Spoilers

“Witness for the Execution”

I remember not being that big of a fan of this episode when it first aired back in the 1980s. It lacked all the bombastic chases scenes and comedy that I had come to expect from an episode of Moonlighting. I was much younger then and, after watching it this morning, I have a much different opinion on “Witness for the Execution.”

A ninety-year old man arrived at the Blue Moon Detective Agency to hire someone to come and witness his own murder. He told Dave and Maddie that he had set up a man to come and shut off his oxygen and he needed an observer to tell the police that it was a murder.

Dave and Maddie argued over the case, of course. Dave said he understood what the man wanted and Maddie said that the company would not take the case and if David wanted to do this, he was on his own.

When David showed up to tell the man that he had changed his mind, he discovered that the man was already dead. David tried to turn the machines back on, thus making it look as if he had been the person who had killed him.

This led to a tense meeting in the parking garage between David and Maddie where David told her that he was leaving, going underground. They shared an unexpected kiss. making the situation even more awkward.

Maddie was able to figure out the truth of the murder in the best piece of observation that she had ever had during the series.

The scene where David told Maddie about the events of what happened was some of the best acting that we have gotten out of Bruce Willis during the series’ run.

Admittedly, there were a few questions I had about the plot that had to happen in order to set this meeting up, especially why David took off in the first place. He believed that he had accidentally killed the man, but that seemed an odd thought considering the situation. However, everything with the case was really secondary and used as a trigger to get to the kiss. Moonlighting was, once again, the relationship between David and Maddie above everything else.