In their book, Cybill & Bruce: Moonlighting Magic (St. Martin's Press, 1987), authors Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel write:
This show, about David's return to New York for the funeral of his brother-in-law, is arguably not only the greatest Moonlighting episode of them all, but possibly the single best one-hour episode ever produced for a prime time television series. Forget the Emmy nominations and Director's Guild awards for other shows. This one beats them all.
At the very beginning comes the shock (to Maddie) that David's been married before. He's off to New York. That night Maddie has a dream about David's previous married life and subsequent divorce. The dream is a technicolor movie musical that is utterly awe inspiring for its classy production values, magnificent dancing, and for its sheer creative brilliance.
Performed to Billy Joel's "Big Man on Mulberry Street," and danced by Broadway musical star Sandahl Bergman, we see David's wife seduce him while he is working at a New York saloon.... Bergman did all the difficult steps, but Bruce held up his end with a natural dancer's grace....
"Big Man on Mulberry Street" literally has everything: music, dance, comedy, high drama, tenderness, pathos – and all of it works. As in all of the very best [Moonlighting] episodes, there is no case, no mystery, no secondary plotline. The show is expressly about David and Maddie. Written with a deep understanding of its characters, never going for the cheap, easy laugh, this is the perfect, quintessential Moonlighting episode.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Guest Starring:
Special Guest Star:
Co-Starring:
Regarding the dream sequence that Maddie Hayes experiences in this episode - she dreams of David working as a bartender in a (strangely musical) basement bar, and has a torrid dance encounter with the mysterious stranger (Sandahl Bergman) - I'm surprised that no one else has remarked that it's a very faithful redoing of a particular sequence in Gene Kelly's "Singing In The Rain" film. In "Singing in the Rain", Kelly is also in a basement bar, only he plays a geeky, bespectacled dancer (and implied virgin). Cyd Charisse plays the exotic stranger who seduces him by dancing with him.
"Rain" also has some amazing camera work, with Kelly sliding on his knees, and stopping before those amazing legs, and following them up to Charisse's drop-dead facial expression. If you haven't seen it, do rent it sometime. (I don't care much for musicals, but this surpasses the genre.)
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