#219. 'Moonlighting' (Hulu)
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Taped the evening before Thanksgiving with all three hosts a little tipsy, the back third of this episode is a genuinely loving deep dive into the Moonlighting pilot (now streaming on Hulu), which all three watched ahead of time and all three adored. Mike, watching cold with his wife, is floored by how completely film-like the 90-minute pilot feels and falls instantly for Cybill Shepherd; Sonny, drawing on an oral history of the show, marvels at how fully formed Bruce Willis arrives in his very first professional acting role and lays out the wild production trivia (a 150-page script for a 90-minute episode, chase scenes padded out because the cut ran short, Shepherd's real-life pregnancy derailing the back half of season four, the show's habit of breaking the fourth wall) and situates it alongside Twin Peaks and The Gary Shandling Show as part of a surprising run of 1980s network experimentation; JVL, who watched it live as a 12-year-old starting in season two, compares its dialogue-forward chemistry to Cheers' Sam-and-Diane dynamic and The Office's Jim-and-Pam arc, arguing "will they won't they" shows are a structural dead end that can never sustain more than a couple of great seasons. Before any of that, the episode opens with a long, boozy Thanksgiving-eve tangent: Sonny rants at length about the absurdity and moral incoherence of the presidential turkey-pardon ceremony (complete with a Game of Thrones Ned Stark bit), then champions canned green bean casserole and boxed mashed potatoes as "90% as good in 5% of the time," while JVL defends dry-brined turkey and real cooking and Mike admits he has no Thanksgiving plan at all and might just make pancakes. That spills into a continuation of episode 218's book- and media-organization debate (JVL's philosophy of giving away work books versus passing along beloved "pleasure books," DVD- and CD-browsing nostalgia) and a box-office segment on the Marvels' historic second-weekend collapse to fourth place, with JVL blaming Disney's glut of Marvel streaming series for cannibalizing appetite for the movies.
From the show notes
Happy Thanksgiving!
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Hello and welcome to another episode of the
Mike00:00:29Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren, and with me, as always, are my two co-hosts who don't have a plan. No, they don't. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Become a patron. Tell your friends. Tell your family. You'll be listening to this maybe on the way home from Thanksgiving. Text your family members. Tell them to subscribe at Sub-Beacon.com. Become a part of the Sub-Beacon community. Get those episodes every Friday morning at Sub-Beacon.com. We're going to be talking about moonlighting. Yeah, we gave you a little tease a couple weeks ago. Now we're going to be talking about the show and specifically the pilot, which we all watched later in this episode. But first, what's going on, guys? Sonny,
Sonny00:01:23what's happening with you? Not a whole lot. I got to be honest. I've had had a few drinks. I'm going to throw that. I don't know if you can tell if you can
JVL00:01:35tell. When you say a few, is this like a Vic Mattis few? No, no, it's not like that. I'm
Sonny00:01:41still would sometimes show up positively lit. Sure. I'm. Toast nicely toast, I think, is a way of saying I've had a few. I've had I've had more than one, but fewer than 12 beers. Is that is that an acceptable range? Michael, you're muted. You're muted, Michael. See, you're drunk. We should. I am drunker that on on the
Mike00:02:04Robitussin. So we should clarify here that we're taping this the day before the evening before.
Sonny00:02:13Yeah. Thanksgiving. Why should we clarify that? Why should we clarify? I don't you.
JVL00:02:18I'm a little lit, too. I just had an entire beer for the first time in months. One beer, one whole beer. And the last couple of beers I've had, I've done like a half to a third. And, you know, I hit my point of being satiated. And so I didn't need any more tonight. I did an entire beer and I am flying high, baby. Excellent. Excellent. So I've I've had I just
Sonny00:02:41wanted to set the scene here because I've had I've had a couple of drinks and I feel I feel I can't remember if I've talked about this before on the show. Frankly, that's that's where we are right now. But there's a thing I want to throw out there and it has to do with the Thanksgiving. A turkey pardon ceremony. Oh, yeah. Have we discussed this before JBL on the show? I don't think so. I want to see where you're going with this. Because I so, you know, for folks who live outside of America and we have several we have ones of listeners who live outside of America. I there's there's a thing we do in America called Thanksgiving, the big national ceremony where we eat turkey and mashed potatoes, whatever. And it celebrates American the pilgrims coming to America
JVL00:03:28and they're they really helping improve the lives of the indigenous people they met.
Sonny00:03:34They were going to starve to death and the indigenous folks showed up and they're like, we're going to help you. And I hope you will repay their first mistake. I hope you will repay us with kindness as the years go along. And as we know, that all worked out perfectly. They got land and every casinos and everything. So so the so Thanksgiving is a wonderful time. I love Thanksgiving, my favorite time of the year. But during Thanksgiving, there's a very specific ceremony that we do. And I don't I don't care for it. I don't understand it entirely. I don't I don't quite understand how it came about to the current form that we have it. But we do this thing. And I I don't I don't care for it because I think it's wrong. I think it's morally wrong. What we do. And I only really feel comfortable again. I only feel comfortable talking about this after having had a few few drinks with friends. You know, we're in a safe space here.
Mike00:04:26We're in the trust tree. You could call this a Friendsgiving
Sonny00:04:28and I won't. But you could. I would rather you didn't do that because I don't care for the show friends. But that's neither here nor there. So so we're talking about, of course, the turkey pardon that the White House does every year. Mm hmm. The thing about the turkey part. Mm hmm. Is that it it doesn't make any sense on a conceptual level. This this idea that we're going to get these turkeys at the White House and the president is going to stand over them and he's going to like kind of beatifically wave his hands over the turkeys and he's going to say you're pardoned turkeys. That's not it's not representative of anything we do in the government. I mean, like there are people who get pardoned for crimes and we can we can talk about like the necessity of that. There are people who get, you know, the Supreme Court comes down and says you won't be executed. And that's like the closest we have to the turkey part. But that's different as that. That's not the same thing. The turkey part is this weird ritualized thing where we say we are not going to eat these turkeys. The problem is that turkeys are still eaten at the White House and everywhere else. It's like this ceremonial idea that we're going to spare these particular turkeys and that's going to make us all feel better about the rest of all of the turkey eating that's going on. I find abhorrent on a on a moral level, but also just on a thematic level. If I were president and this is my I noted this on Twitter. This is my most chaotic idea for the presidency. If I were president, I would call the turkey pardoning ceremony forth as usual, just like the normal ceremony. I would I'd have everybody wedding on it and I would. Well, yes, but like the but the Ned Stark, the Ned Stark version of that. So in the first at the end of the first season of Game of Thrones, I suppose this also happens in the book, but I don't read books because I'm not some sort of nerd. So like in the in the in Game of Thrones, the at the end of the first season, Ned Stark has worked out this deal that he will offer himself up. He will say he's guilty of various crimes and Joffrey Baratheon will come forth and he will he will pardon Ned Stark. He will send Ned Stark to the wall and that will maintain the peace in the kingdoms. But that's fine for that show because it makes sense. It makes sense that the the that the Baratheons and the Starks need to maintain the peace. So they're going to spare Ned Stark. In the show, what happens is Joffrey Baratheon cuts the head off of Ned Stark anyway, and he says he says, you know, peace. I forget exactly what the line is, but it's wonderful. It's like this is for the soft heart of women, the ceremony that we're doing, and I'm going to cut his head off. We're going to put it on a spire on the city. And that's that's. That's how it's going to. And that is how I would. That's how I if I were president and these two turkeys were brought before me, I would start with the you know, we have joined here in this Thanksgiving and we're going to celebrate these wonderful, magnificent turkeys. And then I would call the secretary of defense out there and I would have him pull an axe out of his pocket and I would have him cut the heads off the turkeys in front of all the children who would assemble. And I would have them throw the turkeys into a deep fryer and I would have the turkeys eaten in front of everybody else, because that's what we do with turkeys on Thanksgiving. We don't we don't. There's no pardoning of turkeys on Thanksgiving. We eat turkeys on things like it's anathema to the whole the whole Thanksgiving thing. JBL, you were looking at me like you were bored out of your mind and I can't tell if you're.
JVL00:08:17No, au contraire. OK. Go ahead, Michael.
Mike00:08:22No, no, no. All I was going to I was going to add some historical context, but I want to hear JBL what you have to say.
JVL00:08:27First of all, turkeys are nasty motherfuckers.
Mike00:08:31I have terrible birds. I have a whole flock.
JVL00:08:34Oh, they're quite majestic. I have a whole flock of them that are in and out of my backyard all the time, but they are mean. They are aggressive and mean. So I got to say, you know what? Turkeys won't get eaten. They're going to get eaten. Maybe they should have developed opposable thumbs. If they if they didn't want to be eaten, they should have opposable thumbs.
Sonny00:08:56You want it? You want to get? Out of here, birds fly away.
JVL00:08:58Oh, they can fly. Oh, they can fly.
Sonny00:09:01Oh, your turkeys can fly.
JVL00:09:03Oh, you see them up in trees all the time.
Sonny00:09:04Yeah, well, the modern the modern like farm bred turkeys can't. They're way too fat to fly. They think they're fattened up.
JVL00:09:10Right. Yeah, I assume. No, I think that it's but I will say this. When I was when I was doing my my vegetarian phase. Oh, yes. You know, I tried tofurkey for Thanksgiving. I remember this tofurkey is better. Then turkey. Whoa. Wrong. Turkey is bad. Turkey is garbage meat.
Sonny00:09:35Incorrect. Turkey properly cooked.
JVL00:09:38Turkey is cardboard that you use as a delivery vehicle for cranberries and stuff.
Sonny00:09:44Cranberries. Cranberries. You're not even you're not even delivering the gravy on the turkeys. You're delivering cranberries. Filth.
JVL00:09:52And as in terms of delivery platforms, the. I think, frankly, that the tofurkey is like the attackums of delivery vehicles for the the good things on Thanksgiving, the mashed potatoes and the the cranberries and real turkey is like whatever the high Mars, like, you know, just the high Mars system. They can only go like, you know, 140 miles. The attackums get you 190 miles. And that's what this is a belabored metaphor. Sorry. I don't understand. I had a full beer. I don't understand.
Sonny00:10:27I don't understand what attackums versus high Mars means. Yeah, I have no.
JVL00:10:31I was I was hoping.
Sonny00:10:32So is that no, I don't know. Is that like a SIV reference? I don't know.
JVL00:10:36It's like the big fight we've had over Ukraine funding and like, you know, high Mars rockets, but we weren't giving them attack.
Sonny00:10:42And yeah, I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Mike00:10:47Well, can I just say, first of all, you're wrong about Turkey. I do think bad Turkey, poorly prepared Turkey is bad.
Sonny00:10:55Bad Turkey is bad. Sure.
Mike00:10:57Bad Turkey is very bad. I mean, it's not distasteful. It's just bland. But it doesn't have to be. And I say this as I have my dry brining Turkey breast because it's just the five of us this year. We don't have any anybody visiting us. It's sitting in the refrigerator in the basement right on the other side of this wall next to me. Like this will be a good Turkey because it is prepared. Well, it is dry brined. It will have butter. It will have all kinds of good, you know, goodness. And then you got to make the gravy from the Turkey drippings.
JVL00:11:33I mean, like that's how you prepare a tofurkey. You cut the plastic, you stick it in the oven. Done. No, no prep. And it tastes better than the real Turkey. And it gets the mashed potatoes and cranberries into your gullet.
Sonny00:11:47Can I can I just throw this out there? My my most fervent belief about Thanksgiving and this is this is heretical on several levels and I'm willing to admit this and maybe folks will. Disagree with me, but my my most fervent belief on Thanksgiving is that you should put the least amount of effort into the food as possible. And I say that on the on the widest. So like, yeah, for our in our house, we cook a turkey that comes out of a bag from Target. You like cut slits in the bag. Yes, you throw it. You throw it in the in the in the in the oven and it's good to go for all of the sides. Nothing, nothing that we cook. Has not been drenched in preservatives, either by a can or box. As God intended or a stovetop. The most the most we can talk about is out of a box. We can talk about stovetop in a second, but mashed potatoes are the number one key idea here. Here's the thing. I will 100 percent grant you that fresh made mashed potatoes are better than boxed mashed potatoes. They are. I am. I love not three hours better. I love going to a restaurant and having mashed potatoes that somebody has. Peeled and diced and boiled and cooked in milk and garlic.
Mike00:13:04And as I just did three hours ago, I am.
Sonny00:13:07I am perfectly happy to eat that and I like it and I will pay for it. However, the difference between instant mashed potatoes, which take literally five minutes to make and homemade mashed potatoes, which take 90 minutes to make is 10 percent. Instant mashed potatoes are 90 percent as good, 85 to 90 percent as good as homemade mashed potatoes. They are. They just are. They just are. And like the difference between that 85 minutes of prep is worth the 5 percent to 10 percent of taste value that you get out of the homemade mashed potatoes.
JVL00:13:49They hate you because you're right.
Sonny00:13:52No, they do. This just like the meme. It's just like the meme. I am the Jesus Christ figure in this. So. All right. So. But but that goes for everything, though. That goes for like green bean casserole. Like, you know, there there are these people there are people who promulgate these ridiculous green bean casserole recipes that are like, you got to get the fresh green beans and you got to chop off the ends and you got to boil and then you got to get the you got to get mushrooms and you put them in the cream sauce. And I'm like, no, motherfuckers. All you need. All you need to do is you need to get a can opener. You got to get some Del Monte green beans, French cut Del Monte green beans. You got to get some condensed cream of mushroom and you got to get some French onions, crunchy onion things that you put on the top. And that's all you need. That's all you that's all you need for a delicious the not just a delicious good and a superior, a superior green bean casserole. I mean, like, I'm sorry, a a green bean casserole that comes out of cans was designed by the Midwest to be superior to the green bean casserole that is freshly made by some dipshit in a New England restaurant that gets three stars from the Michelin Guide. That's my most heretical and also correct belief.
JVL00:15:19You need to be drunk on every show, Sonny. Gold, gold.
Mike00:15:24I, uh, I just. I feel bad for you guys. I'm, I'm sorry that your Thanksgivings meals have to be so inferior. Look, I, I am not actually a thousand. I'm not a hundred percent against what you're saying here. I just think our, my line is in a different place than yours are. So for instance, it's a cultured palette. No, I just like, well, here's the other thing, which I don't think I share with you guys, or you don't share with me, which is that I enjoy cooking. And I. Enjoy making food and I enjoy trying things out.
Sonny00:16:01This is absolutely wrong. I love making food. I love dicing and chopping and cutting. I love, I actually love cooking.
JVL00:16:09I would sooner do homework.
Sonny00:16:11Well, uh, JBL. Yeah. JBL.
Mike00:16:13Yeah, I know you. Okay.
Sonny00:16:15No, but I, I love, I actually love to cook. I love to, I love to make nice steaks. I love to, I love to Julian.
Mike00:16:21So what's wrong with, what's wrong with, what's wrong with doing this here?
Sonny00:16:23Let, let me throw out a scenario. Thanksgiving. It's a different beast because you're doing so many different things at once. You're doing so many different things at once. You need them all to be at baseline 80% quality instead of like a hundred percent quality that like, that just, that doesn't, that doesn't work for the meal that is being prepared in your home kitchen. Again, it's not like, again, if I went to, if I went to Shea blue and they gave me canned, uh, green bean casserole, I would be upset. I'd be like, no. This is, this is not what I, this is not what I want. But the whole point of Thanksgiving is that you are cooking at home for yourself and for others who are within your family. It's not, it's a different thing.
Mike00:17:09Shouldn't you want, shouldn't you want to provide them with a high quality meal? And here's the point you can do what, for instance, I have done. We're taping this on Wednesday. I've already made two of the sides. They're already done. They're sitting in the refrigerator. Waiting to be eaten tomorrow.
Sonny00:17:28I'm sorry, reheated sides are garbage. You have to make sides the day of.
Mike00:17:33Wrong. First of all, one of the sides is cranberry sauce, which you eat chilled anyway.
Sonny00:17:38So, Sonny, Sonny, Sonny, shut your mouth. Cranberries, first off, cranberry. My time. First off, cranberry doesn't exist as a side in my house. I literally do not have cranberry.
Mike00:17:47All right. Is there a way for me to mute Sonny here for a second?
Sonny00:17:51No, absolutely not.
Mike00:17:52All right. Second, the mashed potatoes. You make them, you pre-make them, you save the milk that they were boiling in, and as you reheat them over the stovetop when it's time to eat, you whisk in the milk that they bought so that all that starch that was kind of leached out into the liquid comes back in and makes it creamy. And I will tell you this. I will tell you this.
JVL00:18:20Work. But it's rewarding work. It's so great to make a meal. You know what? Work is rewarding. To make a meal and have other people eat it. Work that results in somebody handing you money is rewarding. Work that you do for free.
Mike00:18:36You know what's rewarding? For me to work on these mashed potatoes, to have them cooling off the stove before I put them in the refrigerator, and to have my wife, who does not like mashed potatoes, walk by, take a little taste of them, and go, those mashed potatoes. Those mashed potatoes are amazing. That's worth two hours of work.
JVL00:19:03It's worth it. We have very different standards. Michael, would it blow your mind if I told you that we're taping this at 947 on Wednesday night, and we have zero idea what's going to happen tomorrow for Thanksgiving? We do not have any clue as to what we will be eating, where we will be, who will be involved in it. We have almost no food in the refrigerator. The whole thing is just my mother-in-law said, wait a minute, is tomorrow Thanksgiving? We're like, yeah, tomorrow's Thanksgiving. What are you doing? Well, we'll figure it out tomorrow.
Sonny00:19:42All right. To be fair, you have had your own personal set of things that you're dealing with.
JVL00:19:50It feels a little loosey-goosey. I feel like a G1. G1 Christmas. G1 Christmas Eve.
Mike00:19:57I think that's to be expected, but you'll figure it out. Because the important thing, at the end of the day, the important thing is that you sit around with the family and you eat something, even if it is Tofurky. Pizza?
JVL00:20:14Oh, forget Tofurky. We may make pancakes tomorrow.
Mike00:20:18That's great.
JVL00:20:19I think that's great. Do a lot of pancakes for dinner over the last couple of weeks.
Sonny00:20:23You guys going to have the local? Is the local pizza place going to be open?
JVL00:20:27I don't think so. I can't imagine. The Indian places will probably be open.
Sonny00:20:32What about Chinese? Can you get like General South?
JVL00:20:34I believe the Chinese and Thai will be open. There you go. Maybe that's just racist. I shouldn't say that.
Mike00:20:40I don't know. Yeah. No. No idea. Well, for some reason, that all reminded me of the little anecdote in, I believe it was in our friend Andy Ferguson's. Book, the land of Lincoln about the wasn't the Vietnamese restaurant that would create that would need like a Thanksgiving meal and put it in front of a statue of Lincoln that they had created. Do you remember this? I don't remember, but that sounds sounds like a thing that would happen anyway, like a little
Sonny00:21:17like a little baby Buddha.
Mike00:21:18It was like a little shrine. It was like a little shrine. Maybe it wasn't Thanksgiving, but it was they would they would I think the punchline of it was that Andy asked this Vietnamese couple, you know, because they revered Lincoln, they revered everything was that they they said, of course, we never serve. We never serve a pork. And he's like, why don't you serve in pork? So because he's Jewish, Abraham. So it's so good. All right.
JVL00:21:50Can I get two minutes of book organization talk? That that should have been 15 hours. That show it was boy, I couldn't get enough of it. Really? Okay. I so I've reached the point in my life where with books that I have to get for work purposes. Yeah. I give away almost all of them the minute I'm done. Under the assumption, because what I used to do was I used to hold on to them for forever in case I need it. Right. And you write one piece on something that you need a book for and you then talk yourself into I'm going to lug this book around everywhere I go for the next 25 years in case I ever write another 1100 word piece that needs something from it. What sort of cockamamie like cost benefit analysis is that? And so what I I have given myself permission to do is buy books multiple times. And so if I ever need this book again. Then I will simply buy the Kindle version of it and word search the thing that I think I remember that I wanted to look up again. And otherwise, it is not going to take up shelf space and take up some volume, some infinitesimal volume of my home. I'm just going to divest. I'm just going to get rid of it.
Mike00:23:15So when you say get rid of it, what do you do?
JVL00:23:19We have a giant used bookstore called the Book Barn.
Mike00:23:24And I give it. I give it to the Book Barn.
Sonny00:23:26Reasonable. That's a reasonable.
Mike00:23:27Totally. I was I didn't think this of you, JVL, but, you know, you do always worry about people throwing books away, which is to me is like a cardinal sin, like just like to throw a book away.
Sonny00:23:39I mean, it's it's only one step down from book burning.
Mike00:23:42Totally.
JVL00:23:42Totally. It's funny. So we have this thing that we drilled into our kids almost from infancy. If they you know, when they like as a toddler. Flash, you know, if he stepped on a book on the floor and say, nope, you be careful. Books are precious. Yeah. And this is like a mantra.
Mike00:24:03We don't treat books that way.
JVL00:24:04And we hear our kids say, like, don't be careful. Books are precious. Yeah, that's right. That's great.
Sonny00:24:11It's a good parenting therapy. My son stepped on a book the other day and I like I feel shame about this, but I snapped at him. I snapped at him. I said, we don't we do not step on books. We do not do that. And like, I think it's a reasonable thing. Like, you got to treat books with JVL. I'm I. So I'm. I'm nominally with you on this, with the with the exception that like after reading God, I forget what it was. It was I think it was the recently was the it was the Oppenheimer biography, the Kai Bird Oppenheimer biography. There was there was a thing I wanted to check in that book about the Japanese, the Japanese state of affairs with their military. And I knew I owned the book. I knew I owned the book that I wanted to check it in. It was a I forget the name of it now, but I'll I'll I'll find it. Maybe I'll try and put Joe notes. But the I like I went to my shelf and I looked and I looked. I couldn't find it. Find the book that I wanted. And I realized that right before we moved to Dallas, I gave away a bunch of books that I had bought in for God. It was for World War Two history with Professor. Philip Zelico at the University of Virginia. I'd given away like five or six World War Two history books because I was like, I'll never need these again. Literally three years later.
JVL00:25:36Did you just get another copy?
Sonny00:25:38Three years later? No, I just I like I didn't write the thing that I wanted to write. Just wrote around the fact.
JVL00:25:42Yeah.
Sonny00:25:42You know what? The world didn't end.
JVL00:25:45Let me throw let me throw something else at you.
Sonny00:25:47Or or. Did it, Albert?
JVL00:25:52With the pleasure books. Pleasure books that I really like. I, I believe that if you have a pleasure book that you really enjoy, you should try to give it away to somebody who you think would enjoy it. It should be passed on. Don't keep it. If you want to read it again, buy another copy. The author deserves it. The author, you know, I don't know how often that would happen to you in your life, right? Maybe 10 times your entire life. You would buy a second copy of something. You can afford that. Lifetime, an extra $220. That's okay. And this way you are divesting and clearing of space and you are passing on a thing that you loved to somebody you like.
Mike00:26:34Yeah, but I, I like to hoard books. It's, it's, I get that. No, believe me. It's a guilty pleasure.
JVL00:26:42If you could see what is outside the frame in my office right now, you would, I I'm down with that. I hoard so many other things though. I hoard baseball cards. I've hoard comic books.
Sonny00:26:54I try to, you know, my, my, again, my, my, it's funny. I was on a, uh, I was, I was doing a fantasy football draft with some friends from college who I've been doing this draft with for 20 years now. And, uh, one of them asked me on the shelf behind me, they were like, how many of those books have you read? And I was like, I've read from start to finish most of them, but not all of them. A lot of them are just reference books. It's like, like I have like Scorsese. Scorsese on Scorsese, which is just a collection of like interviews of Martin Scorsese. And like, I haven't read that start to finish, but I like to have that in case I want to reference what he thought about, you know, some, some movie. And like, he was like, oh, and he was like, very, he was very dismissive. And I was like, what? Don't judge me. I have, I have a perfectly good reason for having these.
Mike00:27:45What's his, was his judgment like, oh, so those books are just for show.
Sonny00:27:50Yes. It was very much like, it was very much like you're just, you just have this, I was like,
JVL00:27:53to show for who, how many books did your friend Tom Wolfe have on his bookcase?
Sonny00:27:59Exactly. I bet, I bet Tom Wolfe had more than one.
JVL00:28:03So there, there were two other things I wanted to talk to you about, um, from that show. The, the second one was, uh, D CD organization. So you guys kept all of the jewel cases. You did not pull the CDs and put them into the binders because that's why I said I did.
Sonny00:28:21Yeah, no, we, we, we both did that. We both did that.
JVL00:28:23Okay. Uh, and the, the last thing is Sonny, you said that you were not a browser when it came to DVDs. And I find that, uh, sad because my favorite thing in the world for a big chunk of my life, when DVDs first started happening would be going to Hollywood video and trolling through their used DVDs for sale. And I would go like every Friday or Saturday night just to see what was there and see if there's anything. That I had really loved as a movie and wanted to own or had been interested in, in getting. Cause if I had the chance to buy a DVD instead of renting it, I would buy it 100% of the time.
Sonny00:29:07I know that just was not, it was, it's not a thing that I, that I did. I would browse rentals. I w I would browse rentals, like going to a blockbuster video or whatever I would. But if I was going to purchase a thing, that's like, that's I, I like, I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted and I went to go get that thing. And like, I mean, I, I wouldn't say that this has never happened. I wouldn't say that it has never happened that I showed up to a store with the intent of buying a thing, didn't find that thing and then bought something else that was similar to it. I would that I'm sure that probably happened at some point, but like my goal when I went to a store was to buy a thing that I had in my mind and if I didn't find that thing, I would leave disappointed.
JVL00:29:55Many times I would show up to a store intent on buying some thing without really having any clear idea of what it might be, but just like, Oh my God, I want to buy myself a movie to watch this weekend. Let's see what, uh, what Suncoast video has in the used boxes, right? Holy this tombstone. I saw a tombstone once, two years ago, and I can now own it for 1399.
Mike00:30:19Bring it on. I do feel like there is a demarcation in. At a certain point, we really flipped over into the realm of, uh, we're, we're browsing is like the exception as opposed to the, to the rule. Like, I remember when browsing was a thing of my life, you know, where like a lot of it was like me with my mom going to get clothes for the beginning of school and like just looking through those, uh, those circular racks of, of, of. Of clothing and like, just like dying because I didn't want to be there. And like, obviously now, like, you know, we can ask Lord Bezos, uh, to give us exactly what we want, send it to us. But like, there was that middle, it was like around that time, right? Like, like DVDs were big, uh, but you could start ordering things from the internet. Like there's, there's gotta be a moment in which like browsing, uh, the, the, the, the two lines in the graph.
JVL00:31:20So Michael, you know, we used to back in the olden days, we used to browse TV, you just like, well, it's eight o'clock on a sit down and flip through and see what's on and people still do that with Netflix, right? People browse Netflix in a way that they would browse like the networks in the early eighties. I don't get the sense that people browse like HBO or Peacock. Those seem more like destination.
Sonny00:31:44No, no, but this is, so this is the really interesting thing about the world of TV right now is that the fast channels, the free advertised supporting streaming channels, that actually is how people use them. They will, they will throw on the menu and they'll just scroll down, down until they find a judge Judy channel that they want to watch, or like they'll, they'll see a movie that they recognize that like, oh, I want to watch that and it recreates that cable experience scrolling down, which is fast. It's, it's actually fascinating to me. Like a there, there's a universe of people who really want that unmediated. Experience and that's how they want to watch TV.
JVL00:32:25We disrupted two entire industries and spend billions and billions of dollars so that people could recreate the exact same experience, but using a different delivery pipe, okay, that's great.
Sonny00:32:37No, that's that's capitalism. It's not, don't blame capitalism. Blame the consumer.
Mike00:32:44That is true. That is a consumer problem. Right.
JVL00:32:47Uh, well, that's all I wanted. I'm sorry. This is, I found the entire thing fascinating and I wanted you guys to just keep going with it. Thank you. I was a little sad once you moved on to the Marvels.
Mike00:32:55I was like, no, well, I want to get more Dewey decimal talk. So were we, so were we, um, but speaking of browsing through 78% drop by the way. Right. Oh, it was, should we, should we talk, should we talk box office real quick here because it's, um, it's something else. Is it not? Uh, all right. So let's look at, uh, this most recent weekend, the Marvels dropped from number one to number four. You're right. JVL 78% drop. It's, uh, bringing in just under $65 million through the last weekend. Uh, number one is this hunger games movie. The hunger games, the ballot of songbirds and snakes. What the fuck is this? I don't have no idea. A hundred games prequel. It's a prequel.
Sonny00:33:48Game's prequel. It's fine.
Mike00:33:49And then trolls band together. Number two, this is a troll's movie for the kids and then Thanksgiving. Uh, what is Thanksgiving?
Sonny00:33:56So here's, here's, I, I think this is, this is the most house that this is. This is the most concrete way to understand how far the Marvel cinematic universe has fallen. In its second weekend in its second weekend debuts weekend. Number one, you know, it does, it does whatever in its second weekend. Have the Marvels fell to fourth, which is. Literally unprecedented. There's no other, there's no other MCU movie that has fallen from first to fourth. Frankly, I, I wouldn't want to state this for a fact cause I haven't looked it up. Um, maybe Electra did or so, but I can't think of another Marvel universe movie, even in the broader Marvel universe or even DC universe that has fallen from first to fourth. I can't, I can't think of enough, maybe again, maybe I'm, I'm, I'm missing some thing. Um, I haven't actually looked it up, but I off the top of my head, I can't think of anything. Uh, the, the fact that Thanksgiving came in third is telling because what is Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is a slasher movie directed by Eli Roth. That is, I believe the third spinoff from the Grindhouse series directed by, or Grindhouse movie, not even serious. The Grindhouse movie directed. Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. There, there were a series of trailers from that movie. Um, a Shetty was one, uh, there's, there's another one with a shotgun hobo with a shotgun. Thank you. Was made into a movie. And then there's, and then there's this movie Thanksgiving, which is the third, the third spinoff from Thanksgiving, the enormous failure. It was, it was such an enormous failure. I'm talking out of school here a little bit. I will, I will, but a friend of mine who used to work in the Weinstein offices told me that the one movie they were never allowed to mention in the offices was Grindhouse because it was such an enormous bomb. It was such, it was such a failure. They were not allowed to talk about it. Interesting. Uh, so, so Grindhouse is a movie that has generated multiple spinoff movies. The one of the most recent of them directed by Eli Roth, again, who is a, the guy who is best known for the hostile movies. He is not a reputable filmmaker that movie did better than, uh, the Marvels did in its second weekend, despite being on half as many screens, I think, three, three quarters as many screens. Let's let's just say, um, that's, that's the people, the people at Disney have to be very worried about this because I like, if I'm looking at these numbers, if I'm looking at this movie, the Marvels is going to gross a billion dollars less than it's red. Eh, well, no, no. No, it, it, it, it will probably gross, eh, $850 million less than its predecessor. I'll put it that way. And that's a disaster. That's that is question. Yes.
Mike00:37:05Isn't this really the fault of critics and viewers who didn't want to give Marvels a chance because, uh, uh, because it's a movie about women. I saw this on, I saw this on Twitter and I, I want you to respond to it because I think it's a very serious accusation.
Sonny00:37:29Mike. I'm glad you bring this up. And I think you're right because the real issue here is that people weren't willing to give 20 hours of their time to Disney plus shows to get, to get fully informed about the Marvel's universe before. No. I mean, like what it is, is it's just, it's pure genre exhaustion. And look, I don't even, I don't even blame, I don't, I, I, I find this, I find this movie fascinating because I don't blame the actresses at all for it. I don't even blame the director for it. And I don't even blame Kevin Feige for it. There's just this, there was this assumption that no matter what Marvel did, people would show up for it. And that has been proven. Disastrously wrong with this, uh, this entry. And if they aren't trying to figure out how to, uh, course correct immediately and, uh, delete all of this and move on from the Disney plus stuff, I don't know what they're going to do.
JVL00:38:40Yes. JBL.
Sonny00:38:42I know how to course correct.
JVL00:38:43How? No more streaming series from Marvel. That's the problem. No more of them. First of all, they don't get you. They don't get you anything. Right. Uh, and second of all, they are creating the brand exhaustion and there, this is, this is exactly what happened in comic books in the late 1980s when the, the literally this is what happened. Uh, comic books got hot. And so Marvel decided, well, shit, we ought to make more comic books. They went from, uh, doing, I want to say it was 29 different titles a year to like 110 different titles a year. New series over and over and a new series and you go and you look at some of the art for some of those series and they were just bringing in hobos off the street to like pencil them. Like there are no backgrounds on any of the panels, you know, like you, you can't believe how bad the quality is and it's because this is a sunny Africa. This was in your newsletter or a Rushfield newsletter joke about how, you know, once upon a time there were 35 people who could write TV. And, uh, you know, three networks and now there are, there are, you know, 500 networks and 35 people who can write TV like there just aren't that many people who are capable of doing high level artistic cinema and, uh, spreading all that talent out over all these interminable series, which by the way, don't do anything for your company anyway.
Sonny00:40:15This, this is, I, I, I disagree with this slightly because like the entire Disney plus experiment is built on getting people to sign up month to month to watch the new MCU series, then the new star Wars series, then the new MCU series, then the new star Wars series. And like, maybe they can move away from that and just rely on the library for families.
JVL00:40:38That's what it should be.
Sonny00:40:39I, I think that I, I, I think they have to be very seriously looking at that, but you know what? They're not. Cause you know who was just named the head of Lucasfilm creative, who Dave Filoni? So here's the problem, if they, if you, even if it is true that you need all of these series
JVL00:41:02to keep people signed up, you are eating your seed corn by destroying the appetite for the movies, because once the appetite for the movies goes away, there will be zero appetite for the series on streaming. Right? I mean, this is you, I mean, it mystifies me. That Disney and Iger doesn't understand this.
Sonny00:41:25Let me tell you a story about Bob Iger. There's this book, uh, Disney war by James Stewart. And in this book, they talk about the, uh, the, the bringing of who wants to be a millionaire over from England to America. So, uh, ABC gets the rights to who wants to be a millionaire and despite pressure not to put it on, cuz it's silly and like who wants to watch a game show on prime time, put it on.
JVL00:41:52And it's an enormous, is he the one who wanted like it on every night? Is that Iger?
Sonny00:41:57It's an enormous hit, maybe a hold up. And they, then they then do a sweep sweep.
JVL00:42:03It was a special attraction.
Sonny00:42:05They do a sweeps week and it's a special attraction and they put it on every night and sweeps weekend. Everybody is super excited for it. It does huge, huge numbers. I was one of everyone. Everyone shows up for this movie. They watch it. It does. It blows the competition out of the water. ABC wins. It does the sweeps. And so ABC comes to the producers, ABC, which is at the time headed by Bob Iger, should be noted, comes to the producer and they say, we want your show on the air three times a week forever. Not during sweeps, three times that we want it on three times a week, prime time every day, every week forever. And they look at ABC, which is headed by Bob Iger. And they say, you've lost your fucking mind. If you put this on every night. It will lose the appeal. It won't be special anymore. It won't be an event. We can't do it this way. If we do it this way, we'll destroy what makes it special. And ABC says, give it to us anyway. If you don't, we'll find someone who will. And needless to say, it comes to pass that it's on every night and nobody likes it anymore. And all of a sudden the new hot thing is NCIS. And like that, that's just like it's, it's the absolute story of Marvel right there. I mean, you, you see, you see it 25 years or 30 years ago, whenever this came out originally, like it just, it history repeats itself first, as far as that is tragedy, et cetera, et cetera. Like it just, it, it is what it is.
Mike00:43:50Well, it's a shame that they didn't put moonlight on every day of the week back in what? 1985, uh, because it's a great show. And that's what we're talking about in the last like 10 minutes of this podcast, uh, because we all watched, uh, the moonlighting pilot and Sonny mentioned a couple of weeks ago on the show that he's been watching the show, uh, which is available on Hulu. And so I fired up the pilot to watch with my wife and I said, uh, I loved it. So we're talking about it here today. It's the pilot's basically a, a, a movie. It's like a two hour long movie. Um, and, uh, I fell in love with the show and fell in love with Sybil Shepherd. And, uh, here we go. So, uh, uh, Sonny, you want to give us, should we do a review, a traditional big boy review?
Sonny00:44:47Mike, I, I, I, first I have a question. Did you watch it with? Ads. Do you have Hulu with ads?
Mike00:44:52Yes, we do have it with ads.
Sonny00:44:54So you watched, uh, that's interesting to me. That's interesting. So I, I watched, uh, the ad free version. I have Hulu without ads and it was 90 minutes. It was, it was, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a 90 minute thing. Um, so I, all right. So Moonlighting, the series, uh, stars Sybil Shepherd as, uh, Maddie Hayes, who is a model slash actress, but mostly model who. She wakes up one morning, she finds out she doesn't have any money, doesn't have any money because her, uh, accountants have stolen it all. And when she goes to figure out where it all went, uh, you know, power of attorney, whatever, she doesn't have it. So she has to figure out how to get it back. And the way she is told to get it back is to liquidate her various businesses that were set up for tax purposes to lose money, uh, in order to lessen her tax burden. So, uh, one of the, the, the first business I guess she goes to is. The blue moon, uh, detective company, detective agency, agency, agency. Thank you. Uh, and it turns out that this is headed up by Bruce Willis. And I want to say, I don't, I don't even want to call him David Addison. I just want to call him Bruce Willis because the most stunning thing about the moonlighting pilot, when you watch it for the first time. And like you say, Mike, it is like a movie.
JVL00:46:14It is, it's shot like a movie. Yeah, it's shot.
Sonny00:46:18It is, it's shot. Like it is. Shot like a movie and it is paced like a movie. And to the extent that like watching the, um, restoration on Hulu was like watching the restoration on Hulu in 4k and like nice high res. I was like, oh, this looks like something that was shot on film in the 1980s. This is a, this is a proper movie. And it's, it's paced all wrong for a moonlighting episode, but it's paced just right for a 1980s movie. We can talk about that in a minute, but like. The, uh, what, what, again, what's fascinating about this movie is that like 20 minutes in or so you get to the, uh, the, the detective agency and the guy who runs it. His name is David Addison, but he's played by Bruce Willis and Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis.
JVL00:47:07Like Athena from Zeus's head.
Sonny00:47:10It's one of the most shocking things I've ever seen watching him appear on screen. This is his first, I mean, his first professional role. His first straight up screen role, big screen, small screen, whatever. This is his first role. And he is like, it is, it is shocking. It is just shocking to watch him work. Um, he has, he has his whole, uh, kind of Bruce Willis-y, uh, joie de vivre and rhythm to him. He has his, uh, confidence, but also like self-deprecation at the same time. I, I cannot, I literally cannot. I cannot think of another actor who I've seen in their first performance that appeared fully formed like this. Um, and I, honestly, the rest of the episode is almost a haze after that for me because it is, because it is, because it is, it's, it's just watching him work, just watching him work. Now, the rest of the episode is fine. It's, it's, so the, the setup of the show is you have this, uh, rich snooty woman coming in to run the, uh, detective agency and she has to learn the ropes, but also shut it down. She wants to shut it down, but he doesn't want to shut it down because it's his job. They learned how to navigate their feelings as the show goes along. It's a will, will they, won't they sort of thing that culminates in they do in the end of season three, which again, we will discuss more in a bit, I think, of, of, about what all that meant. But like the actual, the actual episode is fascinating to watch again, not just because it's like, it's set up like a episode it's, it's not just because it's set up like a. A movie almost brought to TV and it's not just Bruce Willis appearing on the, on the screen and being amazing, but it's also how the interplay between them happens. What's, what's fascinating about this show is that, you know, it's again, it's a night, it's 90 minutes really of TV. It's 92 or 93 minutes or something like that of actual TV, but the script was 150 or 160 pages. And this, this, the, the network came back to the showrunner, Glenn Gordon, Karen. They said, you can't, you can't have. The script be this long. This, that doesn't work yet. It's going to be too long. You can't shoot this. That's not how it works. And he was like, no, trust me. It's going to be fine. And they were like, no, you can't do that. He's like, no, trust me. I'm going to have them talk real fast. It's going to be fine. And they didn't believe it. And when you watch the episode, watching them talk to each other, the pattern that they're, that they're doing, the speed with which the dialogue happens. It's something you see throughout the rest of the series as it goes along, but it's, you get a glimpse of it first here. And it's amazing to the extent that, and I don't know if you guys felt this, but the, the, the pilot actually feels stretched out and lengthy to me. Yes. There, the chase scenes go on like three beats too long. All of them, all of the car chase scenes, all of that, every, all that stuff goes on. Just, it just stretches and stretches forever. And that's because the episode was like four minutes short after they shot it. The, despite the script being overly long, despite. It just moves. It just, it just went on. It, it, it was so snappy and so well done that when they put together the assembly edit, it was a four minutes too short. So they had to make it longer, which is, which is fascinating. And like in, in indicative of how the show worked, there was a lot of tension between Karen and the networks and, and, you know, how, how the episodes came together. But this, this, this episode gets the pilot episode gets to a lot of what worked and what didn't. Um, about the show. It's again, it's fascinating to watch. I cannot recommend it enough.
JVL00:50:54It's like a great little Agatha Christie is the wrong comparison here, but it's not, it's not far off.
Sonny00:51:04No, it's not, but it's, but it's, it's, it's like an interesting little mystery that comes together. Yeah.
Mike00:51:09It's like these, these sort of, uh, Raymond, it's, it's like Raymond Chandler meets, uh, screwball comic, right?
Sonny00:51:17It's like, yeah, that's no, that's, that's. That's precisely it. That's precisely it. So I, I love this. I love this pilot. Both for the reasons it works and the reasons it doesn't work. Um, and we can talk about good pilots versus bad pilots and pilots that work versus pilots that don't work if we want. But the, but this, this show does a really good job of introducing people to what was to come and what came after. This is so much better than the very good pilot that it's, it's almost hard to believe.
JVL00:51:49Yeah. I watched Moonlighting contemporaneously beginning in season two. So I'm like 12 years old and I stumbled across the thing. It's unlike anything I've ever seen on TV. Uh, I mean, it is fully modern in a way that we now would understand, uh, with West wing and Allie McBeal and friends and very sort of dialogue forward shows like that, you know, with the. Pattern and it's like the, that stuff is, is entirely modern. And so it just sort of knocked me in the head and the chemistry between Bruce Willis and civil shepherd is, I mean, the show is two things and two things only it's dialogue and then the chemistry of the leads, which is simply off the charts. Amazing, right? You just, you, you, every moment that isn't spent with the two of them, you want to be with the two of them for again, and here's, here's the thing. So I became obsessed with moonlighting when it came. On, but I never saw anything in the first season because back then you couldn't, there were kids, there was no on demand TV.
Mike00:52:56You just saw whatever, where was it? Where was it streaming in 1987?
JVL00:53:01I think moonlighting was CBS. I can be wrong. I think it was ABC. Well, maybe it was ABC. Like you just, whatever ABC put on and which, do you know how you knew what was going to be on in the Sunday newspaper there, your Sunday Philadelphia inquirer would have a TV guide insert. Which was like. Like, you know, 35 pages of black and white newsprint telling you what was on each of the three channels, uh, for each hour of the week. And so I come into it and I was, I was absolutely obsessed with it at the time and really taken in by the, will they, won't they, will they, won't they, and then they finally do it. And I was like, yes, this is great. And then we come back. For season three, I think, or season four, is this season four?
Sonny00:53:54That was the end of season three.
JVL00:53:55And the first thing they do is split her up from him by marrying her off to some random guy. And I, just as an unsophisticated 12 year old, absolutely revolted. I was like, no, this doesn't work. And it was the, the first, I didn't fully realize it at the time. Now, in hindsight, I do. This is the classic Sam. And. Diane, where the audience wants Sam and Diane together, the audience needs them to never be together. Yep. And the, you know, anyway, it's, it is maybe the ER version of all of that. And now looking back on moonlighting, I see it as one of these stars, which happens often with dramedies. You get a star that burns really, really bright and hot. And by its nature, it cannot sustain it. Like Northern Exposure. Yeah. There's like this Northern Exposure burn really hot. Try and think of some other Allie McBeal. Perfect example of this, right? There were like three seasons and Allie McBeal was just sensational and it was great TV. It's just dramedies can't sustain that. They, they're too gossamer, right? They need to, they need to come and end, but they almost never end right. Like they, they burn out and then, you know, disappear and get canceled.
Mike00:55:16Which by the way, that's what moonlighting wound up as, right? Speaking of Allie McBeal. Did you ever watch the shortened 30 minute sitcom version of Allie McBeal? Didn't they do that for like a season or two? No, it was called, they called it Allie and it was literally just the same show. They just like cut out all of the drama and they like, it was like a zippy little comedy version of the same show. They turned it into a sitcom. Yeah. Like, like, like what was going on in the late nineties? Like that they had just like did, did stuff like that. TV. I don't know.
Sonny00:55:51No, but all right. So, but so JBL, like to your, to your point, the, again, the backstory here is so fascinating because like at the end of the third season, which is where they finally hook up, you know, Sybil Shepard is pregnant.
JVL00:56:08Right.
Sonny00:56:09And they have to get her off the show. So she has to, she has to go away for essentially the first half of the fourth season and she goes home to her parents in Chicago, blah, blah. And they like tape all of her stuff in the, in like the six weeks that immediately precede or immediately follow the end of the, the, the season finale for the third season, which then they have to hue to for the fourth season, which was not how the show was made. Like the, the show was made from the, in the second and third season, like on a very ad hoc week by week basis to the extent that there were, there were weeks where there just weren't episodes because they weren't ready yet. They didn't have scripts. They couldn't shoot it. Um, and that, that destroyed the whole rhythm of the show. And then, you know, she comes back mid, she met, she comes back midway through the fourth season, which then, uh, leads to, you know, some tension on the set and Bruce is blown up, right?
JVL00:57:05Bruce is just done.
Sonny00:57:07And then Bruce, Bruce, Bruce does die hard, which makes him one of the biggest action stars in the world, which creates all sorts of other scheduling issues. And, uh, between that. And the audience kind of dissipating the audience. So this is like the big question of the show. Did the audience dissipate because the will, they won't, they was resolved. Did the audience dissipate because they wanted to see Bruce Willis in movies and not on TV? Or did the audience dissipate because the scheduling was so fucked from, from all the schedule schedule issues that like the episodes weren't coming out on time. They weren't coming out on a regular basis. Like, I think it's, I think it's one of these very classic, like all of the. Above everything kind of conspired against this enormous hit show. And like, this is the other thing that is wild to listeners of this show who grew up in the last 30 years, you know, moonlight, moonlighting was putting up 40 sheets, 40 million people, 40 million people a week. We're watching like 40 million people were watching a television show on a weekly basis. At the same time, there's a same hour was only.
JVL00:58:19On right then you couldn't, it was only on one, you couldn't just stream it whenever you want to do.
Sonny00:58:23It was only on once you could like some people had a VHS, you could program it to tape it. Maybe that would work. Maybe it wouldn't. But the the, you know, like this. It's such a different time. It's just such a different time. So like this show is putting up these enormous numbers. It's capturing an enormous number of eyeballs. And it's so weird. Like, I don't know how far, Mike, you've gotten into the show. Not far. But maybe JBL, you remember some of this, like how completely fucking bizarre the show actually was in terms of what it was doing with breaking the fourth wall, having Jeff Jarvis on it.
JVL00:59:01And, you know, I didn't know who he was then, but I know who he is now. Yeah.
Sonny00:59:06It's it's just such it's such like the end of the second. So the end of the second season is a mystery that it's built around Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson, who are guest starring for this episode. He was a con woman. He was a crooked cop, whatever. None of that actually matters that much for the point I want to make here, which is that the whole last 10 minutes of the episode, the whole last 10 minutes, the second season finale of the biggest show on television, arguably. You know, it wasn't technically the biggest, but it was the biggest new show on TV. It was just a total fourth wall break. They literally like ran off the set. They filmed them running down. The, you know, Warner Brothers backlot or wherever they shot it, running to the other set and being like, OK, we're we're filming it here now. Now, Judd Nelson, this is what you would say. Judd Nelson, like kind of walks through his lines is like, oh, yeah, that's a good finale for me. And then, Bruce, this is what you would say to Sybil. And then it and like that's how they ended the season of the show. Like I wouldn't I wouldn't dare to try to get away with that today on TV.
JVL01:00:16It's like practically avant garde.
Sonny01:00:18Yes. Very much.
Mike01:00:20But it's interesting that, you know, the more that I look into the sort of history of television, you know, there's this idea that The Sopranos changes everything about television, which in many ways it does. I don't mean to I don't mean to sort of diminish what The Sopranos meant for TV shows that came after there was a, you know, there was a really good cover story in an old magazine. Called The Weekly Standard about the cold TV and, you know, and, you know, I think you can put it put it there as sort of starting there. But at the same time, there's all of these. I mean, none of this sort of happens out of nowhere. And there are all of these moments in the 80s and 90s where people seem to seem to have this this kind of willingness to put on weird stuff. I mean, we've talked about this before, right? Like whether it's Moonlighting or Twin Peaks or Gary Shandling Show or like, yeah, I mean, it's all it's all kind of there's this, which is it's wild that this is happening at the same time that shows are pulling, you know, 40 plus million viewers all the time in a way which the the networks are going to be. You would think would be sort of extremely attuned to what the content is. How are we going to make sure we're not we don't want to put on stuff that's too violent or too bizarre or too offensive that's going to drive our viewers to other channels, the other networks like. Arguably, they're paying close, very close attention more than any other time, and yet all this kind of extra creative stuff is happening that sort of builds the foundation for that for the goal. Of television, so that's just amazing to me.
Sonny01:02:23What's again, what's what's interesting about moonlighting is that so there's this there's this oral history of moonlighting that was put together by Scott Ryan, and it's fascinating to like look at what some of the creatives at the time were saying about the show, which is that like, you know, we all all of this stuff that we've been doing all of the fourth wall breaking, maybe not to the extent that we were doing it, but like this had all been done before it had been done in the 60s. 70s like we were pulling old tricks and I think that like the thing to understand about the evolution of television is that it is much more driven by the consumer technologies than the actual art of it like television is a consumerist medium, it is it's it's a it's a medium that is driven entirely by what the demands of the networks. In play are so like ABC in 1985 has a different demand than HBO in 1999 which has a different demand in FX in 2003 and like the differences in those demands leads to different types of shows being made and different audience niche sizes being needed like that's the other thing that is that's important to understand here is that like you know again moonlighting drawing 40 million viewers is important because their audience is being served ads and like the audience on the soprano for the sopranos is not being served ads they are being they are people who are paying to subscribe to a service and like the more people who pay to subscribe to the service the more money HBO gets or you know on a show like FX like I was just rewatching the other night the the pilot for the shield the shield is a great show and the shield pilot is very different from the moonlighting pilot in that the shield pilot is the show like this is it is artistically it is the show that was promised is what you get yeah but but FX was doing a different thing FX is business model was based on being on 140 million cable network homes and getting a dollar from each of them a month eventually like at the time they were getting like 10 cents a month and so like a show like the shield or later nip talk or you know everything else that FX does during this time is designed to build up that network to make it a must watch for a small number of people who will complain vociferously if that channel is taken away and like it's it's a really fascinating thing to think about and people have grappled with it but not in a mainstream way that that they probably should have can I mention a couple things that I like please
Mike01:05:19pilot so first of all I loved seeing just like these weird moments like so for instance the very beginning Liz Sheridan plays the the the maid for who this is Mrs. Seinfeld and for for Maddie Hayes and I loved it and I was like and I said I said to my wife I was like oh like I love that Mrs. Seinfeld is in this and she was like I mean my wife is much more perceptive about things than I am this is like the very beginning scene where she's finding out that all of her staff is is leaving and my wife very smartly said I don't think we are going to see Mrs. Seinfeld anymore and then I loved the Mary Hart cameo it's like so weird it was like I'm Mary Hart and it was just it was fun it was sort of like out of nowhere to me I just love that the the punk guy who takes the watch casting is so like first of all that that actor like he's got like sort of like you know acne scars and like he looks he looks gritty like it looks as like you don't feel I don't feel like you see lovely puts the goggles on before he heads out and the walkman yes run barefoot and yeah the running barefoot with the with the guy yeah all that was great and I love the clock tower finale of like it's also it felt and maybe it's because of the art deco building architectural style of it it's like I felt like I was watching a screwball comedy from from like the 40s like just like everything about it it just it has this which I think was happening a lot in the 80s like a very sort of like looking back on culture from the past sort of drawing that that that that culture from the 30s and 40s into uh into contemporary uh culture so uh but everything about that that scene is it was great and and so you know the way that she gets up there in the end you know and you expect bruce willis to be this tough guy and you know I just everything about it was terrific civil shepherd I sent you guys that picture with uh with uh reagan sexy
JVL01:07:49civil shepherd in the oval office yucking it up with the gipper oh for guys like us
Sonny01:07:56it's a lot of different projects yeah doesn't it though but like like that first sequence where
Mike01:08:04she's like in the bed and like going through all of her like I was like dude I sat up in my chair I was like whoa civil shepherd hey now civil shepherd is something else fellas
JVL01:08:19just saying back in the day she was something else also she's great in this I I do want to say one more thing because I've been thinking a lot about the will they won't they genre and I think it's probably a creative dead end because the the thing about will they won't they is that eventually you have to resolve it because otherwise the audience is getting blue balls right like it gets like narrative and thematic blue balls but if you resolve it and you put them together then it takes all the tension out of the enterprise and so a show like this one of the reasons I think it can't work in the long run is because so much of it is about that the the romantic tension between the two leads that just it can't be sustained and it can't be resolved and so that's why you were just never going to get more than like two or three good so that so so
Mike01:09:19there's two examples uh and they're in sitcoms which I think is important two examples of uh of maybe the most famous examples of will they won't they um obviously Sam and Diane uh on Cheers and uh and then you know 25 years later uh Jim and Pam on The Office and I think Cheers succeeds in moving and getting beyond it once once they do once Sam and Diane do it and I really think The Office uh struggled once Jim and Pam became a thing and so I think I I would be interesting to know like why is it because for the one thing you know Cheers is Cheers had the you know the the sort of ensemble cast and all that um that helped right it wasn't just a show about Sam and Diane but also when when uh when uh she left like they just made a new show right like created an entirely new show with Kirstie Alley and and like all the dynamics are different in the show and it's like Cheers 2.0 is completely different well but good but good you're you're
Sonny01:10:31getting to all right so what what happened on The Office remember was that Steve uh Carell left correct and after Steve Carell left the will they won't they became the focus of the show
Mike01:10:44but they would but they were already they already had by that but they had they
Sonny01:10:49they were dating but then it became like you know they're watching them get married
Mike01:10:53yeah Steve Carell was still there when they got married but I but I think once they no no he came
Sonny01:10:58back no he came back that was no he was he was not wrong wrong you're thinking of you're thinking of
Mike01:11:03the wedding at the end with Dwight and uh oh maybe I am yeah which is but like the point is that one I actually think it it's the office started to go downhill once it was not when Steve Carell left um it started to go downhill with that particular those particular two once they became a couple and I think they like I think it's because the show treated it treated them so like the show kind of didn't recognize I think until two until much later that they were not actually like good people or or like people that we want that they were actually not likable people actually we like them when they were going after each other but once they were together they became like insufferable I think cheers avoids that because while Sam and Diane get together then they stay then they get apart then they get back together and they get apart they actually keep recreating the will they won't they because they then they hate each other and they'll never sleep together again and then they maybe so I don't know just my thoughts do we have any other thoughts on on moonlighting
JVL01:12:19or the moonlighting pilot and he you know I the highest praise I can give it is that I am gonna make my way through the series yeah or at least through the first you know three seasons or two seasons uh it may take me five years but I'm gonna I'm gonna add I'm gonna do something I never do which is I'm gonna watch series television look at that you know
Mike01:12:41Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepard making making the impossible possible uh all right well then I think that's all the time we're going to give to this episode we're running a little long tonight enjoy your thanksgiving I hope you did enjoy your thanksgiving because you're listening to this the day after thanksgiving uh and uh we will see you next time uh any any outtakes guys anything no nothing I got I got nothing
JVL01:13:19the show was long enough I'm sure it's fine
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