The Chris Moeller Archives

Come walk the night

Rejoice, O fellow fans of television DVDs, for Tuesday marks the product release of the best of the best. I speak of none other than ABC's epic romance "Moonlighting," and specifically of its finest hour, benchmark Season #3. Before Maddie Hayes sashayed-- and David Addison strutted-- into our lives, romance on American screens large and small had been long lost. Sure, Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers were heating up Saturday nights for the metamucil set on "Hart to Hart," but Sidney Sheldon just wouldn't cut it for the trend-setting young men and women of the "go-go '80s"-- like me. The grand tradition of "screwball" comedy, its fast-paced, overlapping dialogue, and electric picture stars, had gone out with the Second World War. Two generations had grown up without movies like "The Front Page," "His Girl Friday," and "Bringing Up Baby," without Hawks, Lubitsch, and Sturges. With "Moonlighting," the most glorious American film tradition in the lexicon was reborn, in living color, with comtemporary style and flair, and coming straight into our living rooms.

---

Cybill Shepherd was a has-been of the previous decade, her co-star Bruce Willis, a prematurely-balding never-was. She played a cool, elegant supermodel robbed of her earnings by a crooked accountant. He was the brash, incorrigible head detective of the money-hemorrhaging "City of Angels" private investigation agency, one of her few remaining financial assets. Together, they were "a tablespoon of moonbeams," to quote the product line of the "Blue Moon" shampoo Maddie Hayes made famous. Sparks flew. Dialogue flew. Tempers raised. Doors slammed. They spied and solved, wined and dined, struggled and scraped, laughed and cried.

Stars like Tim Robbins and John Goodman passed through before they had made their names. Others, like Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore, passed through at the peak of their star wattage. Orson Welles made an appearance, paying his final respects to the moving pictures he revolutionized. All the rules were broken. The fourth wall, obliterated. In one episode, the screen turned to black and white, and creator Glenn Gordon Caron paid homage to not one, but two of the great Hollywood film studios. In another, Bill Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" took on its most imaginative retelling, in full period costume and combined with the great works of the Young Rascals. One week's plot would ascend into slapstick. The next would evolve into a gripping character drama worthy of The Actor's Studio, even calling upon the master practitioners of the Method in guest roles-- the likes of stage legends Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber. In still another episode, America's greatest choreographer, Stanley Donen ("Singin' In the Rain,") was called upon to direct a pair of musical sequences. You never knew what was coming next.

TV viewers and ABC didn't know when it was coming next, either. Production was slowed by overruns and delays, vicious spats between cast and crew, Shepherd's real-life pregnancy in Season 4, and an industry-wide writers strike that impacted parts of two seasons. Loyal viewers waited weeks for new episodes. Caron's production company had been granted unprecedented creative freedom by the struggling network, and scripts were often being modified, and scenes re-shot even one day before they were scheduled to air. On occasion, the network wouldn't receive an episode at all, and viewers tuning in to see the new episode promoted during the week would find a re-run instead. If new episodes were particularly late in coming, the characters would appear as themselves before the episode, apologizing to viewers. The closest the show ever came to its season order of 22 episodes was 16.

By the beginning of Season 3, the show was peaking. Al Jarreau sang the show's theme over new souped-up credits. The stars were tabloid fodder on and off the set. Cybill was the new queen of prime-time, and Bruce Willis was taking the electrifying path to superstardom before our very eyes. America wanted David and Maddie to hit the rack, and their moment of truth was drawing near. And then it happened, near the end of Season 3, after two years of foreplay in front of millions of people, after two years of what Rodgers and Hart called in their tune "I Wish I Were In Love Again," "the broken dates, the endless waits, the lovely loving and the hateful hates, the conversations with the flying plates." They did it. The sheets rolled and the Ronettes roared. The Earth shook.

---

Critics are fond of citing "Moonlighting" as the classic example of the show that tinkered with its chemistry and blew the deal. Once the sexual tension had been released, they argue, the essence of the series couldn't be recaptured.
They, first, fail to acknowledge the heartbreaking narrative that kept us still spellbound for the next six months, well into Season 4. The failed attempt at dating, Maddie's escape to Chicago, David's self-destruction (which earned Willis an Emmy,) and the characters' alternating attempts at coping. The theory also presupposes that a television program's only mission is to lead a long, durable life-- hitting the 100 episode mark so that the series can leave a lasting imprint on the culture in syndication.

"Moonlighting" was not that kind of show. It was a shooting star, darting across the television galaxy. It burned faster because it burned hotter and brighter. As the TV producer, Sy, explained from the shadows of the screening room in the series finale, before Ray Charles and Betty Carter played them all off forever-- America fell in love with David and Maddie falling in love. But David and Maddie couldn't keep falling forever, anymore than could their public. At some point, they had to land. And they did so hard, with some bitterness and a few regrets.

But, ladies and gentlemen, when "Moonlighting" was at its best, no show was better. We can look back with fondness now, just as we do with past relationships-- older and wiser, grateful for having had time together when we each felt like we were burning at our hottest and brightest. We fell unexpectedly and helplessly, "head over heals," in love, and something is sweeter when you meet 'long the way.

posted by CM @ 8:18 PM