A Womb with a View

Air Date: 6 Dec 1988

Synopsis:

This episode is one of my very, very favorites. Yes, I am aware that many people feel that Moonlighting lost its spark at about the time that Maddie got pregnant. I don't happen to share that viewpoint, although I do think I understand it. But if ever there was a counterexample, surely this episode is it. In my opinion, A Womb With a View is just as magical and superlative as anything that Moonlighting has ever produced.

How do I describe this one in mere words? On the surface, the story is about Maddie's baby, who is visited by an angel, an "emissary of the Creator" named Jerome, while still inside the womb. Jerome is visiting, he says, to prepare Baby Hayes (played by Bruce Willis) for his imminent birth. That preparation involves introducing the baby to his future parents, and describing to him what life in the world is going to be all about. (Among other things, we learn for the first time, at last, that David and not Sam is the baby's biological father.)

On a deeper, more philosophical level, it's more accurate to say that this episode is an exposition of what human beings are all about. It's a sublime, thought-provoking, and a wonderfully drawn portrait of the good and the evil that are the innate qualities of human life, and of the key to finding happiness in a world of such dichotomous and conflicting extremes.

At the start of the episode, Baby Hayes shows Jerome the womb in which he resides, and points out that it is warm and comfortable. "Why would I want to leave this?" Baby Hayes asks. "This is the life," he says. But Jerome responds, "No, I'm afraid it isn't, and that's just the point. Life is a bit more complicated!"

Jerome begins by showing Baby Hayes the beauty and the wonder that exists in the world – and by extension, within each of us – and finishes by showing him the "greed, lust, jealosy, hatred, stupidity, anger" which are "in abundant supply in the world you're about to enter." As Jerome explains, "The Creator has chosen, for reasons I won't pretend to understand, to endow each man with a heart capable of divine goodness and extraordinary evil."

Together with these images, Baby Hayes is introduced to Maddie and David, and we see both their penchant for arguing strenuously with one another, as well as their deep and loving concern for each other.

All of this contradiction overwhelms Baby Hayes, and he becomes even more convinced that he's not leaving the womb. "I don't think I'm too crazy about this 'life' thing anymore," he says reluctantly.

But it's then that he hears sounds of happiness – a baby shower for Maddie – which Jerome explains as "the ultimate gift and the ultimate responsibility – and the key to the ultimate reward." And Baby Hayes begins to change his mind.

Unfortunately, before Baby Hayes can be born, Maddie miscarries. Baby Hayes is distraught, but Jerome explains that this is just a "last minute shuffle," and that he'll be born into another home and another family. ("You're either going to be Kirk Cameron's little brother or Bill Cosby's grandchild.")

Meanwhile, after the miscarriage, Maddie and David console each other in her hospital room.

Directed by Jay Daniel

Written by Glenn Gordon Caron and Charles H. Eglee

Guest Stars:

Memorable Dialog and Additional Links:

• See Christine Graves's Moonlighting Madness page for this episode.

Music:

• The episode opens Moonlighting's fifth season, and to inaugurate it, the whole cast and crew of the show dance and sing a song adapted from Kiss Me Kate's Another Op'nin', Another Show by Cole Porter. (Note that the song appears in the original stage version of that musical, but the 1953 film version uses only the music but not the words to this song by Porter.) As used in this episode, the music is Porter's (albeit with an updated arrangement), and lyrics are as follows:

  Another season, another try,
  to make twenty-two shows before we die,
  a chance for critics to scoff and sneer,
  "We know they'll only make sixteen this year,
  We know they'll only make sixteen this year."
  
  But we don't care 'cause we do our part
  to make a program with wit and heart.
  So go, get comfy, unplug the phone,
  here come Dave and Maddie into your home,
  here come Dave and Maddie into your home.
  
  Another season, another shot
  to show the country just what we got.
  We'll be there every Tuesday night for you
  Without a rerun, without a rerun, without a rerun
  Except one or two.
  
  (We can't have no reruns, 'cause you'll change the channel and watch NBC!
  Oh, yeah!)
  

• Baby Love, by The Supremes
• Mickey's Monkey by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
• David sings a bit of Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto's The Girl From Ipanema; later in the episode Jerome whistles some of that song, causing Maddie to start humming it to herself
• Theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
• What a Beautiful World by Louis Armstrong
• David-as-Baby-Hayes and Jerome sing On The Sunny Side of the Street (which dates from 1930, and was a Tin Pan Alley song written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields for the show "Lew Leslie's International Revue")

Notes:

• The reason this episode didn't air until December is because there was a writers' strike during 1988. As a result, several television seasons started late that year, including this one.
• In the opening song and dance number, David sings, "We can't have no reruns, 'cause you'll change the channel and watch NBC." Moonlighting's NBC competition at the time was a new show called "In the Heat of the Night," and which, as it turned out, attracted more viewers than Moonlighting did.

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Date of last change: 16 December 2000

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