(The worst episode of Cheers, ever)
You know what they say, Icemen Cometh and Icemen Goeth. But sometimes you just want to be where everybody knows your name. And sometimes you just want to pass out in peace! Eugene O’Neill’s sardonic* story of the gang at Harry Hope’s hopeless establishment is a miserable study in human nature, with perhaps the most depressing cast of losers ever assembled outside of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Take the sad but happy-go-lucky drunks of Cheers, mix them with the despicable, desperate team from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and give them the shameless, self-serving egos of Seinfeld, then subtract all the things that made those characters funny, and you start to get the picture presented in The Iceman Cometh.
*[Aside from the overall depression from reading this literature, the thing that bothered me the most was that E O’Neill used the word “sardonic” or “sardonically” excessively, seemingly every time he had a line for Larry, one of the main characters. Eugene – if you weren’t 68 years in the grave, I’d buy you a thesaurus.]
If you’re still interested in reading the “play” (I feel like that word connotes something more fun than this tale; there should be a different term for such a joyless endeavor, maybe “yalp”?), then read no further, because I may spoil a few things in warning off those of you that don’t want to feel depressed by reading the yalp yourselves.
The four-scene story never changes scene from the dingy barroom where the patrons and hosts hardly ever leave except for brief respites to their pitiful rooms upstairs. The exceptions are the “tarts” who leave regularly to hustle johns for petty cash to hand to their bartending manager. The regular barflies gave up on life years before, as did their sponsor Harry, and they spend their days drinking themselves stupid while waxing philosophical about the people they were and how they aspire to be great again. Except for Larry (the Cliff Clavin of the clan), their wiseman anarchist who proclaims himself beyond caring about anything and everything, having given up on life and pining for death.
The newcomer to the club is a kid from Larry’s past (Parritt) that wants to reconnect with him because he’s otherwise lost in a funk of his own. But Larry wants nothing to do with him because it’ll interfere with his indifference if he gives a damn.
Wartime rivals from the Boer War rib each other relentlessly, but are really best friends in an almost sweet way.
Harry has two henchmen hanging onto his every word, even though most of his words are obnoxious complaints about them and everyone else. His heart of gold shines through his gruff exterior as he bemoans that they take advantage of his generosity, while he generously allows them to live rent-free and drink freely of his nickel whiskeys. Harry is Sam Malone only if Sam had the personality of Louie De Palma and never left the bar after Diane dumped him.
Chuck and Rocky are the bartenders who dish out the cheap drugs, while moonlighting respectively as the “fiancé” and aforementioned “manager” of the girls who walk the streets when they are not inside the sleazy saloon. Take sweet Woody and turn him into an abusive Italian pimp, and you have the aptly named Rocky. Chuck is just a boor.
James Cameron dreams of the day when he can reclaim his way to success, perhaps via Avatar 2, but Jimmy Tomorrow keeps procrastinating getting out there and going for it.
Joe Mott is the token black man in the mix, which is at least one more than you can find in the offerings of the classic TV shows referenced for comparison.
Willie Oban is probably the Frasier incarnate, with a highfalutin Harvard grad who’s squandered his potential before finding himself lost with everyone else at Harry’s.
That’s the bulk of the cast, though I’ve skipped over a few because you should get the picture by now that they all suck. They suck so bad they leave hickeys. Which leads me to our hero, Teddy Hickman (I hate that he shares my son’s first name), AKA Hickey. Salesman Hickey comes round once a year like Santa Claus, bearing gifts for the good boys and girls of the bar, with his presence meaning presents of endless bottles of booze. He is saluted like Norm upon arrival, and proceeds to regale the group with similar tales of woe from his marriage to Vera (nee Evelyn). Hickey is the only one outgoing enough to earn enough to support the cheap freeloaders, his brethren in binge drinking. He times his visits to coincide with Harry’s birthday, which happens to be a day away from the start of the story.
No one will leave their positions in the back bar for fear of missing Hickey’s impending arrival and its boundless bottles. This means that most of the time, more than half of the people are sleeping in their seats, slumped in their anticipation of Saint Hick.
That’s the background. Not a lot of action. Until Hickey hits the scene…
Hickey arrives and everyone snaps out of their funks! If only. Hickey comes into his old stomping ground and everyone immediately perks up and drinks up on his dimes (that’s a two for one coin), but Hickman himself is not imbibing with the buds. Something seems off. Hicks tells them that he has found himself a new solution to life’s problems and no longer needs the warm embrace of cheap whiskey to soothe his soul. And he is here to help them find their inner peace as well! He is immediately met with the same reaction you’d expect at an intervention, with the intervented friends preferring that he intervene elsewhere (but leave the bottle, please!). Hickey starts and stops down this same path ad nauseam / delirium tremens, pushing and pulling his people to follow his lead and take action to eliminate their foolish pipedreams once and for all, but don’t let him proselytize. Drink up! But if you follow me, you won’t need to drink up because you’ll be much happier. But I’m not a teetotaler!
Imagine if your best party friend came to the biggest party and suddenly wouldn’t do the ecstasy with you, but said he had something better, but that involved staying clean? You’d assume he was getting ready to sell you Dianetics. And if you weren’t trapped in the one room playhouse, you’d run for stage left.
Hickey’s happy red pill involves taking action instead of always just talking about it. The blue pill is status quo, which he thinks is emptiness filled with whiskey (which wouldn’t technically be empty anymore). Harry needs to explore the neighborhood, like he’s been talking about for 20 years. Chuck and Cora (one of the tart / whores) need to stop teasing about marriage and just do it. Jimmy needs to reclaim his former glory as director of a sinking ship movie (or something). Joe needs to admit that he’s black and go start a club with his own people. Rocky needs to quit being a bartender and focus on his pimping. The Boer War guys need to stop being codependent and go their separate ways, ideally back to work. Larry needs to admit that he’s full of crap and really cares about life. And that annoying kid Parritt needs to get lost because he rubs everyone the wrong way (like a Freddie Kreuger massage). I’m not endorsing any of his encouragements, one way or the other, but you do have to kind of agree that maybe people who are uselessly unemployed and live in a dingy dive bar could use a change.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
So does everyone step up and change their lives for the better to become better people like Hickey hopes? Hardly. Hickman watches one after the next fail in their mission to achieve their simple dreams, which he explains was fully expected and is okay because now it means that they will realize that once their pipe dreams are plumbed down the drains, they no longer have those albatrosses around their necks and can live healthier lives! Who needs hope and self-delusion?
What we had here was a failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. Larry fought the hardest against Hickey’s haranguing, insisting duplicitously that he didn’t care but that Hickey was hiding something.
The Big Reveal:
Hickey’s key to his own happiness was that he had killed his wife. And you thought encouraging Joe Mott to segregate was bad. Hickey explains that it was perfectly logical and solved all of his and Evelyn’s problems. She loved him too much to bear, and he was too unlovable to keep torturing her. So by shooting her in the head, she no longer had to put up with his shit, and he no longer had to suffer his own guilt! Bang – bang, win – win.
It’s a pretty horrific admission of guilt by the guilt-free homicidal husband, but the scene is only exacerbated by the constant interruptions of Harry and company telling Hickey to shut up because they don’t care, they only want to get drunk. Seriously, that is their refrain – “What’s it to us? We want to pass out in peace!” Can they get any lower? Next they’ll be pimping Alec Baldwin murder tee shirts.
As previously mentioned, these are not likable people.
But why not, let’s add a final fun one to this otherwise depressing tale. Remember the annoying Parritt that chased Larry back in the beginning? Well Larry finally decides to help the poor boy get over his own issues with some friendly advice, inspired by the group love all around him. Parritt takes it to heart and takes the plunge, from some number of floors above, splatting in the street outside the bar, only to be mocked by the happily drunken crew inside that is busy celebrating the fact that they’ve figured out that Hickey had lost his mind! All of his exhortations to them about doing something with their lives were merely the ravings of a madman, and not a sad reminder that they were hopelessly drinking themselves to death. Back to the blue pill bottle of bliss!
And curtains.
What a mindfuck! WTF was that? Cheers may not have aged that well from my childhood recollections. Today it seems kind of sad that these people spend all their time in the same bar with no improvements to their lots in life. But at least they didn’t kill their spouses or push each other to jump off the roof or smack their bitches up or any of the other sorry things that happened in The Iceman Cometh.
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