DVD Release Date: March 6, 2007 (Lionsgate)
Color/1988-89
MSRP: $29.98
Number of Discs: 3
Number of Episodes: 13
Running Time: 559 Minutes
Running Time of Special Features: 103 Minutes, 5 Seconds
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Closed Captioned
Special Features:
* Commentary on episodes by various cast & crew
* Bruce Willis & Cybill Shepherd Screen Tests – plus
commentary on THOSE by Glenn Caron and Jay Daniel
Introduction:
And that's all folks! The fifth season of
Moonlighting is now on DVD, and by this point, the
writing is on the wall. The ratings suffered a marked
decline, forcing ABC to put the show on hiatus, before
burning it off on Sundays in the Spring of 1989
(before ABC Sunday was destination television) and
canceling it forever. Near the end the writing was on
the wall, and the tone of the show began to shift
towards closure. The last scene of the series is one
of the more unique endings in television – it
doesn't reveal the show to be a Tommy Westphall
dream or anything, but it's still quite different,
and yet consistent with the show itself--more on that
in a bit. This season is, in my opinion, markedly
better than season 4, even if the ratings didn't
reflect that. They try as best they can to move on
with the show, and you get 13 largely entertaining
episodes – it was just too late by this point.
Hopefully, by now, everyone knows the general plot of
Moonlighting, but this is the last chance I'll
probably get to do this, so one more time, from the
top. Here is Moonlighting:
One of the first dramedies (drama-comedy hybrids) on
Television, Moonlighting was a wonderful take on the
glut of detective series of that era, while still
having a legitimate plot. (Perhaps, if you were so
inclined, you could say that Moonlighting was to the
detective show what NCIS is to crime scene
investigation-type shows). The series focused on the
fine folks of Blue Moon Investigations, namely Maddie
Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (Bruce
Willis). Hayes is a former model – the Blue Moon
Shampoo Girl – who finds herself bankrupt after her
accountant embezzles all her liquid assets (cash,
stocks, bonds, etc). She's left with only a few
failing businesses she initially owned due to the
ability to use them as tax write-offs. One of these
businesses is the detective agency. He convinces her
not to close the place down and liquidate it, as
though the agency had been bleeding red ink, that's
what the agency was supposed to do. He convinces her
to help run the agency, and what followed was five
seasons of wonderful entertainment….well, ok, I'm
just not sold on a lot of the 4th season, but that's
really a personal opinion thing. Also on
Moonlighting is the agency receptionist Agnes DiPesto
(Allyce Beasley) as well as, from the 4th season
onward, David's protégé, Bert (Curtis Armstrong).
The addition of Herbert allowed for plots that
didn't involve Maddie, and even sometimes without
David, allowing a few more episodes to get produced
on-time, one of Moonlighting's chronic problems.
Memorable Episodes / Notable Guest Stars:
While many feel the fourth season CAUSED the decline
in ratings, the fifth season is when the decline
really went full speed ahead downhill. Most viewers
were turned off either by the 4th season's overall
unusualness, or simply by the utter lack of new
episodes (sometimes going a month between shows). The
decline is actually kind of sad, as at least I feel
this season is significantly stronger than the
previous one, even if the glory days of the show are
behind us by this point.
In the first episode, "Womb with a View", aside
from clips from "The Dream Sequence Always Rings
Twice" and "Atomic Shakespeare," we get treated
to a welcoming back by the entire cast after the 9
month gap between new shows. Herbert, of course, is
less than enthusiastic, as he wasn't received very
well the previous season. The cast and crew then have
a dance number and promise to do their best to
complete all 22 ordered episodes. (They made it
through 13 before ratings-prompted cancellation). Oh,
and this episode also features an angel visiting
"Baby Hayes" as he waits to be born and gives him
the low down on his crazy parents and their
relationship. Then there's a miscarriage. Oh well.
In an interesting episode, "Shirts and Skins,"
the office splits along gender lines when Maddie takes
on a case for a woman who shot her boss for sabotaging
her career when she refused his advances. In "Take
My Wife, For Example," a ruthless divorce lawyer
comes to Blue Moon, trying to reconcile a couple she
helped split, and Maddie tries to buy David a gift.
Among the episode's guest stars are Lawrence
Pressman (Doogie Howser, M.D.) and Colleen Dewhurst,
best known to ME as Murphy Brown's mother.
In "I See England, I See France, I See Maddie's
Netherworld," David and Maddie keep company with a
very popular corpse, while a man seeking a bodyguard
drops dead in their office. Guess he won't need
that bodyguard after all. SNL's Charles Rocket
returns as David's brother Richard in "Those Lips,
Those Lies" – in which David's skeptical and
Maddie's sympathetic when Richard shows up looking
for his fiancée's former partner, who has skipped
off with all their company's assets. Even better
though is the opening bit, in which no one apparently
told Al Jarreau about the move to Sundays, causing the
theme to start without lyrics. David/Bruce stops the
credits, asking what's going on. Maddie/Cybill then
shows up, demanding to know the same. Realizing they
can't start the show without the theme music (oh,
those were the days), first Cybill, then Bruce, try to
sing the theme, to equally bad results. Finally,
Bert/Curtis is dragged out, who tells the band to hit
it, shocking everyone nearby, and he lip syncs to the
actual theme, and then the credits finally roll--funny
bit. "Perfetc," an unremarkable episode to me,
does feature a guest spot by soon-to-be-host of
Supermarket Sweep, David Ruprecht. Demi Moore is in
"When Girls Collide." Eddie Mekka -- Carmine from
Happy Days -- is a guest in "In 'n Outlaws", as
is Patti Deutsch, who is probably best known for her
appearances on pretty much every 70s game show under
the sun, as well as being a regular on the final
season of the original Laugh In (She now does a lot of
cartoon voice work). Also, Virginia Madsen, from the
movie Sideways, appears in one of her earliest roles,
Annie, in "When Girls Collide," "Eine Kleine
Nacht Murder," and…
Lunar Eclipse, the last episode. Guest stars include
Timothy Leary (often credited as "the father of 60s
counterculture" - the best thing I can just do is link you to Wiki)
as well as Dennis Dugan as the "ABC Executive" in
the final scene. Why is this dripping in intentional
irony? Dugan, aside from directing the show, played
Walter Bishop in the 4th season – the very character
most often credited with causing the decline in
ratings – he was even credited as Walter Bishop in
the credits. David ends his relationship with Annie,
Bert and Agnes get married, and the detective agency
closes its door. After the wedding, David and Maddie
return to the agency to find the Blue Moon sets being
taken away, and a network executive (Dugan) waiting to
tell them they've been cancelled. The characters
race through the studio lot as the world of
Moonlighting is dismantled, and another executive
lectures them on the perils of losing your audience,
and how fragile romance really is. The final image
is a graphic static that "Blue Moon Investigations
ceased operations on May 14, 1989 – and the Anselmo
case was never solved". And after 5 seasons over 4
years, Moonlighting was finished.
Packaging:
Where did the shiny packaging of the first three sets
go? The fifth season's packaging is significantly
different from the first three sets. For one thing,
rather than the clear plastic disc holders in a
book-style setup, this packaging reverts back to the
older thick black case. Inside the black case, discs
1 and 2 are held by a white plastic piece with disc 1
on one side and disc 2 on the other. Disc 3 is on the
right interior side of the case, while the information
is held on the left. The front and back cover art,
which is nothing more than a traditional glossy piece
of paper with the back on the left and the front on
the right, held inside a plastic screen, is definitely
not of the same quality as the previous releases, and
feels as though Lionsgate rushed this out the door.
Shoddy work on their part, and I'm not a fan of
packaging changes at ALL. Luckily, the "new"
packaging doesn't look that different from the old
from side-view, so it won't be too jarring sitting
on the shelf. This whole contraption is found inside
a hollow (no top and bottom) piece of packaging that
you have to slide off to get to the set – like a lot
of movie sets. I've never been a fan of this
packaging style. The outer art is the same as the
inner art, and the outer art IS shiny, however, this
does no good since it has to be removed to get to the
discs. Episodes are split onto 3 discs. Episodes 1-4
and the screen test are on disc 1. 5-8 are on disc 2,
and 9-13 are on disc 3. Each disc is a red-orange
"sunset" color (tip of the hat to the artwork team
for that touch) in front of the skyline, with the disc
number being displayed in outline by a group of stars
on the right of each disc.
Menu Design and Navigation:
I may have found plenty to complain about with the
packaging, but the menus are still nice. The menu
features the same red-orange look as the rest of the
set, the stars behind the Moonlighting logo, once
again at the top, twinkle. Various shooting
stars…uh…shoot in the background. The lights of
the city cause a glow around the skyscrapers, while to
the left is a moon that starts with a still image of
David and Maddie, which then plays various clips of
the show. The slower theme from the pilot plays in
the background. The screen test can be selected
directly from the main menu. The other two options are
Play All and Episode Selection. Play All's function
is obvious, while episode selection takes you to a
static red/orange sunset and star field menu with a
moon on the left. Each menu page has two episodes
selectable – though for disc 2 all 4 episodes are
selectable on 1 menu page for some reason, with the
option to either play, or in some cases, play with
commentary – it lists the commentators on this
option.
Video and Audio Quality:
No music replacement! Yippee! Something like the
packaging, to me, is ultimately unimportant compared
to the episodes themselves. With the show's
extensive use of music, it's good to hear it.
The video quality is pretty good for the most part.
The picture seems a bit soft, the picture is a bit
grainy, but generally it's good. One problem that
definitely exists is in the first episode, which uses
a lot of stock footage, which wasn't mastered to the
same quality as the show. Audio sounds fine – the
vocals are nice and clear, the music is loud, crisp,
and clear. The audio has no glitches or anything of
that sort. Episodes run between 45-49 minutes; no
idea if there are any edits.
Episode Runtimes:
Disc 1:
Womb with a View: 47:56
Between a Yuk and a Hard Place: 49:06
The Color of Maddie: 45:36
Plastic Fantastic Lovers: 47:06
Disc 2:
Shirts and Skins: 45:57
Take My Wife, For Example: 45:17
I see England, I see France, I see Maddie's
Netherworld: 49:23
Those Lips, Those Lies: 48:06
Disc 3:
Perfetc: 48:17
When Girls Collide: 47:33
In 'N Outlaws: 49:37
Eine Kleine Nacht Murder: 47:21
Lunar Eclipse: 48:21
Special Features:
We have extras on discs one and three. The breakdown
follows:
Disc 1:
Commentary on "Womb with a View" (47:56) by
creator Glenn Caron and Jay Daniel. If you look up
"collateral damage" in the dictionary, you see
this episode's description. Glenn has some trouble
remembering details of this episode.
Screen Test (3:24): Essentially, this is a scene from
the pilot done to convince ABC that Bruce Willis would
work well as David, shot with Cybill as Maddie –
though one was filmed before this. See below. The
video quality is fairly bad – significant amounts of
grain, fuzzy video, etc.
Screen Test with Commentary by Glenn & Jay (3:24):
Done after an enormous amount of cajoling by ABC.
Glenn was adamant that Bruce Willis was good enough
for David Addison, but ABC wasn't convinced. So,
they did a scene from the pilot as a screen test with
Bruce and an actress who was paid to be Maddie JUST
for the pilot – Cybill was paranoid if they saw her
on film they'd fire her. So, they hire the actress,
and there's no chemistry. ABC was ready to pay
everyone off, but Glenn convinced ABC to wait for a
2nd one, this time with Cybill and Bruce. And it
worked.
Disc 3:
"Lunar Eclipse" Commentary by...Dennis Dugan
(48:21): And of course, the last commentary track for
Moonlighting features the guy whose character may well
have killed it. He's also the director for this
episode, and he portrayed the network exec who
"cancelled" the show. Despite there always being
a listed director, with the long production times,
often a director from another episode would have to
shoot scenes for a previous episode. Dennis gets in
trouble for getting the cast to sing "For He's a
Jolly Good Fellow", which cost the show money. He
also answers a few questions along the way. I'm
never a fan of solo commentary tracks – he tries,
but commentary works best when they work off of
others.
Total Features Runtime: 103 Minutes, 5 Seconds
Final Comments:
And it's over. Through four sets, covering five
seasons, spanning 4 years, released over 2 – this
has been Moonlighting. When I was first asked about
doing the review, I'd never seen the show, now it
rates among my favorite series ever. I'm still not
even remotely sold on the 4th season, but I do think
the final season was a valiant if futile effort to
turn the ship around. But, by this point, the
audience was gone.
This final set seemed like Lionsgate was only
releasing it to be done with it, and not nearly as
much effort seemed to be put into it. The case was
changed from the unique and visually appealing cases
of the first three sets to the big black box of doom,
while the cover art was cheaper, and the whole set
felt as though it were just a secondary matter. The
menus were still nice to the end, and are still better
than a lot of the menus that come out of other
studios. I can't complain about the VQ or AQ, just
that the non-show clips featured in "Womb with a
View" weren't as polished as the main show itself.
If you own the previous sets, by all means, pick this
one up – there's a handy link just a bit below
this text. If you're still on the fence, I solidly
recommend the first two sets to buy, and after that
you can make a more informed decision about the final
two, this one included. One benefit this season has
going for it is a lowered price point, only $29.98
MSRP launch, and in addition, the SRP on the previous
three sets has dropped to $29.98 as well – if
you've held out, now is a good time to purchase.
You can own them all with no worries of an incomplete
set. Recommended.
