How Jay Thomas Got His Cheers Character Eddie LeBec Killed Off
"Cheers," 30 years removed from its series finale, remains one of the most important and beloved shows in the history of television. It made several careers and even spawned the most successful spin-off in history with "Frasier," a show that was revived once again recently. The point is that the legacy of "Cheers" is still very much felt today. While many of the central and supporting cast members still benefit from that legacy, there's one who most certainly doesn't: Jay Thomas. The comedian and disc jokey played Eddie, the husband of Rhea Perlman's Carla on the show.
As fans may well recall, Eddie was killed off during "Cheers" season 8 in the episode "Death Takes a Holiday on Ice." But why did the creators decide to kill off Thomas' character? It had to do with public comments he made about Perlman. Thomas himself was responsible for sealing Eddie's fate.
The actor, at the time, hosted a radio show. As explained in legendary TV director James Burrows' book "Directed by James Burrows" (via Page Six), a caller phoned into the show and asked Thomas what it was like being on "Cheers." He replied by saying, "'It's brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.'" That was that. Perlman heard it and Eddie's death ticket was punched. As Burrows explains in the book:
"That was it. He insulted Rhea, which meant he insulted all of us. He crossed the family. Jay was fired unceremoniously. Since he was no longer on the show, Eddie also had to go. In our world, you don't wind up sleeping with the fishes; you die a violent yet comedic death."
Eddie needed to die
And so it was decided that Eddie would be killed off in, as Burrows put it, in a violent and comedic fashion. On the show, Eddie was a goalie for the Boston Bruins hockey team who eventually wound up working as part of an ice show. That gave the writers the fuel they needed to come up with his cause of death. Ken Levine, one of the writers on the show, wrote on his blog in 2006 about killing off Eddie and explained the process they went through in plotting out the episode:
"To explain his departure we decided to just kill him [...] First off, we needed a funny demise. Eddie, by then, was working as a penguin in an ice show so we arrived at a Zamboni machine accident. (We were worried that we wouldn't be able to use the name Zamboni but the company loved it.) Then we needed (a) some comic spin for the story, and (b) something to discredit Eddie so the audience would ultimately be glad he was out of Carla's life. The answer was at the funeral Carla learned that he was a polygamist, and had a second wife."
Indeed, Eddie was killed by, of all things, a Zamboni. To keep this from out-and-out devastating Carla, it was revealed that her husband actually had a second wife named Gloria, played by Anne DeSalvo. Thomas only ever appeared on nine episodes of the show but, since the series ran for 11 seasons, he certainly could have appeared in more had he not made those comments about Perlman.
The episode was actually very well received, with Ken Levine and David Isaacs receiving an Emmy nomination for their work on the script. Perlman and the "Cheers" gang got their revenge and one of the show's many Emmy nominations. Everyone came out ahead, except for Jay Thomas.