Seeing Thomas Haden Church in this episode made me wish that Wings wasn't butchered on streaming services. Neither Hulu nor CBS All Access (even if I was willing to subscribe to Yet Another Streaming Service) has all the episodes available. There are random gaps due to music licensing or other nonsense that I, as a viewer, don't give a crap about—I just want to watch the show, the whole show.
But guest stars aside, it sounds like the motivation for this episode was pretty petty. Allegedly, Eddie LeBec got killed off because Jay Thomas (the actor who portrayed him) made a public remark about Rhea Perlman (Carla) on some radio appearance? And because of that, Cheers' producers decided to "punish" him by having his character die? Given the actor switcheroo shenanigans they played with Gary, basically taking whichever of two actors was available to shoot any given episode, I don't see why they didn't just re-cast Eddie and call it a day. Maybe the real reason was that the writers didn't know how to get Carla and Eddie out of the "absentee husband" situation the writers put them in. (Even if so, that's also a poor excuse. They could have mined some more jokes from Eddie always being on the road, then had him quit the ice show to be home with his family more.)
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2020-08-17T00:02:54Z
Seeing Thomas Haden Church in this episode made me wish that Wings wasn't butchered on streaming services. Neither Hulu nor CBS All Access (even if I was willing to subscribe to Yet Another Streaming Service) has all the episodes available. There are random gaps due to music licensing or other nonsense that I, as a viewer, don't give a crap about—I just want to watch the show, the whole show.
But guest stars aside, it sounds like the motivation for this episode was pretty petty. Allegedly, Eddie LeBec got killed off because Jay Thomas (the actor who portrayed him) made a public remark about Rhea Perlman (Carla) on some radio appearance? And because of that, Cheers' producers decided to "punish" him by having his character die? Given the actor switcheroo shenanigans they played with Gary, basically taking whichever of two actors was available to shoot any given episode, I don't see why they didn't just re-cast Eddie and call it a day. Maybe the real reason was that the writers didn't know how to get Carla and Eddie out of the "absentee husband" situation the writers put them in. (Even if so, that's also a poor excuse. They could have mined some more jokes from Eddie always being on the road, then had him quit the ice show to be home with his family more.)