Cheers Moved Norm Laughs From the Setup to the Punchline
Fans loved the bar regular so much that a possible setup was enough to set them off.
Not Dead Yet · Rob LongOn Cheers, the audience sometimes laughed at Norm's beer joke before he told it.
Rob Long, a writer and producer on the long running bar sitcom, said viewers loved Norm so much that any line that sounded like the setup for a beer joke drew a laugh, even with no punchline yet.
The crew would film the scene two or three times to try to keep the laugh on the punchline rather than the setup.
When that did not work, they wiped the recorded laugh from the setup and added it back over the punchline, about 10 seconds later.
So in some episodes, the laugh viewers hear on the punchline was first recorded about 10 seconds earlier, when the audience laughed at the setup.
Questions people ask
Who was Norm?
Norm Peterson was the affable, beer loving regular at the Boston bar where the sitcom was set. He was played by actor George Wendt for all 11 seasons, and his entrances and orders became running gags.
Was the laughter on Cheers from a real audience?
Yes, Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience, and that response was recorded. It was also common practice on sitcoms of that era to edit, trim, or augment audience reactions in postproduction to match the timing of the final cut.