I still have what I consider to be the best episodes of "Moonlighting" on tape (albeit, Beta tapes). So when I watched the first two seasons of Glen Gordon Caron's seminal dramedy series that first aired in 1985 and saw the rest of the show I found myself wishing that we did some television shows the way they do in Great Britain. A "series" across the pond is what we call a season here, and a show like "Coupling," for example, might do only six episodes in a season. Well, the first season of "Moonlighting" only had five episodes after the pilot movie, and like most series the other writers had problems getting a handle on the show's uniqueness. Only "The Next Murder You Hear," written by Peter Silverman, is on the same level as the pilot. "Moonlighting" was pretty good, but it had its low points and imagine how great it would have been if these were the six episodes that made up the second season:
(8) "Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde?" (Written by Caron), in which David's brother Ritchie (Charles Rocket) stops by for a visit; (10) "Money Talks, Maddie Walks") (Written by Kerry Ehrin & Ali Marie Matheson), where Maddie finds out that the accountant who embezzled her fortune is running a casino down South American way; (11) "The Dream Sequences Always Rings Twice" (Written by Debra Frank & Carl Sautter) is the monochromatic episode, introduced by Orson Welles, where we get Maddie and David's different takes on an unsolved murder mystery from 1946; (15) "Portrait of Maddie" (Written by Ehrin & Matheson) in which a painting of Maddie is a clue to a stolen masterpiece and an episode which features the longest period of time without dialogue in the show's history; (21) "Every Father's Daughter is a Virgin" (Written by Bruce Franklin Singer) has Maddie's mother (Eva Marie Saint) and father (Robert Webber) paying a visit, and David finding out something about Maddie's father she does not want to know; and (22) "Witness for the Execution" (Written by Jeff Reno & Ron Osborn) surprises us by coming up with a reason for David and Maddie to finally kiss.
This is not to say that there are not other episodes in the running (e.g., "My Fair David" and "In God We Strongly Suspect") and if somebody wants to argue there should be eight episodes or even ten (add "Atlas Belched" and "Funeral for a Door Nail") I will not say thee nay. But given the problems they had shooting their 140 pages scripts and getting new episodes on each week, I cannot help but think that the show would have been even greater if we they had not wasted precious time on less than stellar episodes, such as the painful "Camille" that wastes Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson in a story that abuses the show's post modernistic tendency to break the fourth wall.
For my money "M*A*S*H" became the original television dramedy with its first season episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet." As a Detective Comedy/Drama "Moonlighting" is clearly a dramedy as well, but a large part of its uniqueness as a television series was because of it being decidedly postmodern. There was the verbal self-reflexivity in which David and Maddie were clearly aware they were television characters, the musical self-reflexivity where "Moonlighting" employed an incongruous juxtaposition of the musical soundtrack and the action on screen (using "The William Tell Overture" for the chase scene at the end of "The Lady in the Iron Mask") or sometimes it fits (e.g., when David listens to "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" while trailing Maddie's father), and the show's intertextuality as it plays with the boundaries of the Situation Comedy and the Detective genres. Then there are all references to other texts such as films, songs, novels, etc., through episode titles (e.g., "My Fair David," "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice"), dialogue, musical cues, and visual techniques.
Picking up all these references was what made watching "Moonlighting" fun as David and Maddie slowly but surely fought their verbal duels on their way to their inevitable kiss in the parking garage. If there is a "mistake" to be found in some of the early episodes it is the idea that the detective part of the show was as important as the relationship between the two stars. But coming up with an actual mystery for the Blue Moon Detective Agency to solve was not as important as the fact the case would gave David and Maddie something to fight about. If she was not going to end up slamming a door over the case of the week, then the writers are missing the point. But then the strangest thing about watching the "Moonlighting" pilot is being shocked at how slow the two stars are talking at that point.
The key thing is that when "Moonlighting" was good during those first two seasons it was great, and even when it is not so good, there are usually a couple of good one liners buried in it to be enjoyed. Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis apparently ended up not being able to stand each other off camera, but their on screen chemistry is undeniable (I was pleasantly surprised Willis showed up to do an audio commentary track for "My Fair David," not to mention his remembering the "You de-Daved him" line). Therefore it is probably a good thing that they did not do the less is more approach. Still, a "Moonlighting" that was written only by Glen Gordon Caron would have been something to watch (think a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" written only by Joss Whedon).
So when is Season 3 coming out?