"Take my Wife, For Example"

[bry]

"it'd be like stickin' tooth paste back inta the tube"

a lawyer wants dave and maddie to try to help her get two people to reconcile their marriage.
lawrance pressman is in here as a man with a woman on the side. the wife admits to doing his partner and offs him to frame her husband.

dave and maddie are great talking about each others shortcomings. maddie buys dave a car he doesn't like. she also tells him he kisses hard. so, he gets the women in the office to be his science subjects to study his kissing methods.
this one has some funny parts to it.

rating: 6

[CindyK]

This episode to me is very uneven. There are parts of it that are very good. And there are other parts that are just fair.

Personally I didn't care for the "Maddie setting out to buy David a present and coming up with a Yugo" plot. She knows him better than that! Although this did give way to that funny subplot of David trying to get rid of the car...especially the scene with Bert who gets robbed...and they take everything BUT the car.

The discussion between Maddie and David about each ones gripe about the other though is entertaining. Although I do find it odd that Maddie complains about the way David kisses....this is the first time we have heard this---she never seemed to mind it all those times before! And furthermore, I have seen her "kiss back" plenty of times.... plenty!

I do love though the idea that David took the insurance money to buy Maddie the pearl necklace...and how she thanks him. Very nice!

[bry]

that was a nice touch with the pearls. but the whole yugo deal was wrong. it did make some funny stuff, and i mean funny facial expressions and an underhanded plot to get it stolen, but it was a weak gesture. but it turned into some funny stuff, so i can live with it.
i didn't care for the woman playing the lawyer.
they sure do make bert the MVP of loyalty and employees though, don't they?

[CyBr]

I guess I had a different take on the Yugo thing. I think the point was even when Maddie tried to prove David wrong in saying that she wasn't generous, she couldn't bring herself to really splurge on the kind of car he would have really liked. So, in effect, she proved him right! (He did know her better than she wanted to admit!) On the other hand, I think David probably believed he was a very good kisser (since he was quite the ladies man) but still took her criticism to heart with the girls in the office. Also, on a side note, I think Bert was hilarious in this one!

[kismet]

I always thought the writers reversed real life in this episode.

I think Cybill gives great presents, so the writers made her seem cheap by saying that Maddie never gave any presents.
I think Bruce is a very soft, sensuous kisser, so the writers made him into a hard smoocher. Just my opinion, by the way.

I absolutely love Colleen Dewhurst in this episode. It's one of the few times in the later years of her life that we saw her on television (later in Murphy Brown). She looks at David and Maddie (and Bruce and Cybill) with the look on her face that she just knows how those two actually get along. They fight, they make-up, they fight, they make-up - you get the picture.

For those of you who do not know Colleen Dewhurst - she was married to George C. Scott and their relationship was a volatile, passionate one, kind of like we witnessed in Moonlighting. That's what makes Ms. Dewhurst's appearance an extra treat. To me, the episode was just a big INSIDE JOKE kind of show.

[Dutchie]

oof what a grrrreat ending

I liked this episode, but it's not one of my favorites. I like to see Maddie and David together all the time. They flirt they disagree, but they keep eachother in their worth and they LISTEN to what the other has to say.

David doing the kissing test, too bad it wasn't with Maddie. I did like it when the girl fell on the ground after that kiss and hit the door on her way out And Maddie, she knew it all along, but didn't say a thing to David

Okay, up to the next episode (I'm almost finished boohoohoo)

Greets Steph

[MulberryGal]

I feel a bit mixed with this one. It's uneven, as Cindy says. I love the bit where David uses the girls in the office as tests for his kissing skills... "Nothing is more deadly than the duo-directional lipus lockus"!! And I loved the ending with the pearls and the kiss

But, the scene where D & M are following the couple just bugs me. Maddie seems friendly and warm, but David seems to have a real attitude problem, he doesn't break into a smile once and just looks sullen.. I think the director should have told Bruce to play that differently, as the conversation was light and chatty, but he just looks fed up. That line about "no overlapping dialogue today" just sounds stroppy rather than funny... And I have no idea why he's acting like that!

Mebbe it's just me tho!?

Mul

[CyBr]

I think the idea was that David was miffed about their relationship and then about Maddie's comment about his kissing. But I wonder if the real problem was BW didn't want to be there because I noticed that attitude from him in other Season 5 scenes.

[MulberryGal]

Yes I always wondered what it was. But David seemed sullen and stroppy even before Maddie even mentioned the kissing. I think these kind of things are writing problems in Season 5, there is little consistency, and I hadn't noticed it before - possibly because I've spent a lot of time watching earlier episodes which are mostly very well written and consistent. Is it the lack of Glen Caron which caused these problems, I wonder?

Mul