Maddie has disappeared.
At the end of last week's episode we saw Maddie wordlessly leaving Los Angeles on a plane. David and the Blue Moon office staff are unaware of this, and as the day wears on and she doesn't arrive for work, they begin to worry. David in fact becomes single-mindedly frantic in his search for her.
Into this situation, Donald Chase arrives in David's office. "I've fallen in love with a woman," he says, "and I think maybe she's fallen in love with me. But I don't know where she is, and I need very much to talk to her." David responds wryly, "There's a lot of that going around." Mr. Chase met this woman at a charity ball. He knows her name – Melissa – her physical description, and he has an item of jewelry that she had been wearing, and with that, he wants David to find her. David points out the similarity of this situation to Cinderella and her glass slipper, and later in the episode he refers to Chase as "Prince Charming"
David takes the case, but virtually ignores it as he continues to look for Maddie. It is Bert who finally locates Melissa, using the jewelry as a clue. Finally, Maddie calls. She's in Chicago, staying with her parents. She tells David this so he won't worry, but she also begs him not to ever call her there, a fact which becomes very significant in later episodes, especially Take a Left at the Altar, Cool Hand Dave. and Father Knows Last. The reason, she says, is because she needs to sort out her feelings on her own, without worrying, every time the phone rings, that it might be David, calling to spar verbally with her about their relationship.
David and Bert locate Melissa, who is wary of them, believing that they intend to kill her. They calm her down and she explains that her real name was Ellen, that she had been married to an evil man, a mobster, and when she discovered who he was, she left him abruptly, moved to the west coast, and changed her name. She is convinced that her husband has sent a hit man to find her and kill her, and that Donald Chase is that man. David and Bert tell her that it's her choice, but that they believe that Chase is indeed in love with her and that she should give him a chance to explain himself. She agrees to a phone call, and as she and Chase begin speaking, she agrees to meet with him in person.
Following this is a wonderful dream sequence, crafted entirely in Claymation animation, in which David discusses with Maddie why it is that she won't let him call her. Describing this sequence wouldn't do it justice – you have to see it to appreciate it. The animators have captured Bruce's and Cybill's mannerisms and facial characteristics to a T, and it is delightful to watch.
Next thing you know, at midnight that night, witnesses saw Chase kill Melissa, then turn the gun on himself. The obvious conclusion – that David never should have brought the two of them together – goes unspoken, as does David's frustration over not being able to talk with Maddie. Instead, all of this emotion comes out when he borrows Maddie's BMW, then deliberately demolishes it in the Blue Moon office building's parking garage, with Jimi Hendrix's Manic Depression playing on the radio.
At the end of this, Donald and Melissa appear in the parking garage. "We hope that display wasn't because of us," they begin, then they explain that Melissa's husband really did send Donald to Los Angeles to kill her, but that they really had fallen in love with one another once they met. They knew that if they didn't fake their own deaths, her husband would send someone else to kill them both. "I know what you must be thinking," Melissa says. "It's not every day you get involved with people who die, but really don't – just convincingly fake their deaths for another purpose," to which David responds to the camera and to the audience, "Obviously this woman's never seen the show." They plead with David to let them stay dead and he agrees. They thank him, "and they lived happily ever after."
David returns to his office, not especially relieved. Donald's and Melissa's fairy tale has a happy ending, but David's agonizing concern for Maddie is just beginning....
Special Guest Stars:
Guest Starring:
Co-Starring:
Claymation Sequence:
Uncredited:
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Date of last change: 16 December 2000
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