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EspañolMOONLIGHTING (TELEVISION SERIES)
(Redirected from Moonlighting (TV series))
'''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 starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives and was a mixture of drama, comedy and romance that is now considered one of the greatest spoofs of television detective shows. The show's theme song is performed by popular jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a minor hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a major star while reviving Shepherd's acting career.
The series revolved around cases investigated by Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madolyn '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 characters were first introduced in a two-hour TV movie which preceded the show.
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 the City of Angels Detective Agency, helmed by the carefree David Addison. Between the pilot episode and first episode, he persuades Hayes to keep the business and run it in partnership with him. The detective agency is renamed "Blue Moon Investigations" because Hayes was most famous as the spokesmodel for the (fictitious) Blue Moon Shampoo company. In many episodes, she was recognized as "The Blue Moon Shampoo Girl," if not by name.
The show also starred Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto, the firm's quirky receptionist who regularly answered the phone in rhyming couplets, a la Dr. Seuss. In later seasons, Curtis Armstrong — familiar as the character Booger from the ''Revenge of the Nerds'' films — joined the cast as Herbert Viola, a temporary employee turned Blue Moon investigator and a love interest for Agnes.
The series was created by one of the producers of the similar ''Remington Steele'' with the network explicitly wanting a "boy/girl detective show" à la 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 harking 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.
''Moonlighting'' used 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. Variations of this technique had been used previously in television programs such as ''Burns and Allen'' and ''The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis'', although ''Moonlighting'' was the first scripted television series to weave self-referential dialogue directly into the show's plot.
Also unlike the earlier shows, ''Moonlighting'' sometimes broke the fourth wall in much more involved and complex ways — in several episodes, the plot suddenly transitioned into extended sequences which involved crew dismantling or changing the sets, characters wandering off the set into other parts of the studio, production crew stepping into the scene as a ''deus ex machina'', or actors dropping character and referring to each other by their real names.
In the second season's Christmas episode, lead characters David Addison (Bruce Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) walk out of the office through where a wall should be to where the show's staff is singing Christmas carols. In the final episode of the second season, "Camille", David and Maddie flee from one set to the protests of the crew who say, "You can't leave. We've still got two more pages to shoot on this set!" The chase goes across the lot where they encounter the receptionist Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) leaving for the day. They tell her, "You can't leave; you're in this scene!" The protagonists get to their office set and lock the door, but the villain is already waiting. As he is about to pull the trigger, a propmaster takes his gun away. The set is disassembled while the stars explain how this episode would have been wrapped up. In the show's final episode, the lead characters return to their office to find a network executive who tells them the show has been cancelled as the set is (again) dismantled by crew members.
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 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—including David riding in on a horse with BMW logos embroidered on its saddle blanket. The episode was wrapped by segments featuring a boy imagining the episode's proceedings because his mother forced him to do his homework instead of watching ''Moonlighting''.
In addition, 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. The show also acknowledged ''Hart to Hart'' as an influence: in the episode "It's a Wonderful Job", based on the film ''It's a Wonderful Life'', Maddie's guardian angel showed her an alternate reality in which Jonathan and Jennifer Hart from the earlier series had taken over Blue Moon's lease. Although Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers did not appear in the episode, Lionel Stander reprised his role as the Harts' assistant Max.
Both Shepherd and Willis sang musical numbers over the course of the show. In "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", Shepherd performed both "Blue Moon" in Maddie's dream sequence and The Soft Winds' "I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out!" in David's, while in "Atomic Shakespeare", Willis sings The Young Rascals' "Good Lovin'". Willis also frequently broke into shorter snippets of Motown songs. Both "Good Lovin'" and "I Told Ya I Love Ya..." appeared on the show's soundtrack album.
The episode "Big Man on Mulberry Street" centers around a big production dance number set to that Billy Joel song. The sequence was directed by veteran musical director Stanley Donen.
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]
Glenn Gordon Caron partly blamed Cybill Shepherd for production problems: "I don't mean to paint her as the sole bearer of responsibility for the discord. But if I said to you, `You're going to have a great new job -- it's a life-defining job -- but you're going to work 14-15 hours a day, and by the way, you'll never know what hours those are -- sometimes you'll start at noon and work until 3 a.m., other times you won't know when or where it will be [until the last minute]. It can be very difficult, it requires an amazing amount of stamina. It's easier to do if you're still reaching for the stars, it's a lot tougher if you're already a star, if you've already reached the top of the mountain." [2]
Producer Jay Daniel talked about the difficulties between the costars in the later seasons: "Well, I was the guy that more often than not would be the one that would go into the lions den when they were having disagreements. I'd sort of be the referee, try to resolve it so that we could get back to work. So there was that side of it. Everybody knows there was friction between the two of them on the stage. In the beginning, Bruce was just a guy’s guy. Let's just say he evolved. Over the years, he went from being the crew's best friend and just being grateful for the work and all of that to realizing that he was going to be a movie star and wanting to move on. Part of that was because of his strained relationship with Cybill. That sometimes made the set a very unpleasant place to be. Cybill -- I got along with her very well at times, other times I’d have to be the one who said you have to come out of the trailer and go to work. In fairness to her, she was in the makeup chair at six thirty in the morning with pages of dialogue she hadn’t seen before, she'd work very long hours, and then be back in the makeup chair at six thirty the next morning." [3]
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 convinced them to apologize to one another, and promised the viewers that there would be 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.
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 X-Files'' producer Chris Carter repeatedly cited the show as a cautionary tale, influencing his desire to keep his lead characters' relationship platonic.
However many fans of the show and an equal number of critics dismiss the "They Did It" notion that having Maddie and David sleep together led to the show's decline. Glenn Gordon Caron, in commentaries on the 3rd season DVD set, also didn't think that the show had to decline after that event. A number of factors led to the series' decline and eventual cancellation that had little to do with the lead characters consummating their relationship.
In the fourth season, Willis and Shepard had little screen time together. Jay Daniel explained that, "we had to do episodes where there was no Cybill. She was off having twins. Her scenes were shot early, early on and then you had to integrate them with scenes shot weeks later. You were locked into what those scenes were because of what had already been shot with Cybill." [3] Bruce Willis was also making ''Die Hard'' during this period. When that movie became a boxoffice success, a movie career beckoned and his desire to continue in a weekly series waned. In a series that depended on the chemistry between the two main stars, not having them together for the bulk of the fourth season hurt the ratings.
The series lost Glenn Gordon Caron, as executive producer and head writer when he left the show over difficulties with the production: "I don't think Cybill understood how hard the workload was going to be. A situation arose with her, and at a certain point it became clear that… umm…suffice it to say I wasn't there for the last year and a half." [5]
Neither of the principal stars was vested in the last season of the show. Bruce Willis, fresh from his ''Die Hard'' success, wanted to make movies. Cybill Shepherd, having just given birth to twins, had grown tired of the long, grueling production days and was ready for the series to end.
When Maddie returned to Los Angeles near the end of the season, the writers tried to recreate the tension between Maddie and David by having Maddie spontaneously marry a man named Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan), whom she met on the train back to LA. This was widely criticized as a cynical and poorly executed plot development, in terms of artificially creating a love triangle storyline to try and drive the conflict of the series, which led to an even further ratings decline.
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 May 14, 1989 — and the Anselmo case[6] was never solved."
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. BBC carries the show in the UK. The show is currently screening in Australia on Weekdays, 11am, on Channel 7 and in Croatia on Nova TV station.
In addition to the primary cast, several notable guest stars appeared on the series in one-time or recurring roles:
★ Tim Robbins appeared in Season 1 episode 1 as a hitman.
★ Charles Rocket played Richard Addison, David's brother.
★ Paul Sorvino played David and Richard Addison's father.
★ Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber played Virginia and Alexander Hayes, Maddie's parents.
★ Imogene Coca appeared in one episode as Clara DiPesto, Agnes' mother.
★ Mark Harmon appeared in Season 3 as Sam Crawford, a romantic interest for Maddie whose rivalry with David ultimately led to David and Maddie consummating their sexual tension.
★ Brooke Adams appeared in Season 4 as Terri Knowles, a single mother for whom David volunteered as a Lamaze partner in preparation for the birth of Maddie's child.
★ Virginia Madsen appeared in Season 5 as Annie Charnock, Maddie's cousin and a short-term romantic interest for David.
★ R. H. Thomson appeared in Season 4 as Dr. Steve Hill, Maddie's gynecologist during her pregnancy.
★ Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson appeared in the Season 2 episode "Camille".
★ Timothy Leary appeared in "Lunar Eclipse" as the minister who marries Bert and Agnes.
★ Dan Lauria appeared in the episode "Portrait Of Maddie".
★ Pierce Brosnan appeared in the episode "The Straight Poop".
★ Peter Bogdanovich who also directed "The Last Picture Show" in 1971, starring Cybill Shepherd, also appeared in the episode "The Straight Poop".
★ Rona Barrett had a large role in the episode "The Straight Poop", where she acts as mediator between Maddie and David's turbulent professional (yet largely personal) relationship.
★ Donna Dixon (Dan Akroyd's wife, famous from Bosom Buddies with Tom Hanks) appears as seductive murderer and "voice of reason" to David in jail.
★ Randall 'Tex' Cobb Big Guy in Gas Station (1 episode, 1987).
1. Cybill Disobedience, Shepherd, Cybill, , , Random House, 2000, ISBN 0-09-187807-1 .
2. http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/moonlighting/index.html.
3. http://moonlighting21.com/jay_daniel.html.
4. http://moonlighting21.com/jay_daniel.html.
5. http://nowandagain.tktv.net/review23.htm.
6. The Anselmo case was a running gag which had been mentioned in several episodes without any further information being given as to what it actually was. Mostly it served as David's excuse for not being where he was supposed to be. In one episode David set himself up in a compromising situation, apparently with another woman, by telling the woman, a Blue Moon employee, that it was for the Anselmo case.
Lions Gate Entertainment has released all 5 seasons of ''Moonlighting'' on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time.
★ List of Moonlighting episodes
★ Encyclopedia of Television
★ DavidandMaddie.com: A ''Moonlighting'' fansite
★ ''Virtual Moonlighting''
★ ''Moonlighting'' Strangers Magazine
★ Moonlighting - ''Russian site about The TV series Moonlighting''
★ Moonlighting at Stage 1
★ Atomic Shakespeare and Other Moonlighting Minutia
'''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 starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives and was a mixture of drama, comedy and romance that is now considered one of the greatest spoofs of television detective shows. The show's theme song is performed by popular jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a minor hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a major star while reviving Shepherd's acting career.
| Contents |
| Introduction |
| Format innovations |
| Breaking the fourth wall |
| Fantasy |
| Other |
| Production problems |
| Ratings and decline |
| Cancellation |
| Guest stars |
| Notes |
| DVD Releases |
| See also |
| External links |
Introduction
The series revolved around cases investigated by Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madolyn '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 characters were first introduced in a two-hour TV movie which preceded the show.
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 the City of Angels Detective Agency, helmed by the carefree David Addison. Between the pilot episode and first episode, he persuades Hayes to keep the business and run it in partnership with him. The detective agency is renamed "Blue Moon Investigations" because Hayes was most famous as the spokesmodel for the (fictitious) Blue Moon Shampoo company. In many episodes, she was recognized as "The Blue Moon Shampoo Girl," if not by name.
The show also starred Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto, the firm's quirky receptionist who regularly answered the phone in rhyming couplets, a la Dr. Seuss. In later seasons, Curtis Armstrong — familiar as the character Booger from the ''Revenge of the Nerds'' films — joined the cast as Herbert Viola, a temporary employee turned Blue Moon 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 explicitly wanting a "boy/girl detective show" à la 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 harking 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.
Breaking the fourth wall
''Moonlighting'' used 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. Variations of this technique had been used previously in television programs such as ''Burns and Allen'' and ''The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis'', although ''Moonlighting'' was the first scripted television series to weave self-referential dialogue directly into the show's plot.
Also unlike the earlier shows, ''Moonlighting'' sometimes broke the fourth wall in much more involved and complex ways — in several episodes, the plot suddenly transitioned into extended sequences which involved crew dismantling or changing the sets, characters wandering off the set into other parts of the studio, production crew stepping into the scene as a ''deus ex machina'', or actors dropping character and referring to each other by their real names.
In the second season's Christmas episode, lead characters David Addison (Bruce Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) walk out of the office through where a wall should be to where the show's staff is singing Christmas carols. In the final episode of the second season, "Camille", David and Maddie flee from one set to the protests of the crew who say, "You can't leave. We've still got two more pages to shoot on this set!" The chase goes across the lot where they encounter the receptionist Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) leaving for the day. They tell her, "You can't leave; you're in this scene!" The protagonists get to their office set and lock the door, but the villain is already waiting. As he is about to pull the trigger, a propmaster takes his gun away. The set is disassembled while the stars explain how this episode would have been wrapped up. In the show's final episode, the lead characters return to their office to find a network executive who tells them the show has been cancelled as the set is (again) dismantled by crew members.
Fantasy
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 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—including David riding in on a horse with BMW logos embroidered on its saddle blanket. The episode was wrapped by segments featuring a boy imagining the episode's proceedings because his mother forced him to do his homework instead of watching ''Moonlighting''.
Other
In addition, 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. The show also acknowledged ''Hart to Hart'' as an influence: in the episode "It's a Wonderful Job", based on the film ''It's a Wonderful Life'', Maddie's guardian angel showed her an alternate reality in which Jonathan and Jennifer Hart from the earlier series had taken over Blue Moon's lease. Although Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers did not appear in the episode, Lionel Stander reprised his role as the Harts' assistant Max.
Both Shepherd and Willis sang musical numbers over the course of the show. In "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", Shepherd performed both "Blue Moon" in Maddie's dream sequence and The Soft Winds' "I Told Ya I Love Ya, Now Get Out!" in David's, while in "Atomic Shakespeare", Willis sings The Young Rascals' "Good Lovin'". Willis also frequently broke into shorter snippets of Motown songs. Both "Good Lovin'" and "I Told Ya I Love Ya..." appeared on the show's soundtrack album.
The episode "Big Man on Mulberry Street" centers around a big production dance number set to that Billy Joel song. The sequence was directed by veteran musical director Stanley Donen.
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]
Glenn Gordon Caron partly blamed Cybill Shepherd for production problems: "I don't mean to paint her as the sole bearer of responsibility for the discord. But if I said to you, `You're going to have a great new job -- it's a life-defining job -- but you're going to work 14-15 hours a day, and by the way, you'll never know what hours those are -- sometimes you'll start at noon and work until 3 a.m., other times you won't know when or where it will be [until the last minute]. It can be very difficult, it requires an amazing amount of stamina. It's easier to do if you're still reaching for the stars, it's a lot tougher if you're already a star, if you've already reached the top of the mountain." [2]
Producer Jay Daniel talked about the difficulties between the costars in the later seasons: "Well, I was the guy that more often than not would be the one that would go into the lions den when they were having disagreements. I'd sort of be the referee, try to resolve it so that we could get back to work. So there was that side of it. Everybody knows there was friction between the two of them on the stage. In the beginning, Bruce was just a guy’s guy. Let's just say he evolved. Over the years, he went from being the crew's best friend and just being grateful for the work and all of that to realizing that he was going to be a movie star and wanting to move on. Part of that was because of his strained relationship with Cybill. That sometimes made the set a very unpleasant place to be. Cybill -- I got along with her very well at times, other times I’d have to be the one who said you have to come out of the trailer and go to work. In fairness to her, she was in the makeup chair at six thirty in the morning with pages of dialogue she hadn’t seen before, she'd work very long hours, and then be back in the makeup chair at six thirty the next morning." [3]
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 convinced them to apologize to one another, and promised the viewers that there would be 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 and decline
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 X-Files'' producer Chris Carter repeatedly cited the show as a cautionary tale, influencing his desire to keep his lead characters' relationship platonic.
However many fans of the show and an equal number of critics dismiss the "They Did It" notion that having Maddie and David sleep together led to the show's decline. Glenn Gordon Caron, in commentaries on the 3rd season DVD set, also didn't think that the show had to decline after that event. A number of factors led to the series' decline and eventual cancellation that had little to do with the lead characters consummating their relationship.
In the fourth season, Willis and Shepard had little screen time together. Jay Daniel explained that, "we had to do episodes where there was no Cybill. She was off having twins. Her scenes were shot early, early on and then you had to integrate them with scenes shot weeks later. You were locked into what those scenes were because of what had already been shot with Cybill." [3] Bruce Willis was also making ''Die Hard'' during this period. When that movie became a boxoffice success, a movie career beckoned and his desire to continue in a weekly series waned. In a series that depended on the chemistry between the two main stars, not having them together for the bulk of the fourth season hurt the ratings.
The series lost Glenn Gordon Caron, as executive producer and head writer when he left the show over difficulties with the production: "I don't think Cybill understood how hard the workload was going to be. A situation arose with her, and at a certain point it became clear that… umm…suffice it to say I wasn't there for the last year and a half." [5]
Neither of the principal stars was vested in the last season of the show. Bruce Willis, fresh from his ''Die Hard'' success, wanted to make movies. Cybill Shepherd, having just given birth to twins, had grown tired of the long, grueling production days and was ready for the series to end.
When Maddie returned to Los Angeles near the end of the season, the writers tried to recreate the tension between Maddie and David by having Maddie spontaneously marry a man named Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan), whom she met on the train back to LA. This was widely criticized as a cynical and poorly executed plot development, in terms of artificially creating a love triangle storyline to try and drive the conflict of the series, which 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 May 14, 1989 — and the Anselmo case[6] was never solved."
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. BBC carries the show in the UK. The show is currently screening in Australia on Weekdays, 11am, on Channel 7 and in Croatia on Nova TV station.
Guest stars
In addition to the primary cast, several notable guest stars appeared on the series in one-time or recurring roles:
★ Tim Robbins appeared in Season 1 episode 1 as a hitman.
★ Charles Rocket played Richard Addison, David's brother.
★ Paul Sorvino played David and Richard Addison's father.
★ Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber played Virginia and Alexander Hayes, Maddie's parents.
★ Imogene Coca appeared in one episode as Clara DiPesto, Agnes' mother.
★ Mark Harmon appeared in Season 3 as Sam Crawford, a romantic interest for Maddie whose rivalry with David ultimately led to David and Maddie consummating their sexual tension.
★ Brooke Adams appeared in Season 4 as Terri Knowles, a single mother for whom David volunteered as a Lamaze partner in preparation for the birth of Maddie's child.
★ Virginia Madsen appeared in Season 5 as Annie Charnock, Maddie's cousin and a short-term romantic interest for David.
★ R. H. Thomson appeared in Season 4 as Dr. Steve Hill, Maddie's gynecologist during her pregnancy.
★ Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson appeared in the Season 2 episode "Camille".
★ Timothy Leary appeared in "Lunar Eclipse" as the minister who marries Bert and Agnes.
★ Dan Lauria appeared in the episode "Portrait Of Maddie".
★ Pierce Brosnan appeared in the episode "The Straight Poop".
★ Peter Bogdanovich who also directed "The Last Picture Show" in 1971, starring Cybill Shepherd, also appeared in the episode "The Straight Poop".
★ Rona Barrett had a large role in the episode "The Straight Poop", where she acts as mediator between Maddie and David's turbulent professional (yet largely personal) relationship.
★ Donna Dixon (Dan Akroyd's wife, famous from Bosom Buddies with Tom Hanks) appears as seductive murderer and "voice of reason" to David in jail.
★ Randall 'Tex' Cobb Big Guy in Gas Station (1 episode, 1987).
Notes
1. Cybill Disobedience, Shepherd, Cybill, , , Random House, 2000, ISBN 0-09-187807-1 .
2. http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/moonlighting/index.html.
3. http://moonlighting21.com/jay_daniel.html.
4. http://moonlighting21.com/jay_daniel.html.
5. http://nowandagain.tktv.net/review23.htm.
6. The Anselmo case was a running gag which had been mentioned in several episodes without any further information being given as to what it actually was. Mostly it served as David's excuse for not being where he was supposed to be. In one episode David set himself up in a compromising situation, apparently with another woman, by telling the woman, a Blue Moon employee, that it was for the Anselmo case.
DVD Releases
Lions Gate Entertainment has released all 5 seasons of ''Moonlighting'' on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time.
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release Date | Additional Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seasons 1 & 2 | 25 | May 31 2005 | ★ Cast and Crew commentaries, including Glenn Gordon Caron (creator), Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis ★ Not Just A Day Job - The Story of Moonlighting ★ The Moonlighting Phenomenon |
| Season 3 | 15 | February 7 2006 | ★ Memories of Moonlighting ★ Select Episode Commentaries |
| Season 4 | 14 | September 12 2006 | ★ Commentaries by the cast and crew |
| Season 5 | 13 | march 6 2007 | ★ Screen tests for Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd ★ Commentaries |
See also
★ List of Moonlighting episodes
External links
★ Encyclopedia of Television
★ DavidandMaddie.com: A ''Moonlighting'' fansite
★ ''Virtual Moonlighting''
★ ''Moonlighting'' Strangers Magazine
★ Moonlighting - ''Russian site about The TV series Moonlighting''
★ Moonlighting at Stage 1
★ Atomic Shakespeare and Other Moonlighting Minutia
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