The Best Moonlighting Moments to Watch for, Now That the Show's Streaming on Hulu

No more blurry YouTube videos. No more tracking down out of print DVDs. Moonlighting, the detective drama that aired on ABC from 1985 to 1989, is finally going to be available to stream. Beginning October 10, all 67 episodes of the series will be on Hulu. Like many series from the B.S. (before streaming) times, music rights were what held up the show’s availability. But all the songs will now be there, including Al Jarreau’s theme song. Each episode has also been digitally remastered in HD.

Moonlighting followed former supermodel Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and fast-talking con man David Addison (Bruce Willis) as an unlikely detective duo who were great at solving crimes but not so great at getting along. Amid their crackling sexual tension, the duo sparred regularly. The series launched Willis into fame and by now the story of Moonlighting is steeped in legend and lore. Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis hated each other. Don’t put your two star-crossed leads together.

The fact that the show only produced 67 episodes over five seasons was a whole thing. It aired during a time when 22 episodes per season was commonplace. For context AMC’s Breaking Bad had 62 episodes over five seasons. HBO’s Succession had 39 episodes over four seasons. Moonlighting, which had six episodes its first season, 18 in its second, 15 in its third, 14 in its fourth and 13 in its fifth and final season, was simply ahead of its time.

It was also a different time for female actresses. So much attention was given to Cybill Shepherd’s pregnancy: A 1988 article in the LA Times begins with “Cybill Shepherd’s twins are going to have a lot to answer for. They’re the ones who wrecked Moonlighting.” And includes the line “If only Shepherd hadn’t gotten pregnant.” It will not shock you to learn this article was written by a man.

Although a network show, the series followed none of the, by then, well-established, if unofficial, rules of TV. It was consistently innovative. Characters constantly broke the fourth wall. Entire episodes departed from the show’s mystery of the week convention. There were musical numbers and black and white episodes. Anything was possible.

It’s hard to pick our favorite moments but here are eight key ones to look out for when the show begins streaming on Hulu.

1. Best Cameo Appearance: Orson Welles

Episode Title: "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" (Season 2, Episode 2)

During its five seasons, Moonlighting had many guest stars, from Demi Moore (who was married to Bruce Willis at the time) to Whoopi Goldberg. But the best was when Orson Welles, in what turned out to be his last performance (the episode is dedicated to him), introduced this second season film noir nod. “Tonight broadcasting takes a giant leap backward . . . Nothing is wrong with your set. I repeat nothing is wrong with your set. Tonight’s episode is an experiment. One we hope you’ll enjoy,” he drolly tells viewers to prepare them for the mostly black and white episode. Welles is clearly having a ball being part of the show’s creative shenanigans and this early episode was a portend of how many innovative risks the show was willing to take.

2. Best Musical Number: "Big Man on Mulberry Street"

Episode Title: “Big Man on Mulberry Street” (Season 3, Episode 6)

Plot-wise, this was a big episode for the series, as Maddie discovers David was married before and that the relationship ended when he walked in on his wife with someone else. Maddie, reeling from the fact that she didn’t know this about David’s past, imagines what their marriage was like in an elaborate sequence with David dancing with his ex-wife to Billy Joel’s “Big Man on Mulberry Street.” There’s a reason the number has that big 1950s musical feel. The dance sequence was choreographed by none other than famed director and choreographer Stanley Donen (Singing in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, On the Town).

3. Best Use of Music: "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes

Episode Title: "I am Curious Maddie" (Season 3, Episode 14)

I absolutely cannot hear this song without immediately visualizing the scene when Maddie and David finally (finally!) consummate their relationship. Maddie is dating Sam (a positively dreamy Mark Harmon) who proposes to her. Maddie and David have a huge fight. “If there was a close-out sale on human beings you’d be the last one to sell!,” she tells him. “I don’t believe in wasting any more time, I’m sick of this! Two years of is you is or is you ain’t,” he retorts. They call each other names (bitch, bastard) and Maddie actually slaps David (what can we say, it was the ’80s and this was viewed as fine? See also the first season finale of Cheers.). David stops the last slap, pulls her close and the opening beats of “Be My Baby” begin to play. The coffee table is cleared, trinkets go crashing to the floor and a relationship fans had been waiting three seasons for finally happens.

4. Best Use of Iambic Pentameter: “The Taming of the Shrew”

Episode Title: "Atomic Shakespeare" (Season 3, Episode 7)

Perhaps Moonlighting’s most ambitious (and most expensive) episode, “Atomic Shakespeare” begins with a mom turning off the TV as her son watches an episode of Moonlighting (“They argue a lot and all they really want to do is sleep together.”). She tells her son that he needs to study for his Shakespeare test and the son imagines his favorite TV characters as the cast of The Taming of the Shrew—Shepherd taking over the role of Kate (the shrew), Allyce Beasley as her younger, sweeter sister and Willis as Petruchio.

The show used dialogue in Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter mixed with its trademark silliness (“Like it’s my fault I get stuck with all the exposition” Curtis Armstrong laments at the beginning of the episode.) Two things in this stellar episode stand out – David and Maddie do lots of kissing as Kate and Petruchio, and there was no crime or mystery for them to solve. The cast just basically puts on The Taming of the Shrew. Would that ever be allowed now??

5. Best Break of the Fourth Wall: “Another Opening, Another Show”

Episode Title: "A Womb with a View" (Season 5, Episode 1)

By the show’s fifth and final season, it had broken the proverbial fourth wall early and often. From the time they kicked off the second season by vamping and “welcoming” viewers back since the episode’s length was too short (“The network says every show has to be one hour long!”) to when Bruce Willis looked at the camera and said “try saying that fast three times.” But the best was this fifth season opener. By this time, the show was infamous for long delays, the acrimony between the stars, and Shepherd and Willis frequently being absent for entire episodes. There were 10 months between the end of the fourth season and the beginning of the fifth— something that is commonplace now but was shocking at the time.

With his tongue in his cheek, Willis says “Well I’ll be a series regular” before launching into a spoof of “Another Opening, Another Show” from Kiss Me, Kate (a musical based on Taming of the Shrew) with lyrics such as “Another season, another try to make 22 shows before we die” (there were actually only 13 episodes in the show’s final season). True to form, Shepherd comes in at the end of the number announcing “Ready!” This very fun opening belies what happens next: Maddie has a miscarriage.

6. Best Homage to a TV Show: The Honeymooners

Episode Title: "A Trip to the Moon" (Season 4, Episode 1)

From this list you can tell that Moonlighting loved to look at pop-culture and works of art for inspiration. After finally getting the two leads together at the end of the third season, the fourth season kicks off with Maddie wondering and dreaming about where their relationship is heading. The episode begins with a recreation of The Honeymooners opening credits before launching into what looks exactly like an episode of the classic television comedy. “Is that such a crime, Ralph? Me asking you a question?,” Maddie as Alice wonders. “Get a load of Miss Smartypants here,” David as Ralph retorts. It’s clear that everyone involved studied the classic television comedy. Willis’ gestures and dialogue are a spot-on imitation of Jackie Gleason. And, of course, Alice and Ralph Kramden’s bickering is very reminiscent of Maddie and David’s. The episode ends with more Honeymooners as David realizes too late that he wanted to tell Maddie he loved her but she has already left town.

7. Best Use of Claymation:

Episode Title: "Come Back Little Shiksa"( Season 4, Episode 2)

Shepherd was pregnant with twins during much of the fourth season of Moonlighting. That meant she wasn’t in a lot of episodes, leaving the show with creative ways to explain her absence. In the second episode of the fourth season, David, who clearly misses Maddie a lot, ends up talking to a Claymation version of her as his phone comes to life. “Don’t do it, David. You promised me you wouldn’t call.” “You’d think I’d be used to these dream sequences by now,” David says as he and Maddie are transformed into a witch and a horny toad. The fourth season is widely regarded as Moonlighting’s worst and often held up as why you should never put two leads together romantically. But with hindsight, the creative approaches the show took to dealing with circumstances beyond its control can truly be appreciated.

8. Best Example of Don’t Judge a Show by Its Pilot: The Pilot

Episode Title: "Moonlighting" (Season 1, Episode 1)

Moonlighting premiered as an ABC Sunday Night Movie (remember those?) three years after Remington Steele, a similarly themed TV series about an unlikely detective duo, was already a big hit for NBC. (Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron was also a producer on that Pierce Brosnan-led series.) Maddie was introduced as a former model whose accountant had embezzled from her, leaving her broke. She wants to sell off her money-losing businesses, like the Blue Moon Detective Agency, but the agency’s manager, the wisecracking David Addison, convinces her to keep it open. The pilot features Grease’s Dennis Stewart with a positively fantastic blond mohawk and a bombastic soundtrack. The roots of the rat-a-tat bickering between Maddie and David are there (along with Willis’ smoldering sexiness), but the pilot bears very little resemblance to the innovative, groundbreaking show that would follow.

Amy Amatangelo is a writer and editor. In addition to Primetimer, her work can be found in Paste Magazine, Emmy Magazine and the LA Times. She also is the Treasurer of the Television Critics Association.