Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 87

"Where Everybody Knows Your Name"

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"the guys," calls this the saddest day in her life, believing that Sam
doesn't have it in him any more and ^eiefore now nuikes up the story
of his success with Rebecca.
And last among the bar's employees there is the type of the
country bumpkin: Woody Boyd (played by Woody Harrelson). As an
honest- country boy from Indiana, Woody fulfills part of the role
Coach had before him. Like Coach, Woody is simplistic and slowminded, but his apparently stupid comments often reveal deeper
truths and make him a kind of wise fool. At the same time he is the
ty{>e of the young man who has gone out to make it on his own and who
is struggling with his transplantation from country to city. As the
name "Woody" says, he is something of a woodhead. When he wants
to bet $1,(XX) on a sports event and is asked if he even owns $1,(XX), he
takes off one of his shoes. Asked if this is where he keepw his money.
Woody replies, "You guys must really think I just fell off a turnip
truck. This is the map of where the money is buried." But at the same
time, like wood. Woody is down-to-earth, reliable, and steadfast; he
is often more of a realist than the other characters. And like a young
boy (as his last name "Boyd" implies). Woody is honest, uncomipt,
and straightforward.
At one p)oint Gary from "Gary's Old Towne Tavern" comes to
"Cheers" to make arrangements for the annual competition between
the two bars, a time-honored ritual. That year the chosen sport is
basketball and Gary presents to Sam two college basketball players
who allegedly work in his bar part-time and thereby qualify to play
on his team. When Gary asks Sam to bet on the game, Sam has to
accept the challenge to preserve his manly honor. But when Woody
hears "bet," he immediately says, "I'm betting on those guys." His
realism is not impaired by manly pride. As Sam tells Woody that he
has to bet on his own team. Woody, the wise fool, just laughs at what
he considers to be Sam's irrationality.
The makers of Cheers also use Woody to further their
egalitarian message. Woody, an assistant bartender and aspiring but
unsuccessful actor, goes out with Kelly, the extremely wealthy
daughter of a corporate executive. Although Kelly is sent to Paris for
a year by her father so that she might forget Woody, their love
endures, reinforcing the theme song's assertion that "people are all
the same."