What Does Sam Malone have to do with The Shield's Vic Mackey? More than you might think
Shawn Ryan may be known as the creator of such dark-hearted hour-long dramas as The Shield and Last Resort, but as a teenager, his biggest TV obsession was Cheers. "It was one of the first shows where I started to pay attention to the credits," says Ryan, "because the writing was better than everything else on TV." As part of GQ's celebration of the landmark sitcom's thirtieth anniversary, we spoke to Ryan about big-issue TV, Shelley's long goodbye, and Cheers' unlikely influence on The Shield.
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GQ: When did you start watching Cheers?
Shawn Ryan: I was in high school. In the fall-preview issue of TV Guide—which was a very big deal back in those days—I read some blurb that made me think that I might like it. And I was hooked right from the teaser. It was smarter than most things on TV, and it was anchored by Ted Danson and Shelley Long, who were just explosive together. A lot of times, when you go back and you watch comedy pilots, even for great shows, they're really awkward. Seinfeld's a perfect example of a show that certainly did not find its feet for a long time. But you go back and watch the pilot of Cheers, and both Danson and Shelley Long really seem to have a firm grasp of who those characters were. And on Cheers, characters came first, and the jokes came second, which was rare. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.
It was also the day and age when all the characters didn't have to be these incredibly good-looking people. There were more oddball characters [on Cheers] than there were traditionally good-looking men and women. You had Sam and Diane, but Carla and Norm and Cliff and Coach were not the typical good-looking people on the cover of TV Guide.
GQ: Were you caught up in the Sam and Diane relationship?
Shawn Ryan: I was 15 or 16 when it started, and so I was just at that age when you start thinking about dating—or, at least, when dating is an actual option. So I was fascinated by Sam Malone, because I was a shy kid who was a little tongue-tied around women, and here was this guy who would talk to any of them. I was also fascinated by his frustrations with Diane, and how that didn't work—the fighting and the sparks.
GQ: How did you react when Shelley left the show?
Shawn Ryan: I went to college in Vermont. TVs were limited in the dorms, and the buddies I hung out with wanted to watch Mangum P.I. on Thursday night. So I worked on these guys, and by my sophomore year, I had turned them into Cheers fans. Then all of a sudden, Diane was leaving! It was like, "Is there [still] a show? Is she coming back?" When I found out she wasn't, it was devastating to me.
GQ: Her final scene is incredibly moving. In fact, when I was re-watching the first few seasons, I was surprised how often they'd slow down the comedy and have some genuine moments of pathos. But never got mawkish or preachy.
Shawn Ryan: Cheers was radical. The lead character was an ex-alcoholic, and there were episodes where he really struggled with it. And the sexual politics were dealt with in a very sophisticated manner. Sitcoms were saying more stuff in the '70s than dramas were, with All in the Family and Maude and shows like that. Cheers took on serious issues, but they didn't take them on in a let's have-a-debate-about-it kind of way. They tackled them the way that they really would happen in life.
One of my all-time favorite episodes [season one's "The Boys in the Bar"] touched on homophobia. These guys come in, and people at the bar think they're gay, and worry that Cheers is going to turn into a gay bar. To deal with that subject matter with humor—with two guys kissing Norm on the cheek at the end, and him saying, "Better than Vera"—had more of an impact on me, as a 16-year-old, on how I would view homosexuals, than if I had the characters had engaged in sort of Archie Bunker-style debate.
GQ: Did Cheers have any influence on The Shield?
Shawn Ryan: I remember one of the Charles brothers talking about the decision to bring Sam and Diane together at the end of season one, and [saying] that if Sam couldn't seduce Diane within the first 22 episodes, then he wasn't the character they'd been writing. They made a risky decision, based on who their characters were, and decided to follow that out. That's something I would always say on The Shield: "We have to be true to Vic Mackey, and have him do the things he does, even if that creates extra work for us story-wise." That was all based on what they said about Sam Malone.
···
GQ: When did you start watching Cheers?
Shawn Ryan: I was in high school. In the fall-preview issue of TV Guide—which was a very big deal back in those days—I read some blurb that made me think that I might like it. And I was hooked right from the teaser. It was smarter than most things on TV, and it was anchored by Ted Danson and Shelley Long, who were just explosive together. A lot of times, when you go back and you watch comedy pilots, even for great shows, they're really awkward. Seinfeld's a perfect example of a show that certainly did not find its feet for a long time. But you go back and watch the pilot of Cheers, and both Danson and Shelley Long really seem to have a firm grasp of who those characters were. And on Cheers, characters came first, and the jokes came second, which was rare. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.
It was also the day and age when all the characters didn't have to be these incredibly good-looking people. There were more oddball characters [on Cheers] than there were traditionally good-looking men and women. You had Sam and Diane, but Carla and Norm and Cliff and Coach were not the typical good-looking people on the cover of TV Guide.
GQ: Were you caught up in the Sam and Diane relationship?
Shawn Ryan: I was 15 or 16 when it started, and so I was just at that age when you start thinking about dating—or, at least, when dating is an actual option. So I was fascinated by Sam Malone, because I was a shy kid who was a little tongue-tied around women, and here was this guy who would talk to any of them. I was also fascinated by his frustrations with Diane, and how that didn't work—the fighting and the sparks.
GQ: How did you react when Shelley left the show?
Shawn Ryan: I went to college in Vermont. TVs were limited in the dorms, and the buddies I hung out with wanted to watch Mangum P.I. on Thursday night. So I worked on these guys, and by my sophomore year, I had turned them into Cheers fans. Then all of a sudden, Diane was leaving! It was like, "Is there [still] a show? Is she coming back?" When I found out she wasn't, it was devastating to me.
GQ: Her final scene is incredibly moving. In fact, when I was re-watching the first few seasons, I was surprised how often they'd slow down the comedy and have some genuine moments of pathos. But never got mawkish or preachy.
Shawn Ryan: Cheers was radical. The lead character was an ex-alcoholic, and there were episodes where he really struggled with it. And the sexual politics were dealt with in a very sophisticated manner. Sitcoms were saying more stuff in the '70s than dramas were, with All in the Family and Maude and shows like that. Cheers took on serious issues, but they didn't take them on in a let's have-a-debate-about-it kind of way. They tackled them the way that they really would happen in life.
One of my all-time favorite episodes [season one's "The Boys in the Bar"] touched on homophobia. These guys come in, and people at the bar think they're gay, and worry that Cheers is going to turn into a gay bar. To deal with that subject matter with humor—with two guys kissing Norm on the cheek at the end, and him saying, "Better than Vera"—had more of an impact on me, as a 16-year-old, on how I would view homosexuals, than if I had the characters had engaged in sort of Archie Bunker-style debate.
GQ: Did Cheers have any influence on The Shield?
Shawn Ryan: I remember one of the Charles brothers talking about the decision to bring Sam and Diane together at the end of season one, and [saying] that if Sam couldn't seduce Diane within the first 22 episodes, then he wasn't the character they'd been writing. They made a risky decision, based on who their characters were, and decided to follow that out. That's something I would always say on The Shield: "We have to be true to Vic Mackey, and have him do the things he does, even if that creates extra work for us story-wise." That was all based on what they said about Sam Malone.
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