DVD Review: Moonlighting - Season Three

Ode to Miss Dipesto

The wait is now over
And now we all can see
The cases that Blue Moon
Handled in season three.

Haunted houses, Jilted lovers,
A detective’s life is a thrill.
David and Maddie hit the sheets,
sending the show straight downhill

For those unfamiliar with the series, Moonlighting was a detective show from the latter half of the ‘80s, but it had much more in common with the screwball comedies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, driven by the verbal fireworks and sexual tension between lead characters, Maddie Hayes and David Addison. The show was very funny and the characters were well aware of it, illustrated by their self-referential jokes and constantly breaking the fourth wall, reminiscent of the Hope and Crosby Road pictures.

The show was both a critical and popular hit. It received numerous nominations, won some awards, and finished the 1986-87 season in the Top-10. By general consensus, season three is when the show the peaked before spiraling out of control and losing its luster. Unfortunately, like many relationships, once the chase is consummated, dynamics change. In the movies, when the guy finally gets the girl, they roll the credits and don’t have to deal with the hard parts. Moonlighting didn’t have that luxury when David and Maddie slept together. When the next episode aired a month later, some of the magic was lost.

Plus, the writing was already so on the wall that the staff was having trouble maintaining the high level of quality that they had achieved. While the producers were creating some amazing, inventive bits of television, they were constantly late delivering episodes to the network, creating only 15 episodes this season, actually 14 1/2 episodes since one is a clip show. It was always worth the wait, but the public wasn’t used to only seeing a couple of new episodes a month, so they grew restless with so many reruns, as I’m sure the advertisers did.

Season three is memorable for three major items: the addition of junior detective, Curtis Viola, a sidekick for David and a love interest for Ms. Dipesto; the love triangle between Maddie, David, and Sam, played by Mark Harmon; and quite possibly the most memorable episode of the entire series, “Atomic Shakespeare,” which saw the cast transported into a retelling of Taming of the Shrew.

Article Author: Gordon S. Miller

Gordon S. Miller is the artist formerly known as El Bicho, the nom de plume he used when he first began reviewing movies online for The Masked Movie Snobs in 2003. Before that year was out, he became that site's publisher. …

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