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Post by queensgirl on Mar 21, 2006 11:22:48 GMT -5
You have to remember that this takes place not only after the three previous episodes, with all the twists and turns and intensity of the plotlines, but after three years of what was certainly not a placid relationship in the first place. They began as adversaries and swung back and forth between that and the more hopeful possibilities.
Then there's the fact that, on that particular night, David wasn't supposed to be there. Sam was. Maddie had just made the decision to reject Sam's marriage proposal. That alone would have been a cause of great pain and strife. Add to this the reason she was going to say no--because she couldn't stand to be torn by her feelings for David. She had always been of two minds about him, and it's not as easy as it looks to finally go with the mind that wanted him. Maddie had to give up on a chance to have children and a happy home with her long-lost boyfriend Sam. He had a lot in common with her, and on paper, they looked perfect together.
Paper is not real life.
David stayed there in bed, hiding quietly, until Maddie did what she did. He did not speak, and although she had said 'he' shouldn't, she said that under the impression he was somebody else! Addison heard what she was going to do, and he let himself take advantage of that. When she says, "You are the most loathsome, the most vile...", and there's that thousand-watt smirk of his, it's not tough to see why she reacted that way. Then Maddie had to deal with the fact Sam had decided to reject her first.
The emotions in adult relationships aren't always pure, unmitigated romance and happiness. The scene, and the story, was as much about magnetism and the uncomfortable mix of two turbulent personalities, as it was about love.
David began the saga in "Blonde on Blonde" with his failed attempt to catch up to her and tell her what he really felt. If you remember the speech from "Father Knows Last," David had even more on his mind than he let us know just afterward. Then there was his even more embarrassing intrusion at the restaurant in "Sam and Dave." After he got roaring drunk, he had to be taken home by none other than Sam himself. So David was humiliated and rejected twice in a row.
The third time was a little better, as even when "Maddie's Turn to Cry" begins on a sad note, with Maddie trying to figure out just what's making David act so strange--why won't he stop pestering her and her boyfriend?--the detectives wind up running around on the McLafferty case and actually have a lot of fun.
Not to mention, there's that kiss.
So David is very happy at least at that moment. Maddie seems to be relieved as well. Things are on the up, until Sam, irate at Maddie's showing up late again, and her lack of response to his marriage proposal, does not take it out on Maddie but goes to directly challenge David.
Sam informs the other man of his intentions with the woman, and there is the beginning of the end in terms of the epic battle. Once David knows Maddie was actually thinking of getting married well before she showed up to kiss him and make it look like she shared his interest, he is furious, thinking she was playing some kind of game. It takes the warning from Bert and Agnes to wake him up to the fact that even though David is so angry, once Maddie is somebody's else's wife, she will be out of his life for good.
The fight in the garage comes and goes in all its awful decisiveness. David is physically badly hurt, and never got to say anything substantive to Maddie. She even left him and ran into the elevator when he could have used her help or at least drawn confidence from her presence. The result is doubtless the lowest David could possibly feel at that moment.
It looks hopeless.
Not just for him, either.
Although Maddie's feelings are perhaps a little more behind-the-scenes, at least until episode three of the saga, you can figure out in general what she's going through as well. At first she's angry at David for telling her not to go out. Then once she goes out, she doesn't like it at all, and winds up back with an old friend.
But that old friend is too possessive, as well as shaken by the surprisingly strong competition from David. Everyone ought to know by now that Maddie hates even the slightest whiff of being told what to do, and when she feels pressure from both men, while she is attracted toward both of them, she is angry that they don't seem to want her to be the one at the rudder. Um, if either one of them wants to be with her, let alone marry her, shouldn't they ask more of her opinion on it? But so many times in this story, Maddie is left high and dry, with nothing to say and nobody to say it to. Picture her standing at the curb after they walk out of the restaurant in "Sam and Dave." Picture her also in "Maddie's Turn to Cry" when she goes to her office and leans on the door as she thinks about why David is so out of sorts.
Just because Maddie does not wear her heart on her sleeve, people jump to the conclusion that she has no heart.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
So when fate threw them together in that house that night, it was never going to be all hearts and flowers to begin with.
We all wish things could be simple, but that can't always be how it goes.
"Love is strange"--they say that for a reason.
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Post by queensgirl on Mar 29, 2006 16:33:48 GMT -5
On the last day of March, 1987—nineteen years ago Friday—a little before 9:00 at night, if you stood on my block, you probably could have heard a pin drop.
There was nobody coming and going, no cars up the street, nobody standing around talking. We were all indoors, glued to Channel 7. I was afraid to move off the middle cushion of the couch. Something might happen! Something might happen!
Well, it did. You could say that.
This was the day set for the episode of Moonlighting which would bring to resolution three years of bickering, magnetism, vicious antipathy, clever satire—and yes, love. The thinly veiled attraction between its main characters was the center of a frenzy of attention; there were millions of long-time fans, but also those who had been waiting in particular for this event.
Believe it or not, there was a rumor going around, at least in my neck of the woods, that because it was the day before April Fool’s, the entire thing was a ratings gimmick and the plot which had been the subject of such keen anticipation would not happen. We’d see the credits roll and be rewarded with nothing but the knowledge that TV executives had led us around by the nose again. Crazy, right? Well, we heard it, but we all crossed our fingers the scuttle would turn out not to be true.
…Let’s just say there was nothing to be afraid of.
******
Maddie fails to beat the sun after her madcap night with David chasing the nefarious Elaine Johnson and Alan McLafferty to a bowling alley. She sneaks back into her own home.
Someone is waiting. Her boyfriend, Sam Crawford, has stayed up, and made breakfast.
That might not be the only reason he didn’t go to sleep. Where was Maddie, and why?
This is the second time in a row Maddie showed up far after she’d promised; neither time did she call to break the date. Hayes will plead that just as before, she could not have said no to the expedition, as this one and the previous involved assignments from work. Sam, who a day before had asked her to marry him, isn’t so keen about the new information.
“Did you go on this case by yourself?” he asks.
“No, I wouldn’t go out in the middle of the night by myself,” Maddie says, hesitantly. “No, there was someone else, other than me.” Interesting way to put it. Both of them know who her partner is. It’s not like they have a long list of other detectives even working at the agency. But she won’t say that someone else’s name.
Sam believes her. Just.
He ushers Maddie toward the food, and then in a very odd change, straight upstairs. Although she does pause after he asks if she’s hungry, it’s odd that he doesn’t give her a lot of time. And he just went through the point of explaining that it was all for her.
“Come on. To bed,” he says.
“Sam, I don’t think…” Maddie protests, but her guess is off base.
“Not us. You.” While Maddie is undoubtedly worn out from running around town, it is almost time for her to go back to work, and strange that the normally composed Sam would be so stern in directing her. He steers her by the shoulders.
In the bedroom, Crawford fluffs the pillows and moves aside the sheets. Just as he’s tucking Maddie in, the phone rings. Hayes picks up.
“Oh, hi, Mom.” Mom? “No, nothing special, just the same old routine.” Maddie makes quick work of the call and hangs up.
Sam is still in the doorway.
“I don’t want you to think I didn’t think about it, about what you said last night,” Maddie says, in words that will be echoed later that day, in far different circumstances. She still, however, defers an answer.
Now why should a woman who has been proposed to, if she is at all happy to hear it, not be incredibly eager to tell her mother? Isn’t that the first thing she would do? Yet not only does she not crow about it, she doesn’t say anything. She hides it. And the man who asked her is standing right nearby.
Sam is clearly unsettled, but makes no further trouble about it just now. He walks out, leaving Maddie to get some rest. He pauses for a long gaze off the landing. Crawford surveys what’s below him as if trying to figure out whether he will ever really be at home here. It’s a magnificent house, and it belongs to someone else…As does the woman who lives in it. In his only ‘fourth wall’ moment of the entire series, Sam very slowly turns his head from side to side, and at last looks dead ahead.
The next shot is of the man arriving at the home of his adversary.
David Addison sits up and looks sleepily at the intruder. Sam still had his keys from two days earlier, when he brought the savagely drunk man home from the restaurant.
“We have something in common,” the newcomer says. “Someone in common…See, she’s real confused. Which is kinda funny, because I don’t think there’s anything to be confused about. I mean, look at you! Look at the way you live. It’s endearing.” The word is delivered in a tone that makes it a scathing insult. “I know you like it. But I happen to think Maddie deserves better.”
“You do, huh.” David grumbles but does not get out of bed.
“I know what she needs. I know what she wants. You’re not even close.” Sam delivers a challenge. “If you care about her, she should know that. And if you don’t, well, she should know that too.”
Cut to Maddie arriving at the office. She is late for the third day running. This time, however, that won’t be the reason for the upcoming argument.
David will have a lot more on his mind when they meet.
Starting with the reason he is sitting in her chair. Addison perches with his feet up on the boss’ desk.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he rasps. Maddie heads right back out the door. David jumps up to follow. “Hey, come here.” The two of them storm past a surprised Agnes Dipesto at the front desk.
“He asked you, didn’t he?” David demands. Although he knows the answer already, he wants to know why Maddie kept it secret.
“See, I find this pretty interesting. According to him, he asked you last night—before we ran all over town.”
David chases Maddie down the hall. Hayes presses the elevator button. It can’t come fast enough. It doesn’t.
“I didn’t mention it because it’s none of your damn business!” an exasperated Maddie shouts.
“None of my damn business?” David is astonished. All the time Maddie was with him, she never let on anything about this momentous news. She had not only stopped by his place and accompanied him on the trek after the criminals, she had kissed him; a slow, deliberate kiss that followed her tearful question, “You and me, what are we going to do?”
David must be at the end of his rope too. There he was yesterday, laughing and having fun despite the circumstances, and she had done something that made him hope against hope; meanwhile concealing the advent of the most important decision in her life. To Maddie, this is an agonizing decision, which may very well be the reason she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it; to David, it smacks of dishonesty.
“All right, maybe it is none of my business, but I’ve got a right to know!” David persists.
The door finally opens. They rush in and out of the elevator. The door closes and opens automatically around them—a sign that even their usual bombastic arguments are, quite literally, now beyond their control.
Maddie runs back to the office. David chases.
“You’re back!” says a startled Agnes.
“You’re right,” David snaps.
“You’re scum,” Maddie snarls, rushing to her room.
David won’t let up. He follows. “I just want to talk to you about this.”
“What difference will it make?” Maddie asks.
“It’ll make a lot of difference,” David implores.
Maddie contends that in his own way, David too was keeping secrets. “Miss Dipesto makes speeches about how you’re falling apart,” Hayes tears into him. “You walk around here like a jilted lover, like the world is coming to an end…Am I supposed to think that because you chase me up and down the hall that you care about me, that you don’t want me to marry Sam?” She puts a hand directly over his heart and pushes him backwards. “How do you feel about me, David? How do you feel about all this? I have a right to know, don’t I?...Come on. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
He is silent.
“Are we through?” she wonders.
“Sure sounds like it,” he says bitterly, and walks out.
The bad mood of the bosses has affected the rest of the office. One man walks around pouring coffee for the others, and a woman places her hand over her mug in a ‘no thanks’ gesture. He pours anyway, and she does not care.
Agnes and Bert are involved in yet another card game, at the front desk. Only this one allows everybody to keep dressed. ;D They talk about the firestorm raging in other quarters.
“Life’s funny,” Herbert ponders. “One minute, they’re all bark and no bite…”
What happens if somebody crosses the line?
“But will you miss the sexual tension?” says Bert.
“Or will it be wonderful getting to know this person in a whole new way?” says Agnes.
“When the person each of you really wants, is right under your noses?” Bert asks.
“…Right under your noses?” Agnes echoes.
Bert grips the edge of the desk and leans up to kiss Dipesto. Just as they meet, they are interrupted.
Sam walks in.
This time, Bert does not take any chances. The astronaut is not going to have a chance to earn the adoring gaze of his love interest again. Not that the odds are in Crawford’s favor, since Agnes turns her back, but Viola steps forward and gets right in the other man’s face.
“Take the beltway around this one, bucko,” he avers. “The scenic route is out.”
“Ms. Hayes is expecting you,” Agnes, facing the other way, informs the visitor. The man walks past the front station to Maddie’s room.
The other two rush to Mr. Addison’s office. Where they may need to call city sanitation. It’s a madhouse in there. David has destroyed or thrown around everything remotely mobile in the room. All that’s still intact seem to be the couch on which he sits, and the television set. “Got a little frustrated,” he explains. “Couldn’t find any paper clips.”
He’s watching “Divorce Court.” It’s not exactly lifting the mood. David bemoans the sometimes brutal vagaries of love and marriage. Unlike his co-workers, he can’t find any reason to see daylight.
“We just thought…” they both bravely try.
“There might be something you want to say…” Agnes continues.
“To Ms. Hayes,” Bert ventures.
“While she still is Ms. Hayes.” Agnes concludes with a warning hinting at the way a woman might be moved to change her name.
David, seeking one last chance, bolts off to the garage. He is lucky enough to catch them just before they drive off to dinner. He stands in the path of the car. Sam, who is behind the wheel (in more ways than one), hits the brakes.
David leans over the passenger side. “Maddie—“
“Come on, what are you trying to do?” Sam interrupts.
“This has got nothing to do with you!” David yells, turning Maddie’s earlier words around. He turns back to the object of his attention. “Get out of the car.” David pulls the door handle. Maddie just sits there.
“But see, she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Crawford returns.
“Butt out, Buck Rogers!” Addison bellows. He leans on the window again and repeats his plea.
“Go away, David!” Maddie hisses. He doesn’t, exactly.
Addison scrambles over the hood of the car and tries to get in the driver’s side, prompting Maddie to run out the other way.
“I can’t deal with this, I can’t deal with this!” She runs toward the elevator. The men head after her, but can’t stop her in time. “Leave me alone, both of you!” Once in, she presses ‘close door.’
Sam turns to block David and offers him an olive branch. “David, why don’t we just stop?” he says, reaching out to tap the other man’s arm. Addison immediately slaps the gesture away.
“Get your hands off me, pal.” This is the angriest we have ever seen him.
“How about me and you take a walk around the block?” Again Crawford tries the peaceful angle. Again David pushes his hand down. Then David gives a quick nod and turns his shoulder, as if to cool off as suggested. And leans into a full-on punch to the face.
This is the only strike Addison will land. Sam stands there and absorbs the shot with wide-eyed surprise. He quickly resets to a cold, stern look, blocks David’s second shot and tears into the detective like a wolf into fresh meat.
The nasty brawl is very one-sided from then on, and ends with Sam hurling David head and shoulders into the wall. Addison just lies there for a few seconds at first, rejecting Sam’s assistance.
The right side of David’s face is smashed and bleeding. He stares up at his opponent. “All I wanted to do was talk to her,” he repeats.
The elevator door opens again. Maddie returns, in the middle of saying something about wanting the both of them to stop, and looks down to see the shocking condition of her partner as the man still huddles on the ground. “Oh my God, David,” she gasps, and offers a hand to help just as Crawford did. And just like that first offer, David makes no move to accept it at all. He stands on his own.
“Missed it, Maddie,” he grumbles. Perhaps this is one of the most important things he has to say. Although she probably couldn’t have stopped the fight, she didn’t even stay to listen to him, nor for that matter to tell Sam anything. Instead, she ran away, seeking to protect herself, not David in his hour of need. And when he staggers to his feet and ambles across the garage, no one follows to help him. No one apologizes.
David at first looks like he might make it all right. Then he keels back and forth like a small craft lost on the waves. And he’s gone.
Again, Maddie just watches him. Again, she does not do anything.
Maddie and Sam drive off, with their plans for a peaceful evening demolished. Neither of them is in a mood to sit and eat just now.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t take the first swing,” Sam offers. For the first time, exceeding even his near-outburst in Maddie’s house that morning, Sam is genuinely angry with the woman herself.
What bothers him is not just the fight. After all, though neither of the men had said anything to Maddie, in fact the opposite—they had been pretending to get along—the scrap had been brewing for a long time. Nor is it the day and a half that had gone by since Sam popped the question, or even that Maddie had gone running out on the case. No, what really kills him is the fact Maddie had not seen fit to celebrate the happy news of the proposal when her mother called.
Wouldn’t anyone want to share with their mother the announcement that they had just been asked to get married? Isn’t she one of the first people to whom you’d want to talk? So why on Earth did Maddie tell her mother it was the “same old routine,” then hang up in a hurry? (Was that even her mother? Given the end of the previous episode, who knows?)
“I’m not saying you don’t want to be married,” Sam says, “I’m just saying maybe it’s not to me.”
Maddie, in turn, is irate that Sam let slip what Hayes herself thought of as intensely private news. Whose business was it she and Sam were thinking about getting married? Where did he get off announcing the matter to David, who could be volatile enough without this to further aggravate him?
Sam admits to the deed, and asks Maddie if she has a problem with that.
“Yeah, I’ve got a problem,” Hayes scoffs. “It’s none of your business!”
The same thing she said to David.
Maddie continues. “Don’t I have anything to say about all of this?” With these two people fighting over her, she still feels dreadfully alone.
“I guess maybe I’m just not used to asking someone to marry me,” Sam says.
“I know…I’m not used to being asked.”
The two of them arrive at Maddie’s house. When they get out of the car, they are in a relatively placid mood, if not quite what they’d hoped it would be.
“It’s easier if I go,” Sam says.
“No, it’s easier if I’d go,” Maddie replies. “I’ll take the car and you take the house.”
“Work out the alimony later?”
They share pained smiles over the joke, and Sam heads for the door.
Maddie, with nothing better to do, goes back to the office. There, she tries to relax on the couch, then wanders across to David’s room and the wreckage he left behind. Maddie picks up a shattered hockey stick and stands there as the implications of all the madness finally sink in. Now, it is inescapable what is going on. There is no more pretending this is some schoolboy crush that will be swept under the rug.
In walks Agnes.
“Mr. Addison’s favorite,” Dipesto says, pointing to the stick.
Maddie asks why the secretary came in. Agnes laments the damaged state of the room—and her friend. “I just don’t want him to come in tomorrow and find this mess,” Agnes notes, even though Dave was the one to create the destruction in the first place. It’s the thought of the pain continuing that bothers her. “He’s so…”
“I know,” Maddie says. “You’re a good person, Agnes.” Maddie doesn’t even know what Dipesto was going to say, but realizes she’s only trying to help—and Agnes is at times far more sensible than her employers.
Soon, however, Dipesto takes this sense of responsibility and throws it right down the drain. “Want to get wrecked?”
“What?” says Maddie, still unaccustomed to the party life most of her compatriots know by heart.
“You know, bombed, pickled, polluted? All the boy detectives do it.”
So the two set off to get drunk.
They arrive at a bar, where Maddie orders white wine and Agnes rips through enough serious booze to make the average person call for help. Maddie reveals a little of why she’s so bent up. And I do mean little.
“I don’t know,” she says wistfully. “Not only do I not know, I don’t even know why I don’t know, you know?” Hayes’ rambling is reminiscent of her flustered “What you think it means” speech to David three days ago. Agnes cheerfully offers some advice from the other boss.
“When I have a big problem, and I need someone to talk to, I turn to Mr. Addison,” Agnes bubbles. “And he says one of those cute things that only Mr. Addison can say. Suddenly I feel all cheered up, like magic—like Jiffy Pop, without the grease.”
Maddie says she’s not about to talk to Dave. She can’t seem to unwind, and ponders the question she was asked before. This is the first time—even more so than when she was talking to either Sam or David—that Maddie lets on just how difficult this is for her. “It’s just that marriage is such a huge thing, maybe you never know if you’re ready. Maybe it isn’t possible to be sure you’re ready. Maybe it’s only possible to be sure you’re not.”
It is time to go home and tell Sam what she really thinks.
Maddie pulls up to the house alone. She walks in. The house is dark, the only illumination being moonlight streaming in the back windows. There is no sign of Sam. Unlike last time, he’s not waiting up for her. Could be he went upstairs…
Maddie walks up the long staircase and into her room. There is a man in her bed. He moves, but she tells him not to speak. “Sam, this is so hard. You’re so wonderful,” she says. “The thought of marrying you, having a family with you…”
Crawford had, up ‘til then, been the closest thing she had to a love of her life. It’s killing Maddie to have to say this, but there’s no other way.
“You deserve someone who loves you. And only you. And I do love you. But not only you.” She asks him for one last time together, and if he needs to leave, then that’s what he should do.
“But do me a favor,” Maddie entreats, getting undressed. “Give me tonight. Give us tonight.” She gets under the covers.
“Oh Maddie, I like that.”
Says David Addison.
Maddie yells in shock, leaps back out of bed and flips on the light.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was getting lucky.”
Covering herself in the sheet, she glares at him. “You are the most loathsome, the most disgusting, the most vile…”
“Come on, how are you going to know until you try.”
David explains he went to her house to apologize to her and Sam. When he arrived, Sam was on the way out. “His bags were packed,” Dave says.
He turns and hands her a note, which he says Crawford left. Funny Sam would do something like that—leave just a little note in light of such an important event. Also, the last time Sam and David met, neither was in an apologetic mood. But now all that matters is that David is staring down Maddie, and smiling.
She tells him to go home. He isn’t exactly eager to follow orders. “Maddie, Sam’s gone, and we’re here,” David says matter-of-factly, moving a pillow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The two of us, together. Isn’t that what this is all about?”
Maddie claims she never had a part in the decision on the proposal. He denies any supposed ‘competition’ with Sam. She—like the rest of us—doesn’t buy that. “I don’t know why I even bother showing up. Everything seems to get done perfectly well without me.”
“Well, what about just now?”
“What about just now?” Maddie repeats. “I thought it was him, I didn’t know it was you.”
“Maddie, you said some things that…”
“And you didn’t. Not during the whole thing, David, you haven’t said a word.”
“I don’t have to say anything.” He grins.
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t have to say anything’?”
He gets up and walks around the bed, over toward her. “You feel it, and I feel it.”
“But I don’t want you. I never wanted you,” Maddie says. This is, quite simply, a lie. Still, Maddie insists the decision is not really about the man in front of her. “I’m leaving him for me, me, me.”
“Why don’t you try it in C flat?” David deadpans.
“Get back.” Maddie picks up a vase and raises it as if to clout him.
“Put that down,” David scoffs.
“No.”
“I’m not going to force myself on you. To tell you the truth, you’re not worth it.”
“What?” Maddie gasps, shocked and confused by the hatefulness in that statement.
David storms down the stairs and bellows his frustrations. Maddie runs to the landing. They trade invective.
“You’re not a person, you’re a poster!” Addison yells. “Well, you deserve another poster.”
“You’re going over the line, David.”
By now he is in the living room, and she follows him there.
David puts on his pants. He continues the harangue. “Two years of ‘is you is, or is you ain’t!’”
“Two years of bees bee-ing, ducks ducking and a man who thinks that culture is dark beer! This is ridiculous! I’m miserable!”
“Well, so am I.”
“Yeah, well, I may have just let the best thing that ever happened to me get away, and look at me! Here I am spending the evening having another pointless argument with you!”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Bitch.”
“Bastard.”
She belts him across the face with an open palm. “Get out!” she thunders.
He stares in shock. She hits him again.
“Get out!”
Her hand comes up for a third smack. It never gets there. He grabs her arm.
David must know that if it ends here, he will most likely never see her again. So in a living instant, he creates his own hope.
David grabs Maddie’s wrist and pulls her to kiss him. They fall on each other like they were water in the desert. Hands and mouths roaming, they can’t stand for long. The two move to the floor, demolish the coffee table and roll back and forth on the carpet. He knocks over the pokers by the dormant fireplace. All of a sudden he stops, and looks her in the eye.
Next we see them upstairs, moving into her bed. They could not be happier.
It is fairly certain that just before the close of the scene, David says the words the two of them, and most of us, had always known.
“I love you.”
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I love the scene between Maddie and David in her office..."are we through?" And hello, what an ending. Those two are unmatched when it comes to believing their feelings for each other. ;D
I love this episode.
