RS vs Moonlighting and Scarecrow & Mrs King

[Myrtle Groggins]

I've been reading Judith's book and watching the RS DVDs and noticed many notations regarding Moonlighting. In the book, there's a paragraph on RS copycats, namely Moonlighting and Scarecrow & Mrs K. Yeah, well, maybe.

I've watched S&MrsK regularly. I watched Moonlighting occasionally. So today I turned to youtube to watch Moonlighting clips. Entire episodes aren't there but there are the clips of their 'relationship' from most of the episodes. I was especially interested in their 'consummation' episodes (two), which so many claimed were the death of the show - where it 'Jumped the Shark'. Let me say, I don't find it very romantic to be slapping the guy around before, and found it incredibly icky when they were rolling all over the floor with all that broken glass around them! Really, where was the true romance? It was very poorly done, and they blame the 'consummation' for the death show!! Man, these people need to take another look at that series!

Well, all I can say is "poor Bruce". He had his hands full with that co-star of his, and Maddie was no better. And people complain about Laura Holt! OMG! This Maddie/Cybill woman was a real piece of work. She rarely appeared friendly. She always looked as though she thought she was better than anyone, and I rarely saw her with messy hair. SZ she isn't!

I've never been a Cybill Shepherd fan even though I did watch her sitcom in the mid-1990s. I really wanted to like her in Moonlighting, but it just isn't so.

So they threw David and Maddie together because Cybill was pregnant at the end of season three. On the first episode of season four, she has her high and mighty fit, turns David away (Bruce has a wonderful comic scene in this one), and she leaves town for months (while Cybill has her real life delivery of twins), later comes back to the show to torture David again, continually, while she's married to someone else and was carrying yet another man's child. Thankfully, we Steele fans weren't tortured that way.

It doesn't take a genius to see what killed this show.

I wasn't always crazy about the irritating Amanda King, but I used to get mighty upset with Scarecrow for being mean to her and continually belittling her worth with the Agency. For the life of me, I can't figure out what Maddie's purpose on Moonlighting was supposed to be, except maybe to torture David and to pull rank because she owned the detective agency.

At least with Laura and Steele, they were good to look at, fun to watch, and they both had a purpose! I find Moonlighting to be the most frustrating of all.

I watched the pilot which was actually interesting, and I saw the final episode, which was terrible.

They can blame the consummation all they want, but I truly don't think THAT was the real problem.

Why were there so many employees of Blue Moon Investigations? Were they there as background chorus for their insane musical numbers , or something? They rarely did anything but stand around. I saw Agnes and Bert actually working on occasion, the rest appeared to be background mannequins.

I think RS had more episodes than Moonlighting, too.

Rant over........for now.

[judithmoose]

Just remember where the inspiration for all of the "Moonlighting" episodes came from - Glen Caron. He who couldn't plot an episode of "Remington" to save his neck, as Michael Gleason pointed out rather nicely, went on to write the "romantic comedy/mystery" show that he claimed "Remington" never was... Uhm, yeah... Oh, and if you want to see two co-stars who positively hated each other - Bruce actually took pieces of board and NAILED Cybill's dressing room door shut WITH her inside!!! I'm not joking.

[Lauryn]

May 3, 2008 23:58:38 GMT -5 judithmoose said:

Just remember where the inspiration for all of the "Moonlighting" episodes came from - Glen Caron. He who couldn't plot an episode of "Remington" to save his neck, as Michael Gleason pointed out rather nicely, went on to write the "romantic comedy/mystery" show that he claimed "Remington" never was... Uhm, yeah... Oh, and if you want to see two co-stars who positively hated each other - Bruce actually took pieces of board and NAILED Cybill's dressing room door shut WITH her inside!!! I'm not joking.

Understandable, though the argument’s a bit shady, that Caron would downplay the similarities between ML and RS, since he had quite a vested interest in presenting “Moonlighting” as something newly minted in the romantic / comedy mystery line. It was his baby, after all, in a way that RS couldn’t be. And, at least, he’s not all wrong because, though they shared many of the same inspirations, you wouldn’t mistake one for the other.<wink> Funny how David and Maddie’s relationship is so emblematic of the show Caron was running, a dizzy love / hate high wire act that hit some amazing heights, but eventually had nowhere to go but down.

Moonlighting has always been the Rashomon of TV crackups; I guess everyone has their own version of what went wrong. All the tabloid interest in the Bruce / Cybill rivalry obscured other less public conflicts that were just as damaging. Glenn Caron was under tremendous stress, producing and writing, and though, people have said, he was the sort that thrived on drama, the pressure had to take its toll. He also made some disastrous managerial decisions, partly to experiment and partly out of desperation.

One Steele fan I know was acquainted with an ML writer, one of those who stuck it out longer than most. She confided that writers’ scripts were often butchered by their own colleagues, and what ended up on screen would barely resemble what they wrote. This was the state of affairs at one point because Caron was rotating the producer’s chair among the writers and tit for tat was the order of the day, each sabotaging the others’ scripts, once they had the power, as it had been done to them.

Whatever we may say about GC, he is, and was then, a big talent and I’m grateful to him for writing some of RS’ most sparkling and characterful scenes and dialogue, even if, according to Gleason, he couldn’t plot his way out of a paper bag, LOL! (The plot and paper bag thing has always been my problem, too.) But as MG is fond of reminding us, it’s a perennial struggle to find writers who can do both well. Still, like medicine, it’s a job where there’s also ample room for specialists. CG did manage to crank out some plots on his own on ML that would pass for mysteries.

Myrtle mentioned all the slackers hanging around the Blue Moon Detective Agency and I have to smile because that seems to be a Caron trademark, going back to RS. If you remember your first season, he seemed to delight in having extras walking down the hallways, at least as many as they could afford, maybe because that was how they would have done it in old Hollywood.

[Myrtle Groggins]

Thanks for fulling me in on all this stuff. I knew Bruce and Cybill didn't get along, it was all over the tabloids and entertainment news shows. Let me tell you, just watching the woman, I can understand Bruce's frustration. She just doesn't seem to be having fun.

I watched bits of their second season and there was some funny stuff, and Cybill was socked with mud, pies, and paint, too. BUT, it's very obvious they were using a filter on the camera lenses for her close-ups. Bruce's scenes are clear and sharp. Hers are fuzzzzzzy. Worrying about her age, was she? It's so obvious that she had a few years on him.

My favorite episode came early in season two where they were dreaming of a murder case from the 1940s and they portrayed the characters of Zach and Rita, where Orson Welles did the opening and Cybill did a bit of a Rita Hayworth impersonation, all in black and white.

It appears they write more for the scewy relationship than they do for the mysteries, but I have to say, it's still not working. She's such a b*tch in most of the episodes. Bruce's character got a the crazy, funny stuff, while she was just mean most of the time.

Yes, I remember all the people in the hallway on RS. I was always watching for them because at the time, I worked in a high-rise building, in an office suite very similar to the RS Agency's and we never saw that many people in our corridors, except maybe during the fire drills. In fact, when I watch the RS DVDs, I compare notes with my offices and theirs. Very, very similar, except our 12-foot doors were very dark brown instead of red. I'll never forget the day I was trying to decorate my office for Christmas. I pulled up a chair to throw some ribbons over the door, and I came no where near reaching the top. That's when I asked building management how tall they were: 12 feet. Ceilings were 15 feet. No wonder they always brought in tall ladders just to change the light bulbs!

Was Moonlighting on opposite RS, or a different time? I noticed their Christmas show aired the same night as Dancer, Prancer, Donner and Steele - December 17, 1985.

[bsddomi]

I love Remington Steele, Moonlighting and Scarecrow and Mrs King equally, I can't say I prefer one over the other. They all were unique in their own special way.

I agree that bringing Maddie and David together that early in the show killed it somewhat but I would not say that it killed the show. It had many very good episodes in the last two seasons that I enjoyed watching. And I absolutely loved the hate/love relationship they had, the slamming of the doors, the speaking with the audience part, the clamation episode with Maddie turning David into a frog with tie. Moonlighting was all about comedy.

Remington Steele was different. Just like Scarecrow and Mrs King they went overseas to shoot episodes and solve crimes. Both shows had a lot of humor, don't get me wrong, but you cannot compare these two to Moonlighting at all.

As for downplaying other characters, let's just say I think it's more realistic. Life does not always turn out the way you want it and things are said that never should have been said in the first place. Relationships usually do not always work out just fine all the time, co-workers do not get along all the time, there are ups and downs, there are misunderstandings, there are fights and every "real" relationship does need it, otherwise I think it's not a relationship.

I have Remington Steele and Moonlighting on DVD and I can't wait to get Scarecrow and Mrs King on DVD.

I really think you should not try to compare these shows, just watch them and enjoy for what they are without any prejudices or anger about the way things were done back then. After all they are "just" TV shows.

[Myrtle Groggins]

I'm not angry, not really. I just disagree that "the consummation" part was THE downfall of the series. In my opinion, having Maddie get pregnant by someone else and marrying a totally different guy couldn't have set well with the fans. Each series has issues, sure, but they always point to the David/Maddie Big Boink as the beginning of the end. From what I saw, the show was in trouble before then, and the way they wrote in Cybill's pregnancy must have been a huge letdown for fans of the show, and a very large nail in its coffin.

It has many good parts, mostly thanks to Bruce and the way he was written, but I'd never say it was a wonderful series. Although, I do admit I'd like to see more episodes in their entirety. Like I said, I rarely watched when it was new, so my memory of the episodes is not sharp. They only made about 67 hours of the show, including the Rona Barrett one and the bloopers, and it apparently wasn't enough for a regular syndication contract, that's why it's rarely seen on TV these days, although I did see a few episodes on cable when I was in the hospital sometime back.

So I think we Steele fans were far luckier because the two main stars of RS were in every episode and there were over 90 hours compared to 67 for Moonlighting. Not bad at all, and RS had four full seasons, too, plus 6 extra hours. And SZ and RS didn't have to roll around on broken glass half-naked. So in comparison, I think the RS fans got a pretty good deal, for the most part.

How many scenes did Pierce have on "Moonlighting" in the episode, "The Straight Poop"? I saw one clip. Is that all there was?

[boknows]

As a fan of all three shows (I have both RS and ML on DVD and am awaiting the day they finally put SMK on DVD), I've enjoyed everyone's comments and opinions about the similarities, differences and fates of the shows.

I like the shows for different. My heart will always belong to RS because I am such a PB fan and I love romance. The idea of a gorgeous, suave con man falling hard for the girl next door and throwing in mysteries around the relationship was appealing to me. But lot a lot of fans, I was ready for the relationship to move forward and vehemently disagree that RS and LH consumating their relationship would have been the dealth of the show. I think it could have been very interesting and fun, if given the chance.

As for ML, the appeal for me was more fun: BW was a great David Addison and the dialogue was amazing. That was Glen Caron's forte. It was sharp, witty and fun. But like a lot of fans, I got tired of the back stage drama impacting what was on screen. None of it was handled well by the actors or the folks behind the scene. I'm still a fan, and some of the shows are great fun to watch. But all the tabloid stuff wore on me. And the shows began to not even make sense toward the end.

SMK was fun to watch, the growing romance between Amanda and Lee was sweet. I think of it as my junk food TV watching fun, but I wasn't as invested as I was in the other shows. Bruce Boxleitner was cute, but I'd much rather watch PB. And the romance wasn't the same. And it didn't have the snappy dialogue of ML.

In the end, the shows each offered their own take on the screwball comedy genre. Unfortunately for all three, that particular genre of television never got the respect it deserved and the fans were abused by the networks by never respecting their dedication to the shows so they were easily moved around on the schedule and cancelled despite devoted followings.

Just a side note: there's a great fanfic story in the Rolodex list of fanfic that brings RS and SMK together. Check it out.

Belinda