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Post by queensgirl on Mar 12, 2006 21:19:12 GMT -5
Day two.
Having accomplished precisely zero by his nightmare journey of the past day, David Addison must make his way back to work and carry on as if nothing were out of order.
Good luck…
Agnes walks in to find him crouched in his chair and cradling his head in his hands. Two of his fingers are bandaged up, thanks to his confrontation with the people at the hotel, and his face looks like a demolition in progress. He waves, equal parts ‘Hello’ and ‘Get away from me.’ She leaves.
Maddie shows up later, bright-eyed and raring to go. And I do mean later. As in, by two hours.
The next client comes in: Elaine Johnson, who really has a problem with infidelity—namely, that of her paramour, one Alan McLafferty, who is apparently going back to his wife. Don’t you hate it when that happens? ;D
She wants to know for certain if the new reattachment is true. Johnson asks the detectives to trail the couple and come back with evidence as to the nature of the connection.
David walks her to the door and makes an offer so obvious you can see it marching up Main Street. Once he sits back down, his boss lets him have it.
“I don’t approve of flirting with total strangers!” Maddie objects.
“So don’t do it,” David badgers, and you can almost see the bafflement and hate coming off Maddie’s forehead. Besides, she had said all that blather yesterday, but now she’s back to being prim and serious? “And when did you change your mind about total strangers?”
Oh! Five minutes for roughing! (I swear, you could actually cut yourself on some of the lines in this serial, this episode especially.)
They take the case, despite Maddie’s distaste for the person. It should be noted that this is a reversal of attitudes from her stance on taking cases for disreputable people in “The Man Who Cried Wife.” Although there is as yet no violence going on in the Johnson case, this does represent a bit of a turning point in Maddie’s willingness to work with people she doesn’t like. (Ahem.) She accepts the story with somewhat less of a fight than before, and is willing to have the agency do the job after all.
It's another change of pace David will find unsettling.
In a way, David has believed from the very beginning that Maddie belonged to him.
Hence, the bleak look on his face when he turned back to the house one last time at the end of “Blonde on Blonde.”
That wasn’t for Sam.
Although there was not really an overt relationship per se between David and Maddie at that point, David viewed her dalliance with the other man as betrayal. He sees her switch between sensual boldness, which he at first found repellent because it’s not like her, and the usual shy prudery to be, forgive the term, a kind of teasing.
Thus, he does the same thing right back, with this substitute means.
Although Maddie does not know about David’s tragic odyssey of the previous evening, Addison is not about to let her proceed as if things were just fine. He always gets busted for his own sloppy attendance habits, so hands it right back to her. David demands to know what she was up to.
Maddie claims she didn’t do much last night: went shopping, went home and later met up with an old friend who’d left her a message. Dave isn’t buying that, partly because he saw where Maddie really was for at least part of the day: the nightclub Metropolis, where she was looking for a different kind of partner for the night. Through the crazy track of events, he lost contact with her and did not see how she really got home. However, he can’t call her out on this discrepancy, because that would reveal what he’d been doing, and then a big fight would break out, possibly the kind from which you can’t recover.
The man David met at the door to Maddie’s house is her long-lost friend Sam, whom she’s known ‘since she was six.’ Uh-oh. She’s not going to give up on this man too easily.
Maddie carries through on her preparations for another night out. This includes a long break in the afternoon to visit the hairdresser.
David, who had asserted he was very worried about her but since tried to wash off the idea, follows her back to her office to kid her about the second incident of lateness during the day. He offers to go with her on the stakeout that night, and when she says she’s going to dinner, throws that in too—but is rejected. (A weird but very important little moment that skims right over most people’s heads…Maddie included.)
Maddie explains she still can’t go: “I can’t make it, I have plans.”
She’s even brought the dress into which she’s going to change later on, a similar outfit (although not the exact one) to what she wanted to wear the other day in “Blonde on Blonde.” (Notice in that episode, she changed from her planned black dress to a placid off-white outfit? She went through all that trouble to find something especially alluring, then shows up at the club in what she’d had on from work. Meaning she couldn’t really handle the change in identity after all; Joan would be the only one who could truly ‘wear the black hat,’ so to speak. Maddie toyed with the idea of being aggressive, then threw it away in order to continue being the normal person from the office.)
David doesn’t like the idea at all. He skips over the fact that he will be offered the chance to go and do the work, starting with surveillance of the McLafferty’s rendezvous that night, to immediate anger at the notion that Maddie doesn’t have to go with him.
Addison bellows that Maddie is about to “throw two years’ hard work down the drain.”
“When was the last time I sent you on a stakeout so I could go out and get…”
“What and do what?” Maddie thunders.
“Nothing,” David bleats, immediately piping down.
“If you don’t want to go alone, take somebody with you,” Hayes advises. “Take Mr. Viola!”
“Yeah!” Bert cheers, from the post he’s not supposed to have on the other side of the door.
Maddie will not change, and Bert is eager to help on the assignment. All parties but Dave having left the field, the battle’s over.
Addison is not happy to have Viola’s company on this trip, but he goes where he’s supposed to. Not only does he have to earn a living, but though his heart is tearing in two, he is determined to prove Maddie wrong by doing well at the work she discarded. Hayes likes to think of herself as the sharper business person. Dave would like to show it may not be true.
He and Bert go to the room from which they’ll do the surveillance. David stretches out on the bed. Yes, he had just made a big deal out of how he was going to do this case and beat Maddie at her own game, but when push came to shove, David passed the buck. (Perhaps his equivalent of what Maddie did before in switching outfits: you make a goal for yourself, a personal dare, but when it comes time to prove it, you can’t. Instead you find you were not really ready for that at all.) Bert is not sure how to start off his audio notes, so Dave helps him out a little. ;D Bert continues to riff, and David at first pretends to be nonchalant, but in his second day in a row of snooping on secretive lovers, David can’t take it anymore. The news of what the McLaffertys are doing drives David crazy. It’s what he wishes he could be doing, somewhere else, with a particular someone of his own…and it’s what that person and her other friend are going to do if he doesn’t get in the way. He sits up and leaves, off to see about those ‘plans’ of Ms. Hayes.
David strolls into the restaurant in his regular attire from the office. It’s a high-class place, meaning since he does not have a jacket, the maitre d’ will not let him in. Addison slips the gentleman a little monetary assistance, and a coat is miraculously found. It doesn’t fit the young lad, but he doesn’t care at this point.
He looks around for the table, and can just barely see Ms. Hayes and her beau behind the glass wall of their booth. (A visual comment that is definitely not a mistake.) David heads for the table, making a snide remark to one patron and stealing a drink for some quick courage as a waiter carries a tray past him. And on to face the guns.
“Hi,” he announces to the very surprised couple. “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner.” No, he isn’t. “It’s just that there’s kind of an emergency.” No, there is not. Well, on the personal front, there is, but let’s see if he can make this fly.
Though I’m sure Maddie is baffled to see him, she nevertheless introduces him to the other fellow, Sam Crawford. (David already knows his first name.) The men shake hands.
Watch carefully. The duel begins right here, as soon as the two men look each other in the eye.
“Yeah, we’ve, uh…” David begins, and Sam immediately heads off that disastrous revelation with, “Nice to meet you.”
Although neither will say it right out in the open, of course, they both remember their ‘meeting’ at the house door the night before. In the script from that scene in ‘Blonde on Blonde,’ it makes clear that Sam ‘notices the flowers’ that David had carried in anticipation of Maddie answering the door. On screen, it’s not as obvious if he does, but for sure Crawford figured that something was out of the ordinary, because he didn’t start the conversation with “Who are you?” or “What do you want?”, but “Maddie’s asleep…I can go get her, if it’s important…”
One wonders if Sam thought, like Bert, that there was already something between the two, because why else would a strange man show up at someone’s house in the small hours?
It says something that Sam apparently proceeded with the day without mentioning this to Maddie, because nobody else makes note of it, and I’m sure if he’d said anything like, “Did you know somebody was looking for you at four in the morning? He looked like…”—once Maddie figured it out, uh-oh…
Here at the restaurant, the acrimony, if not the context, is made apparent in the little moment of greeting where the men look daggers at each other. You can smile without liking somebody at all. They both do it here.
Shortly, Crawford steps out to give the others a chance to talk. “Be back in a few minutes,” he says with a smile.
Now David finally has a chance to tell Maddie the truth. No criminals, garbage bins, crazy people or police details to get in his way. (Yet.) Even her boyfriend has just gotten out of the way. Smooth sailing! Right?
Wrong.
David has a very viable chance to win Maddie’s heart, or at least let her in on the fact that something truly important is going on—to shake her view of him as this strange person who hides his intelligence behind a wall of sophomoric eccentricity.
This is maybe the hardest thing he’s ever had to say in his life.
Hayes, still flustered but a bit disarmed as well, asks him what he’s so keen to talk about. In a strange way, she looks almost as embarrassed as him. You can’t be sure if she guesses what he’s here to say, but this isn’t your average, ordinary fancy-meeting-you-here. This is not, in fact, a place and time he should be bumping into her at all.
David takes a big drink to help him out.
“Well, I, uh…kinda realized something last night. I made a decision. A big decision.”
“What?”
He is overjoyed and afraid at the same time: he looks away into the corner, blushes, laughs and tries again. “Oh God, Maddie.”
“What, David?”
“Look, what I’m trying to say is…”
Just then, Crawford returns to the table.
“Back too soon?” he says, looking down at the two guests with a faint smile and huff. Yes, he is, and that’s precisely why he did it. The minute and a half he was gone was certainly not enough for anyone to disclose something truly meaningful. The mystery man who showed up at his girlfriend’s house early in the morning was not going to have a chance to truly derail their plans. It was only just sufficient time for the two detectives to become more out of sorts.
David gets up to leave. We’ll never know, at this point, that if he had been able to get away from the table, if he would have been able to approach Maddie perhaps the next day and tell her the whole truth. Or, again, if he would instead be so disappointed that he’d have given up right then and there. Either way seems plausible.
“Sam, sit,” Maddie avers, using the exact same phrase one would toward a lapdog. But he’s not her pet: Sam refuses for the moment, as he and Addison just glare at each other.
Maddie’s words have no effect.
This is not the last time we will notice this tonight.
At last Crawford goes back to his seat and invites David to remain. Sam tips up the wine bottle and offers David a glass. Trapped. Not wanting to seem rude in front of Maddie—and perhaps still nervous and itching for a fight, unable to resist the impulse to prove to Crawford that he’s not a coward as well—David sits down once more.
The gentlemen begin to trade stories of their respective lives and jobs. Sam is a Yale graduate and an astronaut, although in a killing irony, he’s laid off at the moment. David was unable to finish college. He sits there turning many colors as Sam regales them with stories of the times he and Maddie spent together.
It is a comparison of what really constitutes knowing a person well and having a history with them. Sam and Maddie had a serious relationship in the past, and David cannot compete there. This is a salvo he cannot answer. There is no way to be prepared for this. On the other hand, who knows her better now? Who has the current day-to-day experience working together? That’s a detailed knowledge Sam can’t say that he possesses, either.
Hope and self-confidence are little to be seen, however. David is unable to take any comfort from his own success as the conversation rolls on. And he can’t stop drinking.
The consumption that goes on that night is partly due to David’s nervousness in light of the daunting challenge of outshining Sam, partly because to leave or break the pattern of expected responses (when someone offers you something, you take it) would be rude and make him look bad in front of Maddie, and last but certainly not least, it’s a literal case of dares to see who’s going to prove more ‘manly.’
Crawford, having made the offer of a drink to David, doesn’t have much himself, and since it’s not David’s tab, Addison cannot retaliate.
So there is literally no way he can just put down the glass, say “Stop,” and put an end to this. It’s not that easy. And it bespeaks an incredible depth of perception on behalf of Mr. Crawford, who isn’t just the blithe character he first appears to be. He might smile most of the time, but he understands the game, and he’s dropped the Marques of Queensbury rules.
All Maddie can do is watch as the mess unfolds. She hardly drinks anything, and doesn’t say much, either. It’s tough for her to get a word in edgewise. The dispute is between the two men; Maddie is the object, not a participant.
Time passes. David is thoroughly sloshed, playing with the salt shakers and rambling incoherently. Sam chuckles. Maddie blushes and looks like she wants to sink back into the wall.
“Must be no fun up in outer space,” David says. “They’ve got no stewardesses…”
“And no drinking,” Maddie cuts him off. She is, in that moment, the only person to suggest that either of these men knock it off.
All she can do is offer a handful of words, and even then, Sam turns it around, embarrassing her by bringing up the story of her fear of flying. Perhaps Crawford is trying to get back at Maddie for even putting up with someone like Dave. After all, David was not supposed to be here, I’m not sure any of them really believed that off-the-cuff fib about the ‘emergency,’ and Maddie has not told Addison to leave. They couch everything in the form of jokes, but search me if I can tell where they’re actually light-hearted.
Eventually it comes time to pay the tab. David hands the waiter his card. The man soon gives it right back. Wouldn’t go through. Oh, no… Crawford picks up the booklet and makes the payment.
Time to leave. Maddie and Sam head out first. David follows, ambling down the front steps by himself—a brief but hard-hitting moment of piercing loneliness. Despite another painfully poignant scene, as David offers to drive them home—“I can drop you, we can drop you home,” a really interesting implication, if you catch my drift--of course, Addison is too hammered to actually get behind the wheel.
Note, Hayes herself does not offer to drive, just stands there, faintly grinning in pretend happiness but real mortification. The valets have shown up with both vehicles. They probably could have easily called a cab to get David out of there, but this is not to be. Sam volunteers to take David home. (Perhaps there's a hidden purpose behind that: not only safety and sparing Maddie further ridiculous situations, but so Sam could make sure David knew whose help he would need that night--literally, putting him in his place.) Maddie watches in deep pity as Crawford folds Addison into the front seat. And they’re off.
Sam enjoys a song on the radio. David stares into the middle distance.
Soon it’s time for Crawford to stop at a gas station. He pulls up to a pump. As does somebody else, right behind them, and let’s say this new person is without the common courtesy to leave enough room between you and the other cars.
After several impacts, Dave gets peeved, and wanders out to give this information to the man. Who has the height advantage of a foot or so, the weight edge of dozens of pounds, and the bad attitude surplus of a million years.
David fails to see that not everyone will find his monologues funny. He winds up becoming a human butter churn, only in midair, suspended over his attacker's feet. Sam, paying at the checkout—once more covering for David, though in a less dramatic and less antagonistic gesture—is warned of this and goes outside.
To Sam’s credit, he does not just run to the phone and get help; he stands up to him right there and obtains Addison's freedom. It must have been bad: Sam walks away with an awful shiner. (Note, there's quite a lot of this we don't actually get to see on screen. Shame.) Still, he survives the run-in and gets David back in the car. Onward home.
David hasn’t relaxed any in the intervening time. He still wants to talk, and move around on his own, as they stagger up the hall to his apartment. He goes crashing into a chair.
“We show those guys what we were made of tonight, or what?” Addison stammers.
“There was just one guy,” Crawford smiles.
“What do you mean, only one guy?” David is, literally and figuratively, in another world at the moment.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Sam asks, waving his hand in the traditional drunkenness test.
“Four?”
David is off by only three. Sam could rib him about it, but does not. “Yeah, there were four.”
Sam at last reaches David’s room and unlocks the door. Meanwhile David launches into a screed about how you can never have fun with the woman they were out with tonight. Sam chuckles and brushes this aside, knowing full well the kind of fun David wishes he could be having with that same person. The door opens. Sam places David on the bed, closes the shutters—so tomorrow’s unwelcome arrival of bright sunshine will not bother the man—and takes off David’s shoes.
“Hey, Luke?” David jokes, as Crawford heads for the door.
“Yeah?” Sam chuckles.
“You’re all right.”
He smiles. Just before he can leave:
“Rat bastard,” David spits into the pillow.
The last word!
The scene is a very sad reversal of the way David wishes he had gone to bed that night. For the second time in a row, it’s the wrong place, the wrong mood, and the person he wants has gone off to her own home.
If the day belongs to Dave verbally, Sam trumps him all to hell in another fashion. Although there are now serious questions as to who loves who and who really holds another person’s attention, when Sam returns to Maddie’s house, it is to events that make them look like a normal couple. Whether either of them actually still feels that way remains to be seen. They both try to put events behind them and go back to the way they really wanted to be. Happy.
But what is happiness, and why won’t it stay?
Maddie, in her night suit and playing her boyfriend’s favorite record, is there in her room. She doesn’t run down to meet him, but calls him up. He approaches and they briefly talk about the dinner; notice Sam doesn’t let his anger show, or take it out on Maddie. Instead, he smiles.
Maddie goes to meet him. They dance gently to the record. Then it’s to bed. A sweet, peaceful ending to the awful day.
Or is it?
When Sam has gone to sleep, Maddie sits there, hugging him and staring up at the ceiling. She looks deeply sad, not that way at all a woman should look if she is happy with her lover. It seems she mutters something, right before the very end.
“Oh, no,” or—a name?
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Post by maddieaddisonjr on Apr 12, 2007 19:12:49 GMT -5
Hi there! I've been browsing this site for a few days. Very nice! I'm brand new to it but not to my appreciation of Moonlighting, one of my all-time favorite shows - ever. We just got all five seasons at our library and I've been having an obsessive marathon after not seeing this show since the first airing 20+ years ago. It's like I'm experiencing Moonlighting for the first time again although many episodes are familiar to me even after all this time. To me "Blonde On Blonde" is a real turning point in the show and now I'm up to "Sam and Dave." I'll be brief because I want to get back to my marathon. I rated this episode an 8 because it was near perfect until David was invited by Sam to have a drink with him and Maddie. This scene and the also the next one when Sam is driving David home drags on too long. In fact, I think there should have been time enough left to wrap up the case Herbert was left to work on solo or at least return to it briefly. Now this didn't affect my rating but I must say that watching Sam and Maddie's version of intimacy was about as interesting as watching two vanilla ice cream cones melt. They might as well have just hugged each other and called it a night. Sam was familiar to Maddie like an old childhood teddy bear so that took care of her loneliness for the night - but not the recklessness she told David she felt. If she really wanted to "go there" she would have forced the issue of what was between her and David, saving lots of time and emotion. My impression of Sam at this point, for the second time, is that he's a nice cute guy. However, I can't imagine any reason why he would lengthen the interruption of his date with Maddie unless he too wanted the scoop on the competition. And I was certain he did indeed view David as a rival when he didn't confess that he'd met David at Maddie's door in the a.m. hours of that very day. Other than that he seems alright but he and Maddie together are like a meal of skim milk and fat-free cheese. I mean, what is the point? I must say that David/Bruce looked hotter than ever when he lay on the bed looking up at the ceiling and thinking about Maddie. Whew! I'm thinking - Maddie, girl, don't pass up this high calorie gourmet meal for some old watery fat-free cheese! And Herbert was so funny describing everthing going on with the couple he and David were spying on! Oh my gosh, he was funny. So again, the episode was a 10 right through David's almost confession and got pulled down to an 8 from the minute ol' Sam interrupted him through the long drawn out end. What really bothered me was what seemed like a full minute and a half of Sam muttering to some radio tune when he's driving David home and David is looking like 'you're making my head hurt, man.' Maybe I'm missing the message or significance of the scene but it seemed like time wasted that could have been spent on whatever Herbert or Maddie was doing at that moment. Lastly, when David muttered 'rat b*st*rd' and Sam heard it...well, it was an ugly moment. I mean, that's when I realized how much David was seething and he had hidden the intensity of his feelings rather well because I wasn't expecting that clearly phrased insult from his thoroughly intoxicated mind. I felt that in my gut when he said it. Right now I'm ready for some ditzy, zany David/Maddie interaction and no more of this somber angst. David and Maddie belong together and them not openly admitting to romantic feelings and openly acting on them or openly deciding to not to is driving me a little nuts at this point. From the refresher posts I've read here, the next episode should be a little better and a little worse. Let me brace myself. Hit it, Al Jarreau!... ;D
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Post by Frontier on Jul 12, 2007 7:21:37 GMT -5
I'd agree mostly with lauraa about the episode and how Sam cut-into David's love confession to Maddie at the restaurant. But I will disagree that the scenes following were long: their purpose it was to show us how much David felt for Maddie, so much that he made him look fool (as always we men tend to lose our minds when we fell in love with a woman). They also allowed us to get into more to the Sam character; on the basis is a nice guy, but due to the circumstances he is the villain! The way he manipulates David into 'self-destruction' before Maddie's eyes, is fiendish. This is also demonstrated when he drives David back to his place; his face expression tells a lot about the character. Overall, I'd give this episode a 9, only because the next two peak far more than this one on my appreciation-scale.
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Post by maddieaddisonjr on Dec 1, 2007 20:57:07 GMT -5
Hi, Frontier. I just didn't like seeing David go down like the Titanic with Maddie and Sam sitting there stoicly humoring him and looking superior. I dislike the scene very much. It's depressing and the suffering goes on, for me, too long.
I was watching this the other day for the second time this year. I had to laugh at myself because in the restaurant just when David is about to lay it all on the line, up pops Sam and I said out loud "Damn!" - like I didn't know that was going to happen. LOL! I stopped watching at that very point because I didn't want to put myself through the rest of it.
Why didn't Maddie say 'no, we aren't quite finished - will you excuse us?" I would have been dying to know what David wanted to say. This whole arc started with Maddie wanting to be reckless so why stop now? Why be all proper and polite now? Make Sam wait. You don't owe him anything; he's just the breeze that blew in last night. Your 2-year sparring partner's acting really weird and really serious and he crashed your date. I'd have to know right then what was on his mind because I would already have my suspicions. Was Maddie that clueless?
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Post by beesnbears on Jan 19, 2008 12:02:42 GMT -5
MAJr.-- I have always asked myself the same thing. Why didn't Maddie tell Sam to get lost a little longer? When I watch this now, knowing Sam is coming back too soon, I find myself wanting to say "hurry up Dave, tell her......Sam is coming back any second now!!" Sam is in on the game for Maddie from the get go. All of the avoidance of emotions and feelings between Maddie and David keeps us coming back for more. And as far as the love scene between Sam and Maddie----I did not see near the passion that Dave and Maddie had with their first kiss in the garage! You are right MAJr.--fat free and BLAH!! Really have to hand it to the writers at this point. Might of had a lot of repeats back then, but when they were ready we were posted in front of our TV's, weren't we?!?!
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Post by dedaved on Jul 3, 2012 11:54:31 GMT -5
Rating: 9
Moonlighting leaves screwball comedy aside for a change and explores for the first time awkward, uncomfortable comedy of embarrassment and the result is one of (in my opinion) the best scenes of the show. The central set-piece features David once again impulsively going after Maddie to stave off a new threat for her affections to tell her how he really feels. This leads to an extended dinner scene where David gradually makes a bigger ass of himself in front of Maddie and the dashing astronaut/inventor/all round nice guy Sam Crawford whom we met during the unforgettable finale of Blonde On Blonde.
This sequence is fascinating on many levels that I'm not even sure where to start. First of all it's filmed beautifully by Gerald Finnerman with a harsh red haze that pierces away any hope of pleasant dinner ambience (the piano music in the background is as genial as this scene gets). If there's a definitive argument for the glorious lighting in this show I would pick this scene. Then there's the naturalistic, laid-back style of the dialogue, a notable change of pace for this show used in an effort to strip away any zany artifice and make the conversation as cringe worthy as possible. Watching David slink back into his chair, putting his foot in his slurring mouth while Maddie watches in composed horror and Crawford deflects with amiable good-humour is a groan inducing, exhausting experience carried out flawlessly by noticeably subdued (for this show) but sharp acting, editing and of course writing... And the episode isn't even close to over! When Mr. Wonderful does finally get our now long suffering David back home in one piece we are treated to a moment of uninhibited honesty that tensely draws a line in the sand. Sam's reaction says it all.
If you've ever made an idiot of yourself in front of a woman you're hopelessly in love with but can't bring yourself to tell her the truth then this episode will prove to be quite cathartic.
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