Recap / Cheers S 5 E 20 Dinner At Eight Ish

Episode: Season 5, Episode 20
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Phoef Sutton
Air Date: February 26, 1987
Previous: Dog Bites Cliff
Next: Simon Says
Guest Starring: Bebe Neuwirth, Al Rosen, Doris Grau

"Dinner at Eight-ish" is the twentieth episode of the fifth season of Cheers.

After some time of having lived together, a fact they've kept secret from the gang at Cheers, Frasier and Lilith invite Sam and Diane around for dinner. Things start to go wrong thanks to inadvertent cases of saying the wrong thing, and the personalities of all involved.

Meanwhile, Carla's looking for someone to babysit her kids. After exhausting every other option, she very reluctantly chooses Cliff.

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Tropes:

• Badly Battered Babysitter: Cliff volunteers to look after the Tortelli clan for the night. Partway through the episode, Woody gets a call from them saying they're going to drop Cliff off at Cheers, only for Norm to point out none of Carla's kids are old enough to drive yet. There's the sudden sound of a car burning rubber, and a trussed-up Cliff is thrown down the front steps.
• Closed Door Rapport: Lilith, Frasier, and Diane each retreat into the bathroom after different arguments over their relationships. Discussions continue through the door for the rest of the episode.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Frasier. As the evening goes on, Lilith keeps learning all sorts of interesting facts about his engagement to Diane that, mysteriously, he never told her before.
• Fun with Acronyms: Frasier announces that he and Lilith are becoming "POSSLQs", and then helpfully explains that he means "People of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters".
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Cliff, as should be expected. He believes the Tortelli children just need a stern father figure to "sort them out". Which even if this were true, that figure sure as hell ain't Cliff.
• Lethal Chef: Lilith tries cooking dinner. Everyone, Frasier included, is at a loss to figure out what it was she's supposedly cooked. Sam was closest with "something with meat".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lilith, Lilith loses her temper at Frasier. Several times even. Up to and including distraught shouting. It's one of the very few times she ever gets this emotionally worked up.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: The evening at Chez Crane doesn't get off to the best start when Diane compliments Frasier on all the masculine touches to the pad... and Lilith timidly says "thanks".
• Really Gets Around: Just as dinner's ending, things do not get better when it turns out Lilith's hired cook is yet another of Sam's ex-conquests, and Diane gets angry about how they can't go anywhere in Boston without meeting someone he's slept with.
• Running Gag: Someone storming off into the bathroom to sulk. Eventually, Frasier gets so fed up of this he locks Lilith and Diane in.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: At the end, Frasier and Sam go off to watch I, Claudius upstairs (Sam not knowing that it's A: not a gladiator flick, as he assumes, and B: Long.)
• Series Continuity Error: Lilith sings "Our House" with Frasier. Later episodes have it as a gag that Lilith, despite being played by a Broadway actress, is a (supposedly) limited and terrible singer who people dread listening to.
• Shout-Out: The title is a shout-out to the play and film, Dinner at Eight.
• Title Drop: Frasier invites Sam and Diane to come over at "eight-ish".
• Unusual Euphemism: Before Sam and Diane come around, Frasier suggests he and Lilith use "dip" as a code-word for the evening. Then they have the bright idea of serving dip before dinner... end result, Sam asking if Frasier's tried Lilith's "dip" results in them kissing one another's brains out, as a confused Sam and Diane look on.
  Sam: What the hell's in this dip?