Some people move to a big city fantasizing about being a suave, whiskey-swilling executive like Don Draper in Mad Men, or a high-fashion socialite like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.
Real ones, however, know the ideal life of a city-dweller: becoming the “regular,” the beloved barfly at the spot where “everybody knows your name.”
Cheers star George Wendt died at the age of 76, his family confirmed Tuesday.
He played the consummate regular Norm Peterson for 11 seasons on the Emmy-winning series, whose every entrance into Boston’s Cheers bar was greeted with a hearty “Norm!” by the staff and fellow patrons.
The jovial familiarity played a dual role: It established Norm’s residence not just on the Cheers bar stool but as a part of the community’s daily lives, and did the same for viewers at home. Shouting “Norm!” along with the Cheers characters wasn’t just a Pavlovian response developed over the course of 269 episodes, it was heartfelt and enthusiastic. As played by Wendt, you were truly excited to see him.
Whenever a beloved actor from something as cherished as Cheers passes, it’s a shock; mainstays of our pop culture lives should stay frozen in time, immortal as the characters we became obsessed with. It made me think about the profundity of that ritualistic “Norm!” cheer, what it means to be saluted like that, whether out of habit or out of earnest joy, each time he entered the bar.
Peacock, where you can stream all 11 seasons of Cheers, made a supercut every time Norm entered the Cheers bar and everyone called his name. It is 18 minutes long (!). Watch it here:
City life is strange. You’re never alone, yet it is so lonely. Everywhere you go, you encounter crowds of people, but interact with none of them. And real connection? The kind that makes you feel known, that you are a part of a community or a family? That is even rarer.
The appeal of Cheers was the way in which it portrayed the bar’s staff and beer-guzzlers as a “found family”—which is, in various ways, what so many people flock to cities to discover.
I’ve hit the 20-year mark of living in New York City, which means I’ve spent two decades in pursuit of my own Cheers bar, to walk in and hear everyone boisterously yell “Kevin!” I’ve gotten close.
There was the local pub near one apartment where I got to know the regular crowd and servers, but it closed down. One fun summer I lived in the same building as best friends and we turned the bar next door into our version of How I Met Your Mother, but then I moved.
There was also the time in college when I went to the Subway shop down the street so often that when I left to study abroad and returned six months later, the “sandwich artist” clapped and asked dramatically where I had been. (That one I don’t look back on proudly.)
In many ways, we’re all just going through life hoping that, if not everybody, somebody will truly know our name. How wonderful for George Wendt that, thanks to Cheers and Norm, we will all forever know his.
The post Watch Every Time George Wendt’s Norm Entered the Bar on ‘Cheers’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
