Between a Yuk and a Hard Place

Air Date: 13 Dec 1988

Synopsis:

Following the loss of their baby in last week's episode, both Maddie and David are grieving, but are unwilling to admit it, either to themselves or to anyone else. But we see subtle indications of their pain: as Maddie folds laundry, including a t-shirt with the word "BABY" in large letters, she begins to cry, and as David goes through his belongings, he takes a long look at one of his Lamaze books before putting it away.

David deals with his grief by planning an indefinitely long trip to Virginia. Maddie deals with hers by throwing herself into her work, taking more cases simultaneously than she's ever taken at one time.

In the midst of this storm of activity comes yet another case: Mrs. Joan Spring arrives, saying that she believes her husband Dennis has been married before, but won't admit it. She wants to know the truth, and hires Blue Moon to find it for her.

At the home of Harold Swinburn, Maddie and David learn that Dennis has indeed been married before, to Harold's sister Christina. As it turns out, Dennis killed his wife ten years ago, and was tried and acquitted. In addition, Dennis later confessed his guilt to the police, but because he'd already been found innocent, he was not retried.

Maddie and David return this news to Joan Spring, and David prepares to leave on his trip. But Agnes is not willing to let him leave. Agnes knows that David and Maddie are both grieving, and that they are both unwilling to open up to each other, and she won't let them separate from each other in that state. Together with MacGilicuddy, she conspires to trap both of them together in the elevator all night long, because she is convinced that this will force them to come together in their grief.

And Agnes is right. During the night, as David and Maddie are stuck together in that elevator, at first they put on brave poker faces, until at last they can't stand it anymore and Maddie breaks into tears and David takes her into his arms. By morning they emerge from the elevator singing happily.

Meanwhile, overnight, Joan Spring is found dead, and Dennis has confessed to murdering her. But Maddie finds a clue that proves Dennis is innocent, and that Harold killed Dennis's wife out of revenge for the murder of his sister. (Dennis, as it turned out, had hoped to confess to Joan's murder in order to pay for murdering Christina ten years earlier. But because he's innocent, he still can't get convicted.)

Another of Moonlighting's famous chases ensues, this time in a hot air balloon over the Mojave Desert, at the end of which Harold is caught and brought to the police.

Directed by Dennis Dugan

Written by Kerry Ehrin

Guest Stars:

Memorable Dialog and Additional Links:

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

Music:

• Working In A Coalmine by Lee Dorsey as the employees are given their work assignments at the beginning of the episode
• Question: What song does David sing to himself when he leaves the office, walks down the hall to find Maddie waiting for the elevator and realizes he can't avoid her? This is right before he whistles a bit of You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.
• Question: I'm still unable to identify one of the songs played on the elevator music speaker. They are instrumental versions of:
  • Downtown by Petula Clark
  • Mack the Knife, made popular by Bobby Darin; Darin's version was #1 for 8 weeks and was one of the best selling singles of all time.
  • (I believe there's an additional song at this point in the sequence, but I can't identify it.)
  • Hello, Dolly appears very briefly.
  • Somewhere My Love, also known as "Lara's Theme" from the film Dr. Zhivago, by Maurice Jarre and Francis Paul Webster
  • You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, which is when Dave punches out the speaker, relieving the tension so that Maddie can cry.
• David and Maddie sing bits of the traditional What a Friend We Have In Jesus and the traditional Swing Low, Sweet Chariot while in the elevator.
• Surfin' Bird by The Trashman (on the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack) when the chase scene starts up
• Little Honda by The Hondells as the chase scene continues
• Up, Up And Away as the balloon ascends; this is not the version performed by The Fifth Dimension; this version is performed by The Johnny Mann Singers
• The theme from Bonanza as David swings into the cactus field
• Music from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World follows the theme from Bonanza as David continues through the cactus field, concluding when Maddie drives the jeep into the pond
• Instrumental versions of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Flight of the Bumblebee as David climbs on top of the balloon
• Instrumental version of Wild Blue Yonder as the balloon ascends with David on top of it

Notes:

• This episode begins an ongoing reference to the Anselmo case, a case which was briefly mentioned only once previously, ten episodes ago in Cool Hand Dave, but which is mentioned frequently during the rest of the series from this point on. At the beginning of the episode, David is out of the office. Maddie and Bert both mention that he is "serving papers" in the Anselmo case, although David describes what he was doing as "hunting down wanted criminals."
• As is so often the case with fourth and fifth season episodes, the case in this episode ironically parallels the events in Maddie's and David's lives. In a conversation between them on their way to Harold's house, David says that Dennis has a right to conceal his past from his wife. Maddie counters that she needs to "get past his past – she can't just deny it ever happened." At this, David smirks, and rightly points out the irony of Maddie's remark. As Harold comments shortly thereafter: "When you go stirring up the past, you're bound to dig up a tragedy or two."
• Note the following continuity goof: Throughout the episode, Christina and Joan are described as being married to Dennis Spring, formerly Dennis Jones. However, during one scene between Agnes, Bert and MacGilicuddy ("Isn't anyone watching this episode?") he is referred to consistently as "Michael Spring."
• A reader named Wayne Willis sent me email stating that Teresa Willis is Bruce's cousin.

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Date of last change: 6 January 2008

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