Title: Death Takes a Holiday on Ice
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Ken Levine and David Isaacs
Air Date: November 9, 1989
Previous: The Storks Bring a Crane
Next: For Real Men Only
Guest Starring: Kevin Conroy, Anne De Salvo, Thomas Haden Church, Eric Christmas
"Death Takes a Holiday on Ice" is the 7th episode of the eighth season of Cheers.
Boston Red Sox player Daryl Mead (Kevin Conroy) is in the bar, and Carla is all over him. Daryl's pretty receptive to her flirtations, but Carla stops when she remembers the inconvenient fact that she's married to Eddie. As she complains about his inattentiveness to the bar, she's called up by the ice show, who have some news.
Eddie's dead, baby. Seems while the show was doing clean-up, one of the other penguins nearly fell into a ice resurfacer. Eddie shoved the man out of the way, and got shredded. Carla seems to take this... surprisingly well, actually, much to the distress of the gang.
The day of Eddie's funeral comes, and while the service is dignified, a problem soon becomes apparent when the priest calls for "Mrs. LeBec" to step forward, Carla steps forward... and so does another woman.
Kevin Conroy later became famous as the voice of Batman in various Warner Brothers cartoons. Thomas Haden Church got one of his first acting gigs as Gordie, the man whose life Eddie saved.
Tropes:
- Angst? What Angst?: In-universe, Carla is surprisingly calm about her husband's sudden and horrific death. Until the funeral, at least.
- Bait-and-Switch: At the end, Norm tells Carla it's a nice thing she's done. Not doing an apparent good deed for Gloria, but rather getting Cliff to leave several hours early.
- But Now I Must Go: Having delivered a final letter from Eddie to Carla (and not Gloria), Gordie solemnly declares "my work here is done" and leaves.
- Catfight: The end result of Carla and Gloria meeting each other, which then turns into a massive brawl.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Gordie Brown, the man who Eddie gave his life to save, reappears at the end of the episode.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Frasier tries giving Carla advice about holding in grief and how unhealthy it is, only for it to become clear he's got his own issues about the death of Hester Crane he's not dealing with.Frasier: Oh, mommy! Mommy! Why you?!
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Gordie mutters that Eddie hurt his thumb throwing him out of the way of the ice resurfacer.
- Continuity Nod: As established before, Eddie's real first name is Guy.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Carla's passive-aggressive revenge is having Cliff shuttle Gloria back to her house. As Gloria leaves the bar, Cliff begins one of his stories about the derivation of "Gloria"...
- Dark and Troubled Past: Yet more of that horrific Indiana backstory from Woody, who tells Sam despite all the alarming stories about Hanover, he's not been to that many funerals. Most of his family were just maimed, not killed. One uncle of his managed to live past his nineties, and still had both his ears.
- Dead Man Writing: Eddie left behind a note for Carla, an "in the event of my death" note in which he admits that he knocked another woman up, and married her because he had to.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Eddie, last having been seen in "Call Me Irresponsible", is killed off-screen getting shredded by an ice resurfacer instantly. And then, just to add insult to death, he turns out to have been cheating on Carla for the last two years, having another wife and two children he never told Carla about. Out-of-universe, the original explanation given was that audiences didn't like Carla being married. Years later, it turned out the actual reason was Jay Thomas had disparaged Rhea Perlman on the radio.
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Carla, who has been viciously paranoid about Eddie cheating on her their whole marriage, seriously considers cheating on him with Daryl, who has no problem with her being married. Then it turns out Eddie's been cheating on her for a good long time.
- Has a Type: Eddie did apparently. Gloria is basically a taller Carla.
- Oh, Crap!: Father Barry's reaction when both Carla and Gloria step forward and identify as the Widow LeBec.
- Pass the Popcorn: The only person who doesn't get involved in the funeral brawl is Norm, who leans back and gets out a can of beer he brought along.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: As noted above, and as recounted by writer Ken Levine here
, Eddie LeBec was killed off because Jay Thomas insulted Rhea Perlman's appearance on his radio show. - Secret Other Family: Turns out that Eddie had a second wife who looked a lot like Carla. And who he had twins with.
- Skewed Priorities:
- Sam's disgust at Eddie is not so much cheating on his wife, but the thought of being married to both of them.
- Cliff interrupts when Carla and Gloria start talking about where they conceived their kids, declaring it makes him sick... because the cars aren't American.
- You Need to Get Laid: When Rebecca tries offering Carla sympathy, Carla interrupts to tell her that before she does so, she should go out and sleep with someone first.
