Moonlighting (TV series)
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| Moonlighting | |
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| Format | Comedy/Mystery/Romance |
| Run time | 42-44 minutes per episode |
| Creator | Glenn Gordon Caron |
| Starring | Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd, Allyce Beasley |
| Country | United States |
| Network | ABC |
| Original run | 3 March 1985 – 14 May 1989 |
| No. of episodes | 66 |
Moonlighting is a television series that first aired on ABC in the United States from 1985 to 1989 with a total of 66 episodes. The show stars Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives and is a mixture of drama, comedy and romance. The show's theme song is performed by popular jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a minor hit.
The first two seasons were released on Region 1 DVD in May 2005.
Contents |
Introduction
The series revolved around cases investigated by Blue Moon Investigations and its two partners, Madeline 'Maddie' Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (Bruce Willis). The show, with a mix of mystery, sharp dialogue and sexual tension between its two leads, introduced Bruce Willis to the world and brought Cybill Shepherd back into the spotlight after nearly a decade-long absence.
The show's storyline begins with the reversal of fortune of a former model, Hayes, who finds herself bankrupt after her accountant embezzles all of her liquid assets. She is left saddled with several failing businesses formerly maintained as tax write offs, one of which is a detective agency helmed by the devil-may-care Addison. In the pilot episode, he convinces Hayes to keep the business and run it in partnership with him.
The show also starred Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto, the firm's quirky receptionist who regularly answered the phone in rhyming couplets. In later seasons, Curtis Armstrong joined the cast as Herbert Viola, an investigator and a love interest for Agnes.
Format innovations
Moonlighting was one of the first successful examples of "dramedy". The show made use of fast-paced, overlapping dialogue between the two leads hearkening back to classic screwball comedy films, such as those of director Howard Hawks, but which also led to chronic delays in writing production during the series' five-year, off and on run.
One of the innovations Moonlighting brought to television was a technique called breaking the fourth wall. Fourth wall refers to the conventions separating the contrivances of a television program and its real audience, usually meaning that, at least within the confines of the show, the events and characters being presented are "real." Moonlighting broke with this convention, with many episodes including dialogue which made direct references to the scriptwriters, the audience, the network, or the series itself.
Although a few TV series had broken the "fourth wall" before, usually by airing a short segment at the beginning or the end of an episode so the stars could wish the audience a Merry Christmas or announce a milestone episode, Moonlighting was the first television series to weave self-referential dialogue directly into the show itself.
The series also embraced fantasy; the episode "Atomic Shakespeare" featured the cast performing a variation of Taming of the Shrew, complete with Shakespearean costumes. The episode was wrapped by segments featuring a teenager imagining the episode's proceedings because his mother forced him to do his homework instead of watching Moonlighting.
Production problems
The show was plagued by production problems throughout its run, and it became notorious for airing reruns when new episodes had not been completed in time for broadcast. The first two seasons of Moonlighting focused almost entirely on the two main characters, having them appear in almost every scene. According to Cybill Shepherd,
- "I left home at 5 A.M. each day. Moonlighting scripts were close to a hundred pages, half again as long as the average one-hour television series. Almost from the moment the cameras started rolling we were behind schedule, sometimes completing as few as sixteen episodes per season, and never achieving the standard twenty-two." [1]
Even with the introduction of co-stars to relieve the pressure on Shepherd and Willis, a number of other factors caused problems: writing delays, Shepherd's real-life pregnancy and a skiing accident in which Willis broke his collarbone.
Ratings
Although Moonlighting was a hit in the Nielsen ratings in its early seasons, the show's ratings began to decline after the 1987 episode in which Maddie and David consummated their romantic tension. Moonlighting is popularly cited as an example of a television show jumping the shark.
The show was also widely criticized for the following season's storyline, in which Maddie spent much of the season at her parents' home in Chicago (due, in fact, to Shepherd's pregnancy), robbing the show of its creative spark since Maddie and David rarely interacted. When Maddie returned to Los Angeles near the end of the season, the writers tried to create a new point of tension between the two by having Maddie spontaneously marry Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan), whom she met on the train back to LA. This was also widely criticized as a cynical and poorly executed plot development, and led to an even further ratings decline.
Cancellation
In the 1988-1989 TV season, the show's ratings declined precipitously. The series went on hiatus during the February sweeps, and returned on Sunday evenings in the spring of 1989. Six more episodes aired before the series was cancelled in May of that year.
In keeping with the show's tradition of "breaking the fourth wall", the last episode featured Maddie and David returning from Bert and Agnes' wedding to find the Blue Moon sets being taken away, and an ABC network executive waiting to tell them that the show had been cancelled. The characters then raced through the studio lot as the world of Moonlighting was slowly dismantled and another executive lectured them on the perils of losing their audience and how fragile romance is. The final scene is a message stating that Blue Moon Investigations ceased operations on the 14th May, 1989 — and the Anselmo case was never solved.
In a possible acknowledgement of the role the Walter Bishop storyline played in the show's decline, the network executive was played by Dennis Dugan, the same actor who had played Bishop, and was listed in the credits as Walter Bishop rather than by his real name.
As the show had not produced enough episodes to gain a syndication contract, following its original run it was not widely seen until its DVD release, although it occasionally appeared on cable channels (including W in Canada) in the late 1990s.
One Moonlighting fan website has compiled several additional "seasons" of fanfic.
Notes
- ^ Shepherd, Cybill (2000) Cybill Disobedience, Random House. ISBN 0091878071
Episodes
Season 1
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot (parts 1 and 2) | 3 March 1985 | After being left broke by her embezzling accountant, Maddie decides to sell off her few remaining businesses kept open as tax write-offs -- including Blue Moon Investigations. |
| "Gunfight at the So-So Corral" | 5 March 1985 | Maddie arrives for her first day of work to find there are no cases on the books, so David poaches one from a rival agency. Unfortunately, the case puts them in the middle of two rival underworld hitmen. |
| "Read the Mind — See the Movie" | 12 March 1985 | An old-friend of Maddie hires Blue Moon to provide security for SRT industries, and investigate a case of industrial espionage. |
| "The Next Murder You Hear" | 19 March 1985 | Maddie and David investigate the on-air shooting of a romantic talk-show host. |
| "Next Stop Murder" | 26 March 1985 | Agnes DiPesto, Maddie and David are trapped on a "murder mystery train," hosted by a famous mystery author. Unfortunately, a real murder occurs and the trio must solve the case. |
| "The Murder's in the Mail" | 2 April 1985 |
Season 2
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde?" | 24 September 1985 | |
| "The Lady in the Iron Mask" | 1 October 1985 | David and Maddie are hired to track down an ex-boyfriend. Unfortunately 24 hours after they find him, he is murdered and shown to be a released convicted rapist. |
| "Money Talks -- Maddie Walks" | 8 October 1985 | Maddie learns where her ex-accountant has bought a new life with her stolen money. She confronts him and demands her money back. David follows to prevent Maddie from embarrassing herself. The big confrontation involves a high stakes poker game. |
| "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" | 15 October 1985 | Orson Welles introduces this tribute to 1940s film noir. Maddie and David learn of a murder committed at a plosh 1940s Big Band night club. Each dreams the role of the convicted murder and the circumstances leading to the crime. Unfortunately each projects their own bias into their dream sequence. |
| "My Fair David" | 29 October 1985 | |
| "Knowing Her" | 12 November 1985 | Maddie takes a wealthy female client who is being harassed by her rich husband. David used to date her, wants to help her, but becomes caught in the middle when the husband is murdered. |
| "Somewhere Under the Rainbow" | 19 November 1985 | A woman is being chased by several men, and hires the agency to protect. She claims to be a leprechaun and Maddie and David must sort out fact from fiction. |
| "Portrait of Maddie" | 26 November 1985 | Maddie becomes obsessed with discovering the reasons behind the suicide of a man who had painted her portrait. |
| "Atlas Belched" | 10 December 1985 | |
| "Twas the Episode Before Christmas" | 17 December 1985 | A baby is left in Agnes' apartment, and Blue Moon must decide what to do when the baby's mother shows up for help. |
| "The Bride of Tupperman" | 14 January 1986 | |
| "North by North Dipesto" | 21 January 1986 | |
| "In God We Strongly Suspect" | 11 February 1986 | |
| "Every Daughter's Father Is a Virgin" | 18 February 1986 | Maddie asks David to follow her father after suspecting he is cheating on her mother. |
| "Witness for the Execution" | 11 March 1986 | |
| "Sleep Talkin' Guy" | 1 April 1986 | |
| "Funeral for a Door Nail" | 29 April 1986 | |
| "Camille" | 13 May 1986 | A conwoman becomes a national hero after accidentally preventing the assassination of a politician. David and Maddie decide to cash in on the publicity by giving her a job. |
Season 3
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "The Son Also Rises" | 23 September 1986 | David's father arrives and tells his son that he is getting married. |
| "The Man Who Cried Wife" | 30 September 1986 | A man hires Blue Moon to find his wife. She is harassing him with phone calls... but he is certain that he killed her during an argument. |
| "Symphony in Knocked Flat" | 14 October 1986 | After complaining about uninspired dates, Maddie is challenged by David to let him provide a "fine" evening out, while she provides him with a "fun" one. |
| "Yours, Very Deadly" | 28 October 1986 | |
| "All Creatures Great and... Not So Great" | 11 November 1986 | A Catholic priest hires Blue Moon to find a woman he has fallen in love with during confession -- but does not know her name, or what she looks like. |
| "Big Man on Mulberry Street" | 18 November 1986 | Maddie discovers that David was once married when his ex Brother-in-law dies and he must go to the funeral. |
| "Atomic Shakespeare" | 25 November 1986 | William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew seen through the eyes of a teenage Moonlighting fan. |
| "It's a Wonderful Job" | 16 December 1986 | Maddie wishes she'd never kept open Blue Moon Investigations. Her guardian angel obliges, and shows her how it could have been. See It's a Wonderful Life. |
| "The Straight Poop" | 6 January 1987 | Rona Barrett arrives at Blue Moon to investigate why there is no new episode, and why David and Maddie can't get along. Clip show. |
| "Poltergeist III -- Dipesto Nothing" | 13 January 1987 | Bert is hired full-time and put to work on cases. Jealous of his increasing status at Blue Moon, Agnes takes a case turned down by Maddie and David — to investigate a haunting. |
| "Blonde on Blonde" (1) | 3 February 1987 | Maddie reveals to David that she feels closed-in and needs to do something wild and crazy. David follows her to a club, but mistakenly ends up tailing a different girl. |
| "Sam & Dave" (2) | 10 February 1987 | David crashes a dinner date between Sam and Maddie. Sam asks Maddie to marry him. |
| "Maddie's Turn to Cry" (3) | 3 March 1987 | David finds out about Sam's proposal, and that Maddie has not yet given him an answer. Sam leaves. |
| "I Am Curious... Maddie" (4) | 31 March 1987 | Maddie and David sleep together. |
| "To Heiress Human" | 5 May 1987 |
Season 4
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "A Trip to the Moon" | 9 September 1987 | |
| "Come Back Little Shiksa" | 6 October 1987 | |
| "Take a Left at the Altar" | 13 October 1987 | |
| "Tale in Two Cities" | 3 November 1987 | |
| "Cool Hand Dave" (1) | 17 November 1987 | David finds out that Maddie is pregnant. While at the airport booking a flight to Chicago, David finds himself tricked into swapping places with a convict on his way to prison. |
| "Cool Hand Dave" (2) | 1 December 1987 | Mistakenly taken to prison under the name Scott Huntley, David must find a way to let Maddie know what has happened. |
| "Father Knows Last" | 15 December 1987 | David returns to Blue Moon to find the repo men clearing out the furniture, and the staff about to walk out having not been paid. Maddie's father finds out about her pregnancy and goes to see David in Los Angeles. |
| "Los Dos DiPestos" | 5 January 1988 | Agnes' mother arrives in Los Angeles for a visit, fresh from a holiday in Mexico. Someone is following her and Agnes and Bert must help her find out who and why. |
| "Fetal Attraction" | 19 January 1988 | David finds a partner to attend Lamaze classes with. Maddie makes preparations to return to Los Angeles. |
| "Tracks of My Tears" | 2 February 1988 | Maddie travels back to Los Angeles by train and meets Walter Bishop on the way. David and Maddie are finally reunited, but Maddie has some news for him. |
| "Eek! A Spouse!" | 9 February 1988 | Maddie's sudden marriage to Walter Bishop continues to make life at Blue Moon awkward. Maddie and David are hired by a woman to pay her husband's mistress to leave town. |
| "Maddie Hayes Got Married" | 1 March 1988 | David arranges a marriage ceremony for Maddie and Walter. |
| "Here's Living With You, Kid" | 15 March 1988 | Bert asks Agnes to move in with him. |
| "And the Flesh Was Made Word" | 22 March 1988 | Maddie and Walter have their marriage annulled. Blue Moon is hired by a business man to find the girl that his business partner is infatuated with. |
Season 5
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "A Womb With a View" | 6 December 1988 | Maddie's baby is given the chance to see his future parents from within the womb. Maddie loses the baby. |
| "Between a Yuk and a Hard Place" | 13 December 1988 | In the wake of her miscarriage, Maddie throws herself into her work and David decides to get away. |
| "The Color of Maddie" | 20 December 1988 | |
| "Plastic Fantastic Lovers" | 10 January 1989 | Blue Moon is hired by a victim of botched plastic surgery. |
| "Shirts and Skins" | 17 January 1989 | The boys and girls of Blue Moon investigate different sides of the same sexual harassment case. |
| "Take My Wife, For Example" | 7 February 1989 | An infamous divorce lawyer, "The Barracuda", hires Blue Moon to help save a marriage. |
| "I See England, I See France, I See Maddie's Netherworld" | 14 February 1989 | A client dies in Maddie's office. His friend arrives looking for him and reveals that they have won the lottery... and he has only half the winning ticket. |
| "Those Lips, Those Lies" | 2 April 1989 | David's brother, Richie, arrives with his new girlfriend and asks a favor from David and Maddie. |
| "Perfetc" | 9 April 1989 | A dying man hires Blue Moon to help prove that he committed the "perfect crime". |
| "When Girls Collide" (1) | 16 April 1989 | Maddie's cousin Annie arrives in Los Angeles. |
| "In 'n Outlaws" | 23 April 1989 | Agnes misses Bert's family reunion when she is called for jury duty. |
| "Eine Kleine Nacht Murder" (2) | 30 April 1989 | Maddie witnesses a murder and is placed under police protection. Annie moves in with David. |
| "Lunar Eclipse" | 14 May 1989 | Annie's husband arrives at Blue Moon. David breaks it off with Annie for her own good. Bert and Agnes get married. |
