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Post by Veronica on Mar 30, 2007 12:19:34 GMT -5
I like the elevator scene but I agree with Cindy the ballon chase is a little silly. I vote 6.
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Post by diane on Apr 10, 2007 17:24:29 GMT -5
I really tried to look at this episode objectively, but I think it is just a mess.
The beginning is fine, same old David and Maddie, dancing around the truth...which could have been pursued quite well, if the case wasn't so stupid. Between the dopey birds, the cactus patch, and the balloon, I cannot imagine they could have gotten any more ridiculous.
I have always liked the scene in the elevator, especially when David loses it, but I could not help but be struck by something this time.......the Muzak is playing "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" when David loses it, which I naturally think makes a lot of sense -- until you realize that it is the same song David was whistling before getting onto the elevator. Why would it be ok in one context and not another? I don't get it.
I think the singing in the elevator is dumb, and I guess I let real life interfere in my thoughts about this. The skinny was that Cybill and Bruce could not agree on what song to use and argued about it......using both songs was a measure to keep the peace, or so it's been told. So that ruins any of that for me.
No resolution, and very phony in my eyes, down to the rolling around in the deflated balloon.
I give it a 3.
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Post by lin212 on Apr 10, 2007 19:15:30 GMT -5
diane, I wondered the same thing about "You must have been a beautiful baby". I cannot imagine why he would have been singing that song on the way to the elevator. It makes no sense considering what happens IN the elevator.
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Post by Sakura on Apr 13, 2007 6:59:07 GMT -5
That makes me hate more ML and "I am Curious episode"...I can't belive no one likes this episode.... . How can people saying bad about the most great episode of all time...
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Post by diane on Apr 13, 2007 9:35:12 GMT -5
Sakura,
Everybody respects your opinion...they just don't agree with it. That's why they make chocolate and vanilla.
My favorite episode is It's a Wonderful Job.....and lots of people don't like that one either. But I won't change my mind because of what others think.
You go on enjoying this episode....it means something special to you!
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Post by Sakura on Apr 14, 2007 9:25:16 GMT -5
What can I say? "It's a wonderful Job" has note 10...but this great has only one note 10...given by someone that loves it.
I'm so sad
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Post by haddie mayes on Apr 16, 2007 5:13:33 GMT -5
Maybe it`s just me but i always thought that David was whistling the tune `Show Me The Way To Go Home`as he approached the elevator. Which makes more sense seeing that he was going home after all. Any one else think the same?
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Post by maddieaddisonjr on Apr 17, 2007 21:54:10 GMT -5
6 again, folks. This is yet another episode that has only a shadow of the magic of the earlier seasons. Now when I hear Al Jarreau singing in the beginning and at the end it feels like another show stole ML’s delightful theme song. I liked tough Agnes. Bert: “I wished I’d been the man that sired you.” Or something like that. The look on Maddie’s face was too funny. The scenes with the birds and the balloon chase cracked me up! ;D I liked the use of other movie music in scenes. My number one disappointment with this ep was that David and Maddie didn’t talk in the elevator! Their actions were expressive but I wanted the words because they were quite estranged from each other for most of this episode. And singing the spirituals didn’t fit either. If they had talked and after a period of silence sang the first one and then something secular, that would've been okay. I don’t mind spirituals but Maddie is an atheist. It would be more in character if she smiled slightly while David sang one. And for them to be practically skipping with joy was way off IMO. D/M are dialogue driven. Breaking down in the elevator was the main scene in this episode and they don’t actually talk about their relationship or the baby. What the fig! I’m all question marks about this foul up. ( ??!) After going back and reading the previous posts this is EDITED to add: It sounds to me like he was whistling the same song. My take on it is that it just didn't register about the baby when he whistled those few brief notes. Maybe it was a song he had thought of often before while preparing for the baby to be born and so it kind of slipped out. But with all the tension in the elevator it just triggered the grief bottled up. Did anyone else think the silence between them in the elevator was too long? As talky as this couple is I just think the tension would have been too much to keep quiet the whole time.
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Post by honeyblondenoggin on Apr 25, 2007 14:51:40 GMT -5
I give this episode a 6, as well, maybe 6.5 I get choked up every time I see Maddie folding the laundry, seeing the Baby t-shirt, and the expression on her face. It is so genuine. However, when I see that shirt, I think that Maddie would have never, ever worn a shirt like that! Maybe David bought it for her, it's just so silly. And maybe there's more to that wistful look she gives when she clutches the shirt, maybe she's thinking that she's lost the baby AND David. Thought the elevator scene was moving, but brief, could have been explored further. And I thought Maddie singing spirituals was weird in light of the fact she was supposed to be an athiest. That whole singing-thing just felt like an excuse for Bruce and Cybill to get the opportunity to sing. Thought the hot air balloon scene was out of place, like the writers were trying too hard to recapture the madcap-nature of the early episodes and that it seemed insensitive in light of the fact that these two recently lost their baby and JUST acknowledged to each other their emotions over the loss.
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Post by diane on Apr 25, 2007 18:29:57 GMT -5
Eeeeek......you reminded me. I cannot believe I left the "Baby" shirt out of my rant/review!
I have always hated that...because it was so false. High fashion/stylish/sometimes prudishly refined Maddie Hayes would not have worn a "Baby" shirt with a big arrow pointing at her stomach.
I remember when the episode originally aired, calling a friend of mine and just shrieking into the phone about how out of character it was....another ridiculous element of this episode.
But the single tear sliding down her cheek gets me every time!
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Post by maddieaddisonjr on Apr 26, 2007 21:57:49 GMT -5
The shirt didn't strike me as being out of character b/c I didn't really notice it. I was studying the look on her face. Now I think being a mama-to-be possibly changed her tastes temporarily just enough to buy such a shirt. Maybe she would just wear it around the house. Or yes, our man Dave gave it to her.
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Post by diane on Apr 26, 2007 23:04:09 GMT -5
I'm not sure people temporarily change their tastes.....but David giving her the shirt is a real possibility. I just think it never would have made it into the laundry, 'cause it never would have made it out of the gift box......
But that's probably just me too... I've always thought those shirts were a wee bit tacky.
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Post by honeyblondenoggin on Apr 27, 2007 13:24:26 GMT -5
When I was pregnant, I was probably even MORE aware of my fashion preferences and tastes, ESPECIALLY because maternity clothes can be so ugly and I was desperately looking for clothes that looked like something I would even be remotely happy wearing! So I don't think that her tastes changed just because she was pregnant. Honestly, it was probably a plot device used by the writers to visually display her sadness over the loss of the baby. But, as it seemed to go a lot in season 5, the writers sometimes didn't stay true to the characters. Hoever, if I am pretending these are "real" people, I would have to say that a tacky shirt like that was purchased by David as a joke (probably along with a "Baby on Board" car decoration), maybe at some dirty street vendor, which is why it got tossed in the laundry even though it probably was never worn. Or maybe some good-intentioned Wobblie gave it to her at the baby shower and Maddie wore it to bed because she just couldn't fit into anything else I will say I did wear a lot of goofy things around the house when I was pregnant, things I wouldn't be caught dead in outside, just because, at the end, they fit! I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one who noticed, though, how out-of-character that t-shirt was for Maddie.
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Post by davnee on May 27, 2007 16:56:58 GMT -5
How do I loathe this episode? Let me count the ways.
- The characterization is terrible. David abandons Maddie leaving her to grieve alone. And then he's downright nasty to her for coping through work when he does bother to show up. What did I miss between this and last week's hospital scene? The writers never contextualize David's jarring attitude. This befuddling and upsetting characterization is a gigantic sign of what is to come throughout Season 5, which was written as if the writers and producers had never even met Maddie and David.
- The writers stick a fork in the relationship of David and Maddie and they don't even have the guts to give voice to it. The elevator scene is a gargantuan cop-out. I'm supposed to buy this craptastic moment of silent awkwardness as the dramatic reconciliation of the characters and the narrative reset of the whole show? The single most important moment in Season 5, the moment that will tell us what the future of Moonlighting is going to be about now that the demons of Season 4 have literally been killed before our very eyes last week, and the writers can't even come up with any dialogue?! And when they do walk out of that elevator, it is Agnes, Bert and MacGillicuddy that give voice to the reconciliation. They tell us how Maddie and David are feeling now. How everything is raw and tenuous between them. Screw that. I want to see Maddie and David's feelings for each other for myself, not get clued into it by some lazily written exposition given to the third wheels. As if all that is not bad enough, Maddie and David spend the rest of the episode plowing through a series of scenes featuring tone-deaf slapstick and zero emotional engagement between the leads. Yep, sign me up for more. Looks like it is going to be a great season.
- The reinvention of Moonlighting as The Three Stooges on steroids. This episode is replete with completely unfunny slapstick. I mean what's with the freakin' birds?! The writers are so desperately bad here that they can't even think up a narrative justification for the sight gag. And the balloon chase is painfully awful. Silly, climactic chases were a Moonlighting staple, and they were funny because they always pulled them off with a wink and a nod to the zaniness. But Season 5 chases were not pulled off with a wink and a nod to slapstick - a pie in the face here, a stooges yuk by David there - but rather a sledgehammer. The slapstick became so utterly self-conscious and unsubtle during Season 5 that it lost all its charm. This episode was just the first harbinger for the lack of sophistication that was to come.
- The abuse of the fourth wall begins. The show not only devolved into naked, nonstop slapstick during this season, but also used the breaking of the fourth wall as a constant crutch. Can't think up a plot point, just tear down the fourth wall and tell us you are cheating, or go ahead and tell us we are about to laugh at something (which of course meant we weren't going to laugh at all). Like the convenient placement of the knife in this episode. Go to that well too many times and it loses all its charm. Moonlighting became a parody of itself in this season. Breaking the fourth wall had always been this charming tool of self-awareness, a wink to the fact that this was just a tv show. But by the 5th Season, Moonlighting started satirizing the satire. Before the joke had been on the medium. Now the joke was on the show itself. And the new joke wasn't half as funny. For me this episode puts us on the road to the big "screw you for loving us rather than just laughing at us" moment in Lunar Eclipse, and I hate it for that.
Okay, so this was a long vent, but I really do loathe this episode for all that it represents and for all that it started to take away. I do have one nice thing to say about it though: the "sire" scene between Bert and Maddie is hysterical. Her reaction to him is priceless as is the sight gag of him falling off the desk. Completely fitting and prophetic that the best moment of this show, that the best moment of the episode that was meant to reset the series and give it a fresh start, would not be a Maddie/David moment.
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Post by Cindy on Jul 9, 2007 0:05:09 GMT -5
Davnee
I have just now read this post and I have to say that you certainly have found the turning point in the show. I agree with so much of what you said. It did seem that from this episode on, someone pushed the reset button and it just never was the same again. I have my theories on who that someone was. And it wasn't one of our two principle actors either.
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