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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 7, 1991
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Cheers, “Where Have All the Floorboards Gone?” (season 10, episode 8). [Stream on Netflix.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Cheers existed in a very different pop culture universe than the one we have today. Today, most shows are at least in some ways micro-targeted to a niche that is basically designed to appreciate them. That Cheers was such a massive hit in the era of the so-called monoculture makes it the kind of pop-culture phenomenon that really doesn’t exist anymore.
Which is why it’s all the more interesting and admirable that Cheers was confident enough to drill down into the specifics of its setting and characters. Cheers the bar was a Boston bar, and Sam Malone (Ted Danson) was a Boston sports hero, and both of those things are incredibly specific descriptors. And while it didn’t happen every week, Cheers would often acknowledge its setting by delivering a plot that was quite Boston-focused. “Where Have All the Floorboards Gone” is an episode of TV with a very specific target audience, and that audience is essentially “Bill Simmons and his friends.” Boston Celtics basketball great Kevin McHale made a couple appearances on Cheers, the most memorable of which was this episode, where a stop into Cheers leads to a disaster on the court. McHale is essentially incepted with one of Cliff Clavin’s asinine fun facts: specifically, Cliff and Norm have a disagreement over how many bolts are holding down the Boston Garden’s famous parkay court. Despite Carla’s best efforts to convince Kevin to run away, far away, the future Hall of Famer becomes obsessed, eventually showing up on TV as a bolt-counting zombie.
The lesson, as always, is that the barflys at Cheers will always bring you down to their level.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t shout out the cold open to “Where Have All the Floorboards Gone,” wherein Norm and Cliffy play a wonderful little prank on Frasier.
[You can stream Cheers‘ “Where Have All the Floorboards Gone” on Netflix.]
