Moonlighting: Season 05 (1988)

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The fifth season of Moonlighting is the shortest since season one, with only 12 new episodes produced; it is also the final season, thanks to the ever-increasing backstage squabbles involving stars Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, and virtually the entire production staff. The opening episode is one of the strangest ever conceived, beginning with an appearance by practically every member of the cast and the production team, assuring viewers that their professional problems are behind them, and promising that season five will be the best ever. The plot proper finds Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd), impregnated the previous season by her detective-agency partner David Addison (Bruce Willis), going into labor -- whereupon the action shifts to Heaven, where Maddie's baby (also played by Bruce Willis) nervously awaits to be born. Alas, it is not to be; Maddie miscarries, and subsequently buries herself in her work as a detective, neglecting not only David but also her nebbishy husband, Walter (Dennis Dugan). As for David, he philosophically moves on in his life, enjoying a brief fling with Maddie's sister Annie (Virginia Madsen). Thereafter, Moonlighting ceases to be about the Maddie-David relationship and devolves into a standard detective show, albeit punctuated every so often by the series' trademarked inside jokes and eccentric deviations from the plotlines. Inevitably, given the fact that everyone knew that this was the series' final season, Moonlighting comes to a halt as the doors of the Blue Moon Detective Agency are permanently closed. ~ Rovi