Sam has reached middle age and it becomes very apparent when he suffers a hernia, playing racquetball with Woody. He has a horrible time admitting that he has lost a step and some of the gang try to cheer him up. I've seen this in some of the guys I went to school with--unable to slow it down a bit. Still, he overreact and as the episode ends, he is about as sincerely thoughtful as I've seen him. Excellent writing.
4 Reviews
Dark Imaginings (#4.19)
ComedyFan201018 May 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Sam is worried that people see him as too old and challenges Woody for a tennis match. After he goes to the hospital for hernia and tells the rest that he is going skiing. Diane comes to visit him and tries to convince him that getting older is not a bog deal. He does but then he hits on a daughter of a guy about his age.
Meh I don't like episodes about aging. All the pressuring people to believe that with age one has to be boring and that getting married is a must. But this one is pretty good, just because of Sam's character. Good acting.
And we have some great fun moments. Woody wanting to donate his hernia to Sam and Cliff with his vegetable issues!
Meh I don't like episodes about aging. All the pressuring people to believe that with age one has to be boring and that getting married is a must. But this one is pretty good, just because of Sam's character. Good acting.
And we have some great fun moments. Woody wanting to donate his hernia to Sam and Cliff with his vegetable issues!
Best Cheers Episode
jonahfalcon197023 January 2009
Warning: Spoilers
The most nuanced, unexpected Cheers episode. Sam starts diving headlong into a midlife crisis, dating young women and overexerting himself at sports.
When Sam suffers a hernia playing Woody at racquetball, he hides his going to the hospital - Diane tracks him down and insists it's okay to accept growing old. Sam bristles at this and checks himself out of the hospital.
However, Sam suffers a relapse and returns to the hospital, where Diane announces that he was right - he shouldn't accept growing old, pointing out many great figures who performed great deeds well into old age. Sam is aroused by Diane's speech - she gives the classic line as Sam advances on her: "Oh, Sam, this is wonderful. An old person wouldn't be doing this. This is the act of a vital, strong, young man. Who wants a woman. Who wants sex. (Sam gets too close) Who won't GET it..." After Diane departs, Sam meets his new roommate, who is a blond version of Sam. They bond, discovering that they're both getting older but have plenty of virility and drive. However, when the man introduces a young woman to Sam, Sam hits on her - then discovers she's the man's daughter.
After the man leaves the room, Sam becomes introspective - he sits quietly at the hospital window as it rains.
While the episode remains lighthearted through most of the episode, it refuses to give an easy answer. The message of "You're as old as you feel" is subverted as Sam realizes that while he's not an old man, time *is* slipping away. His counterpart had a daughter, and was presumably married, while Sam is a bachelor and childless. How much time does Sam have left? This episode was typical of the gravitas the Sam character had during the "Diane years" - an alcoholic womanizer who was struggling with life. Sam would never recover it til the last few episodes of the series.
When Sam suffers a hernia playing Woody at racquetball, he hides his going to the hospital - Diane tracks him down and insists it's okay to accept growing old. Sam bristles at this and checks himself out of the hospital.
However, Sam suffers a relapse and returns to the hospital, where Diane announces that he was right - he shouldn't accept growing old, pointing out many great figures who performed great deeds well into old age. Sam is aroused by Diane's speech - she gives the classic line as Sam advances on her: "Oh, Sam, this is wonderful. An old person wouldn't be doing this. This is the act of a vital, strong, young man. Who wants a woman. Who wants sex. (Sam gets too close) Who won't GET it..." After Diane departs, Sam meets his new roommate, who is a blond version of Sam. They bond, discovering that they're both getting older but have plenty of virility and drive. However, when the man introduces a young woman to Sam, Sam hits on her - then discovers she's the man's daughter.
After the man leaves the room, Sam becomes introspective - he sits quietly at the hospital window as it rains.
While the episode remains lighthearted through most of the episode, it refuses to give an easy answer. The message of "You're as old as you feel" is subverted as Sam realizes that while he's not an old man, time *is* slipping away. His counterpart had a daughter, and was presumably married, while Sam is a bachelor and childless. How much time does Sam have left? This episode was typical of the gravitas the Sam character had during the "Diane years" - an alcoholic womanizer who was struggling with life. Sam would never recover it til the last few episodes of the series.
AWFUL EPISODE BY AN AWFUL WRITER
talula10603 September 2019
This episode was pretty bad as Cheers episodes go. It was filled with silly coincidences that were totally implausible and lowered the caliber of the show. More annoying than funny which is not good for a sitcom.
I looked up who wrote the episode and it's the same guy who wrote Chambers vs Malone (arguably the worst Cheers episode), Peterson Crusoe (where Cliff inexplicably decides to move to Tahiti because of a health scare but hides in Sam's office for days without anyone noticing), and Coach in Love where Coach came off like an inexperienced buffoon (more than usual ) who spent the entire two episode arc in denial and struggling with what seemed like mental illness over a woman. It ended poorly and again, there weren't very many laughs. This writer seems to love to fill his episodes with totally unrealistic plot points and totally cumbersome dialogue that has no humor whatsoever. None of these episodes were any good and all of them completely disregarded what we already knew about the characters to that point. If you listen to the audience in this episode, you'll see that the audience isn't laughing all that much because the jokes just aren't funny.
Diane's behavior in this episode got a little ridiculous. She spent the entire episode nosing around where she didn't belong and didn't even try to hide it. Granted, she does that a lot anyway but in this episode, it really got silly. Frantically salling every hotel in Sugar Loaf even though Sam didn't say where he was going skiing? He could have been skiing anywhere. It seems a bit out of character for her to spend that kind of time openly stalking Sam and for no apparent reason other than a feeling she had. And the feeling seemed to be based on nothing which was also lazy writing. Sam has dated plenty of younger women so why no Earth was Diane suddenly concerned that Sam was getting old when she saw him with a younger girl? It made no sense and disregarded everything that came before it.
The worst thing in this episode is the way Diane found out Sam was in the hospital. Two nurses randomly discuss a patient while Diane happened to be standing there? When Diane asks about the patient, the nurses just give up that information to a waitress in a bar? This would never happen and the fact that it was written into the episode was an insult to intelligent viewers. It was just lazy writing. Why couldn't they have had the hospital call the bar to confirm employment and Diane answered the phone? Anything was preferable to what this writer did.
Generally, writers expect viewers to suspend their disbelief to some extent while watching a sitcom. This episode asked too much of us with its lazy writing, unrealistic plot points, and far too many coincidences with far too few laughs. Not one of Cheers' best. This writer should have been fired before he had the chance to subject Chambers vs Malone on us in the fifth season. Ugh.
I looked up who wrote the episode and it's the same guy who wrote Chambers vs Malone (arguably the worst Cheers episode), Peterson Crusoe (where Cliff inexplicably decides to move to Tahiti because of a health scare but hides in Sam's office for days without anyone noticing), and Coach in Love where Coach came off like an inexperienced buffoon (more than usual ) who spent the entire two episode arc in denial and struggling with what seemed like mental illness over a woman. It ended poorly and again, there weren't very many laughs. This writer seems to love to fill his episodes with totally unrealistic plot points and totally cumbersome dialogue that has no humor whatsoever. None of these episodes were any good and all of them completely disregarded what we already knew about the characters to that point. If you listen to the audience in this episode, you'll see that the audience isn't laughing all that much because the jokes just aren't funny.
Diane's behavior in this episode got a little ridiculous. She spent the entire episode nosing around where she didn't belong and didn't even try to hide it. Granted, she does that a lot anyway but in this episode, it really got silly. Frantically salling every hotel in Sugar Loaf even though Sam didn't say where he was going skiing? He could have been skiing anywhere. It seems a bit out of character for her to spend that kind of time openly stalking Sam and for no apparent reason other than a feeling she had. And the feeling seemed to be based on nothing which was also lazy writing. Sam has dated plenty of younger women so why no Earth was Diane suddenly concerned that Sam was getting old when she saw him with a younger girl? It made no sense and disregarded everything that came before it.
The worst thing in this episode is the way Diane found out Sam was in the hospital. Two nurses randomly discuss a patient while Diane happened to be standing there? When Diane asks about the patient, the nurses just give up that information to a waitress in a bar? This would never happen and the fact that it was written into the episode was an insult to intelligent viewers. It was just lazy writing. Why couldn't they have had the hospital call the bar to confirm employment and Diane answered the phone? Anything was preferable to what this writer did.
Generally, writers expect viewers to suspend their disbelief to some extent while watching a sitcom. This episode asked too much of us with its lazy writing, unrealistic plot points, and far too many coincidences with far too few laughs. Not one of Cheers' best. This writer should have been fired before he had the chance to subject Chambers vs Malone on us in the fifth season. Ugh.
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