Sunday, January 12, 2014

The Ultimate TV Pilot Checklist: Cheers

After squandering his money, ex-major league pitcher Sam Malone run the bar he bought, even though he’s a recovering alcoholic. His bartender is his old sweet-natured ex-coach, his waitress is wicked-tongued Carla, and his two best patrons are nerdy Cliff and sarcastic Norm. In the pilot, high-class Literature Ph.D. Diane stops in with her professor/fiancé Sumner, who leaves her there while he goes to get a ring back from his ex-wife. Sam figures out that she’s been abandoned and reluctantly offers her a job.
 Yes, it’s hilarious and has the effervescence of a great screwball romcom.
 Not really.
 Yes, an earthy bar owner and his snooty waitress.
 Yes, it’s about a recovering alcoholic who runs a bar (and hires a posh waitress who despises bar talk.)
 No, this breaks the rule that “Nobody every really rebrands”.  NBC wanted to make a smarter, gentler show, like ABC’s “Taxi or CBS’s “MASH”, and succeeded.
 Very much so.  This is a warm, comfortable blanket of a show.
Series Fundamentals: Will this concept generate a strong ongoing series?
 Interestingly, not really.  The show deliberately makes it hard to choose between Sam and Diane, even giving them weirdly co-equal name placement in the credits.  This is a not a case where they’re co-heroes, because co-heroes must star in separate storylines.  Instead, they were allowed to fight for supremacy in the audience’s affection as much as they fought for each other’s.  It was an interesting choice, and they pulled it off.
 Yes, both Danson and Long had budding movie careers and gave them up to do this show.
Is the show set in an unsafe space?
 It’s a very safe space…until Diane walks in and ruins it.  She judges them and they judge her, making it unsafe for the first time.
 Yes, very much so.
Will trouble walk in the door on a regular basis?
 It certainly can, but doesn’t have to, because trouble enters the heart of the bar once Diane is hired.
 Yes, bartending involves a lot of physical labor, a constant barrage of quizzes, and a lot of empathy.
Are there big stakes that will persist episode after episode?
 Not huge, but to a certain extent, both Sam and Diane are drowning here and throw each other a lifeline, and we sense that they genuinely need each other to be saved.
 Yes, Sam is dedicated to helping customers with their problems, and tries to do so before each day’s end.
 The premise is not established until the final moments, but Diane is already a member of the ensemble by the halfway point, though she doesn’t know it yet, so it works.
 Yes, the old-timey photographs that make up the opening credits, the in-show Cheers logo.
 Not really.  That wasn’t a selling point back then.
 No.  Again, not as much of a big deal back then.
 Yes, Sam and Diane clearly have a potential romance.
 Yes, against his better judgment, Sam hires Diane to work at the bar.
 Yes. Same: his gentle put-down of the kid trying to get a drink proves he’s funny, ethical, and empathetic.  Diane: Her witty banter in the phone scene.
Does the hero have a well-defined public identity?
 Yes: Sam: the beloved ex-relief pitcher for the Red Sox and avuncular bar owner.  Diane: the intellectual snot-nose.
Does that ironically contrast with a hidden interior self?
 Yes: Sam: the melancholy recovering alcoholic, Diane: the hopeless screw-up.
 Yes: Sam: Take it easy, help everybody, any girl can be seduced, Diane: be smarter, judge everybody, maintain high standards.
 Yes: Sam: old-timey “Quite a fella, that fiancé of yours.” Diane: romantic literature, psychology: “What a shame such an astute observer of human nature is stuck behind a bar.”
Does the hero have a default personality trait?
 Yes, Sam: avuncular, Diane: snooty
Does the hero have a default argument tactic?
 Yes, Sam: announcing how the argument is going to end before it ends, Diane: making outside references others won’t get.
 Sam: recovering alcoholism, sleaziness, Diane: Snottiness, naivete
 He actually feels that owning the bar is a bad place for him, but he chooses to stay for economic and sentimental reasons.  She definitely feels that she must hang onto those flaws to avoid becoming like the bar patrons.
 Yes, bars are sleazy places.
 Sam: empathy, charm, Diane: intelligence, innocence
 Yes, he’s a great bartender, and she turns out to be a waitress savant, who can instantly memorize an order better than Carla.
 Yes: Sam is more of a winner than the patrons, Diane is smarter than everyone else.
Is the hero curious?
 Yes, Sam divines the truth about her. She is fascinated by the patrons, though she won’t admit it.
Is the hero generally resourceful?
 Yes, they’re doing improv together before they’re even introduced, working together to bamboozle his floozie on the phone.
 Yes, he uses his astute perspective (partially derived from his personal pain) and she uses her vast knowledge.
 Yes, Coach and Carla were both veteran character actors.
 Yes, Cliff and Norm were great finds.
 Very much so.  In a way, each of them is proven right: Carla’s cynicism and Coach’s open-heartedness are both validated.
 Very much so.
 Yes, although they care about each other (and even strangers entering the bar) very much.
 Yes, Sam owns the bar, and the others can all stand up to him.
 Yes, Diane does have to extract their backstories with some effort.
 Yes, it’s the rare 5 way: Diane is head (so is Cliff, but he’s just a day player at this point), Coach is heart, Norm is stomach, Carla is spleen, Sam is crotch.
 Yes: Coach: sports, Norm: “grumbling husband”, Carla: Southie
 Yes: Coach: sweetly dopey, Norm: proletarian, Carla: hostile
 Yes: Coach: agreeing with everybody, Cliff: making up phony trivia, Carla: reversing your turn-of-phrase in a crude manner.
PART 4: IS THE PILOT EPISODE A STRONG STAND-ALONE STORY AND GOOD TEMPLATE FOR THE ONGOING SERIES? (21/22)                                                                
 Yes, one after the teaser, one in the middle, one before the tag.
 The show was somewhat unique at the time for having a teaser unconnected from the rest of the show, but the only “true” act break, in the middle is a nice escalation of the tension.
 Yes, we will often follow events from opening time to closing time, beginning with a stand-alone gently-humorous bar interaction.
 There is just one storyline and a bunch of running gags.
 No, but it’s fine.
 Yes, very much so.  Diane is totally transformed.
 Yes, Sam gradually comes to the realization that the only way to help this customer is to offer a job, despite the fact that doing so will make this no longer a safe space, and her decision is even harder, since it means totally going against her values.
 Yes, Sam: serve drinks, Diane: stop in for a quick drink.
 Yes, Sam has a customer in more trouble than she realizes, Diane is suddenly abandoned there.
Does the hero eventually commit to dealing with this situation personally?
 Yes, Sam becomes proactively protective of Diane, Diane decides to confront Sumner if he comes back.
 Yes, Diane rejects Sam’s protectiveness.
Does the hero try the easy way throughout the second quarter?
 Yes, Sam leaves Diane alone, Diane insists Sumner is coming back.
 Yes, they both realize that Sumner probably isn’t coming back, or at leas not to stay, and they both know the other knows it too.
Does the hero try the hard way from this point on?
 Yes, he determines to make her see the truth.  Sumner comes back briefly and Diane confronts him, unsuccessfully.
 Yes, the day is ending, and with it the chances that he will return.
 Yes, they both hear that Sumner has gone to Barbados with his ex-wife and they both come to realize that she needs to be there.
 Yes, he offers her a job, but she seems as if she’ll never accept.
 Yes for him, he’s actively courting her.  She becomes proactive at the very end when she enthusiastically commits to waitressing.
 Yes, Diane has a total life change and Sam quietly has a personal revelation when he comes to suspect he needs a woman like Diane.
 NA, this is the first scene of the whole show.
 No, it begins at the beginning.
Is this an intimidating setting that keeps characters active?
 Yes, a bar is an intimidating place for an underage teen.
 No, they both want to be there.
 Yes, it’s all non-plot.
 Yes, can he get the drink before Sam examines the ID?
Does this scene both advance the plot and reveal character?
 It’s all character, no plot.
Yes, Sam is oddly upset by it.
 Yes, we’re rooting for Sam to give this kid his comeuppance.
 Yes, the kid wants a drink, Sam wants to let him down gently.
 Yes: The surface conflict: is this a valid ID?  Suppressed conflict: should you be drinking? Can I run a bar ethically?
 Yes, by echoing back the kid’s claim that “war is gross”, he implies that the kid is woefully naïve about the dangers of adult life.
 Yes, Sam’s gentle good humor masks the feelings of melancholy this scene clearly brings up for him.
 Yes, the kid attempts to trick Sam into not checking the ID “I’ll have to tell the mrs!” and Sam tricks the kid into lying more, “What was Vietnam like?”
 Just the object exchange.
Are objects given or taken, representing larger values?
 Yes, the ID is offered and then taken back.
 It’s a very small scene.
The Outcome: Does this scene change the story going forward?
 Yes, the kid leaves empty-handed.
 Yes, the kid doesn’t get what he wants but he gets what he needs.
Are previously-asked questions answered?
 It’s the very first scene, but given that this is a show about a bar owner, the audience is automatically going to have the question, “Is this going to be a rotten guy?”  This scene immediately shuts that question down.
Are new questions posed that will be left unanswered for now?
 Yes, why is this bartender so melancholy and compassionate?
 Not really.
 It ends on a great punchline.
Empathetic: Is the dialogue true to human nature?
Does the writing demonstrate empathy for all of the characters?
 Very much so.
Very much so.  If the show was about just Sam or Diane, we would go crazy.  Each can see what the other can’t.
 Yes, they each attempt to hide their baggage, except Carla, but the others drag it out.
Do the characters avoid saying things they wouldn’t say?
 Yes.  Nobody directly confronts Coach on his senility, or Norm on his alcoholism, or Carla on her bad home situation, but they do it through sympathetic looks.  Diane doesn’t want to acknowledge an attraction to Sam, but the situation forces her to say, “You’re a magnificent pagan beast.”
Do the characters listen poorly?
 No, some do, but the others are great listeners, even Diane.
Do the characters interrupt each other more often than not?
 Yes: “What are you, nuts?  They’re up to their ears in linebackers!”
 Yes: sports: “You call that a football team?  Did they get a jackrabbit for the back field?  No.  Did they get a gunslinger for quarterback?  No,” and bartending (elaborate drink orders galore)
Does the dialogue capture the tradecraft of the profession being portrayed?
 Yes, Sam not only does the job, he astutely evaluates and helps everyone with their personal lives, and steers bar conversations in fun directions.
Is the dialogue more concise than real talk?
Does the dialogue have more personality than real talk?
 Yes, Diane, a would-be professor character, frequently begins parallel constructions only to be cut off by Sam halfway through.
 Yes, Sam finally yells, “That goof will probably be in Barbados tomorrow rubbing suntan oil on his ex-wife!”
 Semi-serious workplace comedy
 Yes, our pov character gets a useless degree and has to work in a bar, which happens to a lot of people, but it happens in a more extreme way, with her boss / thesis advisor / fiance dumping her (in more ways than one) in the bar on the eve of their wedding.
 Yes, warm-hearted.
 Sort of: the runners are very light and the main storyline is actually fairly heavy.
 Yes, Sam turns the kid down for a drink, doing the kid a favor, and the kid resents it, foreshadowing that Sam will help his customers with gentle fairness, but always be left behind after he helps them move on.
 Not really.
 Yes, will Sumner and Diane make that plane?
 Yes, the phone becomes more and more ominous.
 Yes, he has predicted that Sumner will fly to Barbados with his ex-wife, and that turns out to be true, which distracts us from the fact that it’s a bit of a plot contrivance for him to overhear the final phone call.
 Yes, the plane takes off with Sumner, but without Diane.
 Yes, they’re the friendly bar.  We don’t find out about their competition yet, but we sense that this bar is different.
“What are you doing?” “Just trying to cheer you up a little bit.” “What a shame such an astute observer of human nature is stuck behind a bar.”
 Yes, goods: winning vs. community-building, evils: alcoholism vs. loneliness.
 Yes, for Diane: faith vs. wariness, for Sam: bragging rights vs. compassion.
 There’s only one storyline.
Are small details throughout the pilot tied into the theme?
 Yes, it’s great that Sumner knows the sweatiest movie, tipping us off that he’s sleazier than the bar customers.
 Yes, Sam is peddling the poison that ruined his life, and trying to gently protect his customers from his fate while profiting off their self-destructiveness.
 Yes, lots.
Does the ongoing concept include twinges of real life national pain?
 Yes, as the episode begins a kid pretends to be a Vietnam veteran, and then when Sam rejects this, the kid says “This is the thanks we get.”  This ties the show into the heart of the ‘80s: which was all about America turning its back on the working class.  Our heroes will spend the next 11 years huddled down in this underground bunker as their proletarian world is dismantled above them.
Are these issues presented in a way that avoids moral hypocrisy?
Do all of the actions in the pilot have real consequences?
 Yes.  This is one of the few episodes where they worry about Norm driving drunk.
Untidy: Is the dilemma ultimately irresolvable?
 Yes, Sam doesn’t try, Diane tries and fails, in her speech to the tourists.
 Yes, in getting her to stay did he win power (putting this posh woman under his thumb) or surrender power (inviting her to enrich him and his community with her higher ambitions)?
Total Score: 120/133


Harvey Jerkwater said...

Having Cheers on Netflix Streaming is a glorious thing, isn't it? For me, I've been shocked again and again how much of the show I remember and how much of it shaped my comedic sensibilities without my awareness. ("Oh my god, I got that angle from Cheers? I thought that was mine! DAMMIT!") The entire first season never left the bar and it still worked.

Is Diane's character type, the "stuffy and pretentious Ivy League intellectual," still used in comedies? Shelley Long killed it, but the character type felt antiquated. My hunch is that the "stuffy intellectual" plays off of an anxiety that's not so prevalent in the American public anymore, so we don't see it much. Frasier and Niles Crane kept it up, but they may have been the last of the breed. "Intellectual" on teevee now skews towards "Aspergerish science nerds" now, right?

Has "stuffy intellectual" gone the way of "lovable, hilarious drunk" as a disused comic type?

Matt Bird said...

As I'll talk about later in the week, I was surprised as I rewatched the early seasons at how often we're expected to get and laugh along with Diane's intellectual humor. The whole idea of having TV and movies (early Woody Allen movies, for instance) that makes sly Russian Literature jokes (in amongst broader humor) is just gone. You would hardly see supposedly "high-toned" shows like Downton Abbey making those sorts of references today.

Remember when Diane made an avant garde film to convince Woody's hayseed parents that they should let him stay in Boston, but Woody had to inform her "Sorry, Miss Chambers, they thought it was too derivative of Godard."

Harvey Jerkwater said...

Woody's joke about Godard doesn't require knowledge of Godard's style to function as a joke, it just requires that you understand that "Godard" is the name of a fancy-pants movie director. Which you could pretty much pull from context even if you didn't know it.

From what I understand, The Big Bang Theory treats science in a similar way. It drops in terms or names from the field in such a way that even a Math Doofus like me could understand the gag. From an episode [holy crap there's a blog that transcribes whole episodes of BBT the internet is so weird you guys]:

Sheldon: Are you suggesting the work of a neurobiologist like Babinski could ever rise to the significance of a physicist like Clarke-Maxwell or Dirac?

Amy: I’m stating it outright. Babinski eats Dirac for breakfast and defecates Clarke-Maxwell.

Sheldon: You take that back.


Leonard: I’m sorry, I’m-I’m still trying to work on the defecating Clark Maxwell...

That's a whole lotta gibberish to me, but I still get the gag. How many of Diane Chambers's jokes do you have to actually understand the reference to appreciate?

James Kennedy said...

James Clerk Maxwell.

I think Harvey's point is valid, though. In both cases the highbrow reference is simply processed as "highbrow reference" but you don't need to actually know physics (or have a deep background in film) to get the joke(s).

Matt Bird said...

Both shows do a great job of doing what you're both pointing out: making smart jokes that anybody can get just from the context.

So yes, thankfully, everyone can laugh every time, but nevertheless that joke is even funnier if you *do* know who Godard is, and that was also frequently true of Diane's zingers.

(The big difference, of course, is that even though TBBT is smarter than most smart people give it credit for, it's of course much less funny than Cheers, both for those who do get the jokes and those who don't, which is why Cheers could get away with not having a laugh track (they had a live audience instead) while TBBT without a laugh track sounds like this:


(It's actually interesting to think of TBBT as the anti-Cheers: a down-on-her-luck working class girl has no choice but to join a group of over-educated academics and but she never stops snorting with condescending derision at their bumbling ways.)

Matt Bird said...

I'm reminded of watching "The Simpsons" in college when Marge was admiring a picture of her mom in a swimsuit as a young woman, and her mom says, "All the boys liked me, it used to drive my girlfriends crazy." "Who were your girlfriends?" "Frances Farmer, Zelda Fitzgerald and Little Sylvie Plath"

Two or three of us died laughing and the rest of the kids were looking at us like we were assholes.

Sometimes you have to be willing to lob one over the head of most of your audience in order to make a few of them howl like banshees.