Not since the days when Adam West played comedy straighter than Gary Cooper or Micky Dolenz serially broke the fourth wall had there been anything like Moonlighting on TV. At a time when Dallas’ soapy entanglements passed for drama and Family Ties’ laugh-track clichés passed for comedy, Glenn Gordon Caron’s neo-noir absurdist romantic-comedy sparkled brighter than Cybill Shepherd through a diffusion filter. And unlike Batman and The Monkees, Moonlighting was pitched squarely at adults, what with its fixation on boinking.
As welcome as Moonlighting was in a mid-eighties television environment notoriously lacking in imagination, multiple issues conspired to derail its magical run. Stars Shepherd and Bruce Willis loathed each other. Shepherd loathed Caron. Caron often seemed intent on keeping his stars from sharing screen time. Shepherd successfully got Caron booted from his own show.
