It’s always been especially difficult for long-running sitcoms to say goodbye. After years or even decades of making us laugh, many TV comedies struggle with the inevitable sadness that comes with a permanent farewell. But one of the longest-running of them all got its closing moment absolutely spot on.
This particular show delivered a final line which both served as an emotional gut-punch and drew a line under 11 years of small-screen success. With three simple words, it brought home to tens of millions watching that their favorite characters weren’t coming back, in an understated manner befitting the context of its setting.
33 years later, no other sitcom has topped the way Cheers bowed out. It’s a special kind of series that concludes with one of its best episodes. Yet, the Cheers finale episode is better than almost anything on TV today. It sees bar owner Sam Malone rekindle his romance with previous series regular Diane Chambers, only to leave her behind.
Instead, this all-time great NBC sitcom ends right where it started, with Sam alone in his bar, savoring the simple joys of his chosen path in life. Immediately before this moment, friend and longtime Cheers patron Norm Peterson reminds him exactly why he decided not to head west with Diane. He came back for his one true love: the bar.
Cheers Ends With The Greatest Final Line In Sitcom History
For all the great Norm moments throughout Cheers, his final scene in the show is among the very best, despite being uncharacteristically sobering. Yet, it isn’t nearly as moving as what comes next. Left alone by his old drinking buddy, Sam looks around his bar and says, “Boy, I’ll tell you. I’m the luckiest son of a b*tch on Earth.”
Just then, someone comes down the steps outside, and there’s a knock at the door. Sam shouts in their direction, “Sorry, we’re closed.” It’s a succinct way of telling viewers that this moment really is it. Cheers is no more.
In fictional terms, Sam’s Boston bar is only closed for the night, but those of us watching know, in real terms, that it isn’t coming back. Few endings in TV history have been as definitive as this one.
The line’s true genius is its simplicity. It’s something Sam really would say in that very realistic and commonplace situation. Nothing about this ending has been manufactured for the sake of a TV finale.
At the same time, it carries the weight of a second meaning those of us on the other side of the screen can immediately grasp. It’s closing time for Cheers, the bar in the show. But Cheers, the show itself, is closed for good.
Ted Danson Has Made Great Last Lines His TV Trademark
As the closest thing Cheers has to a single protagonist, it’s only fitting that Ted Danson’s Sam Malone gets to deliver the show’s pitch-perfect final line. Since this landmark moment in TV history, Danson has been given at least two more last lines for the ages in other series he’s been a part of.
In CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s 2015 double-episode finale, his character D.B. Russell gets one of the best farewell quotes of the episode. “I’m not one for big goodbyes,” he says, while packing up his office. “Cakes. Candles. Hullaballoo,” in typically laid-back and self-deprecating fashion.
His last words in the CSI franchise as a whole are no less fitting. “Au revoir,” Russell tells a colleague in season 2 of CSI: Cyber, on his way to France for good.
However, it’s a TV comedy that gave Danson his greatest closing line since Cheers. In another perfect ending to a sitcom, The Good Place finishes with his character Michael, a demon from Hell who turns out to be good after all, getting the chance to be an actual human, something he’s always wanted.
As he receives his mail one morning excitedly, revelling in the simple joys of living on Earth, Michael addresses the courier with his beloved catchphrase. “Take it sleazy,” he tells them, reminding us that humor can come from goodwill as well as ridicule. In fact, this is a lesson Ted Danson has been teaching us since Cheers debuted in 1982.
- Release Date
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1982 – 1993-00-00
- Showrunner
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James Burrows, Glen Charles, Les Charles, Ken Estin, Sam Simon, David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee, Bill Steinkellner, Cheri Steinkellner, Phoef Sutton, Tom Anderson, Dan O’Shannon
- Directors
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John Ratzenberger, George Wendt, Michael Zinberg, Andy Ackerman, James Burrows, Tim Berry, Tom Moore
- Writers
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David Lloyd, Kathy Ann Stumpe, Jonathan Stark, Tracy Newman, Andy Cowan, Janet Leahy, Sue Herring, Tom Leopold, Chris Cluess, David Pollock, Elias Davis, Elliot Shoenman, Jeff Abugov, Daniel Palladino, Katherine Green, Jeffrey Duteil, Michael J. Weithorn, Joanne Pagliaro, Eugene B. Stein, Kimberly Hill
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Billie Bird
Lillian Miller
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Kirstie Alley
Rebecca Howe
