Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walks into ours. 

It’s the most breathtaking moment in the eleven-season history of television’s biggest comedy. Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), the high-strung intellectual who won the heart of recovering alcoholic and ex-ballplayer Sam Malone (Ted Danson) before abandoning it to pursue her dreams of writing, walks back into the bar called Cheers. She’s riding the dubious high of having won a Cable ACE award — very much a punchline at the expense of both cable TV, then the broadcast networks’ distant also-ran, and Long, whose departure from the show six years earlier never quite led to the superstar career she’d been hoping for. (Don’t worry, Cheers got its digs in on Danson too; a couple episodes earlier they have him reveal he wears a hairpiece.)

But she’s back, and she’s nominally successful, and her arrival hits the bar like a bomb. We in the audience get caught in the blast radius too. After all, we’ve spent more time in Cheers at this point than Diane has — six seasons more, to be exact — and we have all the same memories of the highs and lows of her relationship with Sam as the characters do. Can he, can she, can they, can we really handle this change?

The question is a proxy for the finale itself. Airing on May 20 1993, it’s the conclusion of a decade-plus run in which Cheers changed the face of comedy and television pretty much forever. Losing any long-running show we’re fond of stings, of course. But Cheers is special. More than any other sitcom this side of Gilligan’s Island, it’s about the way things stay the same — the pleasant familiarity of old friends, the local dive, a barstool worn down into a comfortable groove by the accumulated weight of thousands of nights of pressure from the same pair of buttcheeks. The finale works because it confronts the audience and the characters with the same question: Are we ready to move on?

I wrote about the finale of Cheers, which aired 31 years ago this week, for Decider.

But the problem with Secret Invasion’s AI credits isn’t just one of ethics, or of ugliness. It’s a waste of some of the most valuable creative real estate any television show has. Throughout television history, thoughtfully crafted opening title sequences have set the tone for the shows to follow, conveying valuable information about everything from the mood you can expect to the plot of the show itself. Some are woven so deep into the fabric of the series they kick off that the two become synonymous. The best function like short films, artistic statements on their own. Speaking plainly, AI just doesn’t have the juice.

When Cheers wanted to show you a place where everybody knows your name, they relied on a carefully curated and edited selection of illustrations and photographs depicting nostalgic good-old-days revelry created by James Castle, Bruce Bryant, and Carol Johnsen. Monty Python member Terry Gilliam established his troupe’s style of surrealistic inanity with animation that would become a staple of the show. David Lynch and Mark Frost used second-unit footage and the evocative music of close Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti to transport you to Twin Peaks.

I wrote about the ethical and, above all, artistic failure of Disney’s decision to use AI to “create” the opening credits for its new show Secret Invasion for Decider.

Best: ‘Battlestar Galactica’

Divine intervention, voluntary space-fleet destruction, the incredible disappearing Starbuck — the decisions made in the final episode of this politically charged sci-fi reboot baffled viewers at the time. Hindsight, however, has been extremely kind to Commander Adama and his crew. The show’s long-simmering supernatural elements paid off with the daring idea of a deity whose actions are just as unpredictable and unfathomable as humanity’s. And the joint human-Cylon decision to jettison their ships and live out their days planet-side — in what turns out to be our own Earth’s pre-history — bucked a core tenet of post-apocalyptic SF, arguing that individual lives are more important than the preservation of a culture at all costs. Risky? You bet. Rewarding? So say we all.

I wrote about Battlestar Galactica, Cheers, Dexter, Lost, Roseanne, and The Sopranos for Rolling Stone’s list of the best and worst series finales. But which are which? The answer may surprise you!