Cheers

[Joneslab]

But for a show that takes place in a bar, it can be a distraction to not take note any of these things.

None of these characters smoked in this bar, in the eighties. Nobody paid. They were there every single day, always drinking huge mugs of beer. Rarely ever did you see them drunk.

The bar worked solely as a plot device, and that's okay, because the show was about the characters.

I agree.

I totally see why they did it, but it's definitely strange. Some of the writers have written (extensively) about it in the years since the show. I think it's the little stretches of believability that become necessary when you find that you have a hit that runs for twelve seasons.

Norm and Cliff as stumbling, belligerent alcoholics would've definitely changed the tone of the proceedings...

[surveyor]

But for a show that takes place in a bar, it can be a distraction to not take note any of these things.

None of these characters smoked in this bar, in the eighties. Nobody paid. They were there every single day, always drinking huge mugs of beer. Rarely ever did you see them drunk.

The bar worked solely as a plot device, and that's okay, because the show was about the characters.

I watched Cheers from its inception to the final episode and never concerned myself with that stuff. It's not necessary to the dynamic.

As far as being there every single day.................. I never took the episodes be a daily depiction. I took it to be a window into a day separated by several days to weeks but never continual day after day after day. I never assumed that any of them had been there all day drinking. I assumed the show picked up from after work hours and that was it.

I recall reading somewhere that the creators never wanted to show patrons leaving drunk.

[surveyor]

You guys would have absolutely hated M*A*S*H, then.

[Joneslab]

I watched Cheers from its inception to the final episode and never concerned myself with that stuff. It's not necessary to the dynamic.

It's interesting how shows change and how many odd patterns you notice when you binge watch. Obviously in the '80s/'90s "binge watching" wasn't even a term; the only way it could've been achieved I guess would've been to videotape and watch back on VCR.

It's odd what you can pick up if you watch episodes back to back to back. It's obviously meaningless in the scope of things, but you can tell that the show would've been scripted/blocked differently had viewers been tuning in for strings of episodes as they do today rather than week to week.

But I think mostly they didn't account for certain things simply because they had no idea how monumentally huge the show would get. If you're creating art of any kind--movie, TV show, book, whatever--you're fighting for your life. You get your best ideas and pack them all at the beginning and hope like hell they resonate with people.

They couldn't have accounted for the fact that Kelsey Grammar and Lillith would become so beloved by fans. Or even that Cliff and Norm would be regulars, as they weren't initially thought to be mainstays. This minutia we're talking about would've been so astronomically far from their minds back in the beginning that it's laughable, but because the show became a hit definite motifs and quirks begin to crop up.