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First of all, everybody pick a colored pawn that represents the Cheers character that most closely resembles your own personality and place it on its matching colored square on the game board.
-From the rules for Cheers, the trivia game
You knew "Cheers" was unique from the moment that snobby Diane entered Sam's place on Sept. 30, 1982, accompanied by the college professor fiance who would jilt her, sentencing her to years of servitude as a barmaid.
From the instant of that initial, tone-setting antipathy/sexual tension between Sam and Diane, you knew you were hooked.
Then in walked foggy Coach with his own hilarious one-liners. Then testy Carla. Then beer-guzzling Norm. Then Norm's drinking mate, Cliff.
Even though the gaudy ratings would come later, it was immediately obvious that executive producers Glen Charles, Les Charles and James Burrows had created something quite grand, that "Cheers" would turn out to be one of the best written and performed, funniest, most endearing prime-time comedies ever, that it would endure 11 seasons on NBC, run 275 episodes and win 26 Emmys en route to tonight's finale. Yes, an absolute given.
But puleeze! This is a television series, not the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is the cast of a sitcom, not the cast of the Last Supper.
What these actors do on the screen is all that matters. What's on their minds-their thoughts about themselves, each other, the world, what they had for breakfast, their psychoanalysis of their "Cheers" characters-is only moderately interesting, at best. Yet by now, Ted Danson (Sam), Shelley Long (Diane), Kirstie Alley (Rebecca), Rhea Perlman (Carla),...