CHEERS

INDULGENT MUSINGS:
Cheers ran for eleven seasons from '82 to '93. And because I was only five when the finale aired, I totally missed Cheers. I lived through two whole decades in a post-Cheers America before I saw, with my own two eyes, what all the hubbub was about. You guys, I'll say to you now what I said to every one of my friends in the year 2011: You should really watch Cheers.

How is an 80's multi-cam sitcom with a cheesy laugh track so good? How did it capture audiences that whole first season without  ever leaving that bar set? My best guess:

Characters.

The world and the characters of Cheers feel real and lived-in. So much so that a snobby Season 3 drop-in character with the least dimensionality went on to get a spin-off that ran ANOTHER ELEVEN SEASONS! You guys. That's how good the characters in Cheers are. Frasier is more than a nerdy intellectual. Carla is more than a sassy tom-boy. Norm is more than just NORM! The bar is filled with rich, sympathetic people that you come back for episode after episode. Even if a character you loved left the show or the actor portraying them died, we'd get a brand new, wholly original and fleshed-out personality to refill the empty stool.

Okay, enough geeking out. Let me talk structure. Cheers episodes have something that my past two specs did not: B stories (or subplots). Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to find a sitcom that doesn't have multiple story arcs per episode but prior to the 1970's or 80's, they were way less of a thing. I honestly have no clue why, I'm sorry to leave you hangin'.

When writing a spec with both A and B stories, it's a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's convenient to volley between the two plots. It allows time to pass on plot A while we're exploring plot B. It also paves the way for nifty tonal shifts where your A plot might get heavy and serious just so the B plot can swoop in on a banana peel and fart while pratfalling. That said, there are are two big downsides: There's less time to explore either of the stories and it's super clear when you're being lazy.

Let me explain. We want these plots to connect. If A and B have no thematic similarities or if they don't narratively collide in the second act, you lose.  When your two stories feel too disparate, the episode comes out unintentional and slapped together. It's a Frankenstein episode. This week, I came up with a B story for Cheers that I really liked then scrambled for the A story. This was less than ideal.

SEED OF THE IDEA:
What if Woody started a rideshare program decades before Uber or Lyft existed? Now that that's done, what is this episode going to be about?

HONESTY CORNER:
This was the hardest of the specs so far, guys. I spent all week watching old Cheers episodes on Netflix and really sweating this A story. I couldn't land on anything that had legs. The one I settled on is fine, in my opinion. It touches on themes that are important to me but I'm worried it feels rushed. I feel like I ended up with the Frankenstein episode problem I described above but I've decided to forgive myself. I created a monster but, hey, it's better than not creating anything (that's literally the opposite of what Frankenstein is about). I also wanted to limit myself to setting the whole script in the bar because it felt like a fun challenge. Might've hurt me, though, I don't know.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments!