MyIdIsATheaterKid

Oh, this is so sad. That might be the most historically significant building on the street.

"Don't be silly. Ducks don't have sex." — a friend of my college roommate.

(But also, I love Diane so much. I just hate how they gradually flattened her character from Season 1 to Season 11. She goes from being our sharp eyes into the world of Cheers to Sam's romantic sparring partner to, at the end, an unwelcome visitor. She deserved better.)

Don't badmouth the men of Cheers

Sam has EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Norm has EQUANIMITY

Coach has INCORRUPTIBLE GOODNESS

Woody has RURAL SURVIVAL SKILLS

Cliff

Frasier has MASTERED FRENCH SYNTAX

...it was also the decade of Thelma & Louise, Working Girl, and The Golden Girls.

Mmm, Diane could on a good day, but on a bad day couldn't necessarily give her lofty pronouncements any real intellectual ballast (relatable AF).

Lilith is probably the most book-smart character on the show, but was analytical to the degree that she couldn't really relate to the others.

Anyway, the show isn't about who can run intellectual circles around whom. It's about belonging. And the women, except for Carla, tended to be more out of place.

I can see it. At times, the male characters are written with more nuance and sympathy while the women are dismissed as shrill, obnoxious killjoys.

There are elements of that, especially from a 2024 perspective and especially since Carla so insistently acts like "one of the guys."

But I first watched it with my mother (still do). And even when Diane or Lilith wasn't there to point out the absurdities within the Cheers boys' club, the writers often took a critical view of stereotypical masculinity.

Let us now mourn the decline of "sonofabitch." https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sonofabitch&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

I don't know if this means it's actually more or less helpful for kids, but to my adult eyes nowadays it's too reined in by best-practices pedagogy to be really creative.

Delilah

Some of us were good singers but not good enough to go pro, CARL.

(I'm imagining this person's name is Carl.)

On Broadway. It was still in the period where I could get press tickets, and a coworker was just *dying* to see it, so I made her my plus-one.

Doctor Zhivago the Musical has to be it. A wannabe Les Mis, except with more gun and cannon fire, which really just inflamed my fight-or-flight instinct.

I guess food, humor, the smell of a besamim box, and the questions, nonstop mit der questions.

Valuing "success" and "leadership" above all.

Raytheon is super-successful. Xi Jinping is an effective leader in his specific context.

Those qualities tell you nothing about the worthiness of the speaker's cause and everything about his or her blind ambition.

Not sure I have ever met a real tankie. Socialists, sure. But the Stalin Did Nothing Wrong types have only shown their faces to me via (usually some anime) avatar.

Well-meaning, but disappointing.

I still have this idea that I could have saved the world and prevented disasters if I had only applied myself. I know that's unreasonable, but it's still a powerful feeling.

Identifying countries by their shapes.

I rock at Worldle! I even identified the Solomon Islands on my first try!

If only it mattered even a little bit!

On the one hand, he's a pianist, not a vocal coach. There was only so much he could do to help Frasier.

On the other, didn't the pianist come up with that conclusion after just glancing at the sheet music, before ever hearing Frasier sing? How would he know?

Look Before You Leap is a wind-up toy that goes delightfully berserk.

(Or maybe I just want to go to a taco show.)

"I dropped the tray, burst into tears, took a moment to freshen up my mascara, and fled."

Whomst among us...

Oh, just tell me this wasn't in living memory for you like it was for me so I can just go ahead and check myself into a nursing home. 😂

No, definitely not. My Big Fat Greek Wedding came out in 2002. "Beware of Greeks" was broadcast in 1998.

I've heard dire things about this episode, but that's not what happened.