Sam and Diane
[1] Before the series was produced, the creators auditioned three pairings of six actors, three male and three female, for their respective roles:[2] William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn, Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, and Ted Danson and Shelley Long.
"[9] 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.
[7][8][9][10] 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.
"[3] In the series premiere, "Give Me a Ring Sometime" (1982), Diane Chambers, a college student, enters Cheers and meets Sam Malone, a recovering alcoholic and a womanizer.
In the two-part season finale, "I'll Be Seeing You" (1984), Philip Semenko (Christopher Lloyd), an arrogant, eccentric painter, whom Sam wants to commission for a portrait of Diane, comes to the bar.
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.
[18] 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.
[19] 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.
[19][21] In the two-part season premiere, "Rebound" (1984), within months after her breakup with Sam, Diane meets psychiatrist Frasier Crane in a psychiatric hospital and begins to date him.
In the three-part season finale "Strange Bedfellows" (1986), Sam dates an intellectual politician, Janet Eldridge (Kate Mulgrew), whom Diane opposes politically.
Although she wants to be married to Sam, he convinces Diane to finish the book and delay the wedding, so that she has no regrets about giving up her dream of being a great writer.
Long decided to leave the series to develop her movie career and family, and the characters' relationship story was concluded, even though she and Danson "[had] done some really terrific work at Cheers".
[23] In February 1987, the creators decided to replace Diane with a female lead without blonde hair or any other resemblances to Long,[12] while Danson signed a contract for the next season (1987–1988).
In the series finale, "One for the Road," after six years of separation, Sam watches Diane win an award for writing a cable television movie and sends her a congratulatory telegram.
[30] In October 1984 television critic Rick Sherwood wrote that although the sexual tension between Sam and Diane provided a focus for Cheers' other characters, their later romance and "the removal of the love-hate subplot [caused] much of the edge of the series [to be] lost".
[31] In October 1985, Sherwood's interest in the show lessened because of the romance; Diane's affair with Frasier Crane "made things worse".
[33] In 1989, Michael Hill of The Baltimore Evening Sun found the similarity between the Cheers characters and real-life news anchors Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer of Primetime Live "remarkable".
[25][26] In the "Youth Beat" column of the western Pennsylvania Observer–Reporter in 1992, Jeremy Ross called Sam and Diane "the most-discussed [romantic characters] since Romeo and Juliet" and the model for later television romances.
"[38] That month, George Wendt (who played Norm Peterson) told the Los Angeles Times that "the first two or three years" of the Sam-and-Diane story arc were his favorite Cheers seasons.
[40] Bret Watson of Entertainment Weekly wrote in 1994 that Sam's flirtation with Diane in Cheers might be considered sexual harassment by contemporary standards.
[41] In February 2002 Bill Simmons, a former writer for ESPN, appreciated Sam and Diane's sexual tension but called their engagement a "jumping the shark" moment.
[46] Cynthia Greenwood wrote in her 2008 book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shakespeare's Plays that Sam and Diane's relationship was comparable to that of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, filled with tension and insults concealing their feelings for each other.
[49] In 2009, Josh Bell of About.com called Sam and Diane "the template for countless future sitcom couples [filled] with sexual tension".
"[51] At the September 2009 Comic-Con, Johnny Galecki of The Big Bang Theory exemplified a "non-traditional relationship" with Sam and Diane and said that "not all couples meet, get together, and marry.
[53] In September 2009, critics considered Sam and Diane's relationship fun to watch; it did not spoil Cheers, since the show's genius lay in the writers' freedom to risk alienating the audience.
[60] On May 30, 2012, Amber Humphrey wrote on the Film School Rejects website that the unresolved sexual tension between Flash Forward characters Tucker (Ben Foster) and Becca (Jewel Staite) was comparable to that between Sam and Diane.
[62] In January 2010, Sharon Knolle of AOL placed them fourth on a top 10 "Worst TV Couples Ever" list: "When Diane showed up on the series finale and nearly got back together with Sam, we were honestly relieved when they both realized [a marriage between them] would be a terrible mistake.
"[68] The 2012 Entertainment Weekly article called Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) of Friends the "modern-day Sam and Diane".
[71] Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger said that, from the season three episode of How I Met Your Mother, "Everything Must Go", the taxicab ride scene of regular character Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) and recurring character Abby (Britney Spears) includes a homage to the Sam and Diane's office scene from "Showdown", which includes lines, like "Are you as turned on right now as I am?"
In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode “I Hope Josh Comes to My Party!”, Rebecca Bunch says of her relationship with Greg Serrano that they have a “Sam and Diane thing going on, except that it’s unpleasant and unsexy.” [77]
