There's a lot to like about Moonlighting. Great actors, good chemistry, funny dialogue, breaking the fourth wall, serious 80s vibes, some sexual tension... what's not to like?
Let's just say I did overall enjoy watching the first 2.5 seasons. The show had problems from the beginning, but they became almost intolerable in the 3rd season. I stopped watching when the 4th season hit because apparently the creators didn't figure out how to pull the show out of its tail spin during their hiatus.
The first flaw is somewhat subjective, but it probably the one that most people will recognize right from the first episode. David Addison, played by Bruce Willis, is not a character that could appear on a show today, at least without being explicitly made a pariah. Addison is a very likeable character, but the crass humor and sexual innuendos come off as extremely dated. I'm not someone who gets offended easily, and I wasn't offended by Addison, but he's often very cringey.
The second problem is the inconsistent quality of writing. Dialogue is usually on point, but there are episodes sprinkled throughout the season with stories that were really easy to predict. I've seen episodes of Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers that were more sophisticated than some of these Moonlighting episodes. At a rather high frequency, there are scenes that can last for minutes where characters are just walking or standing around doing nothing. Those scenes are directed to be emotional or to give the audience a breather, but it's especially obvious in the 3rd season that the writers are using these scenes to run out the clock because they didn't know what to do. In other cases, scenes that started out funny or with a rhythm fall flat on their face by the end, which is awkward because it sometimes makes it seem like the actors didn't know what to do and so they just cut it. I doubt that's what actually happened, but then again, who knows, given how supposedly chaotic things were on the set.
What starts out as endearing and ends up being tiring is the bickering between Maddie and David. Not just the bickering, but the characters talking right past each other. It becomes annoying after a while and loses its believability.
Something that becomes really annoying in the second and third seasons is the apparent delusions of grandeur the creators of the show have. It's kind of hard to explain unless you see it. There are many episodes that have pre-intro scenes that are self-referential. At first it's kind of cool and funny because most shows don't do this, but it became obvious that those involved in the creative process were way up their own ass with their egos. Clearly they thought they were excreting gold with every episode, including some incredible duds like the Shakespeare one.
What ultimately killed the show for me is what they did with Maddie.
I liked Maddie. Like David, she was highly flawed from the start, but we had a sense that her character was going somewhere. In my opinion, she became *worse* as time went on. By the end of season 3, she's so unhinged that it's unbearable. Yes, David had problems, many of which reared their head in season 3, but I actually think Maddie was more in the wrong than David was. Up to that point, David was really harmless to himself and others. Maddie really has David to thank for not only their detective agency remaining in business, allowing her to keep her mansion, but adding a sense of adventure to her life. Despite her willing participation, Maddie always had to act superior to David, even when he exceeded her expectations. It became obvious to me pretty quickly that she would never settle for David Addison, no matter what he did, because she would always think she's better than he is. And it turned out I was right. Not only does she *not* end up with David in any meaningful way, but she turned down a man who was closer to her perceived class who was also an astronaut, who she said was "perfect." Her superiority complex knows no bounds.
Character flaws like Maddie's are not necessarily bad for a story at face value. They're a problem in Moonlighting because of the expectations that were set up as far as character development. The audience also spent 3 seasons developing a soft spot for David. Watching David get emotionally abused by Maddie is hard to watch, and it's hard seeing Maddie become, as she put it, "ambivalent" in every way. For instance, she demands things of David that she would refuse to be demanded of herself. There comes a point where she flat out asks David how he feels about her. Does he love her or not? Now we know that David has a hangup about letting his guard down and taking off the mask, so David clams up at the question just like we would expect. He should have told her how he felt. But Maddie is more at fault. Why? For one, we know damn well based on how she'd been acting that there's no way that she would express to him her feelings. She's a hypocrite. In fact, she's worse than a hypocrite because, even if David didn't say "I love you", everything he did for Maddie up to that point was his way of expressing how he feels about her! Maddie wouldn't be running the detective agency if it weren't for him, and her life would have been boring and conventional. He didn't have to go through any of the effort that he did in order to work with Maddie. Any other man would have found a job at another company that's not run by another Maddie Hayes. Going back to what I mentioned before, it really should have been up to Maddie to express her feelings towards him because, unlike David, she never did in any meaningful way, subtle or otherwise. The closest thing to evidence we have that she so much as likes him is that she keeps working with him.
You would think by now that there's no way that those two are getting together, and you'd be right, sort of...
In spite of David nearly coming to his senses and telling Maddie to get a life, the two end up knoodling at the end of season 3. And they lived happily ever after?
Not so fast.
In the first episode of season 4, we find out that after just a month of being together, Maddie is now second guessing their relationship, which she refuses to call a relationship. Her rationalization is that all they do is have sex. That pig, David! Oh, wait, they only have sex because Maddie refused to let the world know that she's together with David and it was purely her idea to set up such an insane boundary! And this is somehow David's fault? The audience is then subjected to several arguments, all of which involve Maddie contradicting what she said in the last one. Maddie, if you loved David, the guy you left the freaking astronaut for, you would want to find a way to make things work with him, especially after just a month. You wouldn't be trying to hide his existence in your life from others (who frankly ought to have figured it by now anyway). I'm supposed to find this entertaining? Did the writers want us to hate Maddie? It certainly seems like it.
Oh yeah, by the end of that episode, she's hopped on a plane to who knows where. Unbelievable. Can't imagine why I had no interest on where she was going or if she would be coming back.
I could go on and on about what happens next, but you get the point. I stopped watching the show past season 4 because it lost all of the charm we wanted more of from the very first episode.
The moral of the story is watch this to get a slice of the 80s, but don't hesitate to stop watching when suddenly you're dreading another episode. Although it's possible the seasons I didn't watch improve, but based on what I've read I sincerely doubt it.
Let's just say I did overall enjoy watching the first 2.5 seasons. The show had problems from the beginning, but they became almost intolerable in the 3rd season. I stopped watching when the 4th season hit because apparently the creators didn't figure out how to pull the show out of its tail spin during their hiatus.
The first flaw is somewhat subjective, but it probably the one that most people will recognize right from the first episode. David Addison, played by Bruce Willis, is not a character that could appear on a show today, at least without being explicitly made a pariah. Addison is a very likeable character, but the crass humor and sexual innuendos come off as extremely dated. I'm not someone who gets offended easily, and I wasn't offended by Addison, but he's often very cringey.
The second problem is the inconsistent quality of writing. Dialogue is usually on point, but there are episodes sprinkled throughout the season with stories that were really easy to predict. I've seen episodes of Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers that were more sophisticated than some of these Moonlighting episodes. At a rather high frequency, there are scenes that can last for minutes where characters are just walking or standing around doing nothing. Those scenes are directed to be emotional or to give the audience a breather, but it's especially obvious in the 3rd season that the writers are using these scenes to run out the clock because they didn't know what to do. In other cases, scenes that started out funny or with a rhythm fall flat on their face by the end, which is awkward because it sometimes makes it seem like the actors didn't know what to do and so they just cut it. I doubt that's what actually happened, but then again, who knows, given how supposedly chaotic things were on the set.
What starts out as endearing and ends up being tiring is the bickering between Maddie and David. Not just the bickering, but the characters talking right past each other. It becomes annoying after a while and loses its believability.
Something that becomes really annoying in the second and third seasons is the apparent delusions of grandeur the creators of the show have. It's kind of hard to explain unless you see it. There are many episodes that have pre-intro scenes that are self-referential. At first it's kind of cool and funny because most shows don't do this, but it became obvious that those involved in the creative process were way up their own ass with their egos. Clearly they thought they were excreting gold with every episode, including some incredible duds like the Shakespeare one.
What ultimately killed the show for me is what they did with Maddie.
I liked Maddie. Like David, she was highly flawed from the start, but we had a sense that her character was going somewhere. In my opinion, she became *worse* as time went on. By the end of season 3, she's so unhinged that it's unbearable. Yes, David had problems, many of which reared their head in season 3, but I actually think Maddie was more in the wrong than David was. Up to that point, David was really harmless to himself and others. Maddie really has David to thank for not only their detective agency remaining in business, allowing her to keep her mansion, but adding a sense of adventure to her life. Despite her willing participation, Maddie always had to act superior to David, even when he exceeded her expectations. It became obvious to me pretty quickly that she would never settle for David Addison, no matter what he did, because she would always think she's better than he is. And it turned out I was right. Not only does she *not* end up with David in any meaningful way, but she turned down a man who was closer to her perceived class who was also an astronaut, who she said was "perfect." Her superiority complex knows no bounds.
Character flaws like Maddie's are not necessarily bad for a story at face value. They're a problem in Moonlighting because of the expectations that were set up as far as character development. The audience also spent 3 seasons developing a soft spot for David. Watching David get emotionally abused by Maddie is hard to watch, and it's hard seeing Maddie become, as she put it, "ambivalent" in every way. For instance, she demands things of David that she would refuse to be demanded of herself. There comes a point where she flat out asks David how he feels about her. Does he love her or not? Now we know that David has a hangup about letting his guard down and taking off the mask, so David clams up at the question just like we would expect. He should have told her how he felt. But Maddie is more at fault. Why? For one, we know damn well based on how she'd been acting that there's no way that she would express to him her feelings. She's a hypocrite. In fact, she's worse than a hypocrite because, even if David didn't say "I love you", everything he did for Maddie up to that point was his way of expressing how he feels about her! Maddie wouldn't be running the detective agency if it weren't for him, and her life would have been boring and conventional. He didn't have to go through any of the effort that he did in order to work with Maddie. Any other man would have found a job at another company that's not run by another Maddie Hayes. Going back to what I mentioned before, it really should have been up to Maddie to express her feelings towards him because, unlike David, she never did in any meaningful way, subtle or otherwise. The closest thing to evidence we have that she so much as likes him is that she keeps working with him.
You would think by now that there's no way that those two are getting together, and you'd be right, sort of...
In spite of David nearly coming to his senses and telling Maddie to get a life, the two end up knoodling at the end of season 3. And they lived happily ever after?
Not so fast.
In the first episode of season 4, we find out that after just a month of being together, Maddie is now second guessing their relationship, which she refuses to call a relationship. Her rationalization is that all they do is have sex. That pig, David! Oh, wait, they only have sex because Maddie refused to let the world know that she's together with David and it was purely her idea to set up such an insane boundary! And this is somehow David's fault? The audience is then subjected to several arguments, all of which involve Maddie contradicting what she said in the last one. Maddie, if you loved David, the guy you left the freaking astronaut for, you would want to find a way to make things work with him, especially after just a month. You wouldn't be trying to hide his existence in your life from others (who frankly ought to have figured it by now anyway). I'm supposed to find this entertaining? Did the writers want us to hate Maddie? It certainly seems like it.
Oh yeah, by the end of that episode, she's hopped on a plane to who knows where. Unbelievable. Can't imagine why I had no interest on where she was going or if she would be coming back.
I could go on and on about what happens next, but you get the point. I stopped watching the show past season 4 because it lost all of the charm we wanted more of from the very first episode.
The moral of the story is watch this to get a slice of the 80s, but don't hesitate to stop watching when suddenly you're dreading another episode. Although it's possible the seasons I didn't watch improve, but based on what I've read I sincerely doubt it.