Moonlighting – Season Three (Lionsgate)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: B

 

 

This critic really waxed poetic about the first two seasons of Moonlighting when reviewing the pilot telefilm and first two seasons.  If anything, that single set was put together that way because that grouping of shows has its own self-contained trajectory and a great one at that.  Season Three could only go on by ignoring what had happened at the end of the second season and picking up as if it were a more standard TV series.  By that time, it was no longer TV’s best-kept secret, but a legitimate hit for the ABC Network, despite executive never having got why the show worked in the first place.

 

This time, Curtis Armstrong joined the cast as a female version of Agnes Dipesto named Herbert Viola, a move that did not work in the long run and really hurt the show more than expected.  As a result, the shows from where he debuted aged worse than I expected; depressingly so, while some of the magic between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd started to tarnish between their conflicts behind the scenes and the scripts having less dialogue-intense banter.  Dipesto didn’t need a clone any more than Beth Howland’s Vera on the TV hit Alice needed a male clone of herself for a companion, but Dave & Maddie needed to stay constantly witty and they did not.  For now, the show still retained much of its attitude and hipness, turning into a slightly different show that was still worth tuning into as the show became a national phenomenon.

 

The 4 DVDs offer the following episodes, with an * indicating an audio commentary track:

 

1)     The Son Also Rises – David Addison (Bruce Willis) returns from a vacation in Mexico to discover his estranged father (Paul Sorvino) is getting married; now comes the bigger surprise.

2)     The Man Who Cried Wife – A man keeps getting harassed by the wife he just killed.

3)     Symphony In Knocked Flat – David takes Maddie to a classical music event with stolen tickets, only to have further complications unexpectedly related to a crime and a hilarious conclusion.  Linda Thorson from The Avengers and Don King guest star in one of the best shows in the set.

4)     Yours, Very Deadly – Viola in introduced in this odd episode where hot and sexy mail leads to murder.

5)     All Creatures Great and… Not So Great – A priest (Brad Dourif in a great performance) hires Dave & Maddie to find a person who confession included the possibility of the young lady killing herself.

6)     Big Man On Mulberry Street* - Another highlight of this season is this terrific tribute to the Hollywood Musical, including a terrific musical number directed by no less than Stanley Donen set to the song of the title by Billy Joel.  It then goes to an interesting story about Addison’s ex-wife and offers even more.

7)     Atomic Shakespeare* - This wacky variation of Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew is a fan favorite I always found shrill and I still think the same thing two decades later.

8)     It’s A Wonderful Job – Cheryl Tiegs and Lionel Stander (in a great and very appropriate cameo) guests in a fun show in which Maddie sees what would have happened to everyone if she sold the detective agency as she had originally planned.

9)     The Straight Poop* - Fun episode in which Rona Barrett interviews Dave & Maddie.  Barrett was a top media entertainment reporter at the time and is a little gem and time capsule at the same time.

10)  Poltergeist III… Dipesto Nothing – Made before there actually was a third (and thankfully final Poltergeist feature film) is this amusing show about how Dipesto takes on a case Dave & Maddie rejected to show Viola she does not need him or them to prove her able-bodiedness.  Too bad the creators did not listen.

11)  Blonde On Blonde – Opening with Janet Jackson’s classic hit Nasty, which in itself has a whole new context, Donna Dixon and Robert Wuhl guest star in this show in which Maddie is not in her element.  She wants to be alone, but when David pushes too much, a dead body surfaces.  Unfortunately, Viola joins in the sleuthing.

12)  Sam & Dave* - Mark Harmon, who is likable, turns up as competition for David in a way that makes the show more about whether Dave and Maddie will get together or not versus the show that made it a classic.

13)  Maddie’s Turn To Cry – The storyline from the previous show continues, more predictably than expected.

14)  I Am Curious… Maddie – The title spoofs the famous sexuality film, while the show continues its soap-opera love triangle.  Some feel this was the episode that ended the show for good.

15)  To Heiress Human – The soap opera comes to its conclusion and a new case shows up in which a client wonders if a marriage has to do with love or inheritance.

 

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is not bad, but not as good as the shows had been on the first set.  It was still a good-looking show and much better than many feature films we are getting now, but not quite where it was.  The great Gerald Penny Finnerman, A.S.C., brought even more of a glamorous look to the show and was a veteran and was back.  The color by DeLuxe is still has some fine moments.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 is again 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.  To recap about the music, 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.

 

Extras are not as numerous this time, but include a nice paper foldout inside the booklike dual-sided and bound DigiPaks.  There are four audio commentary tracks as noted above and a nearly half-hour featurette called Memories Of Moonlighting that (along with one of the commentaries) reunites Willis and Shepherd.  That makes Moonlighting - Season Three yet another great set to catch.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo