Moonlighting: A Fascinating Mess

We’ve been watching Moonlighting. Kent’s never seen it before, whereas for Jen it’s technically a rewatch but it’s been so long that it feels mostly new. We just finished the infamous third season, and we have some thoughts about it (as do plenty of other folks).

Spoilers ahead, or things that are spoiler-adjacent anyway. If you’re like Kent and never saw it when it aired, proceed with caution.

The show started off fun. It didn’t always make a ton of sense, but the snappy rythms of the dialog and the offbeat chemistry of Willis and Shepherd gave it a nice flavor. But by the end of season three, it wasn’t fun anymore. And the seasons were short — it’s frankly amazing how small the fun era of Moonlighting is, considering what a cultural touchstone the show is. We do have two more seasons to go, and we hope some of the fun comes back. We know that Cybill Shepherd will be largely absent for season four, which will obviously impact the flavor of the show. And we know that its ratings tanked…

Lots has already been written about the behind-the-scenes problems, and how the production delays led to reruns (look it up, kiddies) which hurt audience loyalty, and thus led to cancelation. But for us, it just boils down to this: The show was fun, then it wasn’t. We’ve been talking over why we think that is. The two biggest things that stick out are that they (a) started neglecting the core premise of the show, and (b) stopped doing the zany plots and witty banter that made it fun.

Of course, the big turning point on-screen came when David and Maddie became romantic. That’s where there stops being even a token nod toward cases for the agency to handle, and where whole strings of episodes (reminder: the seasons were short…) dwell on how miserable the lead characters are. And because they’ve become miserable, they no longer have rapid-fire repartee. They have speechifying. And they have long takes of sullen silence, gloomily lit.

Many have said that the lesson of Moonlighting was that they shouldn’t have given an answer for will-they-or-won’t-they. That’s a bell that couldn’t be unrung, sure. But, did ringing it have to destroy all the fun? We say no. What if Maddie and David hadn’t made each other miserable? They could have kept making each other crazy instead, and kept pretending they were detectives. They could have had ups and downs, and kept bantering through it all. The banter could have even shaded over into bicker sometimes; snarky, witty bickering can be fun. But seriously, why wasn’t David allowed to even try to actually make Maddie happy? What necessitated making him act like a stalker? It seems like the answer was something along the lines of, “The conflict for the story is rooted in their relationship, so the relationship can’t make them happy.” Okay, but there are options in between “happy” and “miserable.”

So we think that the real lesson of Moonlighting is: Don’t let your detectives stop solving cases. The show’s failure wasn’t when it got canceled, it was when it stopped being fun. It stopped being itself on a basic level. Without MacGuffins to chase, the characters ended up just wallowing. A story can turn in unexpected directions, and can go through different moods. It should! The author’s responsibility is to ensure that through all that, it doesn’t stop being itself.

A writing partner is someone who won’t bend your story so far it breaks, and who’ll help you fix it if it does.