Critical Reception
When this episode originally aired in 1982, Fred Rothenberg from Associated Press praised this episode as an introduction to a "new wise-cracking comedy", "a warm and wacky companion of a television show, a delightful place to spend idle time, a five-star watering hole" known as Cheers. Television and radio critic Mike Drew called it not great but "funnier with cute lines than" any other sitcom, even when prior sitcoms, like television Archie Bunker's Place and radio Duffy's Tavern, have set in taverns.
Fred L. Smith of The News and Courier found this episode similar to other television series Taxi. Smith wrote: "Both are set in a place of business (Cheers at a, Taxi at a ); both have a sensible guy and a pretty, preppy girl as main characters (Ted Danson and Shelley Long in Cheers and Judd Hirsch and Marilu Henner in Taxi), and both are wacky comedies." Nevertheless, he found it "amusing", some jokes funny, even when he found many other jokes forced, and amount of "weird characters" in the show surpassing real-life bar counterparts.
In 2009, Lex Walker from Just Press Play website found this episode "sadder and more sentimental" than funny, remarked that this episode focuses "less on character development and more on" Diane restarting her life as a waitress after loss of love, and called it a contradiction to "what will grow to be". Nevertheless, he dubbed this episode as a true introduction to the series and considered interactive stories of Sam and his friends the true premise of the series. In 2010, Robin Raven from Yahoo! Voices called this episode one of her top five favorite Cheers episodes. In 2011, Austin Lugar from The Film Yap website called it the "best".
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