Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993 TAG: 9305150291
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE WERTS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, in the "Cheers" finale, Shelley Long's Diane will walk back into that bar and back into the heart of Ted Danson's Sam, as series creators Glen and Les Charles and James Burrows come full circle for a sense of fitting closure to their classic situation comedy.
If you'd like to be surprised Thursday rather than know all the happenings ahead of time, you're Les Charles' kind of viewer. (And you probably should stop reading this story right now.)
"One thing we wanted to do, although there are not huge surprises or twists and turns, was to let viewers see it [the finale] without knowing every step of the way and every line of dialogue," Les says. "I think people would enjoy the show more if they didn't know exactly what was going to happen."
But speculation has been running rampant since NBC announced the series' end last fall, and it hit its apex when the National Enquirer splashed " `Cheers' Shocking Final Episode" across its front cover last month, claiming possession of a final copy of the script. How close was the tattling tabloid?
"Well, the National Enquirer has a spy, unfortunately," says Glen Charles, who admits the story was "fairly" accurate - though "they don't have the last scene."
In other words, the mismatched Sam and Diane make plans to get married (again), while Rebecca (Kirstie Alley) is ready to tie the knot, too, with beer-tap repairman Tom Berenger. Carla (Rhea Perlman) gets Diane's goat, just like old times. New city councilman Woody (Woody Harrelson) gets Norm (George Wendt) a job. And Norm and Cliff (John Ratzenberger) are still ensconced at the far end of the bar.
But President Clinton doesn't make a cameo appearance in the episode, after all.
"He was ready to do it," says Glen. "We had written his lines and he had approved them," says Les. But the Vancouver summit and his father-in-law's illness got in the way, the brothers say.
In the end, "Cheers" will go out with its focus squarely on the core ensemble - exactly the way the series succeeded week after week, season after season.
But this normally half-hour comedy will expand to 90 minutes for the conclusion, despite its creators' best intentions. Glen Charles had maintained during a set visit in January, "I think a show that's been a half-hour show, if you make it more than a half an hour, I have problems with that. Comedy's tough on television for over a half an hour."
But he'd admitted even then that NBC was pushing for a longer finale for one of its few remaining hits - "a miniseries," he deadpanned. And he added in a more recent interview that if the brothers and Burrows hadn't delivered a longer last episode, the network was planning to construct its own "Cheers" clip show. "Better we control it than they," he says.
NBC will end up contributing a half-hour salute, preceding the finale, "but it's not a clip show, per se," Les says. "It's more a behind-the-scenes look at `Cheers.' " Jay Leno also does his "Tonight Show" on location in tribute to "Cheers," live from its prototype Bull and Finch Pub in Boston.
by CNB