George Wendt’s Fave ‘Cheers’ Jokes Are Both Woody Harrelson’s
The NBC comedy Cheers had 11 seasons of laughs. Norm (George Wendt) was responsible for many of them, and he got new ones every week since his schtick was to have a new line every time he entered the bar. But out of all 11 seasons, two jokes stand out to Wendt as his favorites and both belonged to Woody Harrelson.
Wendt was a guest on Cheers writer Ken Levine’s podcast Hollywood & Levine on June 30, 2021. He shared his two favorite jokes from the series, and they both happen to be Woody jokes.
1 of George Wendt’s favorite ‘Cheers’ jokes comes from his favorite episode
It’s hard for Cheers fans to pick their favorite episode out of 273. Wendt has his and it includes his favorite joke.
“I don’t know why other than it was just really fun to shoot, I don’t know, I related to it and it’s not just because I’m on your show,” Wendt said on Hollywood & Levine. “But ‘Jumping Jerks’ was the one where the boys all decided to go skydiving and we all chickened out. I’m pretty sure it was a Levine/Isaacs script. It had one of my 2 favorite jokes of the entire series. Maybe if you’ll indulge me I’ll share both of them.”
The best joke from George Wendt’s favorite ‘Cheers’ episode
Wendt set the scene for the Cheers episode “Jumping Jerks.”
“We all go skydiving, the boys, and we all chicken out,” Wendt said. “And we go, ‘We can’t go back and tell people we chickened out. So we need to tell a story but we gotta make sure we don’t get crossed up with our story so it needs to be very simple and believable. Simple and believable, simple and believable.’ Then Sam goes, ‘I’ve got it. We jumped, the parachutes opened and we landed. Simple, believable, right.’”
The plan backfires when Woody gets nervous.
“So we go back to the bar, ‘Ooh, oh my God, I’ve never felt so alive. That was amazing,’” Wendt said. “Rhea’s going, ‘What happened?’ And we’re going, ‘Oh, are you kidding, it was great.’ She finally grabs Woody, the weak link. She corners him in the corner of the bar and she goes, ‘Woody, what happened?’ He goes, ‘What what, we jumped, the parachutes opened and we landed. It was all very simple and believable.’ Whenever somebody says simple, I say believable.”
George Wendt’s 2nd favorite joke
Woody’s buffoonery must’ve really tickled Wendt because his second favorite joke came from Harrelson, too.
“The other one was also Levine and Isaacs,” Wendt said. “It was ‘Bar Wars’ and somebody had kidnapped Woody, they did, the bad guys. We’re going, ‘Geez, I wonder how he’s doing.’ We see in the background he’s being lowered down, he’s bound like Houdini and lowered down by his feet into the stairwell. And we run, oh my God, it’s Woody. And he’s going [muffled] because he has gaffer’s tape on his mouth. We can’t understand what he’s saying. ‘He’s trying to tell us something.’ We rip the thing off and he’s like [babbling gibberish]. Dumb as wood and yet so smart.”
