Only Sam Malone could get away with describing his fiancee by saying, "Oh, yeah, you know, she's a terrific person. She's smart. She's funny. She's horny. She's just the kind of chick you'd want to stick up on a pedestal."
Oh yeah, Ted Danson's Sammy Boy has still got it. "It" being that pre-feminism, big-guy, retro sensibility, which leaves him stuck somewhere on the male evolutionary time line between the end of the Rat Pack era and the days of Joe Namath as jockdom's swinging sex symbol.
They don't make them like "Sudden" Sam Malone any more in the PC prime-time world of 1995. But Sammy's back for one night only tonight on "Frasier," and this is one stupid-February-sweeps trick you don't want to miss.
The plot for the episode titled "The Show Where Sam Shows Up," which airs at 9 on WBAL (Channel 2), is mostly rubber-bands-and-glue. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) is just wrapping up one of his radio shows in Seattle when -- miracle of miracles! -- there's Sam looking at him through the studio window.
Sam says he's come all the way from the "Cheers" bar in Boston because the Seattle Mariners baseball team is looking for a pitching coach. But that's a lie. The truth is that Sam was about to be married the previous day, but got cold feet. It's his flight from commitment that took him clear across the country.
Pretty flimsy stuff, it's true. But one of the great, not-much-understood delights of television is this place in our heads where memory meets suspension of disbelief. It helps us imagine that places like "Cheers," Mary Richards' WJM newsroom and Sheriff Andy Taylor's Mayberry still exist, with all the characters having new adventures.
Tonight's "Frasier" plays with those memories of "Cheers," as Sam brings Frasier up to date on what's happened to Cliff, Norm, Woody and the rest of the barroom gang since Frasier's departure for Seattle. That's what matters. And that's what provides much of the fun tonight.
But the comedy writing also provides its share of fun. Every other line is a punch line, and several that deal with gender and Sam-as-mock-sex-symbol are irresistible.
"So, you're the guy who treats women like dirt?" says Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), Frasier's producer, as she sidles up to Sam. "If you need anyone to show you around Seattle, here's my card."
"Oh, hey, I'm all right with the city. But I get real lonely in my hotel room," Sam says, caressing her hand as he reaches for the card.
"Oh, look at the two of you!" Frasier shouts. "Wild animals all over the Northwest are lifting their heads, picking up the scent."
Even the usually cool Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves) goes ga-ga over "Mayday" Malone the minute she sees him walk through the door of Frasier's apartment and pronounce it "a real babe magnet."
Then there's Sheila, Sam's fiancee, played by Tea Leoni, the very sexy co-star of the short-lived "Flying Blind" series on Fox. Sheila and Sam are both sexual compulsives, who "met in group," as she puts it. The big scene involving Sam, Sheila and Frasier is a little forced, but who cares? By now, you've had so much fun that your only wish is that Danson would quit trying to be a movie star and bring Sam back to weekly television -- instead of merely tantalizing us with this 22-minute sweeps snippet in Seattle.