Moonlighting: Season 02 (1985)

The irrepressibly hip detective series Moonlighting really shifts into high gear for its second season, which offers 18 delightfully intriguing episodes, chock-full of knowledgeable inside jokes and eccentric deviations from the plotlines. In the opener, reluctantly teamed private eyes Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (Bruce Willis) find themselves in hot water thanks to David's charming but thoroughly untrustworthy older brother (Charles Rocket). In later episodes, the couple is hired by a self-proclaimed lady leprechaun to find her missing pot o' gold; Christmas Eve finds the Blue Moon Detective Agency being used as a combination nursery and "Santa Hot Line"; the agency's ditsy secretary, Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley), gets the thrill of her life when she subs for her bosses at a fancy ball; a Hitchcock-style plotline, replete with Bernard Herrmannesque music, finds Maddie probing the mysterious suicide of the artist who pained her portrait; an elderly client insists that David and Maddie serve as "expert witnesses" -- to his own murder; and Whoopi Goldberg guest stars as a con artist who becomes a target for assassination after inadvertently emerging as a national hero. Other highlights include the first appearance of Maddie's well-heeled parents (played by Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber) and a lavish film noir black-and-white episode in which Dave and Maddie solve a cold case from 1946 -- and which is dedicated to narrator Orson Welles, who died five days before the episode was telecast. ~ Rovi