Title: The Guy Can't Help It
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee
Air Date: May 13, 1993
Previous: Rebecca Gaines, Rebecca Loses
Next: One for the Road
Guest Starring: Tom Berenger, Sharon Lawrence, Paul Willson
"The Guy Can't Help It" is the twenty-fourth episode of the eleventh season of Cheers.
Cheers has a broken beer tap, and Sam's called in a guy called Don to fix it. Rebecca's come back from a disastrous vacation she took to find herself and take stock of her life (again), and maybe also find a desperate bachelor. Don takes an interest in Rebecca, who is entirely oblivious to him until Frasier steps in to point out the obvious. The two start going out and hit it off, much to Rebecca's shock because he's a plumber.
Rebecca soon thinks Don is going to marry her. Sam thinks she's just settling, after years of humiliation and failure, going for the first guy to be nice to her, rather than a guy who's right for her. Namely, him. Rebecca isn't really taken at being a back-up option and tears into him for his womanizing. Though she claims she was just lashing out, Sam is still hurt.
He tries asking Frasier's expert advice, but doesn't like the notion he's sex-obsessive. Neither does he like Carla admitting she doesn't think he'd be a good romantic partner. So, at the end of his rope, Sam finally goes to a therapy session. Slowly, and reluctantly, he starts to open up about how now, despite still sleeping around he's not actually happy, how the skirt chasing has robbed him of the opportunity to experience the joys of life.
Tropes:
- Brutal Honesty: When Sam asks Carla if she'd marry him, she chortles and goes "of course not", telling him she thinks if they did even try to get married, he'd probably just check out the bridesmaids at the wedding.
- Cloudcuckoolander: When Sam suggests someone in the bar is going loony, Frasier tells him everyone in the bar is on a connecting flight to "Beyond Loony".
- Damned by Faint Praise:
- Sam's idea of saying he wants to go out with Rebecca is that he might consider marrying her if she didn't find anyone else. Rebecca is understandably pissed at being considered a safety net.
- His defense to Frasier has him claim picking the perfect woman would be like a chef picking a perfect chop. In other words, comparing them to a piece of meat.
- Deconstruction: One last go around for Sam's hound ways. He admits his life is now empty save for sex, even though he no longer enjoys it. Rebecca lengthily calls him out for being pathetically shallow, and Carla admits though she's flirted with him endlessly, she doesn't think he'd be a stable romantic partner.
- Downer Ending: For Sam, though the episode ends on a joke, he goes to therapy and has to force him to admit his life is now entirely empty save for sex, and he's miserable. (This however only sets up the next episode, the series finale, in which Sam realizes that actually he's happy and he does have a true love—it just isn't a woman.)
- Facepalm: Frasier, at the sight of Rebecca being particularly arrogant and condescending to Don.
- Nice Guy: Don, who's cheerful and friendly and an attentive boyfriend to Rebecca.
- Real Men Hate Affection: Sam also tries asking Norm for advice. Norm immediately flees and sends in Paul.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Rebecca unleashes a pretty brutal one on Sam about how women see him, after he tells her she's basically a safety option if he doesn't find the right woman.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: The episode ends with Sam going to a therapy group for sex addicts. (Characterizing Sam as a sex addict of course ignores how he was faithful to Diane in Seasons 2 and 5, how he did have certain rules that he stuck by like not dating married women, and for that matter how he did hardly any womanizing in Season 11.)
