A lot of people have gripes with how the final season of Game of Thrones is unfolding, and we’re right there with you. Complex characters reduced to two-dimensional cartoons; abrupt endings to long-planned arcs; whole plotlines totally ignored. But our main complaint? This season of Game of Thrones just isn’t season four of Cheers. Like, at all.
You may remember season four of Cheers as the one that introduced Woody Harrelson. But guess what? Woody Harrelson doesn’t make a single appearance in this season of Game of Thrones.
Here’s our definitive guide to the other reasons that this season of Game of Thrones just isn’t season four of Cheers.
This season of Game of Thrones is not set in Boston
One big difference between this season of GOT and season four of Cheers is the location. While season four of Cheers takes place in Boston, almost all of the action on GOT revolves around the convoluted politics in a fictional medieval kingdom called Westeros.
Where do we even start with this one? For one thing, Westeros is a made-up country, while Boston is a very real city on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Don’t believe us? Look it up! It’s in Massachusetts and you can go there. We’ve lost all faith in David Benioff and D.B. Weiss if they can’t even catch this glaring inconsistency.
Game of Thrones has lots of swords, while Cheers has very few
Another huge way these two series differ is in the number of swords they show on-screen. In just the most recent episode of GOT, “The Bells,” we counted over 85 swords. Some were being held by men, some were on the ground, and some were buried inside other men, but they were definitely there. Contrast that huge number of swords with season four of Cheers which, to our knowledge, doesn’t show a single sword. Period. Full stop.
That’s 85 swords versus 0 swords, for a difference of approximately 85 swords. Come on, Dan and Dave, how hard is it to count?
There aren’t any phones in Game of Thrones
Phones play a big role in season four of Cheers. For instance, the season finale ends with a huge cliffhanger when Sam proposes to an unidentified woman over the phone. On the other hand, they don’t even seem to have any phones on this season of Game of Thrones. Why not? Not only could they have solved many communication issues and rendered continuous travel between Dragonstone and King’s Landing unnecessary (Tyrion, just call Cersei to tell her to surrender, dude!), but they’re also a terrific plot device because sometimes you don’t know who’s on the other end of the line and that can lead to suspense and humor (see: Sam proposing to an unidentified woman over the phone).
HUGE missed opportunity here for the creators of Thrones. SMH.
Game of Thrones sends letters via raven, while Cheers uses the United States Postal Service
In GOT, if a character wants to communicate across a large distance, he or she will write a letter and attach it to the leg of a raven, which then flies to the place they want the letter to go. That’s a pretty abrupt 180 from how season four of Cheers handles letter-sending, which is by using the United States Postal Service.
Cheers even devotes a character to showing how important this is—Cliff Clavin, a regular at the bar, is a mailman. His whole job is sending and delivering mail. Did somebody miss the memo? Or maybe the two hotshots who are now gonna direct a Star Wars movie just don’t have any respect for source material? Unbelievable.
None of the characters in Game of Thrones are psychologists
One of the most heavily recurring characters in season four of Cheers is Frasier Crane, who is a psychologist. And yet, Game of Thrones doesn’t have any psychologists. Most of their characters are talkers, stabbers, or some combination of the two. The closest they get is Bran Stark, who sometimes says wise things from his chair, but he definitely did NOT go to school for it like Frasier did. C’mon, D&D, get it together!
Game of Thrones is a drama, while Cheers is a comedy
This one is so huge we almost started with it—the tones are completely different! We’ll explain: while this season of GOT has a few moments of levity (such as when all the characters get extremely drunk right before fighting a very important battle), it’s mostly very serious.
On the other hand, season four of Cheers is heavily comedic. For instance, at one point, Sam proposes to an unidentified woman over the phone. This is way funnier than anything on GOT. So yeah, consider us thoroughly confused by the creative team’s choices here.
We’ll leave you with a final message for the so-called “creators” of this travesty, Benioff and Weiss: Have fun ruining Star Wars by not having it be a shot-for-shot recreation of Matchstick Men.