George Wendt Merges With The Infinite

George Wendt, actor most famous for his run as Norm on TV's Cheers, has passed.  

For the duration of the show's 11 seasons, Wendt played barfly Norm Peterson - a guy somewhat beat up by life but who was quick to shrug it off with a quippy one-liner.  

He also appeared in numerous films, memorably in Fletch and House.  Post-Cheers, Wendt worked steadily, often doing single episodes of TV or brief appearances in movies.  He would go on to play Santa at least four or five times, including in Santa Buddies and the A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All - uncredited here for reasons I was unclear on.  He was a wildly popular SNL host, and is why, today, we all still say "'da Bears".

It's hard to explain to today's kids what the world was like when everyone watched network TV, and of network TV shows, Cheers remained an absolute monster hit for its entire run.  Norm was a common denominator for any conversation.  Enough so that when someone licensed the idea of Cheers and put bars in airports that looked a bit like the set, they put a Norm dummy on a stool so you could sit next to him while you waited to make your connection to Duluth.  Apparently that went poorly.*

I cannot imagine what he made over the years on residuals from re-runs, but for twenty years after the show aired, it was still on all the time.

Wendt was much beloved, and seemed an okay guy.  We'll miss you, sir.

*Sadly, when I went into the Cheers bar in Minneapolis, the figures were no longer a feature.