Sam and Diane
Sam Malone and Diane Chambers, collectively known as Sam and Diane, are fictional characters in the American sitcom television series Cheers. Sam is a working-class, baseball player–turned–bartender played by Ted Danson; Diane is a college-graduate cocktail waitress played by Shelley Long. Danson appeared on Cheers for its entire run of the series; Long was part of the regular cast from the 1982 series premiere until the fifth-season finale, "I Do, Adieu". Long returned for a special appearance in the 1993 series finale, "One for the Road."
During the first five seasons, Sam and Diane both flirt with and condemn each other as social opposites, repeatedly consummating their relationship and breaking up. When they are not together, Sam has affairs with many women; Diane has relationships with men fitting her upper-class aspirations, such as Frasier Crane, a long-running character who initially debuts in the third season as Diane's love interest in the romantic pair's dynamic. Each of the first four season finales ends with a cliffhanger involving the story arc. In "I Do, Adieu" Sam and Diane are due to marry, but they cancel the wedding when Diane leaves Sam and the bar to begin a career as a writer. In the series finale Sam and Diane are reunited, become engaged and break up again, realizing that they are never meant to be together.
The pairing of Sam and Diane has evoked mixed reactions. Some critics disliked the relationship, either for alienating viewers by dominating the show or because they saw Sam and Diane as a mismatch. Others praised the pair, seeing them as strengthening the show. Some writers compared them to couples in later shows, such as Moonlighting, with their sexual tension and intermittent relationships.
Development
Before the series was produced, the creators auditioned three pairings of six actors, three male and three female, for their respective roles: William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn, Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, and Ted Danson and Shelley Long. Originally, Sam Malone was "a former wide receiver for the New England Patriots ", and Fred Dryer was initially considered for that role because he was a football player. However, NBC executives praised test scenes between Ted Danson and Shelley Long, so the creators chose this pairing. Sam's character was changed into a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox baseball team.The creators of Cheers, Glen and Les Charles and James Burrows, originally planned Sam and Diane to be an ex-athlete and an executive businesswoman involved in a "mixture of romance and antagonism" from screwball comedy movies starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn for Sam and Diane, but they decided to modify the competitive aspect. The concept evolved into a "pretentious, college-student relationship with Sam," an ex-baseball player. After Shelley Long's departure from the show and replacement with Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe, the original concept was revisited. Heide Perlman said, "It wasn't quite Tracy–Hepburn, because she was a tight-ass, and he was a hound."
The creators had intended Cheers to be a comedy about "family" of characters in a Boston bar, but quickly realized that the "Sam and Diane" romance was popular and decided that every episode would depict it. Burrows told the others several weeks after filming began, "Sam & Diane – that's your show." The "Sam and Diane" romance dominated the show for five years. As Burrows hypothesized, the couple would have diminished the importance and relevance of the bar setting if Long had not left the show in 1987. While the writers were developing the sexual tension between the two characters in the first season, the Charles brothers recognized that the relationship had to mature, so they paired them up in the first-season finale. With the exceptions of Long's last regular episode "I Do, Adieu" and the series finale "One for the Road", every season finale that primarily focuses on Sam and Diane ends with a cliffhanger. With Long leaving Cheers, producers planned to revamp the show without losing its initial premise, and credited Long's departure for saving the series from cancellation. As Les Charles observed, Sam was a "straight man" to Diane; after Long's departure, he became more "carefree" and a "goof-off" in later seasons.
Relationship
Season 1: 1982–1983
Shelley Long said in January 1983, "the core of the show is Sam and Diane ... the relationship has a wonderful chemistry, although they try to resist each other". She said that the producers felt that they did not want the relationship to proceed too quickly. The creators stated that Long and Danson "were easier to write for and had more potential than ."In the series premiere, "Give Me a Ring Sometime", Diane Chambers, a college student, enters Cheers and meets Sam Malone, a recovering alcoholic and a womanizer. While she waits for her fiancé Sumner Sloan, Diane realizes that Sumner has left her, and that she is jobless and penniless with nothing else in her life. Sam offers Diane a job as a cocktail waitress, and she accepts. In the next episode, "Sam's Women", Diane snootily teases Sam for preferring just beautiful women with below average intelligence. In response, Sam involves his ex-wife, Debra, in a pretend relationship to prove Diane wrong. When Sam and Debra are leaving "for" an opera, Diane retrieves the opera pamphlet from Debra only to find it is two years old, foiling Sam's scheme. Sam blames Diane for making his romantic life less fun, and Diane assures that he would never win an intelligent woman. They argue but then make up. When Sam explains a color of the sky at a ski resort and compares it to Diane's eyes in vivid detail, apparently distracted Diane is nearly touched but then averts herself and treats it as repulsive to an intelligent woman.
Throughout the season, Sam and Diane are attracted to each other and trade each other flirts and innuendos, but they never consummate their relationship. In the two-part season finale, "Showdown", Diane briefly dates Sam's successful, handsome, well-educated brother Derek, making Sam jealous. No longer able to suppress their feelings, Sam and Diane kiss passionately in the bar's office.
Season 2: 1983–1984
Throughout the second season of Cheers, Sam and Diane consummate their relationship, which becomes dysfunctional. Sam and Diane love each other but maintain their antagonistic relationship style toward each other. Their pride and jealousy are often the cause of conflict, and their characteristic bickering continues, though often their love for each other overcomes any problems, such as their on-off relationship. Major conflicts arise toward the end of the second season. Robert David Sullivan wrote in December 2012 that trying to change each other and hurting each other took its toll on their relationship. In "Fortune and Men's Weight", Diane admits to Sam that she spent a platonic evening with a fellow student who shares her common interests, and feels guilty for not telling Sam. In "Snow Job", Sam plans to have a weekend of debauchery with his friends on a ski trip, and he hides it from Diane. Carla tells Diane about Sam's trip and Diane takes advantage of Sam's lies to teach him a lesson.In the two-part season finale, "I'll Be Seeing You", Philip Semenko, an arrogant, eccentric painter, whom Sam wants to commission for a portrait of Diane, comes to the bar. Sam strongly dislikes Semenko but Diane praises his talent and begs Sam to do the same, but Sam orders her not to sit for him. However, Diane is convinced that Sam will appreciate the final work despite his reaction to the artist, and has Semenko paint the portrait. Sam hires a lesser artist, who produces a botched portrait of Diane. When she takes the wrapped portrait by Semenko into the bar, Sam and Diane begin to argue until she despondently declares the relationship to have "always been a contest of wills" and then become denigrated into immaturity. Then Sam and Diane finally break up for good. At the cliffhanger, Sam unwraps Semenko's portrait and says "Wow!"
Season 3: 1984–1985
In summer 1984, before the third-season premiere, The show's producers announced the character Frasier Crane, portrayed by Kelsey Grammer, was to be Diane's love interest and Sam's intellectual rival. They intended for Diane to end her relationship with Frasier within a few episodes, and for him to leave the show, but Grammer's performance was well-received, so his role was extended for the whole season. Long was still married to stockbroker Bruce Tyson and was pregnant with his child, and a storyline involving Diane Chambers's out-of-wedlock pregnancy was speculated with either Sam or Frasier as the father. The producers deemed the pregnancy idea undesirable and abandoned it. Instead, Diane was written as childless.In the two-part season premiere, "Rebound", within months after her breakup with Sam, Diane meets psychiatrist Frasier Crane in a psychiatric hospital and begins to date him. Meanwhile, spurred by the collapse of his romance with Diane, Sam relapses into alcoholism. When she leaves the hospital, Coach tells Diane about Sam's relapse. Diane and Frasier help Sam to regain his sobriety. When Diane refuses to work as a waitress again, Coach convinces Diane that Sam will relapse again, tells Sam that Diane will lose her mind if she leaves Cheers again, and convinces Frasier that Sam and Diane will long for each other if she does not return to work there. Diane returns to Cheers as a waitress.
In "Diane's Allergy", Diane moves into Frasier's apartment and becomes allergic, which she believes is caused by Frasier's puppy, Pavlov. Frasier gives Pavlov to Sam, who renames her "Diane". However, Diane suffers allergies, so the apartment is renovated to alleviate her suffering. Later, Frasier regrets giving up the puppy and begs Sam to return her; Sam declares that he loves "Diane", which Diane interprets his as a confession of his love for her. In "A Ditch in Time", Diane admits to him that she told people in the ward about their relationship, including his failed attempt to go on a ski trip with his "buddies in debauchery" in "Snow Job" and watching football right after his lovemaking with Diane for the very first time. Hearing them, Sam apologizes and admits that he failed to be a "very good boyfriend", but tells her that he never "tried harder with any woman in life" and that the good times with her were some of the best of his life. Then Diane stops him from saying something "stupid", i.e. his almost love confession to her.
Later in "Cheerio, Cheers", Sam is told of Diane's plans to leave Boston with Frasier for London. At night in the bar, Sam and Diane try to have sex after their passionate embrace, but realize that they are not sure what else to do in their future together. Before she leaves, Sam advises her to call him if she wants to revive their relationship again. Diane arrives in London with Frasier and then calls Sam at the bar to tell him. Despite her obvious misgivings about her relationship with Frasier, and Sam's pain at her choice, Diane stays in Europe with Frasier. She contacts Sam in two episodes before the season finale "Rescue Me", in which Frasier proposes to Diane in Italy; she accepts and tells Sam about it by telephone. Suddenly, Sam daydreams of stopping the wedding. Back in reality, Carla assures Sam that he is still a womanizer, regardless of his feelings about Diane. With the help of Cliff Clavin's travel reservation, Sam goes to Italy to stop Diane from marrying Frasier. Diane tries to call Sam but hears part of his answering machine message, and then hangs up. Frasier and Diane are set to be married immediately.