Tagged: television

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.

“Surely Your Show Didn’t Do Worse”

  • by jenwhen you punch a comet
  • knitting at a fast and skilled pace
  • Perhaps it’s a signature talisman
  • “With an accent like that I’ll believe anything he tells me.”
  • filled with snow and lumps of ice

Tune in next time part 739      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Surely your show didn’t do worse than When You Punch a Comet,” I said. That was the worst performing program in Contrarian television history, which is saying a lot. Contraria’s space program was nowhere near ready to send boxers into orbit, and the whole thing had been a big snore. Just an endless succession of training montages interspersed with footage of old women knitting at a fast and skilled pace as they raced to complete the spacesuit prototypes. One of the boxers carried around a goat bone. Perhaps it’s a signature talisman for his family, I don’t know. But it was very off-putting. None of the trainers would work with him. Fleur and Isolde’s father, the Warlord of Contraria, was ready to fund a second season until the head of NASA talked him out of it. The Warlord said, “With an accent like that I’ll believe anything he tells me.” (He had a weird thing for Americans.) “And he tells me not to waste my money, so there you go.” In the finale, the boxers did not go to space, which was a good thing because they would undoubtedly have died in their knitwear spacesuits. Instead of a comet with its icy tail, they punched a giant plastic bag filled with snow and lumps of ice.

“That was Harry’s favorite show,” Isolde said with a shake of her head.

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My, This Slope is Slippery

Back in the day, Rune Skelley could be found hard at work in the prose mines nearly every single evening. We toiled behind our keyboards night after night, weekdays and weekends, only taking time off for real emergencies. We got a lot done, but we also burned out. We didn’t want it to be as catastrophic as the time we remodeled our master bathroom and got so burned out we abandoned the project for six months and just used the bathroom in the hall, so we modified our schedule.

It started with taking Friday evenings off. We allowed ourselves some time to relax. Most of the Go! Go! Go! attitude came from Jen, so to ease her into the “weekends aren’t the enemy” mindset, we started by watching movies that could count as research. When she saw that we were able to take an evening off once a week and not lose our momentum, that rule relaxed and we now watch whatever the hell we want.

Things started to slip a little bit during the early days of the pandemic. We had dinner with Jen’s mom once a week, but at the same time we stopped having weekly writer’s group meetings so we told ourselves it all balanced out. Even though in the good old days, the only reason we didn’t have to work on Writer’s Group night is that Group counted as work. Visiting Jen’s mom, not so much.

And then we spent a solid year outlining the Ghost Series. One of the best things about brainstorming is that you can do it anywhere. Another of the best things about it is that it doesn’t take long to get into the right gear to do it. Work sessions can be short and still be quite productive.

All this slipperiness on the slopes started to turn into an avalanche when we were hit with a double whammy: we started having regular (though virtual) group meetings again, and we started actually writing Untitled Ghost Novel #1. Suddenly we couldn’t work in the car on the way to and from our family dinners, and we had another evening commitment on our schedule, and the short work sessions we’d learned to sneak in between episodes of Supernatural and Ted Lasso weren’t cutting it. Sad to say, instead of knuckling down we are now more likely to come up with excuses to skip writing sessions. “Would you look at that? It’s so late. There’s no point in trying to get the fiction engines spooled up now! Better just go watch Severance.” “We’ll get in a good long work session on Saturday (as long as the weather prevents Kent from doing yard work).” “It’s my birthday, and I want to just chill and eat cheesecake.” “It’s the dog’s birthday and I just want to chill and eat cheesecake while the dog wears a funny hat.” etc.

Untitled Ghost Novel #1 is coming along, but not as quickly as it ought to. We had a Very Serious Talk about it today and vowed to do better. But we did not pinkie-swear. When we pinkie-swear you’ll know we really mean it.

A writing partner is someone who values your pinkies as much as their own.

 

Poisoned? By Someone Named Joey?

  • by jenwith a twist!
  • morally questionable reality show
  • secretly follows them underwater
  • you look like hell
  • I see where she picked up her fashion sense

Tune in next time part 583    Click Here for Earlier Installments

Poisoned? By someone named Joey? I had assumed — nay hoped! — that Jeff was murdered by his brother Arlo, and that I would be able to send my dickish viscount nemesis to prison forever. I had not expected Jeff’s to be a story with a twist!

Jeff told me about meeting Joey when they were both contestants on a morally questionable reality show called Tontine. In addition to encouraging the cast to try to kill each other, the producers suggested they skinny dip while a camera submarine secretly follows them underwater, filming everything. Now that I knew Arlo was not involved in his death, I really wished Jeff would be quiet, but he would not shut up.

Tessa hurtled us around a final chicane and brought the motorcycle to a screeching halt on the quayside. I leapt from the sidecar, amazed that we had survived our wild ride.

I stumbled into a stevedore who took one look at me and said, “You look like hell.” Tessa joined us and the rude fellow said dismissively, “I see where she picked up her fashion sense. You two look like a couple of horny necromancers.”

“Thank you!” enthused Tessa. She grabbed my hand and dragged me down the pier.

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The Elevator Opened Into Another Kitchen

  • by jenrepeat episode of the game show Wheel of Fortune
  • “So, I made this decision…”
  • “Ciao… Adieu… Auf Wiedersehen… Via con Dios… GO AWAY!”
  • but the same can not be said of murderers
  • women taking up their rifles

Tune in next time part 211                           Click Here for Earlier Installments

The elevator opened into another kitchen, this one dusty from disuse. With her finger to her lips, the bartender signaled that I should keep quiet. She led me out through the swinging doors into a dining room lit only by dozens of televisions, all playing a repeat episode of the game show Wheel of Fortune, the Contrarian edition. It was time for the bonus round, and the contestant said, “So, I made this decision…” but he didn’t look very decisive. “Pat,” he went on, “I’m going to go with X, Z, Q, and Å.” Pat gave him a pitying look that I remembered well from the first time this episode aired and I watched it with Fleur back in Contraria. Of course none of those letters appeared in the puzzle, and the guy had very little to go on. He started spewing random phrases, hoping to hit upon the right answer. “Ciao… Adieu… Auf Wiedersehen… Via con Dios… GO AWAY!” But of course none of those were right. Time ran out and the poor contestant fell to his knees, bawling. Pat put on his judicial wig and robe and smiled into the camera. He said, “Many thieves and adulterers can be rehabilitated, but the same can not be said of murderers. Silvio, I’m afraid to say you’ve lost your chance at parole.” Uniformed guards marched in from both sides and hauled Silvio to his feet. They tied a blindfold around his head. The last thing I saw before the bartender pulled me through another door was Vanna and the other women taking up their rifles.

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Tessa Let Go of the Steering Wheel

  • k-avatargirlfriend and your sister
  • Well, do you want to follow their path?
  • We had a TV exactly like this
  • began to pick the dust and rocks off them
  • you should always have something baking

Tune In Next Time Part 15                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Tessa let go of the steering wheel and said, “How are we going to do that? That’s a long con.”

Her exasperation seemed to have cured her hiccups, but even so I smiled. “John himself taught me this: you should always have something baking. I’ve had him ‘walking the poodle’ for over a year now.” I steadied the wheel to keep our huge, sparkling car on course in the parade. “Should be a piece of cake to get him over to the river, as it were.” I winked.

“Wait a second — I’m the poodle? This is as bad as the time you introduced me as both your girlfriend and your sister to the same relatives at your cousin’s wedding!”

“They weren’t my relatives, they were on the groom’s side. And you embarrassed me too, when you began to pick the dust and rocks off them.”

“I only did that to be polite.”

I took a deep breath. “Anyway, my poodle, this is the only way.” During our argument the parade had inched along until we were almost upon the Y-intersection at Circle Square. We’d be able to edge our way out on the right fork, onto Elliptical Avenue and out of the Macabre procession. “Well, do you want to follow their path?” I asked Tessa, gesturing ahead. With a shake of her head, she took the wheel again and diverted us to the right.

But we had to stop, not because of the crowd lining the route but because another float had pulled off before us and blocked the road. It was a boxy thing the size of a house, bearing a convex window that took up the entire side facing us, through which we saw people dressed as ninjas bouncing on a trampoline inside.

“We had a TV exactly like this,” Tessa remarked.

Suddenly the giant television screen flipped open and the ninjas bounded out. Michiko’s sworn enemies, Ninja-Vision, had found us!

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