Product Description
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Its the cozy little Boston bar where everybody knows your
name
welcome to CHEERS the Emmy award-winning smash-hit
television series that kept the laughs uncorked for 11 years.
.com
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Cheers: The Complete Ninth Season, like every season of the
great NBC sitcom, is graced by a number of very funny episodes
involving the going-nowhere denizens of a Boston bar. The year
begins with Cheers' multi-millionaire owner Robin (Roger Rees)
heading to a probable term in jail, selling the bar back to Sam
(Ted Danson) and putting its manager, Rebecca (Kirstie Alley),
who also happens to be Robin's girlfriend, out of work. But
what's really interesting is the onset of Sam and Rebecca's
relationship at the same time, which ceases soon after
it begins but leaves such a residual level of caring that Sam
invites Rebecca to come back and work at Cheers when her fortunes
. In the wonderful "Rebecca Redux," Sam hires an assistant
(Bryan Clark) with a mythic all-American grin and such a good,
positive thought for everyone that a near-mutiny develops among
Cheers' customers when Rebecca replaces him upon her return.
While the Rebecca-Sam-Robin relationship dynamic works itself out
over the season, other perennial storylines pick up their threads
from previous years. "Cheers Fouls Out" is the latest in a long
line of mind games between Sam and the (unfortunately superior)
Gary, owner of a rival bar that annually kicks Cheers' behind in
a basketball game. This time, Gary comes up with a couple of
redwood-tall ringers to go up against the likes of Norm (George
Wendt) and Woody (Woody Harrelson), but Sam has a secret weapon:
Kevin McHale of the Celtics. Not that Sam's luck can be expected
to improve even with the odds seemingly in his favor.
Sam's gullibility rears itself in another episode, "Pitch It
Again, Sam," in which failed Red Sox pitcher "Mayday" Malone is
goaded into taking the mound once again in a duel with a veteran
hitter. Hoping for the redemption of his dim, major league
reputation, Sam encounters an unexpected challenge to his decency
at the last moment. The hilarious "Rat Girl" finds Frasier
(Kelsey Grammer) concerned when his psychiatrist wife, Lilith
(Bebe Neuwirth), grieves so deeply following the death of her
favorite lab rat that she carries its little corpse around in her
purse. "Uncle Sam Wants You" begins an understated story thread
about Sam's desire to be a her, while "Carla Loves Clavin"
puts cynical barmaid Carla (Rhea Perlman) in the horrifying
position of having to be nice to one of her favorite targets,
blowhard Cliff (John Ratzenberger). Cliff's mom (Frances
Sternhagen), by the way, shows up unexpectedly in the painfully
funny "Ma Always Liked You Best," prodding at Cliff's newfound
independence and stoking her son's jealousy by lavishing Woody
with attention. "Bad Neighbor Sam" initiates Sam's long-running
feud (which never works in Sam's favor) with the owner of a
restaurant above Cheers. "Woody Interruptus" sees poor Woody
upset by girlfriend Kelly (Jackie Swanson) returning from Europe
with a boyfriend, while Cliff babbles on about having his head
cryogenically frozen. It's life as usual at Cheers, and as always
the show's community of misfits is a joy to behold. --Tom Keogh