I have seen every episode of Cheers. I watched, in one aimless summer - my ponderance in Ben Braddock’s’ pool - every episode, followed by every episode of Frasier. I had seen many of these before, an insomniac child watching Nick at Nite, strolling around Mayberry, crushing on John Ritter, asking myself who really the Boss (Mona, no question). 

I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve lamented jokes that aged like a glass of Bailey’s left overnight, but no episode has lodged itself in my soul and memory more than season one, episode five: “Coach’s Daughter.” 

In this episode, and only this episode, we meet Coach’s district manager daughter Lisa Pantusso (Allyce Beasley) and her fiance Roy, a door-to-door suit salesman at her company. 

Lisa walks in six minutes into the episode, a hairclipped frizzy ponytail, mutton-chop pieces at her ears, a neon mauve shirt and Thatcher chic skirt suit, and meekly hops around to her father. “Daddy!” she exclaims as Coach sweeps her into a big hug. Lisa, who is all Margaret Keane eyes and helium vocals, is regarded as a sweet cousin by the Cheers employees; a bit awkward, a bit unsure, by the audience.  

Roy strides in after parking the car, to silence from Coach as well. Coach needs to catch Lisa’s eye - “is this him?” he asks without words - before grabbing his son-in-flaw and announcing “this is my daughter’s fiance!” to claps from the patrons, a clamored tray by Carla. 

Roy, is a cornucopia of contrast: black blazer, oxblood paisley tie, windowpane plaid vest (reversible!). But it’s the 80’s - am I supposed to find this more garish than the lewks of the day?  

Yes, yes I am.  

Roy as an undesirable match for Lisa (or anyone) is quickly established as soon as he coos “Feeling’s ditto, Ernie” to Coach. To Sam, a former relief pitcher for the Sox, on baseball: “I think it’s a dead sport. They just haven’t claimed the body yet.”Sam asks what sport gets Roy’s heart racing. 

“Female full-contact karate.” 

We’ve seen this before: well, those of us born into these episodes appearing at 11:30pm on Nick @ Nite. (The Golden Girls episode “Blanche’s Little Girl” comes to mind right away, though the episode aired six years later.)  A daughter emerges, perhaps once mentioned or never before, with some loutish chauvinist in tow and a modest diamond on her finger like a manacle. She smiles through his comments about her clothes, his growing career at the expense of hers, his roving eye and thankfully still ringless roving hand.  

Everyone hates him on sight but does their best to not let onto their friend, their coworker that the guy’s a prick, lest they overstep. The parent knows in their heart that the man’s no good, “a pig,” to quote Coach. But they too bite their tongue, delaying the inevitable “why don’t you want me to be happy?” dialogue. The episode ends with a breakthrough conversation, renewed confidence and self-worth in the daughter, who tells her betrothed to get lost. Applause from the audience, hug from the parent, credits roll. 

The concept is not novel. It’s a trope, and it’s in your friend group. But what makes “Coach’s Daughter” stick out is 120 seconds of dialogue in the Cheers back room, between Coach and Lisa, father and daughter. 

Coach's Daughter 

It’s an ugly room, for a potentially ugly conversation.  

Coach tells Lisa she can’t marry him, incredulous that his successful daughter’s vision is webbed when it comes to this louse. Lisa knows, she reveals, his Brillo-facial personality, and that his proposal is motivated by career climbing. He’s the only man to ever propose, not the “dozens” Coach asserted must have asked her, she fears he’ll be the last, her father’s lifelong assertions of her beauty in his eyes are wrong.  

“Look at me! Not as my father, but like you’re looking at me for the first time and please, try to see me as I really am.” Ugly. She thinks she’s ugly. 

Coach takes a moment, an abacus of her eyes, her nose, her chin. “Oh my god,” near tears, “I didn’t realize how much you look like your mother.” 

A lesser show, a less fierce character inventory would have stopped there. Here’s the hug. Here’s the heaping applause. Not Cheers. 

“I know. I look exactly like her, and Mom was not…” she stops herself. We know what she has on her tongue. But in the face of her father, in his doting, near reverent eyes. She can’t. The confrontation twists the knob of an understanding for Lisa to stride through. “...not confident about her beauty.” An inheritance Lisa, from this day, decides to reject. 

This is the fifth episode of the entire show, though if I had seen it out of order my only clue that it wasn’t one of Nicholas Colasanto’s last episodes would be Diane’s clothes and the lack of Frasier. How immediately cohesive this show was from its origin: George Wendt is greeted with a rambunctious “Norm!”, Diane’s trill of “Norman” quick behind. Sam wiggles in overture at Diane, who flits him away, only for her to lose her balance in the flit and land on her face. Carla sneers, all barrettes and bravado. Sam has enough women in his little black book to require a spit-upon shoe to determine which of his paramours is pissed. Diane pursues a lofty hobby (caricature, this time) and reads Jung.  

But to me what endears the most about this early entry into this bar, its patrons, the world of it: Lisa’s Dear Roy sendoff. “Roy, you don’t get Pennsylvania, and you don’t get me…You just get more obnoxious,” she asserts, paraded by a chorus of “yay’s” from the barflys bookending the scene. A tag of Sam and Diane calling back Coach’s naming of the individual bar glasses to end the episode.  

Enter credits. 

“Coach’s Daughter” was written by Ken Estin, and is available on Hulu. 

Tara Giancaspro is the creator of xoxo Gossip Giancaspro, a weekly Substack (taragiancaspro.substack.com) including personal essays, pop culture commentary, and the various and sundry of her silly little life. She has released music under the name Sweaty Lamarr, available to stream everywhere, including "Abbey, I'm Sorry I Stole Your Man," a Jolene sequel from Jolene's perspective. She has been published in Wig-Wag Mag, is a Cancer sun, and got bit by a dolphin once, establishing a potentially generational blood feud. Giancaspro can be found on Instagram and Twitter at @SweatyLamarr. She is based in New Jersey, if you couldn't tell by the hair.