Top 10 TV Hangouts

1. Cheers – Cheers

Could there have been any other choice? While it could be argued that its spin-off, Frasier, was the higher quality show, Cheers has that show pinned as far as TV hangouts go, hands down. The whole show is centered on the hangout itself, with the show’s iconic theme song also being all about this bar “where everybody knows your name” – especially Norm, the barfly who rarely was shown away from his stool at the counter. But aside from this constant drinker, we also had several other characters who worked or frequented Cheers every week, such as the former athlete and recovering alcoholic/womanizer Sam Malone, the tough and demeaning mother of many, Carla Tortelli, the friendly know-it-all mailman Cliff Clavin, the annoying know-it-all feminist Diane Chambers, and many others. The show used its setting as a gathering place where characters from different social standings and backgrounds could gather and bond over a few drinks and good conversation. Unlike Café Nervosa, where your business was the latest gossip, Cheers offered its patrons some friendly advice and solutions with, perhaps, a pint on the side. Cheers didn’t have to go through revisions or remodeling, even through a few cast adjustments, and it didn’t have to burn down to become more contemporary, either, though Sam would sell the bar to the Lillian Corporation in the final episode of season five, putting the obsessive Rebecca Howe in charge and giving him a new on-and-off again flame. He spent the next few seasons trying to fix his mistake and buy back the bar from them, eventually doing so in the final episode of season eight, much to everybody’s happiness. When he again attempts to leave the bar in the series’ finale by flying away with a returning Diane, he begins to have second thoughts about his actions. Ultimately, fate pushes him in the right direction, and he returns to his beloved bar for good. Norm later tells him he knew he’d come back. How did he know? “Because you always come back to your one true love.”