Seinfeld or Cheers?

Love both of these shows just wanted to start a discussion as to which is the preferred show of choice.

In terms of cleverness I would give the definite edge to Seinfeld.

In terms of just being laugh out loud funny Cheers. Guys like Coach, Norm, and Woody could make you squirt milk out of your nose.

What do the rest of you think?

Seinfeld.

Never gets old.

That's like asking me to pick my favorite child .

For sheer sentiment, I'll go with "Cheers" because is started in the very early '80s. When it came on, I was in my early twenties. When it went off, I was in my early thirties. I got married and started out in the world during the run of that show. So there's a lot of nostalgia there for me.

But nostalgia aside, and everything being equal, I'm just as big a fan of "Seinfeld" as I am of "Cheers." Not to mention "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

They're also VERY different shows that worked for VERY different reasons .

I feel ya pizza man.

Me personally it depends on the day. Seinfeld is hilarious because of the situational humor. It's every day shit gone array. And the best part was they were all extremely dysfunctional in some way so everything would backfire in their faces.

Cheers was just characters playing off each other. Sam and Diane couldn't have worked any better.

Fuck it you're right. It's hard to choose

A couple of the most memorable guest characters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaBhnlZgNIo

The Doorman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9tP9fI2zbE

The Library Cop

A couple of Kramer's greatest moments...

Kramer: The haunting memories of lost love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLRlbsBJhio

Kramer: Here's to feeling good all the time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY5OSDxwOEo

Kramer the pimp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zKCUG20xs

"I don't want to be Cheers' little brother." - Larry David

I like Cheers, you wanna know why?...Because it's "Where everybody knows your name."

Tough choice for me.

Larry David grew up in the same co-op as me. (He is four years older and he was a bit standoffish as a kid so I don't really know him) but he made a few references to the co-op on "Seinfeld" and they were like inside jokes to me.

That said, I related better to "Cheers". I had a bar that I went to EVERY night after work for about five years. I was its "Norm" and I REALLY felt like it was home. I related to that.

Ditto.

You knew Larry David!

Larry David is supposed to be incredibly awkward if you come up to him and tell him you are a fan.

He really is socially awkward. It's no act.

I knew that long before he was famous. He wasn't mean or anything; he just never seemed to fit in socially. The co-op in which we grew up had 240 apartments and almost every one of them had kids. It was an AWESOME place in which to grow up. The boys always had a few stickball, punchball or softball games going on and even the older guys played (because many had younger brothers). So, there was ALWAYS something to do and everyone knew everyone else's name and such. Still, I really didn't know him because he was, like I said, stand-offish. He has an older brother (I THINK his name is Kenny) that is my brother's age but they weren't friends either (they once had a big fight in the schoolyard. Larry's brother was bigger than mine but my brother kicked his ass ).

Seinfeld and Cheers had great characters and they were both fresh with subplots and new characters. Two different styles, but clever and poignant. I'll throw in a third show that preceeded Cheers - M*A*S*H. Never missed it. Great cast and wonderful story lines; funny and sad. Seinfeld is on reruns, but if Cheers and MASH are on, I watch them.

I'm a big M*A*S*H fan too, MC. I have the whole set on DVD.

My all time favorite scene is when Radar gives Potter his horse (Sophie) as a gift. Potter slips on a pile of horse shit, Frank Burns says "that's disgusting," and Potter says, "to me, that's a tip toe through the tulips."

Just watched the episode of Cheers that Frasier tries to get Woody elected to City Council last night. It's frightening how accurate half of the crap Frasier says is.

Woody: I don't know about this debate Frasier, i'm not very good at giving my opinion. Frasier: Don't worry Woody, just tell them some more of those farm stories. If that doesn't work just say change 100 times.

Well there's no way that would work in real life .

Thanks for that nugget, SC. Larry David is one of my favorite comics and I actually like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" a little more than "Seinfeld."

And Pizzaboy, I also loved "M-A-S-H." Not only were the regulars like Henry Blake, Burns, and Hawkeye all great, but they had fantastic recurring characters like Col. Flagg, Scully, Rizzo, and on and on.



There are so many great scenes. One that stands out for me is when they were trying to figure out who was playing practical jokes in the camp. BJ got someone to yell "air raid" knowing that Frank Burns would jump into a foxhole. In anticipation of that, BJ filled the hole with water.

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Back on topic, I'd take "Seinfeld" over "Cheers" by a slight margin. There were lulls in Cheers, especially when they focused on Sam/Rebecca and when the setting was outside of Cheers.

My favorites were with Coach and when they involed trying to compete with Gary's Tavern.

I love MASH too. Though I prefer the earlier seasons when it was a comedy with dramatic undertones rather than the later seasons when it became a drama with comedic undertones. Frank was always my favorite character and it sucked when he left the show.

I agree Ivy....the early shows were by far the best...then they got into liberal mumbo jumbo and really ruined the comedic value of the show. That was definitely the best acting Alan Alda has ever done...before or since, though he does a decent job as a quasi villain in Blacklist, which is a great show in its own right.

That's very accurate. And it's no coincidence that the show's liberal slant increased in direct correlation to Alda's autonomy. By the sixth season he had almost total control. His acting as Hawkeye was the best of his career. But he's the original Hollywood liberal.

No surprise there. You remind me of Frank Burns .

The movie MASH was a ground-breaker. Great cast; Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, ROBERT DUVALL, Sally Kellerman, Tom Skerritt and Gary Burgoff (RADAR). 1970, when sex and risque language were creeping into cinema (R - rated).

I find almost all sitcoms enjoyable and I can basically laugh at out loud to any of those show's on TV. I watch 'Seinfeld' almost every weekday and it is one of my favourite sitcoms next to '2 1/2 men'-(Jon Cryer at least), 'That 70's Show' and then 'Friends' and 'Joey' but that's not relevant.

Though I'm not sure about how funny those little comments are supposed to be in Cheers from Norm whenever he enters the bar. But I can enjoy that show as well.

Cheers by far.

I loved both, but give the edge to Seinfeld. My favorite episode was the one where Kramer found the old set to the Merv Griffin show.

mary, you forgot the doll. joanne pflug.

Coach had some of the best one liners I've ever heard. Seinfeld is more of a collective show in my opinion. Somehow each situation those four are involved gets mixed into one giant mess and it's hilarious

One of my favorite scenes is when Frasier's infant kid yells out "Norm!" after his wife berates him for thinking that Cheers was a good environment for him to learn to speak.