Moonlighting (TV series)
| Moonlighting | |
|---|---|
| File:Moonlighting-cast.jpg | |
| Created by | Glenn Gordon Caron |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Cybill Shepherd Allyce Beasley |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 66 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 42-44 minutes per episode |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | 3 March, 1985 – 14 May, 1989 |
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.
Introduction
The series revolved around cases investigated by Blue Moon Investigations and its two partners, Madelyn '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
The series was created by one of the producers of the similar Remington Steele with the network explictly wanting a "boy/girl detective show" ala Remington Steele. The tone of the series itself was left up to the production staff to come up with, resulting in Moonlighting becoming one of the first successful type of "dramedy" themed television series. 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; in season two, the show aired "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", an episode that featured two lengthy and elaborately produced black and white dream sequences. The episode was about a murder that had occurred in the 1940s that David and Maddie are told about by a client who hired them to unsuccessfully find out if his wife was cheating on him. Maddie and David feud over the details of the crime, which involve a man and woman who were executed for the death of the woman's husband, with both claiming the other was the real killer and had implicated the other out of spite. After a fourteen minute set-up sequence, the show switched to two black and white dream sequences where the two dreamed their version of how the murder took place. The two sequences were filmed on different black and white film stock so that they would look like true period films. (On the commentary on the DVD it is said that they used black and white film instead of color so that the network wouldn't later use the color film).
ABC was still displeased with the episode however and fearing fan reaction to a popular show being shown in black and white, demanded a disclaimer be made at the beginning of the episode to inform viewers of the "black and white" gimmick for the episode. The show's producers hired Orson Welles to deliver the introduction, which ironically aired a few days after the actor's death.
Another famous fantasy episode was "Atomic Shakespeare", which 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.
Also, the show mocked its connection to the popular Remington Steele series by having Pierce Brosnan hop networks and make a cameo appearance as Steele in one episode.
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]
The delays became so great that even ABC mocked the lateness with an ad campaign showing network executives waiting impatiently for the arrival of new episodes at ABC's corporate headquarters. One episode featured television critic Jeff Jarvis in an introduction, sarcastically reminding viewers what was going on with the show's plot since it had been so long since the last new episode.
The episode, "The Straight Poop", also made fun of the episode delays by having Hollywood columnist, Rona Barrett, drop by the Blue Moon Detective Agency to figure out why David and Maddie can't get along. In the end, Rona gets them to apologize to one another, and promised the viewers that there was a new episode the following week.
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. To counter these problems, with the fourth season, the writers began to focus more of the show's attention on supporting cast members Agnes and Herbert, writing several episodes focusing on the two so that the show would be able to have episodes ready for airing.
Ratings
Although Moonlighting was a hit in the Nielsen ratings in its early seasons, the show's ratings began to decline after the season three finale, which infamously had Maddie and David consummate their relationship after three years of romantic tension. Moonlighting is popularly cited as an example of a television show jumping the shark due to the two sleeping together, which many felt destroyed the sexual tension that drove the show.
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 (fittingly titled "Lunar Eclipse") 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 was a message stating that Blue Moon Investigations ceased operations on the May 14, 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 Lifetime and Bravo in the U.S., and W in Canada) in the late 1990s. The show currently plays on ABC1 in the UK every weeknight at midnight GMT.
One Moonlighting fan website has compiled several additional "seasons" of fanfic.
Notes
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 | Blue Moon is hurting for cash, so David and Maddie do some moonlighting of their own for a collection agency. They stumble into a mystery when they discover a dead body that subsequently disappears. |
Season 2
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde?" | 24 September, 1985 | David's brother Richard breezes into town, throwing money right and left while putting the moves on Maddie. When David is cornered by a menacing stranger, he realizes that the source of Richard's wealth may not be legitimate. |
| "The Lady in the Iron Mask" | 1 October, 1985 | David and Maddie are hired by a woman in a veil to track down an ex-boyfriend who threw acid on her face in a fit of anger. She claims she wants to give him another chance, but shortly after they find him, he winds up dead. |
| "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 posh 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. Welles died five days before the episode was broadcast, and it was dedicated to his memory. |
| "My Fair David" | 29 October, 1985 | After walking in on an office limbo party, Maddie bets David that he can't act like a mature adult for one week as the two investigate the kidnapping of a famous concert pianist. |
| "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 her. 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 | David helps a young executive find his boss's prized Rolodex as Maddie considers selling the agency. |
| "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 | A wealthy man hires the detectives to find him a suitable wife. David and Maddie decide to go their separate ways, each finding a candidate based on their own ideals. |
| "North by North Dipesto" | 21 January, 1986 | Agnes, looking for some excitement, gets involved in a mystery after someone mistakes her for the owner of Blue Moon. |
| "In God We Strongly Suspect" | 11 February, 1986 | David and Maddie are hired to watch over the body of an escape artist whose widow believes he will come back from the dead and kill her. |
| "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 | An elderly man hires Maddie and David to witness his suicide and report the death as murder so his daughter can collect his life insurance. (This episode is notable as it contains the first non-imaginary kiss between the two.) |
| "Sleep Talkin' Guy" | 1 April, 1986 | David solves several big cases and simultaneously impresses Maddie, who is unaware he is using information passed to him by a prostitute with a client who talks in his sleep. |
| "Funeral for a Door Nail" | 29 April, 1986 | A man, depressed after the apparent death of his wife, decides to hire a hitman to kill him. After realising she is still alive, he hires Blue Moon to find her and stop the hitman. |
| "Camille" | 13 May, 1986 | A conwoman (Whoopi Goldberg) 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... to a woman David once spent a torrid night with. |
| "The Man Who Cried Wife" | 30 September, 1986 | A man hires Blue Moon to find his wife. He is certain that he killed her during an argument, but the day after he buried her in the woods, she started harassing him with threatening phone calls. |
| "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 | A married woman who has been writing to an unknown admirer hires David and Maddie to find him and tell him that she cannot continue the correspondence. |
| "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. All music in this episode from Billy Joel's album, The Bridge. |
| "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. David gets drunk and Sam takes him home. Sam returns to Maddie's house and spends the night with her. 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. |
| "I Am Curious... Maddie" (4) | 31 March, 1987 | Maddie reaches a decision about her feelings for both Sam and David. |
| "To Heiress Human" | 5 May, 1987 | It's the morning after the night before, and Maddie believes she's made a big mistake. |
Season 4
| Episode | First airdate | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| "A Trip to the Moon" | 9 September, 1987 | After a month of sleeping with David, Maddie wonders where the relationship is headed. |
| "Come Back Little Shiksa" | 6 October, 1987 | Maddie retreats to her parents' house in Chicago while David tries to find a client's one-night stand. |
| "Take a Left at the Altar" | 13 October, 1987 | David and Bert try to find a man who fails to show up for his wedding while Maddie continues to brood in Chicago. |
| "Tale in Two Cities" | 3 November, 1987 | Unaware that Maddie is pregnant, her parents throw a party for her in an attempt to cheer her up. |
| "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 | A woman comes to Blue Moon wondering if the man she's living with is really her husband. David tells Maddie he knows her better than she will admit. |
| "Plastic Fantastic Lovers" | 10 January, 1989 | Blue Moon is hired by a victim of botched plastic surgery. David and Maddie discuss whether their attraction was more than skin deep. |
| "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. |
DVD Release
The first two seasons were released on Region 1 DVD on May 31, 2005. Season three was released on February 7, 2006.
External links
- Encyclopedia of Television
- DavidandMaddie.com: A Moonlighting fansite
- Virtual Moonlighting
- Moonlighting Strangers Magazine with exclusive cast and crew interviews
