I posted this over at Cybill.com, but it fits here a whole lot better, so here it is again :P

OK, I just needed to post this someplace. This really rubs me the wrong way, the Moonlighting episode "Womb with a View". There're also a lot of strange plot points in the whole pregnancy arc I'm sure I'll ramble over, too...

So, er, submitted for the approval of the midnight society - a sort-of rant come essay on that, and Why I Believe it Is Bad.

Disclaimer: I'll admit I haven't seen all of Moonlighting. I started watching really from "To Heiress Human". I'm enjoying the episodes now that Junior's been edited out, and I'm basing most of my observations here from other things I've read and from clips I've watched of older episodes.

I also think this probably gives me a slightly different perspective here, I had no attachment to the characters when I started watching from prior episodes, wasn't necessarily as built up about their relationship as other fans, and so the 'big bang' was was more like a small pop for me.

Some observations:

1) The story is entirely driven by character interaction, the episodes usually were stand-alone epics with only very slight development that tended to revert to the formula of bantering, bickering and doorslamming amid mystery solving. Sophisticated, hot-as-hell Scooby-Doo if you like

2) Once you introduce an arc into that formula, it doesn't equal up anymore. Especially if you don't really know how it ought to end, and your lead actress is heavily pregnant.


What the hell is with the Walter Bishop storyline? I'm mildly offended that, after establishing Maddie as a business woman who's learned a hard lesson, and who holds her own against numerous criminals, solves mysteries, and tends to be a fairly intelligent, independant woman, suddenly feels the need to marry a perfect stranger at the first sign of childbearing. She'd be scared, sure. Freaking out a whole lot - but the fact that she suddenly reverts back through twenty years of liberation is a little unnerving.

But, after having written this tome already, I bring myself to my own point - Womb with a View. Miscarriage. I loved the concept - from the perspective of the baby, innovative. Cute. Redone with Bruce Willis in Look Who's Talkin'. But the execution of the idea? Nuh uh.

Excuse me for being a little patronised when, instead of a neatly handled, symbolic, bittersweet death I'm told that God took the baby to The Cosby Show. What. The. Hell?
I wasn't impressed with the use of the 'messenger from God' plot device, but as that's a personal grievance I'll leave it out of this, it could have still worked.

Here's how I'd have done things. The baby, first of all, in stop-motion/claymation. Give it Bruce's voice, a curl of blond hair and blue eyes. It looks like AN ACTUAL baby, the womb isn't plastic, and no grown men in diapers to be seen. Keep the messenger from God, drop the whole 'everyone is briefed about their parents before birth' spiel.

I'd have the Messenger From God (MFG) come down and simply start going over that stuff with Junior, no explanation of why. Keep the snappy dialogue, especially the line about intestines <3. Idea being that the MFG is actually just there to collect the baby's soul, because his life is ending already.

As for the miscarriage, none of this Cosby Show stuff. I'd simply show a light going out, even though I did quite enjoy the last scene on the stairs - it could still go in, with the song and all - at the VERY end, after the cut to David and Maddie at the hospital.

I couldn't feel the last scene at all - bearing in mind that this was a miscarriage, my mum had three or four of them before me, and I was the one who got through finally - I should feel something, just by proxy. Why not? Cause I was going "THE COSBY SHOW? WHAT?"

I just really thought it was handled in a clumsy way, it upset the flow of the story - the episode even started with a musical number. The tone was off. Not that there couldn't have been humour, but it shouldn't overshadow the event. Didn't give the audience enough credit to care enough about the characters to see them through that.

I dunno, maybe it was different in the eighties. Someone who wasn't 2 years old at the time could tell me!

Can't wait for ML on DVD though, the rest of it is teh awesome.

Hi CRB,
Nice to see you here too!

I like the idea of a claymation baby, Bruce in a nappy was kind of unsettling!

well, it is a tv show with no factual story to it. so i can take the plastic bubble and the baby in a diaper part and just enjoy the episode. a very good episode. so what if it is a bit far fetched? it makes more sense than most of what's on tv now.

My point wasn't that the setting inside the womb was too far fetched, it was that the story and the imagery were handled poorly. I love the idea of seeing the baby as a character even though it won't be born, it SHOULD make the miscarriage all the more painful for us.

I meant that the whole angle, with the Cosby Show and Bruce in a diaper, actually detracted from what should have been the leap away from the sheer madness that was Maddie's pregnancy. Narrative wise, it was poor. Conceptually, it blazed trails - but in effect, most of the impact was lost. Moonlighting was a lot about mocking the genre, and paying homage to screwball comedies, but there are some episodes where development must occur. Case and point, Big Man on Mulberry Street - and, Womb with a View/the episode following, where they're locked in the elevator together (forgotten the name).

Womb with a View was Caron's last episode, wasn't it? I'm wondering if he just killed off the baby to reset things for his successors, two episodes later Hayes-Addison Jr is long forgotten, and things get back to things like fighting on hot air balloons and being buried up to the neck in graveyards.

So it's not the stretch of the imagination by any means, bry :) It was the way the subject matter was handled in the script and the way it was portrayed on screen I thought could be better.

-CRB

I personally like the choice of having Bruce play the baby. He is very good at it....nails the baby actions very well.... and it allows the audience to know once and for all for sure who is the father of Maddie's baby (like any of us real fans ever had any doubt...but some people might not know until they see that).

And I love the showing the baby his parents bit.... a clever way to do it. But a lot of this episode felt like filler to me. That opening song and dance that had NOTHING to do with the main story line.....the water cooler roulette....the long past life clips from Dream Sequence and Atomic.....those all seemed to be stuck in there to fill time.

I take your point about the identity of the baby's father but I am still disturbed by a grown man dressed as a baby!

I too hated the water cooler roulette but I can't remember the opening song and dance. As that is one of the few episodes I have maybe I will go and watch and refresh my memory

I'm not a big fan of WWAV either. First the things I did like: I loved Maddie and David dancing. (They always danced great!) This is one the few times they seemed truly happy together, briefly. I loved the angel's words to the baby about good and evil. That montage, particularly set to Louis Armstrong, was beautiful, I thought. I also liked the description of Maddie and David's relationship. Unfortuntately, I agree that the old flashbacks seemed dated, there was way too much filler like the water cooler roulette and other Agnes and Bert scenes, and I hated the opening song and dance which seemed pretentious and didn't fit the rest of the show at all. While we're at it, the bit about David ogling girls as candidates for a nanny seemed out of character for him by this time (much more 2nd season David) and quite insulting to Maddie.

Cindy - I believe having Bruce voice the baby would have been enough, not to mention the fact that the angel plainly introduces David as the father and explains it, would be enough to imply David as the father. Maybe it's easier in retrospect, having seen similar done with Look Who's Talking, but the Grown-Man-As-Baby thing -- well, I'll just say it. It reminds me of a TV show I saw once about bizarre fetishes.

Liked the song/dance, thought it was dreadful for this episode. If Caron had any sort of a plan (even the vaguest of plans), I would have suggested he shuffle the episodes and put a different one in the beginning to fit it.

Oh christ, late for work!

-CRB

In retrospect, when this episode aired originally, I was not particularly fond of it either. But over the years I have gained an appreciation of it in regards to how outrageous what they were doing in this episode was for TV at the time. Moonlighting took real narrative risks that stretched the boundaries of TV, and this was one more of those examples. Also this was filmed back in late 1988 before Look Who's talking, so this came first.

Yes, the baby shower and dancing is my favorite part of the episode, but so is the sweet little scene between Maddie and David when he comes back into her office to apologize for his behavior earlier. This is not something David would have been accustomed to doing earlier in their relationship...so we can see how much he has changed under her influence.

The Sunny Side of the Street conclusion doesn't alarm me as much as others. Many people cite that scene as totally abhorrant to them...but I see it more as a sing and dance in the face of great adversity moment. The final scene with Maddie and David in her hospital room was very upsetting to me on first viewing. I felt perfectly wretched at that moment for them.

Cindy - yup, I knew Look Who's Talkin' was after, that's what I meant by 'easier in retrospect', and yup, a big leap for TV at the time - but it would've been even with certain elements played down. There's a big leap and then their's a big fall, I don't think the landing went well.

The song at the end, walking up the stairs, was alright. I thought it was bittersweet and it sort of worked, the song at the beginning ("IT'S A NEW SEAAASON!!") I could've done with having on another episode. A lot of the elements of the episode were really nice, but they weren't tied together well. Glenn Caron is a brilliant writer with regard to character interaction and humour, but I think he missed the mark on this one. Of course by that time he might not've been aiming FOR the mark, but still missed it.

So yeah, definitely enjoyed the concept, some of the humour (Do you KNOW what's out there?! INTESTINES!) and of course, the scenes at the party. The seams begin to bust a little just with imagery, lighting, pace, and the way they handled the ending. There wasn't a lot of that stuff in TV at the time anyway, but having caught a few episodes here and there before settling into a routine of watching (Big Man on Mulberry Street for example), I know that it had been used effectively on ML before, at least.

That said, the rest of the series is naturally genius, and it's been said countless times that there was a drop in quality due to varied reasons anyway - this was just the one episode that really bothered me, I was actually surprised to find that Caron had written it.

Oh that song and dance scene! My memory is not very good :D

I quite liked it but it maybe went on a little bit too long :confused:

The Cole Porterish intro song that is a parody of a number from "Kiss Me Kate" I don't care for except the concept that this is a number from "Kiss Me Kate" which we all know is a derivative of "The Taming of the Shrew" which resonates with the entire premise of Moonlighting.

I think it is rather corny and does go on too long and I don't care for how one of the butt of the jokes is Maddie showing up late. I would much rather have seen her participating in the show tune too. The one redeeming joke in it though is the Stand By due to technical difficulties sign appearing and then being pushed off the set by the cast. That is rather funny. Otherwise the whole thing was pretty lame and to me wasted valuble story telling time in an episode that had a LOT to tell.

Exactly, Cindy, it was too long - I had never seen the episode and I pretty much got up an wandered off to get a drink, knowing the opening credits would be right after it and I wouldn't miss anything :P I was disappointed at the lack of Cybill in it as well, possibly they were having a bad day that day and wanted to keep them separate ;)

-CRB

how happy do they look !!!!

I really enjoyed a womb with a view but one of the things that put me off was the water cooler roulette bit between viola & mcguilacudy.
I was gutted the way it ended because when jerome was talkin to baby hayes he was saying that he had seen the future episodes and that maddie and david were gonna be sensational parents and that made me think that it was going to end up ok but hey a believe anything :crazy: but i did think that they would of made sensational parents meself like but neways