Complete Second Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Television history is filled with quality shows that were cancelled by impatient network executives when the shows failed to immediately find audiences. Cheers could have easily been one of them had Grant Tinker not been the head of NBC at the time. Tinker, who had earlier produced The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many other classic series under his MTM banner, had been brought in to revive the ailing network. As explained in the supplemental features that accompany Cheers: The Complete Second Season, the executive planned to achieve this by filling NBC's schedule with shows of the highest possible quality.and leaving them there until audiences discovered them. Even though Cheers' first season was an underachiever ratings-wise, Tinker was a fan of the series, so he renewed it for a second season. It was a smart move - a few days before show's second season premiere, Cheers' first season won Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Comedy Series," "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" (Shelley Long), "Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series" (James Burrows) and "Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series" (series creators Glen and Les Charles). It proved to be a good omen for the series which reached new comic heights (and achieved greater ratings success) in its second season.
In the episode "Power Plays," the second season picks up where the first left off - an argument between playboy bar owner Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and snooty cocktail waitress Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) leads to a violently passionate embrace. The two get to work planning a tryst, but the Cheers gang - firebrand waitress Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman), addled bartender Ernie "Coach" Pantusso (Nicholas Colasanto), and barflies Norm Peterson (George Wendt) and Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger) - is skeptical at the lovebirds' newfound happiness. They have reason to be: within a few minutes, Diane's extensive stuffed animal collection proves to be a deal breaker, and the budding relationship ends. Of course, the two are back together by the end of the episode. And so their on again/off again romance-cum-prizefight begins, with both Sam and Diane competing for the upper hand, each unable to surrender to the other.
For the rest of the season, the two characters try to maintain their relationship while refraining from killing one another. Sam and Diane sometimes struggle to become the person they think the other wants - Sam reads War and Peace in five days in a misguided attempt to appear intellectual, and Diane reluctantly helps Sam write his smut-filled memoirs. While such efforts inevitably fail, they do temporarily bring the couple closer together. Danson and Long are brilliant at portraying the ebb and flow of this love/hate relationship. The characters are undeniably attracted to each other, but at the same time, their individual love-of-self proves to be too strong to allow them to totally commit to another person.
The season is not just focused on the relationship between Sam and Diane. The other characters are also given a chance to shine. Carla's vulnerability and softness comes to the fore in "Battle of the Exes." When her smarmy ex-husband Nick (Dan Hedaya) announces his marriage to beautiful babe Loretta (Jean Kasem) by sending his ex a wedding invitation and a nude picture of his bride-to-be, Carla practically goes into mourning. It isn't that she wants the boorish Nick back in her life - she just wants him to suffer. Hedaya gives a believably seedy performance as Nick, and Perlman is also extremely effective in her desperate - and ultimately successful - attempts to make him jealous. In "Little Sister Don't Cha," the actress is given an even bigger workout. With Carla in the hospital giving birth, Perlman appears as Carla's sister Annette, whose saintly, virginal appearance belies her truly slutty nature. As Norm says, "She's been around.and around.and around." Adding to the fun is the fact that this standout episode was written by Perlman's real-life sister Heide, Cheers' story editor.
In season two, Norm is separated from his wife Vera and, for most of the season, unemployed. He occasionally sleeps in the bar, and even sinks so low as to work at Melville's (the restaurant above the bar) as a dishwasher. In "No Help Wanted," a reluctant Sam is talked into hiring Norm as Cheers' accountant. This episode culminates with a sublimely frantic physical performance by Wendt when Norm fears that he will be forever banished from the bar.
Coach and Cliff get their chance in the spotlight in a few episodes of their own, including "And Coachie Makes Three" and "Cliff's Rocky Moment."
The season ends with the brilliant two part "I'll Be Seeing You." Oddball painter Philip Semenko (Taxi's Christopher Lloyd) chooses Diane as the subject of a portrait, much to Sam's chagrin. Semenko feels that he can accurately portray in paint the inner turmoil that Sam has caused Diane. While sitting for the artist, Diane admits that "Sam and I are very different people. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not so good. Sometimes he makes me cry. Sometimes he hurts me and seems to like it." These lines - and Long's expert performance - are emotionally devastating. In the season's final scene, Sam and Diane engage in a brutally funny volley of slaps followed by mutual nose-pulling. Their on again/off again relationship is off once again as Diane leaves Cheers - this time, she says, for good.
This is a bravely somber season ender for a sitcom. The script is well crafted, mixing humor and horror in a way that suggests a sitcom version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Through the years, sitcoms like Will & Grace and Friends have tried injecting episodes with bit of drama. It almost never works - usually it simply points out how cartoonish and unbelievable the shows' characters are. That Cheers is able to seamlessly accomplish this difficult task and simultaneously make it seem so easy is a testament to the strength of the show's creators and performers.
Guest stars in season two include Corey Feldman, Dick Cavett, Night Court's Harry Anderson and Markie Post, Punky Brewster's George Gaynes, and Hunter's Fred Dryer.
The twenty-two episodes that make up season two are divided onto four discs. The discs themselves feature pictures of individual cast members. The simple menu design does not feature a play all option, allowing the viewer to play only individual episodes. The episodes are divided into chapters that correlate to the original commercial breaks (with an extra one after the opening credits), but the menus do not allow the selection of individual scenes.
