[hijack]I always thought it was weird that they never had any plotlines involving Sam’s sometimes-mentioned but never-seen ex-wife.[/hijack]
It drove me crazy that Sam dated a woman named Janet for several episodes, but they never went for the “Sam and Janet evening” joke.
Yikes! Let me just say that I didn’t realize what a contentious issue this was when I brought it up.
While I clearly don’t agree with Kalhoun, I think he may have a point about my tossing around a.a. slogans as if everyone proscribed, or knew, them. Oh well.
I didn’t intend to get into a debate about a.a. in general. Let me just restate that I do realize this is just a sitcom. But it’s just an offhand idea I wondered about while watching it…in the same way that I wonder that, say, “if the passengers of the U.S.S. Minnow were going on a mere three hour cruise, why did the Howells bring all their money & Ginger bring all her clothes?”
My point being that the writers of “Cheers” introduced the fact that Sam was a recovered alcoholic, and mentioned it in several early episodes (such as when Woody asked him to try out a drink he’d mixed), and then proceeded to neglect the issue. (I had forgotten about the episode with the lucky bottle cap BTW.) I thought perhaps that might have been intentional to explain his randy behavior. MrVisible’s list of symptoms includes “grandiosity”, “impulsivity”, and “indecisiveness”, and mentions "lack of introspection’ as well. All things that apply to Sam. Was this a deliberate angle they were working on or not?
Sam’s alcoholism is brought up a fair amount in the series, at least in reference to his days as a baseball player. Any time someone brings up his Red Sox days, Sam will make some comment about he doesn’t remember the game the guy is talking about, or how messed up he was in those days.
Art Vandelay, Architect, I grant you Sam’s impulsivity, but please substantiate your claim of his “grandiosity” and “indecisiveness.”
I can’t recall any of the former. He didn’t brag about his exploits with women, but always mentioned them matter-of-factly. And he was generally modest about his ball-playing as well; in one episode he said something like “I was a relief pitcher back before it was cool to be one.”
And I can’t recall the latter as being one of Sam’s foibles. Diane was the one who was always changing her college major and embarking on new hobbies.
I think maybe Sam belongs to Rational Recovery which bypasses all the 12-step hoops and gets directly to the point-- stopping drinking.
Thus, he is not a “dry-drunk”, he is simply someone who has stopped drinking. No more, no less.
Who needs 12 steps when just 1 will do?
There is also the possibility that Sam was never a true alcoholic to begin with, but rather just a guy who drank too much. He stopped drinking and that solved his problem.
I think “dry drunk” is mostly just an AA term for people who stop drinking without attending AA.
I liked the small moments, like when he would take a sip of bottled water when the guys were hanging out afterwards.
Well about his grandiosity, come on! He bragged incessently about his womanizing! He’d only “matter-of-factly” mention his scoring with women in that feigned breezy way that the worst blowhards do: to rub in the point that scoring with babes was so easy for him.
One specific instance that comes to mind is a two-part episode in which Coach sees a mother & daughter in the bar. Coach wants to ask the mother out on a date, and asks Sam to “distract” the daughter. Sam asks the daughter out, she makes an excuse that is quickly discovered. She then admits she wasn’t interested in Sam and wanted to “turn him down easy.” Sam is so riled up that a woman, much less a less-than-stunning-looking woman, would reject him, he spends the next two episodes fuming about it. One rejection is a major blow to his ego.
Aside from that instance, the entire latter half of the show’s run was one long-running gag of Sam trying to get Rebecca into bed, Rebecca shooting him down, and Sam fuming about it. I don’t think there was an episode of the whole series that didn’t include one joke about Sam’s exceeding vanity.
As for indecisiveness, the whole thrust of the series originally was whether or not Sam & Diane were going to be a couple or not. Granted, Diane WAS the one of the most obnoxious characters in television history, but they hate each other in one episode, are close to hooking up the next, then at each other’s throats the ep. after that. And it wasn’t all Diane’s fault. As she pointed out when she wrote a thesis about him, Sam DID have a massive fear of commitment - to her or any one. Then there was that whole horrible plotline when Sam & Rebecca were going to have a baby together because they both realized they were getting older and left no legacy, then decided not to, etc.
At the time, actress Kirstie Alley was really trying to get pregnant by her husband, Parker Stevenson. If she’d managed it, no doubt the pregnancy would have been written into the show which, frankly, probably would have made the last few seasons even more painful.
This reminds me of a movie review I read on a secular recovery site once. It was on LSR (Lifering Secular Recovery) for the movie 28 days, with Sandra Bullock. The review was written by an amateur, that is, a person who was not a movie critic. However, she was not an amateur when it came to drinking, if you see where I’m going with this…
Anyway, IMO she just seemed terribly disappointed that the movie didn’t depict the character or the rehab situation realistically.
:rolleyes:
This is why some productions are called MOVIES and some productions are called DOCUMENTARIES.
Now, back to Sam and Cheers. I know the OP has stated at least twice that he’s not taking this whole thing too seriously, but, come on, you can’t expect much when you try to (what is it ?) TAKE THE INVENTORY of a FICTIONAL character. Unless what you’re looking for has been written into the character, I’m guessing you’re not going to find it.
Why bother?
On another note, the AA/12 step/religious stuff can really be insidious, and any indication like this, where you are actually thinking about how it relates to a fictional character’s life, might be a warning sign that things have gone too far.
Actually, actors do that often – especially the good ones.
I think that’s a little different.
[sarcasm]Gee, I never realized that living as an addict was healthier than being completely absorbed in recovery my first couple years clean.[/sarcasm]
Give the guy a break, he’s only 8 months sober. If he’s still asking that on public message boards in 3 years, then maybe he needs to diversify from recovery. Right now it’s a lot healthier to take Sam Malone’s inventory than blow of his recovery.
I was really more interested in the idea of separating fiction and reality. But when I added that other note, I just meant that I think AA/stepping can be a bad thing. I also meant “you” in the general sense, using the Sam thing as an example, but it didn’t come out right at all. I actually wasn’t trying to give the OP a hard time or anything.