"Depressed? Depressed is what I was before I started feeling really bad and became what I am now. Do you know what I just did? I just called a radio station. They were giving away money, and I thought if I could only win some.We've been at this for months, and it's not getting any better. This business is a giant pit I'm throwing my money into." - Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes
Moonlighting: Seasons One and Two DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Ex-model Maddie Hayes' (Cybill Shepherd) seemingly perfect life has suddenly developed a few problems. First, her accountant absconded with all her money, leaving the former Blue Moon Shampoo girl penniless. Well, almost penniless. She still has her house, her car, and majority stake in a few failing businesses that were set up as tax shelters. Which leads to problem number two - City of Angels detective agency, one of those money-losing enterprises. Specifically, its smart-mouthed lead investigator, David Addison (Bruce Willis), with whom Maddie immediately clashes after delivering the news that the agency is to be closed and its assets liquidated. After reluctantly working with David to solve a mystery involving a dead pilot, a murdered punk, a mysterious watch, and an ex-Nazi, Maddie faces her biggest problem yet: she reluctantly agrees to team up with David and keep the newly renamed Blue Moon Detective Agency open. And so begins the loudest, door slamming-est love/hate business and romantic partnership in TV history.
When Moonlighting premiered in March 1985, it was unlike any other TV detective series. Detective shows that paired male and female investigators had been around for years - Hart to Hart, Remington Steele, McMillan and Wife. Moonlighting, however, has more in common with screwball comedies of the 1930s than with these other crime shows. Its characters speak in a style of fast-paced banter that would have been right at home in The Awful Truth or Bringing Up Baby. Screwball comedies were known for their adept blend of the sophisticated and the stupid, a combination perfected by Moonlighting's cast and creative team. The series throws out rapid-fire repartee and overlapping dialogue while trusting that viewers will be able to keep up. This refined verbal humor is often accompanied by lowbrow physical gags, like pie fights and wacky chases. Watching Moonlighting: Seasons One and Two some twenty years after the series premiered, two things are striking. The first is how fresh and exciting the series still is. The second is no subsequent series has even come close to duplicating its achievements.
The genius of Moonlighting is that it takes the detective genre seriously while simultaneously sending it up. "Portrait of Maddie" centers on the suicide of an artist who, unknown to Maddie, had just completed a painting of her. She becomes obsessed with the painting and convinces a skeptical David to help her investigate the suicide. The result is a modern day noir that mixes equal portions of Portrait of Jennie and Laura. Until, of course, the final reel, which involves a comically paint-spattered gun battle. In "Knowing Her," David's ex-girlfriend (China Beach's Dana Delaney) asks for the agency's help in dealing with her violent husband. David finds himself slowly falling back in love with this face from the past while Maddie becomes increasingly jealous. How does this emotionally resonant whodunit end? With a wacky car chase involving a hearse, a funeral procession, and a coffin that joins in a baseball game.
In a few episodes, investigation plots are thrown out all together in favor of character development. One particularly strong episode is "Every Daughter's Father is a Virgin" which features Robert Webber and Eva Marie Saint as Maddie's parents. Mrs. Hayes confides to her daughter that she fears her husband is having an affair with someone from his office.and that the woman has followed them to L.A. for the wedding of a co-worker. When Maddie decides to tail her own father, David volunteers to do the job instead. Moonlighting is known for its canny use of popular music, and this episode is no exception. In an extremely memorable scene, David follows Mr. Hayes to the tune of the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." This riveting extended sequence - much of it involving absolutely no dialogue - comes to a powerful conclusion when David confirms that Mr. Hayes is, indeed, having an affair. Equally intense are subsequent scenes where Maddie uses her handbag to pummel her father in a parking lot and then apologizes for her behavior in an emotional hotel room scene. For a show that can often be silly, Moonlighting is never afraid to get serious.
Perhaps the most lauded episode in the first two seasons is "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice." Introduced by Hollywood legend Orson Welles (in a clip filmed a week before his death), this innovative episode is partially filmed in black and white. After meeting with a client in a beautiful but dilapidated ballroom, David and Maddie discover that it was the setting of the infamous 1946 Flamingo Cove Murder, in which a beautiful singer and her lover conspired to kill her husband. That night, each dreams about what might have happened forty years ago, imagining themselves as the singer and her lover. In Maddie's dream, the singer is an innocent victim sucked in by cruel predator. In David's dream, the lover is a poor dupe who falls prey to a manipulative femme fatale. This beautifully filmed episode was meant to capture the disparate moods of '40s "women's flicks" like Mildred Pierce and the bare-knuckled, male-centered noir of Humphrey Bogart films. It does that and more. We actually learn more about Dave and Maddie in their twenty minute dream sequences than we do about most TV characters in an entire season. This episode also set the stage for future genre-bending episodes of the series, including "Atomic Shakespeare" and "It's a Wonderful Job."
Moonlighting's main characters often break the fourth wall, stopping the action to comment on the sometimes ridiculous plot developments. They even refer to themselves as characters while acknowledging that they are on a TV show. A terrific example is "Camille," the final episode of season two. [SPOILER ALERT: If you've never seen this episode, skip this paragraph. We don't want to spoil your fun!] Whoopi Goldberg guest stars as Camille Brand, a scam artist who accidentally prevents the assassination of a senator while escaping from a corrupt cop (played by Brat Packer Judd Nelson). She's soon hailed as a national hero, and David convinces Maddie that a national hero is just what the agency need to attract business. Camille agrees to take the job because she figures Blue Moon Detective Agency is so backwater that her pursuer will never find her there. He does, and the resulting chase leads all of the principal characters off of the show's set and onto the studio's back lot. The craziness doesn't stop there - the episode ends mid-chase when the Moonlighting crew decides to pack up for the season. A dismayed Whoopi and Judd are whisked away to their waiting limos while David and Maddie bid each other a wistful farewell for the summer. The ending comes as a complete surprise, and is complex in its lunacy.like its assertion that the secondary characters are played by actors but that David and Maddie are real.
Speaking of actors, they're all wonderful. Shepherd is, of course, a radiant beauty. She's also a gifted comedienne and a master of the slow burn. (I'm also a fan of her whooping scream. The sound of her yelling "Stop it!" over and over again while jumping up and down on a sofa in "Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde?" never fails to provoke a laugh.) Willis is a perfect match for Shepherd. He is simultaneously childish and manly, his crooked grin not yet the smug parody it would later become. Allyce Beasley, as the agency's rhyming secretary, Agnes Dipesto, is also charming. Her character would become overused (and underdeveloped) in subsequent seasons as pregnancies and behind-the-scenes strife sidelined the show's leads, but seasons one and two feature just the right amount of Ms. Dipesto.
If Moonlighting was like nothing else on TV when it first premiered, there has been nothing like it since. Its heady mix of comedy - high and low - with drama and suspense is still unparalleled. Perhaps TV execs don't think that today's attention spans are capable of handling the lengthy monologues, snappy banter, and fast-paced style that made the series so unique. But one thing's for sure - despite its stars' big hair and bigger shoulder pads, Moonlighting is vital and current. Maybe it is just ahead of its time.
It must be noted that the episode running times are wildly inconsistent. The majority of the episodes clock in around forty-nine minutes. Several are only forty-five minutes, however, and "Twas the Episode Before Christmas" runs a paltry forty minutes. It's impossible for me to tell whether the shorter episodes are the syndication cuts, whether they've been time compressed, or - and this seems unlikely - whether these time variations date back to the original broadcasts. Whatever the explanation, it doesn't feel as if anything is missing, and the episodes are just as entertaining as ever.
The twenty-three regular episodes and the pilot film that make up Moonlighting: Seasons One and Two are divided onto six discs. The discs are housed in clear plastic holders that are "bound" together book-style. The cleverly designed purple-hued cover features Shepherd and Willis in a giant moon overlooking a cityscape. Shepherd and Willis are actually printed on a piece of clear plastic which shows through to disc one on the inside of the case. The disc is imprinted with a moonscape, giving the cover image a simple yet effective 3-D feel. The remaining discs feature moonscapes paired with character photos. A pocket on the inside back cover holds an episode guide. The disc menus - featuring incidental music from the series - allow viewers to play all of the episodes or choose an individual one. The episodes are divided into chapters, but there are no scene selection menus.
