We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
The “Cheers” writing team made the marital misfortunes of Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) a big part of her lore, but real-world events inspired one of Carla’s most memorable storylines. In Season 5, Bruins goalie Guy Édouard Raymond “Eddie” LeBec (Jay Thomas) pops into the bar, and he and Carla begin dating. During his nine-episode arc, they get married and he leaves professional hockey to skate as a penguin in an ice show.
Eddie’s run on “Cheers” ended in Season 8; he was killed by a Zamboni off-screen after Thomas made disparaging remarks about Perlman on the radio. When asked what it was like being on “Cheers,” he cited kissing Carla as a job hazard and said he should get combat pay for performing romantic scenes with her. Perlman heard his comments and informed writer Ken Levine, who brainstormed a way to handle the situation.
In a 2006 post to his blog titled “The Kiss of Death for Eddie LeBec,” Levine outlined exactly why and how Eddie had to go. He recalled, “[Thomas] said something to the effect of ‘[being on “Cheers”] is brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.’ … To explain his departure we decided to just kill him … We were worried that we wouldn’t be able to use the name Zamboni but the company loved it.”
James Burrows confirmed why Jay Thomas was fired from Cheers
The writing team used Eddie’s death by trademarked ice resurfacing machine to influence ongoing audience impressions about the character. At his funeral, Carla discovers that Eddie was a polygamist with a Carla-lookalike second wife, Gloria (Anne De Salvo). Back at the bar after a brawl between Eddie’s two families, fellow ice show penguin Gordie Brown (Thomas Haden Church) tells the women that Eddie died saving his life, and he gives Carla a note of apology from Eddie. This always-interesting storyline helped Eddie score a spot on our list of the best characters on “Cheers.”
Ken Levine wrote that the polygamy angle and funeral brawl were developed to provide “some comic spin for the story” and “something to discredit Eddie so the audience would ultimately be glad he was out of Carla’s life.”
“Cheers” creator and director James Burrows died at age 85 in June 2026, but he also mentioned the situation in his 2022 memoir, “Directed by James Burrows,” writing, “[Jay Thomas] insulted Rhea, which meant he insulted all of us. He crossed the family. … In our world, you don’t wind up sleeping with the fishes; you die a violent yet comedic death.”
Jay Thomas died in 2017, having downplayed the incident in an oral history of “Cheers” published by GQ five years earlier. “Look, I made jokes about kissing Murphy Brown [too],” he said. “But if that’s what cost me my job, my wife will probably say, ‘Hey a***hole, I told you so.'” Eddie himself might have offered similar advice in his gentler, French-Canadian manner: “Watch what you say, eh?”
