Spoilers

“Blonde on Blonde”

The soap opera section of Moonlighting started with this episode. 

It also revealed another one of my least favorite TV characters of all time. Sam Crawford, played by Mark Harmon. When Mark Harmon suddenly was standing in Maddie’s doorway, blocking David from finally telling Maddie how he felt, he cemented his place among the most despised characters around.

Mark Harmon was a top notch actor and was playing a character who, by all accounts, was a wonderful person, but he the definition of wrong-place-wrong-time.

This also started, in my mind, the eventual downfall of Moonlighting. When the show turned from a romantic comedy investigating cases with Dave and Maddie verbally sparring into this example where they were separated, not working together and focused more on the darker side of their relationship, is when the show started a downturn. Sure the ratings would be high for these episodes and Mark Harmon had created quite a buzz with his shocking appearance, but they started to lose something that made the show what it was.

You saw the elevation of Herbert Viola to sidekick status instead of DiPesto love interest and that was another misstep.