‘Cheers’ vs. ‘Disjointed’: Which Show Is More Under The Influence?

We watch TV to escape from the real world. Sometimes, the characters in those shows are doing a little escaping of their own, although they ain’t watching TV. If they’re characters in Cheers and Disjointed, then they’re probably unwinding with a Bud or some bud.

Those sitcoms may have 30 years in between them and totally different comedy styles, but they have one fundamental thing in common: both Cheers and Disjointed set out to make people lighten up about the show’s central substance. While drinking beer is no big deal today (hello, Drunk History and every TV show of the past 30 years), Cheers broke new ground by being set entirely in a bar back when people associated bars with drunks, burnouts, and sad sacks.

Fast-forward 30 years and Disjointed is seeking to do the same thing Cheers did back in 1982, except for weed. The show set in a dispensary, features characters blazing up on the reg, and has so many plots revolving around weed culture and the stigmas and regressive laws surrounding it.

But just how big a part of each show is the very thing/habit/culture they’re normalizing? If you take out all the alcohol and marijuana, what’s left? Which show is more under the influence?! There’s only one way to figure it out: counting.

I decided to compare three episodes from each show, three from the recently released Season1B of Disjointed and their corresponding episodes from the first season of Cheers. The episodes in question, chosen only because they’re spread fairly evenly throughout Disjointed’s latest batch, are:

1×11: Disjointed, “4/20 Fantasy”/Cheers, “One for the Book”
1×16: Disjointed, “B.Y.O.P.F.U.”/Cheers, “The Boys in the Bar”
1×20: Disjointed, “Main Street, USA”/Cheers, “Someone Single, Someone Blue”

I mean, just looking at those titles, it’s obvious Disjointed loves a weed pun!

Then, with the thorough help of Decider intern Jess, references to beer and weed were counted. And we counted it all. Every pun, every puff, every pour–if a character even said the word “bar,” it got counted. After all, these shows were tackling a then taboo subject. Just the mention of the word “whiskey” was probably enough to send the most conservative TV viewers of 1982 into a tizzy. Here’s what we found:

If you’ve seen even a minute of Disjointed, it should not surprise you that the show is waaaaay more stoned than Cheers is drunk, at least where references are concerned. When Cheers points out that it’s a show set in a bar, it usually does so by saying “bar” or “bar” or sometimes “bar.” Disjointed, on the other hand, fills all your senses with weed references. Weed stickers are everywhere, pot leaves pop up on everything from curtains to clothing, Ruth (Kathy Bates) is referred to as a “pro-grass agitator” while growth expert Pete (Dougie Baldwin) is “Vincent van Grow,” and Bud, Bong and Beyond is a store that exists. The characters run a YouTube show called “Strain O’ The Day,” which allows the show to cram in more weed puns into the site’s sidebar (“Schrodinger’s Pot,” “Weed of Fortune,” and “Bud’s Lite”).

Still, Cheers makes use of its setting when it comes to the plots of these three episodes. The show doesn’t let you forget that it takes place in a bar, a place filled with–as a soon-to-be monk says upon entering Cheers–seedy degenerates. Sam even jokes that Cheers has an “all the beer you can cry into for a buck” night. “One for the Book” and “The Boys in the Bar” couldn’t take place outside of a bar, although “Someone Single, Someone Blue” probably could have; in a plot that’s totally separated from the bar, Sam and Diane almost get fake-married–in the bar!

Disjointed runs with its weed connection. Even if a plot isn’t directly connected to weed, it is still dank. Like, Dabby wants to throw a Great Gatsby party (not pot related), but it’s also a Bring Your Own Pot For Us party (mad pot related).

But pot puns and bar stories are nothing compared to the real test: how often do we see people drinking or drunk, and smoking or stone?! Here’s the count from within the previous count:

1×11: Disjointed: 8/ Cheers: 8
1×16: Disjointed: 4/Cheers: 8
1×20: Disjointed: 1/Cheers: 4

Surprise surprise, Cheers actually comes out on top here! You are way more likely to see beer mugs in the hands of every character at Cheers than to see people blaze up in Ruth’s Alternate Care. Norm even low-key downs a whole beer in two drinks, a thing I only noticed because I was paying close attention to how many times Coach slides him a brewski. That’s not to say characters don’t get high on Disjointed. I think it’s safe to say that every character on the show maintains at least a low-level high at all times. And characters do casually vape, but it’s not as prominent as all the beer on Cheers. Basically, Disjointed tells you it’s a weed show while Cheers shows you it’s a beer show.

When it comes down to one show being more under the influence than the other, I think you really gotta go with the overall count. After all, Disjointed is under the influence of weed in every way possible, from the characters getting high to the metric ton of weed paraphernalia on display in every half hour chunk. But who knows what lurks in the episodes we didn’t scrutinize for this totally scientific-ish study? Sounds to me like you should pick the show of your choice, chill out, and do some of your own research.

Where to stream Cheers

Where to stream Disjointed