Cheers (season 1) the pub, but on the Stage 25 lot of Paramount Studios with the set decoration of "Cheers". The Bull & Finch Pub was later renamed Cheers Beacon Hill. The entire season is set exclusively in the bar, its office, and the billiard room; no locations outside the bar were used until Diane Chambers' apartment is seen in the second season. In the pilot episode's original script, there were only four principal characters: Sam Malone, Diane Chambers, Carla Tortelli, and Ernie "Coach" Pantusso. Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin were absent from the original script. George Wendt and John Ratzenberger had auditioned
Home Is the Sailor (Cheers) promises nothing of the sort will occur again and is provisionally re-hired on the understanding that this is his last chance as Rebecca uses a seductive baseball metaphor-pun about having two outs, two strikes and "no balls". The producers intended "Cheers" to be a comedy about a comedy itself set in the Boston bar, but, as Burrows claimed, the "Sam and Diane" story arc predominated the show for five years and, as he hypothesized, would have made the bar more of a minor role and more irrelevant if Shelley Long had not left the show as Diane Chambers in 1987.