This was news that I truly never ever thought I'd hear... At the Movies cancelled! A shocker. I frequently got the first word-- and often the most authoritative word-- on upcoming movies from this show, through my entire movie-going lifetime. In those terms it's pretty sad; but the show as a show has had such a rocky road since Gene Siskel died, and the magic never did return. 
There's a lot of hours in between the BBQ and the fireworks— best spent with a little classic TV! I offer, Moonlighting Season 3. Moonlighting remains one of the relatively few classic shows that managed to get the whole run out on DVD, based on the efforts of an avid fan base. Season two remains the series best season; but the single greatest series episode, “Atomic Shakespeare,” would make its appearance in season three. Other classic episodes of season three include: “Yours, Very Deadly," "All Creatures Great... And Not So Great," the Stanley Donen musical show "Big Man on Mulberry Street," "It's A Wonderful Job," "Blonde on Blonde," "I Am Curious... Maddie," and "To Heiress Human." I’ll be revisiting Moonlighting over the next few blog entries and reviewing these episodes. Below is my ratings of each season three episode based out of **** stars. My rankings for seasons one and two are here.
There are relatively few series that I'm truly still waiting for. So many came out that I would have sworn I wanted but then when they were released I found I really didn't care that much. So I'm a little more honest about what I really want to buy. Old TV is just too hard to watch/catch up on. Long-running series are just not watchable after-the-fact. It's much more palatable to catch an episode here and there of a favorite old show while channel-surfing, rather than attempting to slog through entire seasons or runs. But there's some shorter-run stuff on my rainy day list, like Twin Peaks, and it's nice to know it's available for when I get around to it. 
Two of the very best episodes of Moonlighting played at the end of season two, reviewed below.
This episode opens with Maddie and David addressing the camera to read viewer mail, all about how they should kiss already— it ends up in the air again, of course, but it’s a cute “filler.” Funny Blue Moon office opening that only needs David to be disguised as a priest to keep the comedy ball rolling. We’re introduced to Maddie’s parents— in the form of Robert Webber and Eva Marie Saint— who are in L.A. for a wedding. Moonlighting throws its audience another curveball with a highly dramatic story in which Maddie's mother confides in her that she suspects infidelity and David agrees to follow Maddie's father to prove her “wrong.” Sequence in which David tails Mr. Hayes is well played, nicely scored to The Temptations’ “Papa was a Rolling Stone.” David has a lot of one-liners to balance out this episode (“I wasn’t even in town that month.”/ “Like I always say, if you can’t agree, disagree.”/ “Alright, then it’s Oedipie.”/ “Your wish is my demand.”) David’s treatise on justified dishonesty is hilarious (“the turkey tastes great Aunt Sophie… the factory just isn’t the same without you cousin Eddie.”) At the centerpiece of the episode are Cybil Shepard and Robert Webber’s scenes together which are heartbreaking. Eva Marie Saint has one nice, memorable speech (“It rains, and it stops, and the sun comes out again.”) There's even a funny reference to Maddie’s door slamming. Not a sour note throughout (except perhaps a weak tag), and if it’s not a “fun one” that you’d want to frequently return to, it’s a significant episode in the Moonlighting oeuvre.
Title Card: "1. Here Comes the Bride" as the soundtrack blares: “Devil with the Blue Dress” and Whoopi Goldberg enters frame. It’s nonstop from there and is possibly my all-around favorite episode of Moonlighting (save for the offbeat "Atomic Shakespeare"). The plot surrounds Camille Brand (Goldberg), a small time hustler who accidentally thwarts the assassination of a senator and becomes an instant celebrity, prompting David to hire her for her publicity value to Blue Moon Investigations. David Paymer plays the usual lackey, Judd Nelson plays the dirty cop that wants to blackmail Camille for a piece of the money she’ll get due to her new found fame, and Edie McClurg has a cameo as a chatty woman getting her hair done (“I had this dream last night... about this man with the longest tongue you’ve seen and he could breathe through his ears.”) Goldberg, in an Emmy-nominated performance, offers both laughs and pathos as the shyster-with-a-heart-of-gold; Judd Nelson is great as the oily fortune hunter. Idea of David holding an ice cream as he gets off the elevator in one scene is a funny bit. Although Camille lectures Maddie and David: “Who I am and what I do is take people for a ride. And you two have been rode,” you know she doesn’t mean it. The best of the best crazy chases and finales— as only Moonlighting could get away with [then and now] (and one last brilliant cameo that I won’t reveal). A sexual-tension-filled last few minutes had legions of fans tuning in for season three.
Two more good ones from Moonlighting reviewed.
Addison watches The Bride of Frankenstein in his office at the end of a lazy Friday, giving some audio commentary on the Monster’s woes. Maddie wants to take off early on this particular Friday, prompting David to wonder why: and leading them to discuss a date, but it doesn’t happen, as duty calls. The episode’s plot revolves around a 39-year-old man’s desire to hire Maddie and David to find a woman— only it’s a possibly non-existent one: he wants them to find him a dream mate, a la a dating service. A perfect Moonlighting premise: David brings in his version of the dream mate and Maddie hers— with the expected differences. Most fun is the approach the two take in finding the woman: both finding it impossible (at first). The episode does offer some real discussion of what men and women want (and the conundrum of what looks good on paper versus real world expectations and desires). Funny moment when David supposedly uses his investigative background to open a door with Maddie’s shoe. Quick Moonlightingesque wrap-up of the mystery (Maddie: “When did you find all this out?”/David: “During the commercial.”) features a wild, funny chase through a hospital.
Maddie and David talk directly to the screen in the kill-time opener in which they discuss a failed 3-D episode (Moonlighting had actually planned to do this—series creator Glenn Gordon Caron later did do a Medium episode in 3-D as a make-up session). Another great Moonlighting opener follows in which a Harry Houdini-like accident during a magic show of the “Great Kandinisky” [also spelled Kandinski during the episode!] ends with a distinct punctuation of that wonderfully familiar “ding” of the elevator at the Blue Moon building. Maddie finds the office empty and then a rare moment occurs in TV— a Beatles song is actually used well (“Happy Birthday”). Continuing the breaking of the fourth wall, the episode features a classic pull-in (during Maddie’s flying fig speech) in which the two characters both address the audience. The Houdini reference continues: the plot of this episode is that Mrs. Kandinsky hires Maddie and David to watch her husband’s body, since, as a purveyor of the occult, he had threatened to kill her after he died. What follows, could qualify as a Moonlighting Halloween episode— even if it did originally aired in February. What follows is a fun, interesting mystery, with some funny lines throughout (Maddie: “And wipe that stupid grin off your face.” David: “This happens to be the smartest grin I own.”/”Ceased to be deceased”, etc.). Cute scene also when Maddie visits an old magician named Abby Cadabra: magic in itself. The meat of the episode comes out of left field but somehow fits: the God discussion— brilliantly done. This is absolutely why Moonlighting is one of the great series of all-time. When do TV shows get into discussions of theology amidst comic romps? The show ends up being mostly about Maddie’s doubts and David’s belief in God, than anything else. The topic ends on an interesting note, in terms of both character development and what thoughts the viewing audience might have.
Very ‘80s “sting” music follows a robbery of office equipment in the opener— has Blue Moon been robbed? We soon discover that it wasn’t Blue Moon, but we get another surprise, Maddie has brought breakfast-for-two into the office: served on fine china for he and she. But the bad news is Maddie has ideas of selling the agency. But kismet strikes and David just might be able to impress a big fish and put Blue Moon on the map. Perfect Strangers’ Mark Linn-Baker guest stars as a poor schmuck whose bosses’ rolodex was stolen out of his office due to his negligence— he knows his job is as good as lost, until David meets him in a bar and takes the case in a preemptive strike at finding it before the boss finds out. Reference heavy episode: Ronald Reagan, Madonna (and the error in thinking she wouldn’t last), even The Lone Ranger, Because it’s such a downer, this is an episode you might not want to go back to— but it serves a purpose— to show how delicate and fleeting things in your life can be: for Maddie and David, it’s their happiness and fulfillment at Blue Moon— for the audience it’s basically the exact same thing, as their happiness is ours. As a part of the greater whole, an important episode in the series, and one that serves to bring our lead characters closer together.
Seeing Agnes’ Dipesto’s apartment is a delightful surprise and its exactly as you’d expect. The way Agnes interacts within her home environment is very well written and played. The conceit of the “three kings” (and their crowns) is very funny, the other Christmas references are only so-so acceptable. The scene where David mocks Maddie, repeating her every words at the office, is masterfully timed. Wacky confrontation with the villains at the denouement is the show at its absolute silliest. For a show that had nothing to do with children and raising a family, the writers managed to pull off a Christmas miracle.
The first perfect episode of Moonlighting comes from the pen of the same writers who did “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice,” Debra Frank and Carl Sautter, and, it too, plays like a miniature movie. The episode begins with a bang-up opening sequence in which a woman puts a spell on a man and he dies on the spot. At Blue Moon, Maddie and David are at it again, this time over a discussion of art, high and low, and each other’s definition of “poetry.” 
When Maddie brands David a philistine, he’s able to use her words against her as an unexpected client arrives— the young woman of the opening sequence, whose name is Kathleen Kilpatrick. She claims she’s a leprechaun who’s being hunted for her gold. Maddie doesn’t want to take the case, but David calls Maddie on her lack of imagination, i. e. “poetry.” Agnes has a hilarious line that never fails to get me, right before the first “station break.” The bulk of the episode has us starting to believe that Kathleen is a leprechaun, playing out like Miracle on 34th Street— each beat has the audience cheering her on. This episode softens Maddie (and even David: particularly in his parting advice to Kathleen) and makes Agnes DiPesto look normal (!). There are plenty of laughs, with little-to-none missing their target. There are some nice character touches too, as when David describes the way Kathleen casts spells by holding up her hand “like early Diana Ross”— the exact reference that David Addison would use. The silly chase at the airport is highly pre-9/11 and has several moments in which, despite the villain being right on their heels, the trio have what seems like several minutes in between his catching up to them for which to concoct a new scheme to get away! But no matter, it’s all in good fun, and this was exactly the kind of material that no one was doing on television at the time.
A disturbing opening has a gun going off and blood spattering on a collage of magazine covers featuring Maddie Hayes at various stages of her modeling career (employing the real life Cybill Shepard’s image). The back-and-forth between Maddie and David in the opening (and most of the first act) is not quite up to par— the bread-and-butter of the series— but includes some of the winking to the audience that became a big part of the series. Also prevalent is the hopelessly obvious soft focus on close-ups of Cybill Shepard. When the mystery gets going in act two, we’re brought into the Hitchcockian plot, that at least for this episode, takes precedence over Maddie and David’s shenanigans, ever so slightly lowering the humor level. The line “Where’s the duchess?!” and David’s retort however becomes funnier with each viewing.
I ranked eleven episodes of Moonlighting *** or above, here's capsule reviews of the first three:
Odd, and therefore memorable, series episode in which a woman wearing a black veil, whose face had been disfigured, shows up at the Blue Moon Detective Agency, in order to hire David and Maddie to find the recently paroled man who threw acid in her face (she claims she wants him found because she “always loved him"). This episode seemed to rerun quite a bit while the show was on, so it must have done well in the ratings. It opens hilariously with some off-topic commentary on “9-to-5-er” boredom (When the staff disappears Agnes Dipesto says they’re at lunch and Maddie says “Lunch? It’s not even 10:15?” to which Agnes replies “OK then. Brunch?”). Again the showdown between Maddie and David begins with the oft-repeated argument as to whether the case should be taken, which comes to a dramatic head with some character development from Maddie— she had once been the object of an unhealthy obsession herself. We get back on comedic track when Maddie mentions the phrase “Let’s be friends” prompting David to offer his interpretation of this most-dreaded of female turndowns: “No kissy, no huggy, no horizonty.” A very farfetched series of plot twists and turns mark this episode— that you just go with— punctuated by a Hitchcockian score.
The black & white episode, the Orson Welles episode, the “Blue Moon” episode. In the old abandoned Flamingo Cove nightclub, whose heydey was in the 1940s, Maddie and David are told about the famous murder that took place there, in which a singer and a trumpet player both blamed each other for her husband’s murder. The episode shows two versions of how the “Flamingo Cove Murder” might have happened— Maddie’s version shot in glossy MGM style and David’s, shot in down-and-dirty Warner Bros. style. This show begins with Addison’s opinion as to why he’s glad that there’s a little dishonesty in the world (and the unexplained logic seems to make sense!). Just before the show goes to black-and-white, Maddie and David have a "car fight" in which he calls her a sexist and she ends up shouting: “Not another word, not another sound, not another peep until we get back to the office!” Then there’s a beat, and David says: “peep.” Back at the office David gives his “sexiest sexist speech” on how he likes to “satirize, scrutinize, fantasize, etc. etc.” Maddie. The main drama is well written and a nice homage, if somehow a shade forced (especially the humor in the second story). Cybill Shepard shines in this episode, particularly in her singing scenes, while Bruce Willis seems out of place. I still think this is a terrific (as well as ambitious) episode, just one I rarely go back to. 
It was dedicated to Orson Welles, who filmed a brief introduction to explain to the audience that the episode would be in black & white (even then I thought this was absurd— did TV execs think that 1985 audiences were that unsophisticated?). However, because of the silliness of such a necessity, Orson Welles was given a primetime platform to essentially say goodbye— the greatest director of the black-and-white era, espousing the need to take an artistic chance.
