Kirstie Alley's 12 Best Episodes Of Cheers Ranked

The sudden death of Kirstie Alley on December 5, 2022 has left her fans reeling from the unexpected news. Many folks might take this time to celebrate her life and talent with a marathon viewing of her best work. Alley was a naturally charismatic and comedic personality, and those qualities were never showcased better or more frequently than on her six-season run as Rebecca Howe on "Cheers." 

Out of 148 episodes, it's hard to pick her best ones. The classic sitcom is truly a masterpiece of an ensemble comedy, so some of the best "Cheers" episodes overall might only have one or two killer lines from any particular character. Still, we scoured the back half of the series and have come up with a list of the 12 best episodes (plus a few more, in the case of multi-part episodes) to watch right now. Take a break from all your worries and appreciate Kirstie Alley at her finest.

Sam doesn't know how to work any of the new '90s technology that comes along during the time he doesn't own the bar anymore, so he calls Rebecca up to help him get, as he says, the "green letters" to show up on the computer, which means (as Rebecca confirms) he hasn't even managed to turn the thing on. She just dashes in for a few minutes on a break from her new job and leaves after 10 minutes. 

Always concerned with appearances, Rebecca tells the bar she's now working in public relations, but what she's really doing is working as a model at the auto show — a job so humiliating and debasing that it totally undermines her attempts to save face. Alley plays enraged just as hilariously as she plays lustful and every extreme emotion in between, but this time we get the added benefit of her doing it dressed as a beauty queen.

Rebecca receives a white rose from her incarcerated billionaire boyfriend Robin (Roger Rees), who is getting out of prison in a matter of days. With the rose is a proposal of marriage and Rebecca, of course, is thrilled — this is everything she's ever claimed to want. However, when Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) throws her a bridal shower, Rebecca gets a little too drunk and has one of her patented emotional breakdowns. Later, when Sam goes to check on Rebecca in her apartment, she's gone from a little bit drunk to a sloppy lush. And Alley is a master at both. 

She perfectly balances excessively tipsy giggles with fragile emotions as likely to burst as the bubbles in her champagne, then adroitly jumps through those hoops in her drunken stupor like an acrobat of acting. She's despondent, confused, sly, raunchy, ridiculous, and morose all in the span of a few short minutes. Plus, her physical comedy is right up there with greats like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. That dead faint into Sam as the credits roll takes a lot of nerve and a lot of trust, which Alley clearly had in spades, and the way Ted Danson and she both nearly break character and collapse into laughter as she bawdily serenades him with "We've Got Tonight" and an impressive high kick shows just how much her co-stars enjoyed her company.

This was the season Alley won her Emmy, and this episode is a big reason as to why.

As with all the Bar Wars episodes, this is very much an ensemble piece, and Rebecca is the focus of the B plot in which Redbook magazine offers her a free makeover. Rebecca is played as a send-up of all the stereotypes about women who have tumultuous love lives or indulge a certain amount of vanity and materialism, so the idea of a makeover comes across as the kind of Hollywood fantasy depicted in hundreds of different movies. Even though Rebecca already takes great care with her appearance, she is thrilled with the prospect of leveling up even further, all the while basking in the compliments of the bar patrons who tell her she's already beautiful and sexy (while undercutting the compliments with jokes about her breasts or grating personality). 

As the B story progresses, Rebecca's look gets more and more overdone, with her hair being teased and poofed and put in sexy up-dos and her makeup gets the heavy application necessary for a photo shoot, but it's still undeniably her. The real punchline, then, comes when Rebecca reveals her final look — an image so far beyond her natural style it's a sight to behold. There's no denying she looks beautiful; she just doesn't look like herself.

It's the famous "Jeopardy!" episode featuring trusty mailman Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger) running the boards then biting the big one, but what most people don't remember about that episode is the B story. That secondary narrative finds Sam's little black book missing and woman after woman calling to chew him out for not showing up to their dates. In order to smoke out who stole his book, Sam asks Rebecca to agree to meet the thief when he inevitably finds her number in the book and calls her. Kirstie Alley pulls out all the stops here with her bimbo voice on the phone, both mocking the types of women Sam usually goes out with and embodying them so convincingly even Sam is aroused. 

When the budding lothario and book stealer shows up to the bar and turns out to be about 15 years old, Rebecca goes from disgusted to disapproving to flattered when the boy compliments her looks. Over and over throughout the series, Kirstie Alley demonstrates this amazing agility in her acting that is hard to duplicate and impossible to forget.

Here we have one-upmanship at its peak as young Woody and legendary Sam both vie for a kiss from Rebecca. Only they have to get it by midnight, plus there's money and humiliation involved. Yes, that's right — it's another Cheers bet, this time between the two bartenders as to who can kiss Rebecca first. They resort to ridiculous, obvious ploys that Rebecca immediately identifies as suspect, and then the show really revs into high gear. 

Rebecca tells Sam she knows about the bet and wants him to win, then arranges for him to come into her office under the pretense of waking her up from a nap to get his so-called spontaneous kiss. Sam goes off to gloat and get ready, while Rebecca says something very similar to Woody. Surprise, surprise, she manages to use this advantage to her own ends which, aside from the questionable hilarity of a gay panic joke, is incredibly satisfying. 

For whatever Rebecca is, however she prostrates herself at the altar of inappropriate men or impossible situations, she is never a doormat. She is never without her own agency and purpose, and it's a ton of fun to watch.

In 1993, over 93 million people watched "Cheers" end its 11-season run. It was truly one for the ages, and while most of the focus was on Sam and Diane, not to mention that closing line, it's a satisfying end to Rebecca's story as well. 

In Part 1, Don proposes to Rebecca just as she wanted, only she can't say yes. Try as she might, there's some sort of mental block still preventing her from accepting, and Kirstie Alley hilariously plays up her horrified despair by making Don pop the question over and over and over again. He runs off, convinced her lack of affection is obvious. From that point on, Rebecca is a blubbering, farcical mess. When Diane shows up at the bar unexpectedly, Sam panics and asks Rebecca to pose as his wife, a request she has no problem agreeing to, which sends her even further over the edge. 

In the uproarious denouement, Rebecca is miserably trying to sell this charade amid squeaky tears and nonsense, when Don strides in and declares his love and intentions in front of everyone. He again asks Rebecca to marry him and this time, to her great delight, she is able to accept. They kiss and run off with Rebecca literally carried over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. And she couldn't be happier. It's a fantastic end fit for a fantastic character brought to life by a fantastic actress. Kirstie Alley will be greatly missed.