IN THE DARK REVIEWS

It was one of the most daring moves on what would become one of the most popular shows on television, and it started because the actors were delivering their lines so quickly that the episodes were running short on time.

By reader request, we're reviewing the second season of "Moonlighting," which originally aired from the fall of 1985 through the spring of 1986, and which is now streaming on Hulu. Even though it boasted more lines of dialogue per episode than any other hour-long scripted show on TV at that time, it still wasn't filling its time slot.

So, season two of "Moonlighting" kicked off with the break from contemporary scripted broadcast conventions that would come to define the series by having its starring couple break the "fourth wall," addressing the audience directly, prior to the opening credits.

Over the course of season two, which would turn out to be the show's longest season at 18 episodes, our dueling duo would preface a few select episodes, starting by explaining the aforementioned episode-length issue in the season premiere, and eventually even responding to viewers' expressed desires to see their characters finally connect romantically.

But what mattered was the series' lead actors, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, never did romantically connect. Even when the onscreen stories ultimately made their way off the shooting sets and onto the studio lots, like the "French Mistake" sequence of Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles," our heroes were always the characters of David Addison and Maddie Hayes.

This was the most essential aspect of retaining the fans' emotional investment in "Moonlighting," because even when the characters alluded to the show's commercial breaks or network standards within the midst of their misadventures, underscoring the metafictionality of their existence, our central pairing, David and Maddie, remained as real and resonant as ever.

It's why we cared when we met their relatives, from the underappreciated Charles Rocket as David's even more roguish brother to Eva Marie Saint as Maddie's mother, setting standards of apparent perfection that her daughter clearly aspired to, but that not even the elder Mrs. Hayes could achieve in her own relationships.

It's what made the tension simmer when Dana Delany was introduced as David's enticingly enigmatic ex, for whom he still nursed wounded feelings, and it's what lent a vulnerability to David's expressions of shock when Maddie nonchalantly disclosed she was an atheist, and the otherwise flippant and frivolous David revealed that he harbored just enough religious belief to pray (or at least "put in a good word") for Maddie's soul.

It was the season that gave us David and Maddie's first fiery kiss, even though they both disavowed it almost immediately afterward.

It was also the season that established "Moonlighting" tropes ranging from chaotically silly chase sequences - in wheelchairs, in laundry bags, in a procession of hearses, in matching masked drag outfits, and across the ABC Television Center backlot, in electric carts and on horseback - to Alfred Hitchcock-esque mysteries of men haunted by their obsessive love for women they could never claim as their own.

Allyce Beasley's adorable rhyming receptionist, Agnes DiPesto, scored her first spotlight episode in Season 2, by unwittingly getting caught up in unlikely spy-jinks, which planted the seeds for her more prominent role in subsequent seasons.

Four episodes into the season, "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" landed Orson Welles for its cold-open introduction in what would become his final onscreen appearance and inspired a succession of imitators. Many shows over the next decade or so started their own noir-styled flashbacks in black-and-white. That episode was ultimately ranked 34th on TV Guide's 1997 list of the "100 Greatest Episodes of All Time."

Don't get me wrong; modern genre shows like "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" deserve all the credit they can get for entertaining experiments like their musical episodes and animated series crossovers, but "Moonlighting" was walking on the moon practically every week with its own comparable risks and innovations, years before a lot of television and streaming services' current performers and scriptwriters were even born.

It was like David Lynch's "Twin Peaks." No one else was doing what "Moonlighting" was doing. No one else was even daring to dream what it dreamed.

It's notable that an episode guest-starring a self-proclaimed leprechaun didn't even set the high-water mark for wacky during "Moonlighting" Season 2.

Its holiday installment, "Twas the Episode Before Christmas," not only made Ms. DiPesto the temporary caretaker of a foundling infant (whose parents were named Joseph and Mary, of course), but it also included "three kings" in the form of three FBI agents who shared the surname King (one played by the irreplaceable James Avery, aka Uncle Phil from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," and the original voice of the Shredder in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.") And then, it started snowing, inside the Blue Moon Investigations offices, before David and Maddie walked out to join the show's entire cast and crew, and their families, in singing Christmas carols in the packed soundstage.

The Season 2 finale, "Camille," ensured the show flew into its summer break like a rocket with two high-profile guest-stars - Judd Nelson, star of the previous year's "The Breakfast Club," and Whoopi Goldberg, star of that fall's "Jumpin' Jack Flash" - being put through their paces in a story whose bullet-point plot played out like a lesson in how to construct a comedic drama, and whose conclusion was one of the most audacious stunts staged on primetime TV up to that point.

"Moonlighting" started out a charming, clever comedy with some minor crime-solving mixed in, but its second season was what made it MOONLIGHTING, the pop culture phenomenon whose example continues to influence onscreen storytelling to this day.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]