Moonlighting 1.01

Pilot

Fashion model Madeleine Hayes (Cybil Shepard),  wakes up one morning only to discover that her accountant has stolen most of her money. One of the assets she still has is the City of Angels Detective Agency, which has lost money consistently for the past three years. She goes there to try and shut it down and meets, for the first time, David Addison (Bruce Willis) who runs the agency. 

David tries to talk her into keeping the agency up and running but Maddy is not interested. Maddy goes to dinner that night at a fancy restaurant with a plastic surgeon. David shows up and derails her dinner. The doctor leaves after being fooled into thinking that there is an emergency which calls for his attention.

David and Maddy's talk, which she has no interest in continuing, gets interrupted by a man who drops dead in front of them with a knife in his back. The man gave Maddy a watch just before he died.

Maddy and David are interrogated by the police and then let go. She is still determined to shut down the detective agency, lose David, and move on with her life. They arrive back at her place. She is saying goodbye to him for the night when two armed men show up looking for the watch.

Maddy and David continue to argue, after the men have left, empty handed. David figures out what it is the watch that is so important: it contains coordinates for the location of diamonds stolen by Nazis.

Thoughts

This episode was about 90 minutes long. Regular episodes are around 45 to 50 minutes long.

The story evolves further from the point where my summary ends. It ends with Maddy and David solving the case and Maddy getting closer to keeping the detective agency up and running.

I saw Moonlighting when it first aired on TV in the 1980s. I was in high school at the time. I don't recall exactly when I started to watch. I might have seen this episode before but if I did then it probably wasn't the first time it aired.

This was a mid-season replacement show when it first aired. There are just five more episodes in the first season. This was fun. The story itself doesn't work fully. The reason to watch is the interactions between David and Maddy. Both Shepherd and Willis look like they are having fun.