Written by Scott Ryan
Pubished by Fayetteville Mafia Press
In 1985 a mid-season replacement show called Moonlighting hit the airwaves of ABC and forever changed the dynamic of what TV could be.
Incorporating fourth wall breaks, musical numbers, farce, rapid-fire dialog, high drama, fantasy and severely over budget/EXTREMELY LATE episodes that in this day and age would make network higher-ups ruin their pants with the stress-poos, Moonlighting burst through the often banal offerings of the sitcoms and dramas of the 80s to become one of the most interesting, frustrating and medium-changing shows in television history.
The show also happened to launch the career of Bruce Willis (who played lead-character David Addison), and re-established Cybil Shepard (playing opposite Willis as Maddie Hayes) as a powerhouse actress.
In Scott Ryan’s (The Last Days of Letterman, The Women of Amy Sherman-Palladino) newest pop culture endeavor, Moonlighting: An Oral History, just about everyone (minus Bruce Willis – come on Bruce) connected to the show, from its creator Glenn Gordon Caron, to the various main cast members, writers and crew and yes, even guest stars, discuss the show’s 5 seasons, giving a “Behind the Scenes” view of a 66 episode show that managed to rack up 40 Emmy and 10 Golden Globe nominations over its run (while somehow managing to fade from the TV viewer consciousness – but I’ll discuss that later in this piece).
Particular space is given to some of the show’s more iconic episodes like: The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice, a 40s Noir episode shot in black and white and introduced by Orson Wells (his last performance before he died); North by North DiPesto which established co-star Allyce Beasley’s character Agnes DiPesto (Maddie & David’s secretary) as a strong “Go-To” when Willis and Shepard were unable to shoot an episode; Atomic Shakespeare, a meta episode where a young Moonlighting fan can’t watch the show until he does his homework so he imagines the cast as the characters in Taming of the Shrew; Big Man on Mulberry Street which has both a dream sequence AND a dance number; and, of course, I Am Curious…Maddie, the episode that established the golden rule for all tv shows that followed “DO NOT LET YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS SLEEP TOGETHER LEST YOU RUIN THE SHOW”-although the creators of the show go to great lengths to counter that there is no such thing as “The Moonlighting Curse”.
Ryan also doesn’t skimp on the aftermath of Season 3 when it seemed the show had to deal with “behind-the-scenes” strife due to a confluence of issues: Shepard gets pregnant with twins and can’t physically be in the show, Willis films Die Hard and wants to pursue a movie career, show creator Caron leaves to shoot a feature, writers have to create half a season where the main characters aren’t in any scenes together…beginning with Season 4, it was a dead show walking.
Interviews with the writers, cast and crew all delve deep into the show’s shift when Shepard’s Maddie re-enters the picture in the last half of Season 4 in a way that was contradicts the character relationships established in the 3 preceding seasons (which fans will tell you was the death knell for Moonlighting) and how that shift sparked some seriously bad tension with the fans and between the cast/crew and the show (not to mention the vitriolic strain between Shepard and Caron).
Is it fun to read all about how a great and inventive show slid down the tubes after only 3 Seasons?
Not really, but from the standpoint of a fan, it answers a lot of questions about what happened and why (and yes, there are a few episodes from Seasons 4 and 5 that are certainly Moonlighting-worthy that Ryan covers via interviews as well. Season 4’s 2-part episode Cool Hand Dave is a particularly good call back to earlier seasons).
In Moonlighting: An Oral History Ryan has managed to shine a spotlight on a curious and brilliant show that burned into the culture of the “Have-it-All” 80s and turned the conventions of television on its head, paving the way for innovative shows that would walk in its shoes later on (Malcolm in the Middle, Fleabag, Peep Show, Community, and Atlanta to name a few) and for fans of the show, it is a nostalgic look back at a brief moment in time when anything could happen between Maddie and David.
But as good and interesting as Ryan’s book is, there is a question I have to ask: will anyone other than a small, niche group of fans care about it?
Moonlighting isn’t on ANY streaming services (the show used a ton of music that can’t get cleared, meaning music choices would need to be changed and re-inserted back into the show for to be viable for streaming… which is not possible because ENTIRE episodes were written specifically around certain songs), the DVDs are long out of print and each season is selling for over $100 a piece (and new fans aren’t going to invest in a 32 year-old tv show they haven’t even heard of), and it doesn’t appear that there is enough interest in resurrecting the show for one of those “limited series” runs that seems to be all the rage for nostalgia-hungry fans looking to find out what happened to the characters after the show left the air.
The answer, sadly, is that this book is really only for those fans who loved the show when it was on and miss it – a decidedly limited audience.
If you are one of those people, Moonlighting: An Oral History should definitely be on your reading list… and maybe one day, another generation can see Bruce Willis speak in iambic pentameter for 45 minutes over and over again.
