Moonlighting – Seasons One & Two (Lionsgate)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: B+     Telefilm + Episodes: A-

 

 

In some revisionist thinking, the clashing between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd has come more out in the open in their work on their hit TV series Moonlighting (1985) and thanks to later shows that just did not work, many have reduced the show to them bickering and that “maybe” the show was funny in its time.  That they did not have quite the chemistry of past detective or spy teams because of their dysfunction on and off screen, that the show was shrill and would age badly.  The bad prints of the episodes that have been broadcast since have furthered this idea.  With Lionsgate’s incredible release of Seasons One & Two, I would argue that those revisions are inaccurate.

 

If anything, the tension between Shepherd and Willis actually helped the increased sexual tension and lunacy that made Madeline “Maddie” Hayes and David Addison one of the most memorable couples in TV history.  For those who have not seen the show, Hayes is a top model who is in decline in that business, but made tons of money and lives off of those investments.  That is until her accountant takes everything.  When faced with what was left behind, it turns out everything was a tax write-off.  This includes a detective agency called Blue Moon.  She will have to fire the staff, close the place down and cut her losses, especially since she has no money to pay them and it has been a money loser since day one.   She finds out why when she meets David and knows he is doing whatever he can to not to act like an adult, responsibility and all.

 

This all happens in the great pilot TV movie, a great telefilm that did better ratings in its second broadcast and was a huge hit in the tradition of past ABC-TV pilot films like The Night Stalker and The Six Million Dollar Man.  It was the last great telefilm that led to a TV series of the reign of the big three television networks before cable and satellite changed TV forever.  Then there are the great episodes.  Filling the rest of the 6 DVDs, they are:

 

1)     Gunfight At The So-So Corral – A very successful assassin is in his twilight years and not doing so well health wise.  When a younger new hotshot hitman wants to take him out Old West style to be the new big gun in town, he hires Dave & Maddie to find his “son” before its too late.  Tim Robbins also stars in this great first regular episode that shows the different moral centers of the lead characters.

2)     Read The Mind, See The Murder – Psychic powers and deadly, new, groundbreaking weapons of mass destruction combine for a crazy case for Blue Moon’s resident team to solve.

3)     The Next Murder You Hear – A talk show host is murdered while doing his show live on the air and Maddie becomes more and more interested it what a good soul he seemed to be, to the point she decides to solve the case, no matter how much it upsets David.

4)     Next Stop, Murder – Secretary Agnes Dipesto (regular Allyce Beasley) wins a detective mystery murder contest that puts her on a murder train trip.  Good thing Dave and Maddie join here, because the murder is real.  The exceptional character actor Vincent Schiavelli costars.

5)     The Murder’s In The Mail – Opening with the theme of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo (or a close soundalike), Dave and Maddie go to work for a collection’s agency, but find a dead body instead.  When they report it, the body is gone upon return.

6)     Brother, Can You Spare A Blonde? – David’s brother Richard (Charles Rocket) shows up with money to burn and that includes seducing Maddie.  Too bad the money belongs to a drug kingpin.

7)     The Lady In The Iron Mask – Terrific Noir Comedy as a disfigured woman hires Maddie & Dave to find the man who disfigured her so she can marry him!  This includes one of the great finales of the show and look for C. Thomas Howell as a waiter, not listed in the credits.  Dennis Christopher guest stars.

8)     Money Talks, Maddie Walks – Maddie tries to save an old friend from jumping and committing suicide, until he tells her where her accountant (Mark Lonow as Ronald Sawyer) ran off with her money too, so she flies off to finish this business.  Love the use of the DeBarge hit You Wear It Well.

9)     The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice – This is the great black and white episode hosted by Orson Welles in his last great appearance.  Dave and Maddie debate an unsolved murder from 1946 and each of them imagines their own version of events.  Fans of Sin City will enjoy comparing the second half of this episode to Willis’ sequences in that recent film.

10)  My Fair David – Maddie bets David that he cannot act like a mature man for even a week, while they drop off ransom money, but nothing goes as planned.  Barbara Bain and Billy Drago guest star.

11)  Knowing Her – Is an old lover of David’s (Dana Delaney) trying to rekindle their love or use him and stab him in the back?  Maddie suspects the latter.

12)  Somewhere Under The Rainbow – A woman claiming to be a leprechaun comes to Blue Moon to help her find a pot of gold her father hid… in Los Angeles!

13)  Portrait Of Maddie – A great send-up of the Film Noir classic Laura (1944, reviewed elsewhere on this site) has an artist paint a beautiful portrait of Maddie, then kill himself.  She decides to investigate, though they have never met and David gets involved, naturally.  Paul Rudd guest stars.

14)  Atlas Belched – A competitor offers to buy Blue Moon from Maddie, while David looks for an important book of phone numbers.  Mark Linn-Baker guest stars.

15)  ‘Twas The Episode Before Christmas – Obligatory holiday episode is somewhat amusing as Dipesto finds a baby and David turns Blue Moon into a Santa telephone center.

16)  The Bride Of Tupperman – Blue Moon is hired to find a client the perfect woman.  Too bad it becomes a horror show all its own.

17)  North By North Dipesto – Agnes gets to go on her own when a piece of paper surfaces at a party with Dave and Maddie, which she tries to take on herself.  Though this was no attempt at a spin-off any more than Next Stop, Murder, it shows that Dipesto was an underused character and any chance to make more of her was a missed opportunity for the series.

18)  In God We Strongly Suspect – An escape artist’s widow thinks her husband might come back from the dead, so she hired Maddie & Dave to corpse-sit until the resurrection occurs.  K Callan guest stars.

19)  Every Daughter’s Father Is A Virgin – Maddie’s parents (Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber) show up and all does not seem well, so she and David see if her dad is having an affair.

20)  Witness For The Execution – Dave & Maddie are hired to be official witnesses of the murder of a dying old man.  Is it a mercy killing, revenge or something crazier?

21)  Sleep Talkin’ Guy – Dave uses a hooker to get information from one of her clients he is investigating, which she gets when the target falls asleep.  Too bad the secrecy of the arrangement is about to end.

22)  Funeral For A Doornail – A man hires a hitman to have himself eliminated since his wife is dead, but hires Dave & Maddie to stop the assassin and assassination when he sees his wife alive!

23)  Camille – The grand conclusion of the second season arrives in the form of Whoopi Goldberg as the title character, a con artist who undercover and then on the run set to the Mitch Ryder’s classic Devil With The Blue Dress On.  Judd Nelson is the cop who is in pursuit of her, while Billy Barty, David Paymer and Edie McClurg guest star.  The conclusion of this episode nicely wraps up this era of the series.

 

 

What made Moonlighting unique was its combination of screwball comedy and good detective storytelling.  Unlike the equally great Hart To Hart (also finally hitting DVD), while Jonathan & Jennifer Hart may have been as glamorous as Nick & Nora Charles or John Steed & Emma Peel on the original Avengers, Dave and Maddie were mismatched like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and all the great mismatched screwball couples up to Ryan O’Neil and Barbra Streisand in What’s Up Doc? (1972).  That had never been done before in a show like this and is also why imitators of Hart To Hart were always so pale and flat, while Moonlighting also owes something to the great spy series Honey West.  Miss West (Anne Francis) had spy gadgetry, but ran a detective agency and her partner was not unlike David Addison, save he was more mature and reliable.

 

Writers including Glenn Gordon Caron, Michael Petryni, Joe Gannon, Peter Silverman, Kerry Erhin & Ali Marie Matheson, Michael Scheff & Mary Ann Kasica, Roger Director, Debra Frank & Carl Sautter, Bruce Franklin Singer, Jeff Reno & Ron Osborn, Scott Spencer Gordon and Charles H. Eglee rotated writing dialogue-dense teleplays that were usually twice the size of normal scripts of any kind as a result.  Instead of a minute a page, it would often be 30 seconds a page, something few TV series have ever offered.  The same can be said for its cinematic literacy.  Usually, a series like this becomes a victim of the weekly TV grid, but original fans of the series remember how long new episodes often took, so they were able to hold that problem up for a while.

 

Cinematographer Michael D. Margulies shot the pilot, which was first issued on VHS along time ago from Warner Home Video.  That tape was so old, it did not even have Hi-Fi FM Stereo, just hissy magnetic mono.  A few years ago, Anchor Bay issued the pilot when the idea of putting entire TV seasons on DVD crazy and a money loser.  How times have changed.  It was an improvement, but is no match for the terrific new print and transfer on DVD 1 here.  Furthermore, all the time and money ABC put into saving and restoring the individual episodes is amazing, with beautiful detail, color quality and depth that is some of the best for any TV on DVD to date.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is that great throughout, often uncovering the cinematic react of the camerawork throughout.  The great Gerald Penny Finnerman, A.S.C., brought even more of a glamorous look to the show and was a veteran and expert who was first a great cinematographer shooting in monochrome.  You will never believe how great these shows looked, more revealing than just about and filmed TV series we have seen on DVD, and that is just about all of them.  The color by Deluxe is stunning and a real demo and treat for any video playback, digital High Definition and will shock just about anyone.  Roger Shearman did some cinematography work on Knowing Her.  On the black and white episode, the picture quality is also exceptional, which should be expected considering it was a relatively recent filming.  Though ABC tried to get them to shoot the black and white sequences in color, the producers did not trust the network and used real black and white stocks.  Bravo!

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 is simple stereo, from the original monophonic sound.  The producers kept asking ABC to do the show in stereo at a time when that was something new, but they refused.  This sounds good, but is not the truer stereo it would have been if the network had made the better choice.  With that said, this sounds really good, showing the somewhat dated fidelity of the time.  The Al Jarreau theme song was a Top 30 hit (#1 Adult Contemporary) and the series joined Miami Vice as one of the few TV shows at the time to have a hit soundtrack album, something that was highly uncommon at the time.  The theme is how you can tell how stereophonic this is and is not.  As compared to the simple Dolby 2.0 Stereo on Anchor Bay’s DVD of the pilot, this new pressing has better sound to match the better picture.

 

Extras include a nice booklet inside the book-like, dual-sided and bound DigiPaks.  There are several audio commentary tracks, including a brand new one for the pilot by producer Jay Daniel, editor Artie Mandelberg, creator/producer Glenn Gordon Caron, and director Robert Butler.  Other episodes with commentary include The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice (director Peter Werner, Debra Frank and Caron), My Fair David (Willis and director Will Mackenzie), ‘Twas The Episode Before Christmas (with Werner, Beasley and producer Jay Daniel), and Every Daughter’s Father Is A Virgin (with Caron and Shepherd).  Fans will notice that the commentary by Willis and Caron, which Anchor Bay has retained, along with the screen tests for Willis and a good actor who he went head to head with.  For now, that will be a collector’s item.

 

As far as featurettes go, DVD 1 offers Not Just A Day Job – The Story Of Moonlighting – Part One and promos for the pilot, while DVD 6 has Inside The Blue Moon Detective Agency – The Story Of Moonlighting – Part Two and The Moonlighting Phenomenon.  The show is celebrating its twentieth anniversary and this is a great way to celebrate.  Moonlighting was never just abrasive arguing between its leads; it was a brilliant series and is a true classic.  This set finally sets the record straight and cheers to everyone including Willis and Shepherd for participating in the extras!

 

See the review for Season Three elsewhere on this site.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo