There is no shortage of cinema alcoholics. They come in all sorts of sizes, flavors and varieties. Crazy and old, cartwheeling and carefree, angry and violent, wise and homeless. Salesmen. Stepfathers. Secretaries who hide bottles in their desks. For two hours at a time, we’ve borne witness to countless examples. Paul Newman in The Verdict. Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa. Doc Holliday in Tombstone. Miles in Sideways. Hell, some are even accidental heroes, like Denzel Washington’s Captain “Whip” Whitaker who, in Flight, still manages to miraculously crash-land a plane, even with cocaine and booze racing through his system. The list goes on — and will continue to go on.
TV alcoholism, however, is another beast altogether. Sometimes, like on Mad Men, there are too many drunks to count. (If your characters’ drinking habits are turned into an infographic, your TV show has probably crossed into hyperbole.) TV alcoholics are also very often just caricatures. (If your brain can take it, here is a montage of every drunk Homer Simpson moment ever.) On very rare occasions, TV alcoholics have their struggles drawn out over entire seasons, where their disease is really given time to breathe and destroy. Here are 10 memorable drinking moments from TV, which include the hilarious and the devastating. And just like in real life, they’re sometimes both.
1) Family Ties
It’s hard to remember that Tom Hanks had a career before he was Tom Hanks. Before he was Forrest Gump (or Walter Fielding from The Money Pit, as I prefer to remember him), Tom Hanks was Uncle Ned on Family Ties. When Michael J. Fox flips on the kitchen light, Uncle Ned is revealed to be sitting there in the dark, alone with a near-empty bottle of whiskey. It’s a little forced by today’s TV standards but in four minutes, the scene accomplishes a lot. You can hear the studio audience gag as Hanks downs an entire bottle of vanilla extract, but there’s truth in how he flies from one emotion to the next, pivoting between vulnerability, self-loathing, humor, simmering rage and shame. It’s also easy to see how Tom Hanks became “Tom Hanks.”
2) House of Cards
Probably the most dour, monochromatic scene of the bunch, House of Cards’ Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) addresses his sobriety in an AA room the same way he does his own day-to-day numbers-crunching: drinking simply doesn’t compute with him. “Failure is not an option,” he says. “The same goes for my sobriety.” In the end, he refuses to bring his day count down to zero at which point he utters the iconic phrase: “Fuck the zero.”
3) Rescue Me
I’d never watched one minute of this show but, ironically, I somehow caught this one-minute scene late one night while half into a bottle of scotch. Newly sober firefighter Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) manages to insult gin and my favorite film character of all time (James Bond), all as he stares back at his drinking career. “I drank the way a man is supposed to drink,” Leary insists. “I drank in dark bars, dive bars, with other men, where the bartenders were men. It’s like drinking in the cave.”
4) The West Wing
This is, quite simply, the single greatest TV scene about alcoholism ever performed or written. It’s also something like an echo chamber: not only is White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (the late John Spencer) forced to recount a relapse, but he’s struggling with himself all over again as he relishes every last detail. The interviewer wants him to cut to the chase, but that’s not going to happen. He takes his time. He rhapsodizes about Johnnie Walker Blue the way poets describe love. Since Spencer was also vocal about his own recovery, it’s impossible to see where the actor begins and the character ends.
5) New Girl
It’s played for laughs — but it’s also somehow affecting. Self-exiled to a photo booth, New Girl’s Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) is mournful in the way only a drunk can be. The metaphor is simple and clear — he’s “trapped” somewhere he can easily escape.
6) The Wire
Twenty seconds. Cause and effect. Point A to Holy Shit. The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), flawed detective, has a rough go of it over five seasons — losing nearly everything. This scene quickly tells McNulty’s struggles, but I’ve actually seen this exact Point A — someone swearing they’re not going to drive — at least a dozens of times in my own life.
7) The Andy Griffith Show
Otis Campbell was “the town drunk” on The Andy Griffith Show. In fact, it’s so quaint that the show seems to take place in an alternate universe — I’m not sure even 1960s audiences didn’t view it that way. Still, it’s remarkable to see a character whose only function in the script is to be The Alcoholic. When Don Knotts condescends and says it’s time to see if Otis is “fit to take [his]place in society again,” it’s confusing since Otis’s place in society is pretty straightforward.
8) ER
It’s kind of a cheat to use this montage of ER’s Dr. Abby Lockhart’s alcoholism, but I think it’s crudely effective. It plays like the perfect snapshot of a drunk’s downward spiral, told in 90 seconds. It’s also the most depressing highlight reel ever of a deeply flawed person. (Complete with Stanley Tucci!) I also like how there’s no resolution at the end.
9) Star Trek
I’m not even sure where to start with this. Scotty was always up to hijinks, but this is just downright bonkers. “Look for any way to stimulate the senses,” Captain Kirk commands his crew, in order to distract their alien visitors. Scotty immediately goes for the booze. The next three minutes follow the Scotsman as he tries to go drink-for-drink with a humanoid alien. There are even fake bagpipes on the soundtrack at one point. “More of this?” Scotty offers. “Anything,” the alien responds. Insane.
10) Community
One of my favorite shows is this deceptively complex sitcom, which has more moving parts in a script than a Boeing 767. In the episode “Mixology Certification,” the community-college study group learns that Troy (Donald Glover) is turning 21. Everyone sees this as a call to action to celebrate Troy’s first legal drink. Midway through, it’s clear that they’re simply going through the motions and that it’s the most disappointing field trip ever. (What’s ironic is that co-star Gillian Jacobs is not just the resident recovery girl on Netflix’s current Love, but she’s never had a drink in real life.) More than anything, I identify with Troy’s disappointment as all of his friends get drunker and drunker on his birthday, leaving him to be the only one who can take care of them.
BONUS: Cheers
NBC’s Cheers aired for 11 seasons so when the sitcom ended its run, it was an event. In fact, it was a live event, televised nationally from an actual Boston bar. Jay Leno desperately tried to corral a runaway conversation with the actors, who were completely and utterly bombed. There was always something monumentally depressing about this to me. Deep in celebration, the actors were far less fun to be around than their characters — and, at a young age, I suddenly understood the difference.
A version of this article previously appeared at AfterParty.