CHEERS to the jokes we didn't use

I saw a CHEERS episode recently (no, it wasn’t one we wrote) and noticed a certain joke was missing.  Not worth telling you the joke; you’d have to know the context.  But it was probably cut in syndication so they could squeeze in more reverse mortgage ads.  

But it got me to thinking.  There were so many jokes over the course of a season of CHEERS that never made it to air.  Not because they were bad (well some of them were), but because the story shifted or time constraints or we just thought of better ones.  

Let’s take a typical episode.  The writer works with the staff to lay out the story.  Along the way the staff pitches possible jokes. These are transcribed and the writer may use them when writing his outline.  He uses a few, meaning a bunch are washed ashore.  He writes alternate and new jokes.

He meets with the staff again to get notes on the outline.  More jokes are offered.  Sometimes the decision is made to change whole chunks of the story.  So all the jokes in the discarded chunks now don’t apply.  

The writer composes the first draft, adding a lot of new jokes along the way.  He gets notes, more jokes are cut, new story elements are introduced and other jokes are left by the side of the road.  

Once the writer turns in his second draft it goes to the staff for the rewrite.  Scripts can change from 10-100%.  Jokes and sometimes whole storylines are thrown out.  

Once the script goes into production, there are table readings or run-throughs every day and those require rewrites.  More jokes crash and burn.  

The show is filmed and generally is too long.  Editing eliminates even more jokes, sometimes really good jokes, but you never want to sacrifice story for jokes.  

And then there’s editing for syndication.

Now imagine this happening 25 times a season.  That’s a shit-ton of jokes that never make it to air.  But we always considered that was part of the job.  To be on staff you had to be prolific.  It’s not like a comic strip where you’re required to come up with seven jokes a week.  If you were on a staff of CHEERS (and this goes for most sitcoms I’m sure), you needed to churn out seven jokes every twenty minutes.  It can be a grind, but boy, you laugh a lot.  The jokes just keep coming.  If you've got to spend twelve hours a day in a room, there are worse ones I can think of.


from By Ken Levine