Buttonwood: A world of difference

摘要

IN THE FIRST episode of "Cheers", a 1980s television comedy, Diane Chambers, a graduate student, intends to elope with Sumner Sloan, a literature professor. In stark contrast to the genial barflies at Cheers, a Boston watering-hole, Sloan is well-educated and middle-class-but also, it turns out, vain and deceitful. He's goofy, says Sam Malone, the bartender whose on-off romance with Diane is the show's dramatic axis. "He's everything you're not," she retorts.