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| Brother, Can You Spare a Blonde? (24 September 85) | |
| This episode introduces Charles Rocket as David's brother, Richard Addison. Richard is a con-artist wannabe, but without the talent, who tries unsuccessfully to make money selling bogus get-rich-quick schemes to people. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a briefcase containing $100,000 appears under the hood of Richard's car. Richard promptly begins to spend it, mainly in an attempt to impress his brother David into believing that Richard is a financial genius and a huge business success. David isn't impressed -- he doesn't believe Richard is capable of financial success - but Maddie spends time with Richard, saying that she thinks he's a nice guy, which makes David jealous, although he doesn't say so. But then the owner of the money, a Mr. Navarone, comes calling for it - it turns out the money was drug money, stashed temporarily to hide it from the police - but mistakenly thinks that David Addison is the one who took it. Navarone roughs up David, warning that he wants his money back. Now David knows what Richard's game is, and he knows that Richard is in trouble. But does David really want to come to his aid? | |
| The Lady in the Iron Mask (1 Octobrer 85) | |
| For the first time, a client actually solicits the Blue Moon Detective Agency! Blue Moon is visited by Barbara Wylie, a woman wearing a mask to hide her disfigured face. She says that when she agreed to marry Benjamin Wylie, another man named Frank became very jealous and burned her face with acid and then went to jail. Barbara says that despite all that, she still loves Frank. She tells Maddie and David that Frank is out of jail now, and she wants to see him again, and she wants to hire them to find him. Finally they do find him, as a tour guide at a distant church. But he doesn't believe their story, and says that he doesn't want to see Barbara. Then Frank turns up dead, and Maddie and David suspect a connection. They confront Barbara at her home, but Barbara insists that she has never seen Dave and Maddie before, that she never hired Blue Moon, and that she doesn't know what they are talking about. As Dave and Maddie pursue the case, it becomes clear that someone is dressing up like Barbara Wylie in order to frame her. But who? They argue about how best to solve the case, and decide that each of them should solve the case in their own way -- which turns out to be that both of them dress up in the same costume, pretending to be Barbara Wylie. | |
| Money Talks...Maddie Walks (8 Octobrer 85) | |
| In the pilot episode, we saw that Maddie had been a very wealthy model, before her accountant ran off with all her money. As this episode begins, Maddie learns where he went. She learns that Ron Sawyer went to Buenos Aires and built a casino. Incensed, she flies down to confront him and demand her money back. David is convinced that she is wasting her time, that Sawyer will laugh in her face, but he follows her down anyway. It turns out David was right, of course: Sawyer has no interest in giving her her money back. Dave and Maddie try to make the best of it by winning some of it back at the craps table. Then Maddie has an idea: she wants David to win her money back from Sawyer in a high-stakes poker game. She puts up her house, her car, and the agency, against the two million dollars that Sawyer stole from her. Of course she doesn't get the money back, but she doesn't lose the agency either; the resolution to this card game is classic. | |
| The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice (15 Octobrer 85) | |
| This episode ties with Every Daughter's Father is a Virgin as my personal favorite episode of the whole series. Maddie and David arrive at what was once the Flamingo Cove nightclub. While there, they learn that a murder was committed there in the 1940's. It seems that the nightclub singer, Mrs. Rita Adams, who was married to the nightclub's clarinet player, Jerry Adams, became romantically involved with the cornet player, Zack McCoy. Shortly thereafter, Jerry was murdered, and both Rita and Zack insisted that the other one did it. On their way back to the office, Maddie and David argue about the case. Maddie is sure that Zack did it, and David is sure that Rita did it. Maddie calls David an animal; David calls Maddie a sexist. ("I am not a sexist." "You just accused a man of murder, Maddie -- of murder -- based on what? That fact that he's a man!") Next we fade to black and white, and in a dream sequence we see Maddie's version of what happened. Maddie-as-Rita is a loving wife to Jerry, but she is attracted to David-as-Zack. Rita and Zack have an affair, after which Zack plots to kill Jerry. Rita is reluctant, but she covers for Zack as he struggles with Jerry and kills him. Later, Zack accuses her of the murder to the police, and she is arrested. Next we see another dream sequence, this time David's version of what happened. This time Maddie-as-Rita is a victim of her husband's abuse, and she is anxious to see him dead. David-as-Zack is reluctant, but he finally agrees (killing Jerry in a single blow). Rita later accuses him, and he is sent to the electric chair. Although the storylines for the two dream sequences are similar on the surface, it is the differences in detail between the two versions -- the way they underscore some fundamental differences between men and women (such as how caring and loving Zack is in Maddie's version, and yet just a little unsure and vulnerable, contrasted with how confident, almost cocky, Zack is in David's version; David's Zack is even shown playing most of the instruments in the band -- at the same time!) -- which are what make this episode such a classic. | |
| My Fair David (29 Octobrer 85) | |
| Clark Greydon is a professional concert pianist. It's "something he was born with, not something he works at." He also has a talent for getting himself into debt, and getting his wealthy mother to bail him out. Now he's gotten himself kidnapped, and Clark's mother receives a ransom note. She brings it to Blue Moon, saying that she is quite willing to pay the ransom, but she'd rather not pay the whole amount if she doesn't have to, so she hires David and Maddie as negotiators, offering to pay them "one dollar, for every two dollars you save me". As David and Maddie pursue the kidnappers, it turns out that Clark staged his own kidnapping, and wrote his own ransom note, so as not to have to face his mother with the news that he had gotten himself seriously into debt yet again. Mystery solved, until a second ransom note appears, and this time Clark wasn't behind it, and Clark really is missing. But in a way, that's not really what this episode is about. This is the episode in which we first see David limboing with the office staff, and Maddie is furious with him, angry that he isn't taking his office responsibilities seriously, wanting him to be a "boss" to the employees, "not a buddy". They make a deal: if he can't go an entire (week?) being serious and adult, he has to fire two of the least productive employees; but if he can, Maddie has to do the limbo. | |
| Knowing Her (12 November 85) | |
| Gillian Armb is an old flame of David's who left him unceremoniously years before. She walks into Blue Moon, intending to hire Blue Moon to find a locket of hers which is now missing. David takes the case (over Maddie's objections), among other reasons to find out more about why Gillian left him so suddenly. It turns out that she met a very rich man, whom she married for money ("the one thing you couldn't give me", she tells David) but not for love. As David spends more time with her, suspicious events leads them to believe that Gillian's husband is trying to kill her. These include a near-fatal fall from a balcony, an overdose of sleeping pills, and finally a confrontation in a dark parking lot which leaves Gillian's husband dead. It looks like self-defense -- until Maddie figures out the truth. | |
| Somewhere Under the Rainbow (19 November 85) | |
| Kathleen Kilpatrick is a leprechaun. At least, she believes she is. Her father, who years ago left Ireland for America and then died soon after, told her so. She also believes that she is in danger, that some man is after her for her pot of gold, and so she comes to Blue Moon for protection. Maddie doesn't believe her, and so Kathleen offers to show her the pot of gold as proof. David, Maddie and Kathleen drive to a hidden spot and start digging and eventually find - $100,000 in gold coins. David does some research, and finds that the gold was stolen from a bank in Ireland twenty years earlier by three men, one of whom was Kathleen's father. Kathleen doesn't know. Furthermore, one of the men has a son who is still alive, who wants his share of the money - especially now that it's been found. So it turns out that Kathleen the leprechaun really is being pursued by a man for her pot of gold after all. | |
| Portrait of Maddie (26 November 85) | |
| Police come calling for Maddie, with the news that an artist in town has just committed suicide, and they want to know if she knew him. Artist Phillip Wright evidently has a secret love for Maddie: his studio walls are covered with her photos, and a recently-completed portrait of her hangs on his easel. Maddie never knew him, but she is touched with the thought that he secretly felt so bly for her. Maddie buys the painting, then gives it away to a man who says he is Charlie, Phillip's brother. But Maddie learns that Charlie didn't want the painting for sentimental reasons, because he had begun to scrape the paint from the canvas, looking for something underneath. It turns out that Phillip, Charlie, and another man were international art thieves, who had stolen a multimillion dollar painting called "The Duchess" three years ago, and now they want to try to sell it. The trouble is, Phillip was the only one who knew where the painting was, and now he's dead. And then Maddie learns that he's left a clue to The Duchess's location in his own "Portrait of Maddie", the same clue that Charlie was looking for and never found.... | |
| Atlas Belched (10 December 85) | |
| Lou Lasalle is the owner of a large, successful detective agency in town, and he wants to buy Blue Moon from Maddie. His offer is very attractive to her, but because it leaves David out in the cold, he isn't happy. Meanwhile, Thornton Wellman is the owner of a very large business, and much of his office equipment has just been stolen, including in particular some very valuable phone numbers to clients, business contacts, and other important persons. Wellman's executive secretary is a man named Phil West, who is sure that he is going to lose his job with Wellman over the theft of the Rolodex. David learns that Lou Lasalle is the securities agency for Thornton Wellman, and he plans with West to recover the stolen Rolodex. David is planning to start his own detective agency once Blue Moon is sold to Lasalle, and he believes that he can get the Wellman account away from Lasalle if he can get the Rolodex back. The trail that leads to the Rolodex leads them to the city dump, but they finally recover it. But West decides not to go back to work for Wellman. Instead, he holds the Rolodex hostage and sends Wellman an anonymous ransom demand. Meanwhile, Maddie realizes that she has made a mistake in selling Blue Moon, and she comes to David and asks to work for him at his new agency. Together they find West, and persuade him to take credit for getting the Rolodex back from fictional criminals, and thereby negotiate a higher paying, more prestigious position with Wellman. West agrees, and they return to Wellman's office, but before they arrive, they meet Lasalle, who is scared that Dave and Maddie will get the Wellman account from him, and he offers Blue Moon back to her in return for letting him take credit for helping West find the Rolodex. Maddie doesn't want to accept, but David insists. | |
| Twas the Episode Before Christmas (17 December 85) | |
| A man named Joseph once testified against his partner, sending him to prison. The partner is out now, and has found Joseph and murdered him. Joseph's wife Mary and their baby son are on the run. Mary anonymously leaves the baby with Agnes, leading David and Maddie to try to find the baby's parents. On the way, they meet up with three guys from the Justice Department named King (Ruben King, Saul King, and Jim King), a camel (cigarette), and a star to guide the way. This is the first of two Moonlighting Christmas episodes. The other one is It's a Wonderful Job. | |
| Bride of Tupperman (14 January 86) | |
| It's hard to pick favorite examples of Dave n' Maddie Banter, but this episode has got some of the very best. It's late on a Friday afternoon, and nothing much is going on around the office. David is watching The Bride of Frankenstein on television, and Maddie wants to leave early. David suggests that they go do something together, but it turns out they can't agree on what to do: they can't agree on a restaurant, they can't agree on a film, and they can't agree on a nightclub, so they cancel the whole idea. Then, a client walks in, Mr. Alan Tupperman. He's looking for a wife. He says he's never met the right woman, but he has a list of qualities that he's looking for. He gives the list to David and Maddie and offers to hire them to find the woman who meets his description. Again Maddie and David disagree, first on whether to take the case at all, and then, after they take the case, they disagree on what Tupperman's list means. Finally, they agree to disagree: each of them goes separately in search of someone who will match the list, and let Mr. Tupperman decide between the two candidates. When the dust settles, Maddie and David are each sure that theirs is Tupperman's perfect woman, and of course the two women are completely different. Maddie and David gloat at each other, sure that Tupperman will pick the woman that each of them has found ... until they learn that Tupperman has picked them both, and was already married when he came to see them. | |
| North By North Dipesto (21 January 86) | |
| This is the first episode to center primarily around Agnes; Dave and Maddie appear relatively briefly. (Other episodes in which Dave and Maddie appear briefly, if at all, include Poltergeist III -- DiPesto Nothing, Los Dos DiPestos and Here's Living With You, Kid.) Agnes denies it, but she's down. She's blue. She feels like her life is a boring routine. She wants glamour, she wants excitement, and she wants to do something different than the same old thing every day. So, Dave and Maddie send her to the California Investigators Association Annual Banquet and Ball, where she stumbles into the middle of an espionage operation. In the process, she meets two different guys, one of whom is apparently stabbed in a bowling alley; she is injected with truth serum; the cab she is riding is in hijacked; she is kidnapped and interrogated under a bright light; and finally she escapes into a laundry where, as it turns out, spies have been hiding stolen plans. After all that, she realizes that she has missed Blue Moon, and that "life is pretty good". | |
| In God We bly Suspect (4 February 86) | |
| Facing heart surgery, Dorothy's ex Stan confesses to his extramarital affairs -- and his need for a place to convalesce -- just as Blanche and Dorothy have discovered that the men they are dating are identical twins. Warning Stan that "You live alone and nobody likes you," Sophia invites him to stay with them to recuperate, and Dorothy reluctantly agrees -- until they discover the recovery time is three months. | |
| The Actor (11 February 86) | |
| The Great Kandinski, "the greatest escape artist in the world", dies on stage during one of his escapes. As the crowning achievement of his career, he has threatened to come back from the dead and kill his wife. Afraid that he will succeed in carrying out his threat, she hires Blue Moon to protect her, to watch her husband's body until it is cremated. Maddie and David spend the night in the mortuary with the body. To their surprise, in the morning the body is gone and shortly thereafter, Mrs. Kandinski is found dead. David and Maddie set out to solve the mystery, and while doing so, they debate the possibility that a man could come back from the dead. David contends that it's a possibility, because things can happen which are beyond explanation, and Maddie counters that that's not how life works: "behind every mystery, behind every unexplained phenomenon, there's usually a perfectly logical explanation." David uses God as an example to demonstrate his point ("God defies explanation, and everybody believes in Him"), and is startled to learn that Maddie doesn't believe. | |
| Every Daughter's Father is a Virgin (18 February 86) | |
| This episode ties with The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice as my personal favorite episode of the whole series. Every scene, every line of dialogue, everything about this episode is excellently well done. The final scenes of this episode, especially the two closing scenes between Maddie and her father, reduce me to a blubbering ball of tears every time. Maddie's parents, Alex and Ginny Hayes, are in town from Chicago, visiting Los Angeles to attend a wedding, and Maddie is a little anxious because she hasn't seen them in a long time. While Maddie and her mother are talking alone together, Mrs. Hayes lets slip that she suspects that her husband is having an affair. Maddie says nothing to her mother, but later, to David, she insists that her father would never do such a thing, and she and David set out to demonstrate that her mother has nothing to worry about. David trails Mr. Hayes, and learns that he is in fact sharing a hotel room with another woman. Maddie is brokenhearted, and she resolves to tell her mother, on the grounds that her mother has a right to know the truth. David disagrees, insisting that Maddie keep the truth to herself, that telling the truth will only make things worse. Maddie struggles to go through with her resolve, but she doesn't succeed, in part because her mother prevents her. Instead, in the end, Maddie violently confronts her father. The next morning they meet again, both of them in tears, and Mr. Hayes promises Maddie that it's all over, and that it will never happen again. | |
| Witness for the Execution (11 March 86) | |
| Maddie is berating David about another "lost weekend" when they are interrupted by a new client. A frail ninety year old man, Lawrence Everett, is wheeled into the office by his daughter. In between labored gasps from his oxygen mask he explains that he has lived a long, full life and wishes to die with dignity before his life savings are gone. He tells Maddie and David that he has found someone to help him die, but he needs a witness. Of course, Maddie is totally against taking this case and David accepts against her wishes. David has a change of heart when he arrives at the nursing home that night. He rushes to Mr. Everett's room to stop the him. When he gets to the room he finds Mr. Everett dead. The life support equipment has been turned off. A nurse arrives as David tries to turn it back on. It appears that David killed Mr. Everett. He runs away to Maddie's house and explains that he killed Mr. Everett. He leaves Maddie's when the police arrive. The next morning, a dirty, unshaven David meets Maddie in the parking garage to say "good-bye". He explains he is "going underground" and they have their first romantic kiss. David leaves and Maddie goes on to find out how Mr. Everett really died, clearing David of murder. During their office reunion, both want to discuss "the kiss", but neither wants to be the first to reveal their feelings. They conclude that "If you didn't do it and I didn't do it... then it didn't happen!" | |
| Sleep Talkin' Guy (1 April 86) | |
| Maddie and David have been working together at Blue Moon for a year, and it is the agency's anniversary. David uses the occasion to ask Maddie for a raise, which she declines, saying that he has "never solved a case". David insists that he's solved lots of cases, and Maddie responds that their cases "somehow seem to have worked themselves out". Later that evening, while David is alone in the office, he receives a visit from Toby, a prostitute with a client named Jerry who talks in his sleep. It happens that Jerry is connected with organized crime, and talks about murders and other crimes that are about to happen. David and Toby make a deal: if she'll tell David what Jerry tells her, David will report the crimes to the police and split the reward money with her. Soon, Blue Moon's telephones are ringing off the hook. Newspaper reporters are in the office around the clock. The police chief calls, congratulating David for solving their case. The mayor's office calls, offering him a job with the District Attorney's office. A television studio calls, offering to make a television series about him. ("I don't know," he says. "I think people have had enough of detective shows." And everyone in the office agrees.) The whole scheme works wonderfully for David -- he has Maddie believing that he's the best detective in the world -- until Jerry tells Toby that David is the next one to be murdered.... | |
| Funeral for a Doornail (29 April 86) | |
| Roger Clemens is very much in love with his wife. So much so, that when her car goes over a cliff, he feels he has nothing left to live for, and so he makes arrangements with an assassin to end his life -- but not until Friday, so that he can make final arrangements. But then, while in his lawyer's office, several floors above the ground, he looks out the window, and thinks he sees his wife walking along the sidewalk. It's hard to be sure, from so high up, but he is convinced that she is still alive. Now he needs to change his plans, and find his wife, but it may be too late to get word to the assassin, so he hires Blue Moon, both to contact his killer, and to protect him until Friday is over. Friday ends, and unexpectedly, Clemens dies after all. Maddie's conscience is stricken, and she decides to give back the money Clemens paid them, because they failed to do the job they were paid to do. They contact Clemens's lawyer, who says that there's no need for Blue Moon to be so generous, that Clemens was wealthy enough that his heirs would be well taken care of. But then, Clemens's wife arrives at Blue Moon. She says that she faked her death in order to escape from Clemens, with whom she felt "smothered", because he loved her "too much", driving away friends and family to have her all to himself. She also says that Clemens has no heirs -- no parents, no children, and that she herself didn't want any of his money. Maddie and David realize that something fishy is going on, and return to Clemens's lawyer to confront him about those supposed "heirs". | |
| Camille (13 May 86) | |
| Camille Brand is in trouble with the law. Although what she has done is never quite specified, we have enough clues about her background to conclude that she's a con artist. As our story opens, Camille is escaping from the police officer who has her under arrest. As she flees from him, she inadvertently stumbles into a crowd, landing on top of a would-be assassin, preventing his attempt to shoot a Senator. As a result, the world treats Camille like a hero, and she's happy to let them do so. David Addison wants to hire Camille, hoping that her prestige will win business for Blue Moon. Camille accepts, but not because she wants to work -- she's using Blue Moon as a cover to hide from the police, one police officer in particular, who sees Camille's sudden prestige as an opportunity to extort money from her in exchange for not arresting her for evading the law. After three weeks of doing nothing but cashing her paychecks, Maddie is furious with Camille, and with David for hiring her. Camille decides to leave Blue Moon, but not before stealing $2000. David and Maddie encounter the police officer, and all three of them pursue Camille. Okay, that's the setup, but the honest truth is that the plotline here is not really what makes this episode memorable. This episode is memorable partly because Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson are the lead guest stars, but mainly because, as the four of them chase each other, for the first time ever we leave the Moonlighting universe, chase around the television studio where the series is filmed, and finally wind up back in the Moonlighting universe, in the Blue Moon offices -- but not for long. Just as the police officer is explaining why he is going to shoot all of our main characters, the property master takes the gun from him ("We're on a very tight schedule -- prop's gotta go back in the prop room, ya know?"), the film crew begins to dismantle the Blue Moon office set from around these characters as we watch (the season is over, after all!), and as they do, a voice announces, "Goldberg and Nelson, your limousines are waiting." Judd Nelson is confused. "What happens to my character?" he asks. Bruce Willis explains to him that his character goes to jail, while Camille goes straight and becomes respectable. Goldberg and Nelson leave arm in arm, Bruce and Cybill say good-bye to Allyce ("Guess I won't see you until Fall"), and then they all drive off into the sunset. In retrospect, looking back over the entire series, we've seen so many occasions where Moonlighting has broken through the fourth wall -- either by making reference to itself as a television show, or by taking us outside the walls of the Moonlighting set like it did this time -- that we've become accustomed to thinking of Moonlighting as a series which does this routinely. What is interesting about this episode is that it's the beginning of that characteristic of the show: it's the first time that Moonlighting took us outside of itself with such earnest and wild abandon. | |
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My name is Radostina Georgieva, "Roddy".I live in California.
I enjoy travelling, reading books, listening to music, going to the movies.
I am constantly looking for ways to challenge myself, learn, and grow.