Moonlighting (TV series)

Show name	Moonlighting
Format	Comedy-drama / Mystery / Romance
Runtime	approx. 42–44 minutes per episode
Creator	Glenn Gordon Caron
Executive producer	Glenn Gordon Caron
Theme music composer	Lee HoldridgeAl Jarreau
Opentheme	"Moonlighting"Performed by Al Jarreau
Starring	Cybill ShepherdBruce WillisAllyce BeasleyCurtis Armstrong (1986–89)
Company	Picturemaker Productions, in association with ABC Circle Films
Country	United States
Language	English
Network	ABC
First aired	March 3, 1985
Last aired	May 14, 1989
Language	English
Num seasons	5
Num episodes	66
List episodes	List of Moonlighting episodes

Moonlighting is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 3, 1985, to May 14, 1989. The network aired a total of 66 episodes (67 in syndication as the pilot is split into two episodes). Starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives, the show was a mixture of drama, comedy and romance, and was considered to be one of the first successful and influential examples of comedy-drama, or "dramedy", emerging as a distinct television genre.

The show's theme song was performed by jazz singer Al Jarreau and became a hit. The show is also credited with making Willis a star while providing Shepherd with a critical success after a string of lackluster projects. In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME."

Introduction

The series revolved around cases investigated by the Blue Moon Detective Agency and its two partners, Madeline "Maddie" Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (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 a nearly decade-long absence. The characters were introduced in a two-hour pilot episode that preceded the series proper.

The show's storyline begins with the reversal of fortune of Maddie Hayes, a former model 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 and the first one-hour episode, David persuades Maddie to keep the business and run it as a partnership. The agency is renamed Blue Moon Investigations because Maddie was most famous for being 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.

In his audio commentary for the season-three DVD, creator Glenn Gordon Caron says that the inspiration for the series was a production of The Taming of the Shrew he saw in Central Park starring Meryl Streep and Raúl Juliá. The show would parody this Shakespeare play in the season-three episode Atomic Shakespeare.

Cast and characters

Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes: Maddie Hayes is a chic and smart former high-fashion model. Left bankrupt when her accountant embezzles all of her money, she is forced to make a living by running the detective agency she had previously owned as a tax write-off. Using her celebrity as a former model, she brings in clients and tries to bring some order to a business previously run without any discipline. By the time he had written 50 pages for the pilot to the show, Caron says he realized he was writing the part for Cybill Shepherd. After reading the script, she immediately realized this was a part she wanted to do and, during her first meeting with Caron and producer Jay Daniel, remarked that it was reminiscent of a “Hawksian” comedy. The two had no idea what she was talking about, so she suggested they screen Twentieth Century, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, three of her favorites, to see how the overlapping dialogue was handled. A week before shooting of the pilot began, Caron, Shepherd, and Willis watched Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.

Bruce Willis as David Addison: David Addison is a fast-talking, fun-loving detective running the City of Angels Detective Agency. Faced with the prospect of being put out of business he convinces Maddie that they have always lost money because they were supposed to and talks her into rebranding the agency and going into business with him as her partner. Glenn Gordon Caron had to fight with ABC to put Willis in the lead role having already signed Shepherd for both the pilot and series. Caron claims he tested Willis about a third of the way through testing over 2,000 actors, knew "this was the guy" immediately, and had to fight through twice as many more acting tests and readings while arguing with ABC executives before receiving (initial) conditional authorization to cast Willis in the pilot. ABC, according to Caron, did not feel that anyone viewing would think there could possibly be any "believable" sexual tension between Shepherd and Willis.

Allyce Beasley as Agnes DiPesto: Agnes DiPesto is the extremely loyal and quirky receptionist for the Blue Moon Detective Agency who always answers the phone in rhyme. As problems arose with getting Willis and Shepherd on screen due to personal issues, the writers started to focus on the relationship between Agnes and fellow Blue Moon employee Herbert Viola. In the series finale, Agnes berates Maddie and David for not being able to figure out their nitwit relationship as the entire set is dismantled and states “if there’s a God in heaven he’ll spin Herbert and me off in our own series”.

Curtis Armstrong as Herbert Viola: Herbert Viola started at Blue Moon as an employee from a temp agency. The producers brought Armstrong in based on his work in Revenge of the Nerds and Better Off Dead, hoping to expand the role of Agnes DiPesto by giving her a love interest, thereby taking some of the filming pressure off of Willis and Shepherd. As Herbert begins to shine in his duties, he gets promoted to working real cases as a junior detective. Debuting in season three, he appeared in 23 of the series' 66 episodes.

Jack Blessing as MacGillicudy: MacGillicudy is a Blue Moon employee, and became a foil for Herbert Viola and a rival for Agnes’s affections. Debuting in season three, he appeared in 17 of the series’ 66 episodes.

Guest stars

In addition to the primary cast, several notable actors appeared either as guest stars or made cameos on the series.

Recurring roles:

Charles Rocket as Richard Addison, David's brother.

Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber as Virginia and Alexander Hayes, Maddie's parents.

Mark Harmon appeared near the end of Season 3 as Sam Crawford, Maddie's romantic interest and rival with David.

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.

One-time Roles:

Liz Sheridan as Selma in the pilot episode.

Mary Hart as herself in the pilot episode.

Tim Robbins as a hitman in the Season 1 episode "Gunfight at the So-So Corral".

Orson Welles as himself delivering the introduction in the Season 2 episode "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice".

Dana Delany as Jillian Armstrong in the Season 2 episode "Knowing Her".

David Patrick Kelly as McBride in the Season 2 episode "Somewhere Under the Rainbow".

Dan Lauria as the Lieutenant in the Season 2 episode "Portrait of Maddie".

Mark Linn-Baker as Phil West in the Season 2 episode "Atlas Belched".

Richard Belzer as Leonard in the Season 2 episode "Twas the Episode Before Christmas".

Whoopi Goldberg as Camille Brand in the Season 2 episode "Camille".

Judd Nelson as a Police Officer in the Season 2 episode "Camille".

Billy Barty as himself in the Season 2 episode "Camille".

Paul Sorvino as David Addison Sr. in the Season 3 episode "The Son Also Rises".

The Temptations as themselves in the Season 3 episode "Symphony in Knocked Flat".

Don King as himself in the Season 3 episode "Symphony in Knocked Flat".

Rick Ducommun as one of David's friends in the Season 3 episode "Big Man On Mulberry Street".

Sandahl Bergman appeared in a "dream" dance sequence in the Season 3 episode "Big Man On Mulberry Street".

Colm Meaney as one of Katharina's suitors in the Season 3 episode "Atomic Shakespeare".

Sterling Holloway as the Narrator in the Season 3 episode "Atomic Shakespeare".

Lionel Stander as Max in the Season 3 episode "It's a Wonderful Job".

Cheryl Tiegs as herself in the Season 3 episode "It's a Wonderful Job".

Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop".

Peter Bogdanovich as himself in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop".

Rona Barrett as herself in the Season 3 episode "The Straight Poop".

Donna Dixon as Joan Tenowitz in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde".

Sam McMurray as Moe Hyman in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde".

Robert Wuhl as the Nut in Holding Cell in the Season 3 episode "Blonde on Blonde".

Jeff Jarvis as himself in the Season 3 episode "Sam & Dave".

Randall 'Tex' Cobb as "Big Guy in Gas Station" in the Season 3 episode "Sam & Dave".

Gary Cole as Alan McClafferty in the Season 3 episode "Maddie's Turn to Cry".

William Hickey as Mr. Kendall in the Season 3 episode "To Heiress Human".

Dr. Joyce Brothers as herself in the Season 4 episode "A Trip to the Moon".

Ray Charles as himself in the Season 4 episode "A Trip to the Moon".

Amanda Plummer as Jacqueline "Jackie" Wilbourne in the Season 4 episode "Take a Left at the Altar".

Imogene Coca as Clara DiPesto in the Season 4 episode "Los Dos DiPestos".

Michelle Johnson as Mrs. Hunziger in the Season 5 episode "Plastic Fantastic Lovers".

Jennifer Tilly as Nurse Saundra in the Season 5 episode "Plastic Fantastic Lovers".

Colleen Dewhurst as Betty Russell in the Season 5 episode "Take My Wife, For Example".

Rita Wilson as Carla in the Season 5 episode "Those Lips, Those Lies".

Demi Moore, Bruce Willis's wife at the time, as the woman in the elevator in the Season 5 episode "When Girls Collide".

Timothy Leary as minister Wynn Deaupayne in the Season 5 episode "Lunar Eclipse".

Format innovations

The series was created by Glenn Gordon Caron, one of the producers of the similar Remington Steele, when he was approached by ABC executive Lewis H. Erlicht. Erlicht liked the work Caron had done on Taxi and Remington Steele and wanted a detective show featuring a major star in a leading role that would appeal to an upscale audience. Caron wanted to do a romance, to which Erlicht replied “I don’t care what it is as long as it’s a detective show”.

Breaking the fourth wall

Moonlighting frequently broke the fourth wall, with many episodes including dialogue which made direct references to the scriptwriters, the audience, the network, or the series itself. (For example, when a woman is trying to commit suicide by jumping into a bathtub with a television playing The Three Stooges, Addison says, "The Stooges? Are you nuts? The network'll never let you do that, lady!"). Variations of this technique had been used previously in television programs such as Burns and Allen (a sketch comedy series) and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (a sitcom which sometimes opened with the main character addressing an interior monologue to the audience), although Moonlighting was the first scripted television series to weave self-referential dialogue directly into the show's regular plot.

Unlike these earlier shows, Moonlighting sometimes broke the fourth wall in much more involved and complex ways. Cold opens sometimes featured Shepherd and Willis (in character as Maddie Hayes and David Addison), other actors, viewers or TV critics directly addressing the audience about the show's production itself. These cold opens were originally born out of desperation as a way to fill air time since the dialogue on the show was spoken so quickly and the producers needed something to fill the entire hour. In some other 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 (e.g. a propmaster suddenly walking into the scene and taking the villain's gun away), or guest actors dropping character and referring to each other by their real names. However, other than in stand-alone openings, the main actors never stepped out of character during the episodes.

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 the inheritor of the then-famous nightclub where the murder had taken place. 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 The Taming of the Shrew, with David in the role of Petruchio, Maddie as Katharina, Agnes as Bianca and Herbert as Lucentio. The episode featured Shakespearean costumes and mixed the Shakespearean plot with humorous anachronisms and variations on Moonlighting's own running gags—including David riding in as Petruchio on a horse with BMW logos embroidered on its saddle blanket and repeatedly launching into the wrong Shakespearean soliloquy until the rest of the cast corrects him on which play he's in, and the Blue Moon office itself serving as Petruchio and Katharina's estate. The characters perform the Shakespearean dialogue in iambic pentameter and the episode was wrapped by segments featuring a boy imagining the episode's proceedings because his mother forced him to do his Shakespeare homework instead of watching Moonlighting, which the mother described as "That show about two detectives? A man and a woman? And they argue all the time and all they really want to do is sleep together? Sounds like trash to me!"

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. "Good Lovin'", "Blue Moon" and "I Told Ya I Love Ya..." appeared on the Moonlighting Soundtrack.

The episode "Big Man on Mulberry Street" centers around a big production dance number set to the Billy Joel song of the same name which was in turn inspired by the show itself.

Typical scripts for an average one hour television show run 60 pages, but those for Moonlighting were nearly twice as long due to the fast talking overlapping dialogue of the main characters. While the average television show would take seven days to shoot, Moonlighting would take from 12–14 days to complete with episodes and dialogue frequently being written by Caron the same day they were shot. Caron often defended his filming practices in the name of giving the audience what they wanted and producing a quality product. He used the following analogy to illustrate the point, "The thinking in television which makes no damn sense to me, is that a half hour of television costs X, and an hour of television costs Y, no matter what that television is, it strikes me as an insane hypothesis. The parallel is, you're hungry, whether you go to McDonald's or whether you go to '21,' it should cost the same; they both fill your stomach. It's nonsense."

All of this attention to detail resulted in production delays and the show 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."

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."

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."

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 season three clipshow 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 couldn't get along, as the premise to set up the clips from earlier episodes. In the end, Rona convinced them to apologize to one another, and promised the viewers that there would be an all-new episode the following week.

Shepherd's real-life pregnancy and a skiing accident in which Willis broke his clavicle further contributed to production delays. 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

Moonlighting was a hit with TV audiences as well as with critics and industry insiders garnering 16 Emmy nominations in just its second season. That season saw Moonlighting tie for 20th place in the Nielsen ratings. In season three the show peaked in 9th place, then dropped off slightly in a tie for 12th in its 4th season. Shepherd recalled Caron left the show stating that it was either him or her, and he didn't think the network would choose him.

When Maddie returned to Los Angeles near the end of the fourth season, the writers tried to recreate the tension between Maddie and David by having Maddie spontaneously marry a man named Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan) within a few hours of meeting him on the train back to LA. When Shepherd read the script she strongly voiced her objection that her character would not do such a thing, but was overruled. The move failed to rekindle the sparks between the main characters or capture the interest of the audience, which led to an even further ratings decline.

Cancellation

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.

In the 1988–89 TV season, the show's ratings declined precipitously. The March to August 1988 Writers Guild of America strike canceled plans for the 1987–88 Moonlighting season finale to be filmed and aired on TV in 3-D in a deal with Coca-Cola (though Coca-Cola did a 3-D TV deal with NBC's broadcast of the halftime show of Super Bowl XXIII in January 1989 instead) and delayed the broadcast of the first new episode until December 6, 1988. 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 canceled 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 Agnes and Herbert's wedding to find the Blue Moon sets being taken away, and an ABC network executive waiting to tell them that the show had been canceled. The characters then raced through the studio lot in search of a television producer named Cy, as the world of Moonlighting was slowly dismantled.

When they found Cy, he was screening a print of "In 'n Outlaws", the episode of Moonlighting that had aired two weeks earlier. Once informed of the problem, Cy lectured David and Maddie on the perils of losing their audience and the fragility of romance. Cy was played by Dennis Dugan, the same actor who had played Walter Bishop in Maddie's marriage storyline — however, Dugan was also the director of the episode, so his acting credit was listed as "Walter Bishop".

The final scene was a message stating that "Blue Moon Investigations ceased operations on May 14, 1989. The Anselmo Case was never solved… and remains a mystery to this day."

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 US, and W in Canada) in the 1990s and 2000s. Bravo airings often featured new claymation promos with Maddie and David using original audio clips from the series. The "Atomic Shakespeare" episode aired on Nick at Nite in 2005 as part of the network's 20th anniversary celebration. The 1985 ABC Tuesday night line-up was honored with reruns of Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains and Moonlighting, although "Atomic Shakespeare" was from the '86-'87 season. BBC initially carried the show in the UK, though it has been shown on CBS Drama since November 2009. Between 2005 and 2008 the show was frequently shown on the now defunct channel ABC1.

Awards and nominations

Parodies

Riptide, a once-popular detective series whose ratings had declined to the point of cancellation after airing against Moonlighting in the 1985–86 television season, aired an episode (the show's second-last) in 1986, in which that show's detectives acted as mentors to "Rosalind Grant" (Annette McCarthy) and "Cary Russell" (Richard Greene), the bickering stars of a television detective show pilot. Although their names were an allusion to Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, the characters were written as parodies of Shepherd and Willis, even adopting some of their real mannerisms and clothing styles, and their dialogue contained many nods, both obvious and subtle, to Moonlighting's writing style.

The episode was explicitly promoted by NBC (Riptide's network) as a Moonlighting parody, and was publicized as such widely enough that Riptide's producers felt obliged to clarify that they liked Moonlighting and intended the episode as an homage.

An episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks did a parody called Dreamlighting, featuring Brittany as "Bratty Hayes" and Alvin as "David Alvinson".

See also

List of Moonlighting episodes

Moonlighting Soundtrack

Notes

External links

Moonlighting in the Encyclopedia of Television

Category:1980s American television series Category:1985 television series debuts Category:1989 television series endings Category:American Broadcasting Company network shows Category:American comedy-drama television series Category:English-language television series Category:Television series by Buena Vista Television Category:Television shows set in Los Angeles, California