Woody Boyd from Cheers is a bartender, but also a Beekeeper! It’s always a good sign when a Beekeeper is famous enough that he has his own Wikipedia page, so let’s see how Woody does.

Woody’s shtick on the show is that he is the good-natured farmboy from Hanover, Indiana who comes to the big city (in this case Boston) and works at the bar. His most common joke is that he’s slow or naive. The keeping of bees only came up in one episode (Season Seven, Episode Three, “Executive Sweet”, an episode that does not merit its own Wikipedia page). Surely, if it only came up once, it can’t be that big a facet of the character can it? Well, let’s see. In that episode Woody inherits 4000 Buckfast bees from his uncle, saying “When I was a kid, you couldn’t keep me away from my uncle Fergie’s hives.” That resulted in the people around town giving young Woody the nickname “Woody the Beekeeper” which certainly seems like enough to get him on the board for my purposes.

With uncle Fergie retired, Woody eagerly takes these bees and keeps them in the bar’s office until he finishes his shift. This is a sitcom, so of course the bees manage to get loose, but using the proper gear and equipment and only getting stung a couple times, Woody gathers them up and takes them home. That’s the last thing we know for sure.

Does Woody keep up his apiarist ways? Well, there’s no canonical proof, but I think so. Bartending is Woody’s preferred occupation. It’s where he’s meant to be. He was never going to leave the bar. The show ends with Woody elected as a city councilman, but we know from his appearance on Frasier that he went back to Cheers when that was over (which is not a surprise given that once, when talking about reincarnation, he said he’d like to come back in his next life as the President of France, because he thought that would be good for the bar). But one of my oft-cited benefits of keeping bees is that it can be done while still pursuing other occupations. We know that Woody did other kinds of farming while he lived in the city, he’s shown successfully growing a large pumpkin, so given the lack of evidence otherwise and how excited he was to receive them, I think I can rule that Woody probably continued to be a Beekeeper.

With that settled, how does Woody rate for the things that PDR uses to rate a Beekeeper? Well, he has positives and negatives. The guy is so sweet it seems like he might be immune to Beekeeper Rage. He does talk once about the need to bottle up feelings, but given how often he actually does let those feelings out I don’t think he really lives by it. That’s just one of several wrong-headed old-fashioned ideas that were instilled in him back in Hanover. Perhaps that upbringing is also the root of one of his biggest character flaws: when things are going very well for Woody (such as when he was first acclimating to his wife’s wealthy lifestyle, or even just when winning a lot of money via gambling) he can be rude. When it comes down to it though, Woody is too nice for the anger or the rudeness to stick. If he realizes that he is lashing out or mistreating anyone he will generally back down and try to fix things because he feels bad about it. He just likes people too much.

Some might think he should be docked for being dumb, but not me. And anyway, Woody’s intellect comes out in other ways. In fact, back in Hanover he was occasionally teased for being a “brainiac” in spite of being held back in school more than once. He’s able to do things like memorize the serial numbers on his money in case he needs to prove that it is his and he’s proven more than once to be good at gambling on sports and playing poker, though it seems more instinct than anything. Also, he can sleep standing up.

Still, Woody doesn’t have any paranormal abilities (though Hanover is once cited as UFO capital of the world) and he’s no good in a fight and seems to be more susceptible than the average person to hypnosis. I can’t rate him any higher than:

Three Honeycomb out of Five.

I admit that I’d love to be able to give him a point for being an ubiquitous part of popular culture, similar to how Friar Tuck got a bonus for being legendary, but Woody doesn’t quite clear that bar. Cheers is still remembered as a classic sitcom, sure, but I can’t deny that its not the zeitgeist-dominating juggernaut it once was. Maybe someday the kids will learn about Cheers and it will be popular again. Then Woody can show up on the Frasier reboot and it will focus intently on his beekeeping. Until then, this is it.

Transcript of Rec#000437 21/08/15: The robot called Gladys Blue was part of Adam’s team before I was recruited and, until this conversation, I thought of her as a machine belonging of Adam and Dante. With a generally humanoid shape, Gladys seems to be made of some sort of blue plastic material that I will certainly need to investigate more closely in the future. Although I have seen Gladys wear a fairly unconvincing disguise to pose as an elderly human woman, I did not think of her then as “her” but as “it” instead. On the day of this interview, I found Gladys seated in front of the television, her preferred location when not working. I came in as an episode of Hospital of Disaster was ending and thought this would be a good time to see if the robot had any useful information.

OCTOBER: Can we turn off the TV for a bit?

GLADYS: Nah, I’ll just mute it. It’s just Celebrity Strip Poker, so I don’t need to hear it.

OCTOBER: Sure. You do that. So, how does this work, exactly? How do you do a conversation?

GLADYS: Um. Most of time? Reluctantly.

OCTOBER: Heh. No, I mean, do you have a list of potential answers you choose from, or do you take bits of what’s said and reconfigure it or something like that?

GLADYS: I genuinely have no idea. This is not where I assumed this conversation was going to go. The other guys said you were asking about ghosts and shit.

OCTOBER: Sorry, I’m… I just don’t know how to talk with you.

GLADYS: Seems like you’ve done fine talking to everyone else.

OCTOBER: Yeah. I guess… I admit I find it a bit weird to be talking to a robot.

GLADYS: Why’s that?

OCTOBER: I don’t know, it’s just a new concept for me. I suppose I should get used to it. I’ll probably be talking to a lot of robots in the future.

GLADYS: You think so?

OCTOBER: Well, I mean I know companies are working on artificial intelligence. Both Worldful and Atomical have been open it for years, and I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Technolocorp has been too. And it makes sense that they’d have the most advanced ones too.

GLADYS: Uh, sure I guess. Although technically, Technolocorp owns the Secret Government now, but they didn’t make us. We’re from some kind of alien technology or something.

OCTOBER: Alien?

GLADYS: Yeah. Maybe it was a crashed spaceship? I don’t know really. Dante knows more.

OCTOBER: Everyone says that about him.

GLADYS: Hey, until I started to watch television, everything I knew about the world came from two sources: Secret Government propaganda and that guy. Obviously he’ll know more than me.

OCTOBER: Well, what about the stuff you weren’t taught? You’re own lived experiences?

GLADYS: Ugh. I hate my lived experiences.

OCTOBER: What?

GLADYS: Listen, I’ve been through a lot of crap. Immediately after being coming out of the computer, I was drafted into the SecGov Army. I hated it.

OCTOBER: What happened in the army?

GLADYS: Well. During my first mission we accidentally went through some dimensional tear and ended up in the space between universes.

OCTOBER: What do you mean “between universes” exactly?

GLADYS: I dunno. That’s what they said it was.

OCTOBER: And what was it like between universes?

GLADYS: Swirly, mostly? I dunno. There were ghosts and I lost my old arm. I try not think too much about it. Later on a duplicate of me came back to the real world and started lasering SecGov City. I think maybe it was made out of my old arm?

This alien wizard showed up too and explained about it, but anyway, I hated it all.

OCTOBER: What did you hate about it? Personally I’d love to see big cosmic things like that.

GLADYS: Hey, fill your boots. You’re on the team now. You can have all the adventures and I’ll stay safe here and sell honey to tourists.

OCTOBER: That’s what you hate about it? The danger? You can feel fear?

GLADYS: Of course! Incessantly! You don’t? I don’t understand how everyone isn’t terrified! Or pissed off. Both! Always!

OCTOBER: You know, you don’t sound like I would have expected a robot to sound.

GLADYS: What did you expect?

OCTOBER: I don’t know. Flat. Stilted, maybe?

GLADYS: Like Adam?

OCTOBER: Heh. Yeah, Adam does sound more like a robot than you do, I guess. (brief pause) You said there that you didn’t always have television…

GLADYS: Yeah! I mean, I had access to the SecGov channels, but this: with real shows! I can’t believe I lived without it for so long!

OCTOBER: Do you think maybe you learned to talk from television?

GLADYS: No, I’ve been talking my whole life. But I did decide to start using a catchphrase after I saw how funny they were on Hot Angry Teachers. I’m gonna start saying “Watch your back, Stankface!” or something like that.

OCTOBER: Then you do take inspiration from the shows you watch?

GLADYS: Uh… I guess. I’ve never thought about it. Why?

OCTOBER: Well, when you described your time with the army, I couldn’t help but think that it sounds like the kind of plots you might see on a sci-fi show. Have you seen a lot of sci-fi?

GLADYS: I prefer comedies.

OCTOBER: So you don’t know about a show called AltWorld Patrol?

GLADYS: Sure I do. It gets mentioned on Buncha Losers all the time.

OCTOBER: Well, it has a…

GLADYS: Hey! Don’t spoil it! I’ve only seen up to the start of the Red Planet Renegades spinoff!

OCTOBER: So you have watched it?

GLADYS: Well, yeah. I wanted to get the jokes.

OCTOBER: Okay, so, my point, spoiler-free, is that AltWorld Patrol has a lot of strories about alternate universes and dimensions and duplicates and weird creatures. Do you think maybe you–

GLADYS: Wait, what are you… are you trying to prove I’m not sentient right now? You’re saying that I made up my past by regurgitating stuff I saw on television? That I’m just some mindless machine walking and talking in a parody of life? Is that what this is?

OCTOBER: I… uh… I…

GLADYS: Well, whatever. I don’t care.

OCTOBER: It’s just…

GLADYS: Seriously, I don’t care. I mean, do you walk around worrying if other people see you as a real person?

OCTOBER: Well, I… I mean, I could teach you the history of how society treats women, but…

GLADYS: I mean you personally. If I assumed you weren’t a thinking sentient being, would it matter much to you?

OCTOBER: I guess not. As long as you weren’t using it as an excuse to oppress or kill me or something.

GLADYS: Not planning on it. And I assume you don’t want to kill me.

OCTOBER: I do not.

GLADYS: Good, because I could kick your ass. My robot body was specifically designed for combat and I was trained by our own in-house assassin. The only thing that got me through all the those bad times I hated was that I can kick ass.

You piss me off and you better watch your back and whatnot.

OCTOBER: Fair enough. I was not planning on killing you.

GLADYS: So, we’re fine then.

(Almost a minute of silence during which a famous athlete on television has to remove his underwear because his bluff was called) Heh. Look at that chump.

OCTOBER: You know, I guess I am actually convinced you can think

GLADYS: Geez, I thought we covered how it doesn’t matter.

OCTOBER: But what I’m wondering now, is why you pretend to be human? With that wrinkly suit that Dante got you.

GLADYS: Because I’m a bright blue robot. That stands out in a human city and we’ve got enemies.

OCTOBER: But we have friends too. You haven’t told Devon the security guard that you’re a robot, have you?

GLADYS: Well, no… but he’s an old man. Probably he’d have a heart attack or something.

OCTOBER: Fair enough, I don’t intend to pressure you on it. It just makes me think.

GLADYS: Well, think in your own head then.

OCTOBER: Heh. And just for the sake of my recording, you don’t have anything particularly insightful to say about the paranormal or aliens or anything?

GLADYS: Well, have you watched AltWorld Patrol?

OCTOBER: A bit. I actually know someone who knows someone who used to be on it.

GLADYS: Well then, you probably know as much as I do. What you really need to do-

OCTOBER: Talk to Dante.

GLADYS: Exactly. He’s knows you’ve been talking to us. He’s already preparing his presentation.

OCTOBER: He what?

GLADYS: The guy loves presentations. You need to talk to him.

OCTOBER: I… I will. Maybe tomorrow. Let’s just watch some television for now.

Kaydee Festermeyer appeared on a cartoon called Dicktown, a comedy about the “boy detective” genre. Kaydee’s story is one of the show’s mysteries, and I’m about to reveal a bunch of spoilers, if you care about any of that.

Kaydee is definitely a person who found herself early, and so, even when she was a high school student she was essentially who she would be for life. That includes keeping bees. We don’t actually know the extent or details of her beekeeping, but she had what one character described as “a super dangerous beehive” in school. And as an adult, she still has bees, which she uses as a weapon. I am left assuming that she is a pretty successful beekeeper.

Also, she just has a general air of “badassery” that works for what I am seeking in a Beekeeper. She cures her own tobacco that she uses to make her own cigars, in school she had a pet raccoon named Ripper that she used to guard her locker because it didn’t lock, and as an adult she has an outfit/helmet that makes her look like some kind of motorcycle ninja while she drives a Polaris Slingshot, which is some manner of outlandish vehicle that really serves only to signify “cool” status. Oh, and she can set traps too. In general, she’s just tough.

In school, Kaydee was wrongfully blamed for a crime by the show’s protagonist John Hunchman. The school took the boy detective at his word and Kaydee wound up being expelled. As adults, she enacted a plan to get revenge on Hunchman, and it really seems like she’s got a bad case of the Beekeeper Rage. But actually, Kaydee is not as terminally rage-filled as it might first appear. She makes it clear that after being expelled, she went on with her life and put it all behind her until she moved back to town as an adult and found Hunchman still doing the detective thing. That brought up the bad memories and Hunchman didn’t even remember who she was. Her name aside, her anger is not something that had been festering, but was fresh and impulsive. Ultimately, after Hunchman realized he’d been wrong, Kaydee accepted his apology and ceased hostilities. She wanted justice to be done and once it was, she was able to back down. Good for her.

Four Honeycomb out of Five.