The television show Cheers is one of the greatest TV sitcoms of all time with some of the funniest comedy moments. So when it came to an end it was one of the biggest television events of the 1990s, drawing viewers back to the Boston bar for one final night with Sam Malone and the gang. But for Ted Danson, the end of an 11-season run barely registered because his life away from the set had become far more consuming.During a recent episode of Team Coco’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Danson spoke with guest Jake Johnson about the actor’s Cheers fandom and his own early years in Hollywood. When Johnson asked about the period surrounding the show’s conclusion, the Cheers star offered a startlingly blunt account of how little room he had left to process the professional milestone. He explained:People say, 'What was it like? What did you do when she was over?' I said, 'I had fucked up my life so much that I didn't even realize Cheers was over.’ Cheers aired its finale May 20, 1993, ending a run that began in 1982. For millions of viewers, it was a major goodbye to characters who had occupied the same corner of prime time for more than a decade. Danson’s memories of that period are apparently much less nostalgic.The actor said he barely knew himself during the show’s final year and described the experience as a fast, painful course in growing up. His comments also make clear that he was not simply worried about losing a steady job or escaping the long shadow of one of the best TV bartenders, Sam Malone. He was trying to rebuild the person who would walk away from the bar once the lights went out.(Image credit: NBC, Paramount Television)That work led Danson to seek help outside the familiar orbit of Hollywood. He recalled driving to Long Beach to visit a therapist and mentor who introduced him to a different combination of emotional work and spirituality. He continued:I wanted to stop being a liar. I wanted to be emotionally mature. I wanted to change massively. And I went for it…. I drove down to Long Beach to my mentor who was a therapist, [an] Iranian fellow, who was just absolutely amazing. So I got a whole different kind of therapy spirituality kind of thing.Danson did not present the change as something that happened automatically once Cheers ended. The way he tells it, the final season overlapped with a deliberate effort to confront his behavior and develop an emotional maturity he felt he lacked. That makes his recollection a sort of personal reset that happened to coincide with one of the most well-regarded series finales.His career certainly did not end with Sam turning off the lights. The longtime television fixture later led Becker, played a wonderfully smug version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm and reached another generation as Michael on The Good Place. He now stars in A Man on the Inside (streaming with a Netflix subscription) which reunited him with Good Place creator Mike Schur and gave him another television role built around starting over later in life.It is easy to imagine Cheers ending as the defining rupture in Danson’s story. He remembers something messier. While the country was saying goodbye to Sam Malone, the actor was too busy figuring out who Ted Danson was supposed to become next.All 11 seasons of Cheers is available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription.