Cheers Chats #2: Truce Or Consequences

Welcome to our second installment of our year-long Cheers Chats series, where we travel back in time to revisit one of the most acclaimed and revered sitcoms in history, Cheers. Incidentally, today’s post comes a couple days before we get to see the Cheers cast reunited once again for Must See TV: A Tribute to James Burrows. Or, you may know it as the “Friends reunion” aka five of the six friends got together on a couch (not at Central Perk) to talk about their beloved director Jimmy Burrows. The cast of Cheers sat on the same couch and had a similar conversation about their time on the show with James. At this point, only eight episodes into the first season of Cheers, we’re not as emotionally involved as we are with Friends, a show that shaped our youth. But despite that, we are both greatly enjoying our binge of Cheers a mere 30+ years later, so we’ll check back at the end of the year and freak out about the following reunion at the James Burrows tribute:

Anyways, back to season one. Last time we covered the Pilot, and this time we’re on Season 1, Episode 8: Truce or Consequences (We’re going by this list from AV Club if you’re wondering what our plan of attack is). There is some serious girl power in this ep, so get ready for a lot of Carla and Diane talk.

Episode 1.08: Truce or Consequences

Netflix synopsis: When the constantly bickering Carla and Diane call a truce over drinks, Diane loosens up and professes her desire for a friend.

M: The only friends I can think of are her bookish chum who showed up in the last episode (which made me wonder if, as college educated single ladies, we would have been like Diane and Diane’s Friend in the 80s??), and, of course, Sam.

T: I do find myself trying to figure out which one of the characters I’m most like on this show, and I usually err to the side of Diane. Fantasy: Carla. Reality: Diane.

Chit-Chat Club

(Off-topic Cheers chatter.)

T: I just realized that all of these episodes so far have been bottle episodes, which could be its secret weapon.

M: I think you’re really onto something, and I wonder if this will keep up for the whole series? This also explains why we weren’t interested in it as kids: a group of adults talking in a dark bar every week.

T: Now that we are adults, talking with a group of friends in a dark bar that’s not a nightclub sounds like a dream.

Bahhston Tahhlk

T: Coach says he’s never driven home alone before? The man is like 60 years old. Then Norm offers to let him drive him to Kenmore (which isn’t too far from the Cheers bar) then take a cab back to the bar. This seems ridiculous. I guess that’s the point.

M: Was about to question whether Coach just hangs out at the bar and doesn’t drink, then I remembered that the answer is yes. Because he works there. Shouldn’t some of these people be taking the T, anyway?

T: Yes! They should be taking the T! No one lives in this area except rich people like John Kerry. That’s a fact. When Molly came to visit me in Boston, we stood outside his brownstone and took a pic.

M: I probably don’t even have to say this, but it was 2005.

Carla’s My Boo

T: Carla (under the influence of the Leap Into an Open Grave) starts telling Diane she has a secret, and wants to get it off her chest but doesn’t know if she can trust her. Carla decides to go for it, and the way she’s telling the story makes me think it’s all a joke and she’s gonna yell PSYCHE at the end. She does not. She tells Diane that years ago, Sam got drunk, she drove him home, one thing led to another, and nine months later Sam’s son Gino was born. WHERE IS THE PUNCHLINE.

Carla’s never told anyone. I feel like this is a test. Is Diane even going to remember this?

M: Is Gino Sam’s April Nardini? Because usually they don’t pull that shit in Season One.

“Question: Who is my dad?”

FYI, in an earlier episode Carla says that she gets pregnant if you wink at her so at least they’re keeping her character consistent.

Shut Up, Diane

(We just have a feeling we’re going to be saying Shut Up, Diane at our screens KIND OF A LOT.)

M: Since the pilot, one of my favorite things is the Carla/Diane rivalry. It’s also how I came to start to almost like Diane. Carla said that Diane wasn’t blonde in college, and Diane growled something like “look in the yearbook, Carla. Carla. Look. In the yearbook.” It was like Leslie Knope serving it to Eagleton.

T: They hug and Diane starts singing People because of this moment they’re sharing. I don’t find myself making up with rivals too often, but I can tell you I won’t be singing any Barbra Streisand during the make-up sesh.

M: I was really warming to her, but nope. SHUT UP DIANE is still a necessary Cheers Chats feature.

Also why does Diane act so traumatized by this news? She knows Carla has a bunch of kids with different fathers. File under: Diane is impossibly prissy.

M: Carla told Diane the story knowing she’d blab it everywhere, so basically an entire episode based on the Shut Up, Diane premise.

T: It’s like we wrote her character from start to finish based on the pilot alone.

M: Sam snaps “Stay out of it, Diane” which is a Shut Up, Diane of his own.

Little Ditty About Sam & Diane

T: BTW since the pilot, it’s becoming more clear that Sam & Diane are feelin each other. Like in the way that Sam gets jealous of men interested in Diane and vice versa.

M: Also, these little gestures…. like, Diane playfully unties Sam’s waist apron in lieu of totally doing it with him. Diane. Sam. Do it.

T: Oh Sam comes in to save the day, Diane is passed out in an “Open Grave” drink and he offers to take her home. Carla explains that she “told the biggest lie I could think of and she started to sing!”

T: Diane’s hangover acting is not good. She can’t find the hook on the coat rack. She’s hungover not blind.

T: Diane def remembers the lie Carla told her about Gino and tries to hint to Sam that she knows the secret. COME ON DIANE.

M: Diane: who put my pajamas on? Me: SAM AND DIANE. Do it.

Pour It Up, Pour It Up

(Drinks at the bar)

“We call it ‘Leap Into an Open Grave’ all the liquor some OJ, an egg, blended.” In these ridic glasses. They look like fishbowls you’d try to shoot a ping pong ball into at a carnival.

Say It Again, Sam

(Memorable lines from the episode. Not exclusively from Sam Malone.)

Carla to Diane – “Listen pencil neck, you’re starting to get on my nerves!”

Sam to Diane and Carla: “Two women who hate each other left alone in a room with glass and alcohol.”

Diane to Carla: Let’s have a bottle of wine. I think we have your favorite, Chateau Guam?

Carla to Diane: You hold your secrets like you hold your booze

Women fighting is very unlady like. Unless of course they’re wallowing around in mud pits.

Diane, re: Carla: I reached out to this “little twerp”

Carla: You sound like a lady getting tired of her teeth. (Ed. note: Whenever Carla gets feisty she sounds like one of the mean orphans in Annie.)

Cheers Queries

T: Diane and Carla haven’t been getting along over the past few episodes, I just didn’t realize it was bad enough for them to have a sit down convo?

M: Yeah, I thought they were just being snarky at each other, like it’s their love language.

T: Sam and Carla start hysterically laughing because they both know that Gino is ugly and so is her husband I feel uncomfortable about this. They’re laughing at a seven year old kid because he’s ugly?

M: It’s less bad because they don’t show him. Kind of like Karen’s stepchildren in Will & Grace (or did they show them eventually?)

It is kind of refreshing that Carla can laugh at her own kid being ugly, since the popular thing now is for parents to think their kids are gorgeous even when they’re not. Note: I may just be saying that because Carla’s my boo.