Cheers & The Internet

The internet can be a maddening place, sometimes.

There's a particular bit of trivia from the "Cheers" episode "Coach Buries a Grudge" that I found interesting from Cheers' Oral History. It's about Nick Colasanto (the Coach) and how, as his health deteriorated, he had increasing trouble remembering his lines and took to writing his lines on hidden places around the set:

"Ted Danson: When Nick had heart disease, he was getting less and less oxygen. There wasn't a surface on that set that didn't have his lines written down. There was one episode where a friend of Coach dies, and he says, "It's as if he's still with us now." Nick had written the line on the wood slats by the stairs the actors would use to enter the studio. Nicky dies, and the next year, we're all devastated, and the first night we come down the stairs, right there was his line: "It's as if he were with us now." And so every episode, we'd go by it and pat it as we'd come down to be introduced to the audience.

And then, one year, they repainted the sets and they painted over the line. People almost quit. Seriously. They were so emotionally infuriated that that had been taken away from them."

This trivia is repeated on imdb, the Seattle Times, the awful click-bait article "Secrets You Never Knew About Cheers", and "12 Frothy Facts About Cheers", and it goes on and on.

The only problem with this, of course, is that that line never appears in the episode. I've watched it twice now and downloaded a file of the subtitles... and Coach doesn't say that line.

The closest thing I see is that Coach says, "It'll be like having my old buddy back for all-time." That would make sense - Danson paraphrased the line from memory - but then the problem is that line is said no where near any stairs or a door (some sites claim it was written by a door). The only way the anecdote makes sense is if the line was written next to the physical location where it was spoken.

I wish there was some way to ask follow up questions to understand what the actual story is. I'm sure the trivia isn't entirely fabricated, someone just needs to so some research instead of just regurgitating the same misinformation over and over. Unfortunately the internet is the place where no one knows your name (wah wahh). Maddening. Even worse when I consider how bothered I am by something so amazingly inconsequential.

By the way, "Coach Buries a Grudge" is only in the second season but I'm pretty sure I can say I've already found my favorite episode of the series. If you want a single episode of "Cheers" to watch, that would be my recommendation. It's amazing.

And if you want to feel internet-crazy too, why not check out the never-aired episode of "Cheers" promoting savings bonds? Yes it's a real thing. Don't believe me? Then why is all this text a link? It's real and it's like something out of an alternate dimension. Never before have I seen a modern show from such a totally different era.