Movie Review - Full Moon Rising
‘Moonlighting’ DVD fans an old, smoldering flame
In 1985, where were you on Tuesdays at 9 p.m.? If you were junior-high age or older, these snippets of snappy banter might rouse the memory banks:
Maddie: The man is looking for a clue - a clue, a clue, a CLUE!
David: Gesundheit.
Maddie: Do you think he’s planning on marrying them both?
David: That would make him the biggest bigamist in bigamy history. (To the camera) Try saying that fast three times.
Maddie: Would you get serious!
David: Maddie, I just had my hand on your behind. If I get any more serious, they’re gonna move us to cable.
The racy quarrels between Madelyn “Maddie” Hayes and David Addison, played to piping-hot pitch by Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, made ABC’s “Moonlighting” the show to be turned on by in the mid-’80s. With its hyper-drive dialogue, wink-wink references to pop culture and the “will they/won’t they?” sexual tension between the characters, “Moonlighting” broke new ground on television - and in the dead center of the rightist Reagan era at that.
I was among the obsessed. Each Wednesday morning after a new episode aired, my friends and I would giddily dissect each flirtatious nuance and funny riff uttered by Maddie, the ex-model gone broke, and David, the ne’er-do-well detective. “Do bears bear? Do bees bee?” we’d repeat ad nauseam, quoting David’s arguably most famous line. I saw each episode at least twice, without the aid of a VCR.
Actually, that wasn’t a difficult feat. After the second season, repeats became more frequent than new installments. “Moonlighting” was notoriously plagued with production problems. Apparently, Glenn Gordon Caron, creator and executive producer, tweaked scripts incessantly until moments before a scene was shot. The show made Willis’ career and revived Shepherd’s. As egos flared, reports of clashes amid the two stars and Caron grew rampant. Shepherd’s pregnancy during the third season forced the writers to make some wince-worthy plot choices, from which the show never fully recovered.
“Moonlighting” hobbled along for two more uneven seasons before ABC canceled it in 1989. I faithfully watched to the end.
The show was seen in syndication infrequently after its demise. But in this age when old TV shows are finding a second shelf life via DVD, longtime “Moonlighting” fans began organizing campaigns to have the show re-released. Enter Lions Gate Entertainment, which will release the first and second seasons of “Moonlighting” on DVD May 31.
I yelped enthusiastically when a review copy of the DVD showed up at the office. I hadn’t seen an episode of “Moonlighting” in 15 years. “Don’t expect magic,” countered a curmudgeonly colleague. “Those ’80s shows don’t usually hold up very well.”
He was wrong. As soon as I heard the first strains of the show’s jazzy theme sung by Al Jarreau, a grin stretched over my face. Shoulder pads and anachronistic office equipment aside, the chemistry between Shepherd and Willis is still fresh to watch. No one bickers with that much lusty gusto on TV today - not even on HBO.
The DVD collection includes two behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries, as well as commentary from the stars, directors and producers. But the real treat is simply watching the shows, and remembering the initial hubbub that had critics raving.
The 90-minute pilot starts the ball rolling slowly. A dullish subplot about a wristwatch with a secret distracts from the juice of the story: Wealthy Maddie wakes up one morning to find her accountant has stolen all her money, though she still owns several money-losing companies, including a detective agency run by wise-cracking David Addison. David convinces her to become partners in the agency. After the pilot, the sauntering, bickering sizzle begins in earnest.
The collection includes so many “Moonlighting” classics, I want to send copies to my high school chums and twitter about the show all over again: Remember the black-and-white episode introduced by Orson Welles? How about the euthanasia episode where they kiss in the garage? And the one when David’s brother comes to town? And when Whoopi Goldberg guest-starred on the Season Two finale?
Twenty years later, the show could still stir up some plucky chat by the water cooler.