Norm Peterson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Cheers character | |
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| Hillary Norman Peterson "Norm" |
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| Gender | Male |
| Hair color | Brown |
| Eye color | Blue |
| Role in Cheers | Customer |
| Portrayed by | George Wendt |
Hillary Norman "Norm" Peterson was a character on the American television show Cheers, portrayed by George Wendt. Norm's real first name was revealed to be Hillary, named after his grandfather.
Prior to the show, Norm was born in Chicago, and moved to Boston to become an accountant.[1] Norm enters the show as an accountant, though later becomes unemployed and eventually a housepainter. Norm was revealed to be an accomplished interior decorator and beer taster (capable of spotting a bad vat in a factory by drinking a single bottle). Ironically, even when unemployed, Norm is the bar's best customer. Numerous jokes are made about the enormousness of Norm's tab at Cheers (e.g., several large binders are shown as being just a portion of it).
Norm's best friend is postman and fellow barfly Cliff Clavin.
Norm's entrance into the bar is a running gag on Cheers, typically beginning with a welcome by the bar crowd followed by a joke from Norm. A typical entrance went:
- Norm enters
- Norm: Afternoon, everybody!
- Customers: NORM!
- Coach: How's life treating you Norm?
- Norm: Like he caught me in bed with his wife.
This is referenced in The Simpsons episode "Flaming Moe's" where Barney Gumble walks into the newly successful and popular Moe's Tavern to be greeted with the friendly cry of "Barney!".
Norm has a wife named Vera who is often mentioned but never seen. When she is finally shown, her face is covered in a thrown pie. The only other time she is seen, viewers can see only her legs. Vera is the brunt of many of Norm's jokes, but on many occasions, Norm has professed secretly an undying love for his wife, or defended her honor. Norm and Vera separated during the second season of Cheers but reconciled in the last episode of the season, ironically contrasting the romance between Sam and Diane, who enjoyed a romance then bitterly broke up in that last episode. When Vera got a job at Melville's however, he was deeply disturbed by her proximity to him during his bar time. Vera was played by George Wendt's real-life wife, Bernadette Birkett.
When not sipping beer at Cheers, Norm satisfies his hunger at an eatery called The Hungry Heifer, whose emblem is a young cow smacking her chops. The customers there greet him just the same as the Cheers patrons do. He knows the waitresses by name, and usually orders a meal called a Feeding Frenzy, a monstrous supply of corn and beef. He denigrated the eatery when he first visited it in season 2, but when the place was being shut down, he became hysterically upset. Corrine (played by Doris Grau), who worked at Cheers occasionally as a temp waitress, was a server at The Hungry Heifer, and said the waitstaff knew Norm as "the guy who comes back".
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character of Morn was inspired by and anagrammatically named after the Norm Peterson character. Morn was also a patron of Quark's, the bar/casino that served as one of the main sets on that show, though he was not nearly as prominent a character on DS9 as Norm was in Cheers, as he was never heard speaking by the home audience, despite being described as loquacious by the show's other characters.
George Wendt guest starred as Norm Peterson on St. Elsewhere, Cheers’ first spinoff The Tortellis, Wings, and The Simpsons. Years after Cheers ended, Wendt played Norm in a 2002 episode of its spinoff Frasier. Norm was most recently seen in animated form, voiced by Wendt, on Family Guy in the 2007 episode "Road to Rupert".
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[edit] References
- ^ Cheers episode "Knights of the Scimitar"
