Moonlighting, the 80s TV series

Bruce was a better harasser than Les was.

Bruce was so sexy back in the day. He had that NYC working class rough trade thing going on.

It was on for 5 seasons. The first 3 seasons were great

I remember the detective agency having other employees. You saw them sitting at their desks. None of them ever seemed to work a case, which was odd.

I really expected a better career for Allyce Beasley

I remember LOVING this show when I first saw it in syndication in the early and late 90's. I would agree that the show has aged poorly looking at it again now (I purchased a few seasons on DVD). I still find it quite entertaining nonetheless.

Remington Steele was a better show by the same producers.

At its best, when it was firing on all cylinders, it was a very early "peak tv" type show. Absolutely fantastic. I'd thought it was only so popular because it starred a movie star, and then two of them (Moonlighting was Bruce's big break,) until I saw it in syndication and it blew me away. But the magic faded after a few seasons, it didn't last long.

I had a crush on Bruce when I saw this show when it was first airing. Now I can't stand the guy and think he is one of the worst actors.

Rebooting with Bruce and Cybill would be disastrous. They're old and look it. Bruce look like a hairless hunk of cheese and Cybill like a bloated drunk.

They never reached syndication. It was a really expensive show to produce and tanked after they had sex. The tension was gone; viewers moved on.

Glen Gordon Caron is now the showrunner for Bull. They tried to replicate back and forth/will they won't they vibe Moonlighting had with Weatherly and Dushku and it ended up costing CBS almost 10 million dollars. They were awful together.

It did too make syndication, two people have mentioned seeing it in syndication in this thread. It may not have lasting long in syndication but it was in syndication for a few years. I think I saw it on Lifetime.

The vaseline smared on the lens every time Cybil had a close up was absurd.

Smeared.

It was a pretty good show. Its first two seasons were really well done. It was part screwball comedy, party noir detective show. It was original for TV at the time, and the rapid fire dialogue was new. Bruce Willis immediately rose to stardom with his cocky grin and attitude. He was also at his best looking. Cybill Shepherd fit the character of Maddie perfectly--a model who had aged out of the business who lost all her money to her shady accountant, and all she has left is the detective agency. Enter Bruce Willis. The sexual tension was there from the very beginning. Bruce and Cybill had a lot of on-screen chemistry.

I've heard differing accounts of how the show went downhill, but most point to Cybill. I knew someone in the industry back then, and he said Cybill's nickname on the set was Cybill-zilla because she was such a monster. When Bruce Willis won the Emmy for the third season, that about did it for Cybill. Plus she got married and pregnant and wanted more time off, including after she had her twins. Bruce Willis became a movie star with Die Hard and wanted out. By season 5, it was in the shitter and everyone was ready to move on. Glen Gordon Caron, who ran the show, left about a year and a half before it folded. He was the creative spark behind the show, and when he left it showed.

The show was near-perfect the first couple seasons and those episodes do age well. I think what tanked the show was NOT David and Maddie sleeping together, but the contrived ways the show tortured their relationship to cover both Willis and Shepherd not being full time available. Had the show continued normally with David and Maddie still constantly fighting but in the context of an actual relationship, the show could have still worked well. But Willis needed time off to make movies and because of some kind of accident and Shepherd needed time off after she had twins and the show could not figure out how to handle their absences--if there weren't ever in the same room, there couldn't be any of the tension that made the first 2-3 seasons so fun. The show went so far as to have Maddie marry a stranger to stage conflict. It just got ridiculous.

It's too bad because I remember the show handled the endless production delays from the first 2-3 seasons really well. They had tons of 4th wall jokes about it and there was one episode where Rona Barrett shows up to try and resolve David and Maddie's fighting. But David and Maddie not being on set together was just an insurmountable problem.

The infamous chase scene from the "Lady in the Iron Mask" episode. Timeless slapstick.

In the '80's, it was almost unheard of for a hit TV to show to deliver only 16 episodes, which "Moonlighting" did regularly due to production delays.

Today, 16 episodes would be a remarkable order for a network TV show, and ABC would probably have just delayed production for a year due to Shepherd's pregnancy and Willis' film roles.

It’s amazing how one can like an actor (Willis) so much in one thing and not be able to stand him in literally everything else.

Willis was fantastic in this. He should have gone on to do more comedic roles

He so did not want to be a comedic actor, he wanted to be an action movie star. And other than Die Hard, he chose terrible projects his first decade or so of fame.

[quote] I really expected a better career for Allyce Beasley

Shortly after Moonlight here was a series being produced starring Allyce Beasley, Beth Howland and Georgia Engel. I read that it was supposed to be a spinoff of Moonlighting and Allyse would continue playing Dipesto. There was a pilot made that never aired.

I loved this show in 7th grade. I wanted to BE Maddie Hayes.

R18's link shows how well this show did slapstick which is not easy to do.

They do it!

The "sex" part of the scene is really awkward because Cybill Shepherd was very pregnant at the time, so they couldn't violently thrash around they way you'd expect.

You can see though that this didn't have to ruin the show. They still had so much to fight about, have tension over, etc.

Not slapstick, but another great example of the show's humor:

The cases were just the excuse for them to be together, snarking at each other.

Bruce very rightly shot to super stardom but Cybil herself is just as crucial to the success of the show. She really was perfect in the role.

R29 she is what attracted people initially cause she was a big movie star now on a show. Eventually people kept returning for him. She was so jealous of how big he became.

She was seething with hate when he won that Emmy.

I know how Bruce feels.

Another favorite scene, from "Money Talks, Maddie Walks:" Maddie tracks down the accountant who stole from her, and he's in Buenos Ares. She finds him, challenges him to a card game and is on track to win back a big chunk of money from him after putting up the detective agency and other possessions as collateral. David, trying to be kind, talks her out of it so she folds and she gives an amazing speech about how she's moved on from what he did to her. And then, of course, she comes back and checks the cards....

(scene starts around 40:00)

Cybill Shepherd got a lot of shit for the show's problems, and no doubt she was a bitchy diva, but in fairness to her that set was crazy. Scripts were twice as long as typical one hour show scripts because of the intricate dialogue, and they took 2-3 times as long to shoot as one hour shows typically did. Glenn Gordon Caron was a perfectionist and held up production a lot because of his demands. This was a vanity project for Cybill, she wasn't expecting to work such a grueling schedule. So her feuding with Bruce Willis comes in that context. Bruce Willis was at first just grateful to have a job, but after Die Hard hit, he saw his movie star future and basically checked out himself.

Producer Jay Daniel did an interview where he was as diplomatic as can be about all of them.

"You know, I love Glenn Caron. There’s nothing bad I can say about the man. Even in the heat of battle when his back was against the wall, he kept a sense of humor about it, very self-denigrating humor. Oh, he had his moments, but for the most part he was a great, great pleasure to work with. The one criticism would be that he really did need to have to have his back to the wall and guns pointed at his head to get a script out. But that was because he’d set the bar so very high on Moonlighting. You get nominated for sixteen Emmys, you know the bar gets higher. He was a real perfectionist in terms of wanting the scripts to be as good as they could possibly be. He would go to the very last possible second to make a script better. Bruce and Cybill would get ten pages of dialogue they'd never seen first thing in the morning and they were going to shoot it in another hour or so. It was very difficult for them. Some of the tension on the set was because of that. But other than the lateness of the scripts, I have no criticism of Glenn whatsoever. He’s very, very talented, not just as a writer, but he's a great producer and a talented director as well."

"In the beginning, Bruce was just a guy’s guy. Let's just say he evolved. Over the years, he went from being the crew's best friend and just being grateful for the work and all of that to realizing that he was going to be a movie star and wanting to move on. Part of that was because of his strained relationship with Cybill. That sometimes made the set a very unpleasant place to be. Cybill -- I got along with her very well at times, other times I’d have to be the one who said you have to come out of the trailer and go to work. In fairness to her, she was in the makeup chair at six thirty in the morning with pages of dialogue she hadn’t seen before, she'd work very long hours, and then be back in the makeup chair at six thirty the next morning. It was debilitating. She wasn't twenty years old anymore and she had concerns about how she looked at the end of the day -- and rightfully so, so we’d do our best to accommodate that. Try to shoot her out of scenes. That made Bruce work later. So there was some resentment about that. It was a constant give and take with both of them, but it's the results that count and in the end, they both gave some incredible performances in spite of what went on off-camera."

The Smart and Sexy thing perfected by Willis.... who else has it? Certainly not Clooney or Pitt. Anyone?

DIE HARD was the worst thing to happen to Willis. He started taking himself VERY seriously.

That sexual tension between them was the real deal. They slept together when they first met, and Cybill discusses it in her autobiography,

I always hated how fast the characters on this show talked

Just really fast talking..

R28, true, but some of the mysteries were fun B-plots. One I vividly remember was a priest trying to find the anonymous woman he fell in love with during her confessions.

Should be remade with DL faves Mamie Gummer and Evan Peters

I loved Allyce's character, Cybill's hair and shoulder pads- and I am a fool for just a little alliteration.

Flip the sexes. Jon Hamm as a washed up althlete (?) who discovers a detective agency among his many investments, run by competent by fun loving and trouble magnet Ilsa Fisher. They played well off each other in Keeping Up With The Joneses.

^^yuck no thanks

Amazing show - Season 3 is perfection!!!!

Season 3 had absolute peak Mark Harmon.

Yes, Die Hard changed everything. It was a mega-hit, the biggest action film in years, and Willis became a movie star overnight. It all went to his head right away and he became insufferable.

Bruce Willis recorded 2 albums, too.

Bruno!

Curtis Armstrong talked about Moonlighting extensively in his book. Bruce was an arrogant asshole who thought his shit didn't stink once the show became a hit. Booger was brought on because Bruce started to resent all the slapstick he was given, and wanted more serious storylines so movie studios would take note of his range and cast him. . When he won the Emmy it got worse, and by Die Hard, he had all but checked out of doing the show. The staff hated him. They weren't fans of Cybill either, but unlike Cybill, Glenn had a bromance with Bruce, and thought he could do no wrong. So he got a pass for his wretched behavior, which included belittling people on set in front of everyone if he was in a bad mood.

Few celebrities have been as obnoxious and assholish as Bruce Willis was at the height of his fame.

[quote]She was seething with hate when he won that Emmy.

...and then again when Christine Baranski won hers for Cybill.

Willis seems to have completely lost his sense of humor as he's grown older, and Shepherd seems to have gained one.

I can't fathom how this could be rebooted with those actors in their current state, but without them, it's not "Moonlighting."

If Moonlighting were to be rebooted, it would just be quick-edited so that no one has to memorize more than two lines of dialogue at a time.

As for Cybill, she comes off as moody and depressed in Curtis book. There was some clear jealousy and resentment that Bruce's star had shined so brightly, but she was also intentionally ignored and treated badly by Willis and Caron. They gave her a lot of shit for getting pregnant, but Willis got none for not showing up to the set because he was hungover and missed his flight, or having to delay shooting because he broke his leg skiing in Aspen.

Reading his account, its clear she dragged a lot of issues from this show into "Cybill".

R48, which is pretty ironic because from the beginning of the "Atomic Shakespeare" episode, it's pretty obvious Curtis Armstrong could run acting circles around all of them.

Curtis Armstrong is a fucking awesome actor, who can elevate even the most mediocre of scripted dialogue (Exhibit A: his "Metatron" in Supernatural; Exhibit B: his asshole defense attorney in The Closer and Major Crimes).

Love him.

The Mark Harmon reveal on the episode in which David realizes he’s in love with Maddie was one of the best cliffhangers ever.

Remember when they had to resort to Claymation to have Cybil in an episode?

R55 Exhibit C: Risky Business, when "What the Fuck" Miles' bowels turn to water after being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp.

They cast well having Virginia Madsen as Maddie’s cousin.

I'm sure Cybill was none too pleased to have Virginia Madsen join the cast, she was much younger and at the peak of her looks.

Virginia was stunning.

I thought Viginia Madsen was going to be a major star. Granted, she's had a very nice career and she works all the time, but I thought she was going to be the next Jessica Lange in movies.

R60 looks like a B&W photo that's been colorized.

I like it!

Madsen was gorgeous. Cybill must've hated her.

I don’t recall her saying anything.

Diehard was a classic.Its Bonnie movie...she upstaged Willis.Bonnie should have won an Oscar for her role in those movies.Something that makes Willis mad.

Cybill hates Willis....yeah i watched repeats and their bickering is annoying.

Dana Delany had a memorable guest appearance as David’s former flame.

Bruce Willis experienced a meteoric rise to fame that few unknown actors have ever achieved. It does happen of course, but for Bruce - he became famous almost overnight and was suddenly a movie star, "singer", big-shot-big-wig on TV commercials that aired every 10 minutes for years and the toast of the town on every talk show of the period (which used to be a rather big deal back in those days). Whether or not he became a diva (by most accounts, he DID), he was able to maintain his star power for decades after. Cybill had a wonderful resurgence that was even better than expected I am sure - but in comparison to Bruce, she was the baby thrown out with the bath water. I can see why she was envious; it is a human response to such a situation.

Atomic Shakespeare and the episode where there's a dance sequence set to Billy Joel's Big Man pn Mulberry Street stand out to me.

I know two of Cybill’s ex-assistants and they LOATHE her.

She was exceedingly cruel.

She’s not well regarded in the industry.

Alan Rickman was the best thing about Die Hard. He's the one who should have been a bigger movie star from it, not Willis.

I loved the theme song by the late Al Jarreau. That was such a great song.

Does anyone remember the episode where Maddie gives a gift to an elderly woman who is laid up in a hospital bed? I'm looking for that episode but cannot seem to locate it on my DVDs.

You may be thinking of the Christmas episode “It’s A Wonderful Job” (season 3)? Maddie doesn’t make it to the hospital on time and her aunt dies.

Thanks. That sounds like it might be it.

I remember when Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback was first on a website like AV Club did a 10 Best Shows of the year type article and Comeback was on it. Someone commented that after working on Moonlighting with him, Glenn Caron should sue HBO, as the Paulie G character on The Comeback was a straight rip off of his frat boy style on the Moonlighting set.

Possibly Cybill’s best performance, r76.

"You gotta read a lot of Dr. Seuss."

Interview with Willis, Shepherd and Caron.

HATED the Maddie wet look in Season 5.

I waited on Cybill Sheperd during this time. She was absolutely beautiful, too beautiful to look at directly.

I never saw it in the 80's but remember it having a huge buzz at the time. In the late 00's I was older and was suddenly interested in revisiting everything 80's (my youth) and on a whim rented the DVDs from Netflix, starting with season one. I became quickly fascinated and couldn't believe what I had missed!

I now own all five season DVD sets and still watch them. I love this show! I think Cybill Shepard and Bruce Willis together in these roles is an example of great casting. I think the post-modern and screwball elements still hold up. I like how easily it shifts between ironic humor and then has me genuinely feeling Maddie and David's on-off romantic pull, especially when Mark Harmon steps in and David is so desperate.

Also I'm amazed it made a gay man (me) a Bruce Willis fan. I eventually grew to appreciate his obnoxious shtick!

I also always felt the talk-over dialogue thing was Altman-inspired, or an homage to Myrna Loy and William Powell in the Thin Man films.

And I also disagree, I feel the show was strong all the way to the end, when the plots get even more insane... the show's whole aesthetic was bonkers to begin with.

It did seem like Allyce Beasley had a whole career ahead of her because of her role, she was so popular on the show right away. Whenever I mention MOONLIGHTING, often the first thing people say is, "Oh, I loved Allyce Beasley ."

Anyone who imitates Preston Sturges is very bad.

I know back when it aired, a huge deal was made about Cybill's age but having just looked it up she was only 34 when it first aired. That is hardly old. Certainly no need to smear Vaseline on a camera lens.

Also a deal was made about the age difference between her and Willis yet he is barely 5 years younger than her. That is nothing!

She was far prettier than he was handsome that's for sure.

We noticed even back then that one could replace David with a snarky lesbian, and the show would still work.

I still love the opening credits. Takes me right back to the mid-80s.

R85, the cinematography wasn't about Cybill's looks--she was still stunning on and off camera and they had lots of scenes with her without the soft focus. It was about giving her character Maddie an old-Hollywood glam aura. Another example of that kind of detail was in the "Dream Sequence" episode--rather than shoot in color and then remove the color (which is cheap and easy), they actually shot on old-school B&W film, which was more expensive and took longer. That episode was one of the most expensive in TV history at the time.

In the interview at R80 at 6:30 they talk about the soft focus and how they made a joke of it in the "Straight Poop" episode.

It was one of the first shows that was self-referential and became very meta before crawling up it's own ass and losing it's charm.

I'm curious how Bruce and Cybill got to work. Did they drive themselves or did each have drivers. Bruce lived all the way out in Malibu and Cybill was in Encino. Both pretty far. How they were able to not get stuck in LA traffic during any given work day is a mystery.

R91, Cybill said in her autobiography that she bicycled every day, but I found that impossible to believe.

Bruce was only 29 when the show started? Wow.

My favorite episode:

The black-and-white Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice

It developed into a formula very quickly. And it was hardly ever on! It got so bad that one show had Bruce Willis playing the soul of the Maddie and David's unborn baby (with a bow in what little hair he had).

This was a show that would have done wonders in today's cable TV world - or the British TV seasons - where you only make 10-12 episodes at a time.

R96- It woukd have worked better in an era without an expectation for 22 episodes per season.

I know she is featured in the opening credits, but I really wish Angelyne had been given a guest spot.

Can you see her trying to spit out a Caron line of snappy dialogue?

"Bruce was so sexy back in the day. He had that NYC working class rough trade thing going on."

Um, it was supposed to be Philly, not New York. I get nothing New York from Bruce Willis at any time from any project. I could see someone maybe buying it if they had never been out of Little Rock.

No. Bruce was adorable then, but nobody wants this bald Trump supporter now.

Apparently R21 never saw Hudson Hawk. Consider yourself lucky.

R30, Cybill was by no means a "big movie star." If anything, Moonlighting was her first success since The Last Picture Show (1971) and shampoo commercials. Everything in the 1970s was a disaster - At Long Last Love, Daisy Miller -Cybill's name was a punchline. She appeared in a TV series with Sam Elliott called Yellow Rose a couple of years before Moonlighting, and I was very impressed how much better she was as an actress by then.

In many ways Moonlighting was a parody and put-on, which worked fabulously in the first three seasons. I especially loved how they used Bernard Herrmann-like background music in many episodes. The show really clicked, it was so well done. I still enjoy it and don't care about the backstage dramas.

[quote] I know she is featured in the opening credits, but I really wish Angelyne had been given a guest spot.

Who is this?

R102 she is L.A's billboard queen.

[quote]R36 That sexual tension between them was the real deal. They slept together when they first met, and Cybill discusses it in her autobiography,

In the book she says they were attracted to each other, but did NOT sleep together because it would be bad for the show.

I was about 20 when that show aired in the UK and would have happily drank BW's bathwater.

Of course now I know he's a repug, not so much.

R104, R36 is another example of how DL regulars distort facts to suit their fantasies. You are right.

R106 will fight to the DEATH to defend Cybill’s honor!

Thank you Bruce Willis @ R107