One for the Road (Cheers)
[3] In this episode, Shelley Long reprised the role of Diane Chambers, a character who is reunited with her former on-off love interest Sam Malone after six years of separation.
Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a ladies' man, former professional baseball player, and bartender, and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), a college graduate student and cocktail waitress, had on-and-off relationships throughout the first five seasons of the program (1982–1987) until Diane left Boston to pursue a writing career in the season five finale, "I Do, Adieu" (1987).
[7][8][9] The waitress Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) has gone through two husbands—her first marriage ended with divorce before the series began,[10] and she became widowed in her second[11][12]—and is a single mother of eight.
[14][15][16] After her failed relationships with rich men in the past,[12][17] the bar manager Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley) and the plumber Don Santry (Tom Berenger) start dating each other in the preceding episode, "The Guy Can't Help It" (1993).
Rebecca accidentally rejects Don Santry's (Tom Berenger)[a] proposal because she is too excited to accept it, causing him to break up with her.
Indeed, she had to convert her rejected finished manuscript into a screenplay, prompting her to remain in Los Angeles for six years for greater success.
While Sam and his gang celebrate the reunion, Rebecca announces happily that Don has a job with the sewer department and leaves for their honeymoon.
After the rest of the gang head home for the night, Norm briefly stays behind and tells Sam that he knew he would return to Boston for his "one true love."
"[b] After Norm leaves, Sam looks around the empty bar and says to himself, "I'm the luckiest son of a bitch on earth," before he tells someone (Bob Broder[c]) knocking on the door, "Sorry, we're closed."
Three hundred people attended the filming of the finale at Paramount Studios' Stage 25 in Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 31, 1993, from 7:20 p.m. to 2:15 a.m.[4] Because of Shelley Long's commitment to the CBS sitcom Good Advice, the finale's bar scene ending, where the series main cast gather as their own respective characters, was shot without her on Wednesday, April 7, 1993,[5] after the episode "It's Lonely on the Top" was completely filmed out of sequence on the same day.
[22][29] Brandon Tartikoff, former executive of NBC and former chief of Paramount Studios, and Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau appeared in the finale as uncredited bar extras.
KTLA, a Los Angeles station that reran Cheers in syndication, played a variation of the show's theme song, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", during the week before the finale.
[35] The Star Tribune published stories related to Cheers, including one about local residents playing trivia games that paid tribute to the show and characters such as Cliff and Norm;[36] the future of the fictional Sam Malone was addressed.
[38] Many bars across the United States and one of the Canadian stadiums, the 50,000-seat SkyDome in Toronto, organized parties for screenings of the series finale.
John J. O'Connor from The New York Times called the episode "overly long and uncharacteristically labored" and considered its length "a miscalculation."
"[27][40] Tony Scott of Daily Variety praised the writing, yet he found the finale "overly long" and described the last 30 minutes as "limping.
"[41] John Carman of the San Francisco Chronicle "liked the finale" and "was choked up at the end"; nevertheless, he found Shelley Long's special guest performance "disappointing" – her "cute pills" were past "their expiration date."
"[44] In 2006, Ron Geraci, author of the book The Bachelor Chronicles: A Dating Memoir, called it "raw and moving" and "significant.
[48] In 2010, Sharon Knolle of The Huffington Post was relieved to see the final onscreen romance between Sam and Diane end rather than conclude with their marriage.
[49] In the same year, Oliver Miller of The Huffington Post was heartbroken by Sam and Diane's on-screen "absurd protracted double-gut-punch break-up" in the episode.
[20][8][63] At the 45th Primetime Emmy Awards (1993), Robert Bramwell won Outstanding Achievement in Editing for a Series (Multi-Camera Production).
[64][65] Shelley Long lost the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series to Tracey Ullman (Love and War).
[65][67] James Burrows lost the Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing in a Comedy Series to Betty Thomas (Dream On)[65][68] Before and after the production of Cheers had ended, the cast had moved on to other stages in their careers.
However, Frasier would eventually return to Boston for a visit, along with his brother Niles and father Martin (played by David Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney, respectively).
Before the first airing of this series finale, more than five hundred people, including the cast of Cheers (except Shelley Long, Kirstie Alley, and Bebe Neuwirth)[70] and politicians such as William M. Bulger and then-Governor of Massachusetts William Weld, participated at an afternoon celebration on Beacon Street near the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, to celebrate the series' ending.
[70] After the episode aired, the remaining cast appeared live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in the Bull & Finch Pub.
[71] In 1997, one copy of this episode's script was donated by George Wendt to the Handel and Haydn Society, a Boston music institution.
In March 1997, the autographed copy of the episode's script was sold to the Bull and Finch Pub (now Cheers Beacon Hill) for $10,000.
