Summary

• The confusing nature of The Far Side comic strip led to a hilarious gag on the iconic sitcom Cheers.
• Season 9 episode "Where Nobody Knows Your Name" featured Cliff and Norm explaining a Far Side cartoon to Woody.
• The clever twist in the gag showed the writers of Cheers were zigging when we expected them to zag, as Woody DID understand the joke

In "The World Outside," I examine comic books showing up in outside media, like TV shows, sports, novels and films. Today, we look at how The Far Side's reputation as a confusing comic strip led to a gag on the iconic sitcom, Cheers.

As I noted recently in a Comic Book Legends Revealed, Gary Larson's legendary comic strip, The Far Side, was famous for both being really funny, but it was also famous for how frequently people were confused by the jokes in the strip.

In the author description on The Far Side website, Larson explained the inspiration behind his sense of humor:

As for his inspiration, Larson often cites his family’s “morbid sense of humor” growing up and how his older brother loved to scare him whenever he got the chance. He was also once quoted as saying, “You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again.” He attributes much of his success to the caffeine in the coffee he drinks daily.

As noted in the aforementioned Comic Book Legends Revealed, in 1982, Larson's sense of humor was SO offbeat with one particular cartoon, titled "Cow Tools," that his syndicate had him explain the joke to all the newspapers that carried the strip (Larson admitted that even his own mother was confused by the "Cow Tools" cartoon). It was simply an exercise in silliness by Larson (if cows made tools, what would they look like?) but people kept trying to read a lot more meaning into the cartoon than was intended.

Okay, so now that we've established that The Far Side was famous for how confusing its strips were, let's look at how its confusing nature was so notable that it even made its way into a gag on the legendary sitcom, Cheers!

Who was Woody Boyd on Cheers?

Cheers, of course, was a long-running, award-winning hit sitcom that aired on NBC from 1982-1993, about a neighborhood bar in Boston called, well, you know, Cheers. The sitcom initially centered on the romance between the bar owner, Sam Malone (Ted Danson), and the waitress, DIane Chambers (Shelley Long), who was forced to take a job at the bar while pursuing her Masters in literature. However, after Long left the series after its fifth season, the show added Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe, the new manager of the bar, but the show became more of an ensemble comedy at this point, running another SEVEN seasons.

Of course, the show had already done well in terms of being forced to replace a main character, as tragically, one of its original stars, Nicholas Colasanto as the sweethearted, but dimwitted bartender, "Coach" Ernie Pantusso, an old coach of Sam's from Sam's time as a professional baseball player, died in 1985. Woody Harrelson was hired as Woody Boyd, a pen pal of Coach's who is hired as the bar's new secondary bartender.

Harrelson's Woody hit a lot of the same kindhearted, but dimwitted notes that made audiences love Coach, and so Woody was soon beloved, as well. Naturally, though, for a character whose comedy came from his naive simpleness (Woody came from a small town in Indiana, so they did a lot of "Country mouse" type jokes), it makes sense that The Far Side would be an area where he might have some problems, and in Season 9, that's where Cheers went!

How did Cheers do a gag about The Far Side being confusing?

In the fourth episode of Season 9, "Where Nobody Knows Your Name" ( a play on the show's theme song, which was about how Cheers was where everybody knows your name), in October 1990, there was a gag where Woody opens up a newspaper, and remarks, when seeing The Far Side, "I don't get The Far Side."

Suddenly, two of the bar's regular patrons, know-it-all mailman Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger), and frequently unemployed Norm Peterson (George Wendt), step in, and offer to explain the cartoon to Woody. Cliff grabs the paper, and he and Cliff read the cartoon. They note that is shows a group of cows who are standing on their hind legs, and interacting with each other like humans, until a car arrives, at which point they go back on their four legs, and act like "normal" cows again. Cliff and Norm explain that the joke is that cows only act like cows when we're around, and when we're not, they act differently.

Pleased with themselves, they hand the paper back to Woody, who then explains that he was saying that he doesn't get The Far Side in his local newspaper, so he reads it in the paper at the bar, but he sarcastically thanks them for explaining the joke to him like he was a small child.

It was a very clever twist on our preconceptions of the characters by the episode's writers, Dan O'Shannon & Tom Anderson. They made us think that they were zigging, when they were really zagging. That season Cheers won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series (the fourth, and final time, that the series won the award). It was also the first, and only time, that the show finished the season as the #1 rated show on television.

If anyone has a suggestion for an interesting time when a comic book ended up getting featured in a TV show, music video, novel, etc., drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!