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Wannabe's like 'Thieves'
never seem to work out
of TheColumnists.com
Forget reality series. Forget comedy series. Forget spy/secret
agent series. Forget cop/lawyer series. There are more than enough
of them on the tube.
What TV really needs is a good, old-fashioned comedy-drama with
a healthy dose of romance tossed in to keep things interesting.
This season ABC tried to revive the long-missing-from-TV genre
with Thieves, a one-hour series about a couple
of--well, thieves. The hook was the duo did jobs for a government
agency to avoid being thrown in prison for their various crimes.
The leads--John Stamos and Melissa George--were easy on the eyes.
While working for the government, they played the cat-and-mouse
game of will they or won¹t they wind up in each other¹s
arms. And beds. Alas, after eight episodes, ABC pulled the plug
on the show.
Was Thieves the
show I had been pining for? Nope. It wasn¹t a bad show,
but it didn¹t have that certain something that made it appoinment
television for me and millions of other TV viewers. ( But ratings-beleaguered
ABC deserves points for trying to program something that wasn¹t
a clone of Dawson¹s
Creek, Felicity, Roswell, Survivor, or the like).
That certain something was also missing from a couple of 1990s
series that attempted to revive the genre. In 1996 CBS tried
with Scott Bakula and Maria Bello playing sexy spies in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and ABC had Billy Campbell and Ally
Walker in 1993¹s Moon
Over Miami, a detective
comedy-romance. Both shows were gone before most people knew
they were even on the air.
But those shows, along with some others I have already forgotten,
can¹t hold a candle to the best of the genre: Moonlighting.
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early in the short happy life of TV's 'Moonlighting.' When the chemistry started turning destructively volatile, the show disappeared. |
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What a great show! It starred Cybill Shepherd, then best known as a teen model and sometime actress (The Last Picture Show), and the then unknown Bruce Willis. They played the uptight Maddie Hayes, a model who had fallen on hard financial times, and wisecracking detective of sorts David Addison. While liquidating her assets, Hayes found that she owned a detective agency and decided to get rid of it. Addison talked her into keeping it and joining him in the business. Thus was born the Blue Moon Detective Agency.
The detecting on Moonlighting was incidental. What the series brought to mid-1980s TV was something that hadn¹t been seen before: A well-written and well-acted comedy-drama. It had romance. It had flair. It had some great one-liners. And again, and it can¹t be said enough times, it was well-written.
Watching the show now in reruns weekdays on Bravo cable is like looking into a time capsule. The dialogue--and some of the one-liners--are dated. For example, Willis telling Shepherd about a movie: "I saw The Color Purple and it made me blue.¹¹ The styles are dated: Shepherd with lots of hair, big hair, dressed in pastels and jackets and dresses with big shoulder pads. Willis with--well, lots of hair.
Created by Glenn Gordon Caron, the show featured an excellent supporting cast led by Allyce Beasley as office receptionist Agnes Dipesto who answered phone calls with rhymes. The object of her affections was detective-in-training Herbert Viola, played by Curtis Armstrong.
But it was the on-screen chemistry between Shepherd and Willis that kept the show humming along. Viewers turned in weekly to to see if Maddie and David would, as Willis' character would say, hit the sheets together. He was willing, she was resistant. But you knew they would wind up together. Or you hoped they would. Someday. Somehow.
The show broke new ground, at least for television, in several ways. Shepherd and Willis often looked straight into the camera and talked to the audience. In one episode, Shepherd, Willis and guest stars Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson chased each other off the Moonlighting set around the film studio where the series was filmed. The world of TV fiction moved into the real world of props, stage personnel, lights, cable and fake sets.
Then there were the wildly different episodes, including "Atomic Shakespeare," a takeoff on William Shakespeare¹s "Taming of the Shrew" with Shepherd as Kate (the shrew) and Willis as her suitor, Petruchio. The jokes, one-liners, sight gags (both Willis and the horse he rides into town on are wearing sunglasses, and the horse had a saddle blanket with a BMW logo on it. In the series, Shepherd drove a BMW).
And how about the 1985 episode "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice."? Narrated by Orson Welles, it¹s an homage to films of the 1940s. Shepherd plays a 1940s nighclub singer and Willis plays in the club¹s band. She¹s married to one of the other guys in the band, but becomes romantically involved with Willis' character. Her husband is murdered. Who did it? In a black and white dream sequence, the story of the murder is told from the viewpoints of both the Shepherd and Willis characters.
My favorite episode is the pilot, which set the tone for the series. Catch it on reruns sometime, or rent it at your local video store. The plot, such as it is, is inconsequential. Watch it for the sharp and witty dialogue written by series creator Caron. And watch it because it sets the table for the future relationship between the two leads.
With great writing, offbeat stories and the Shepherd-Willis chemistry, the show climbed in the ratings. According to The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, for the 1985-86 season, the show ranked No. 24 in the Nielsen ratings. During the 1986-87 season, it climbed to No. 9, and in the 1987-88 season it was No. 12.
After that, the wheels began falling off. The well-publicized bickering between the stars and series creator Caron took its toll. Episodes were often delivered late to ABC, meaning too many repeats too often. And, worst of all, the spark that had ignited the series seemed to have gone out. On May 14, 1989, the final episode aired.
But, this being television where shows live forever in reruns, the best--and worst--of Moonlighting is yours for the viewing. Check it out. It¹s worth watching, at least until-- and if--the next great show of the genre comes along.
© 2001 by Donna J. Plesh. The "Moonlighting" photo is courtesy the Lifetime cable network.
You can comment on this column or contact Donna J. Plesh with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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