Why are writers so afraid of the Moonlighting Effect?

A long time ago, in a television-watching galaxy far, far away, there was a TV show called Moonlighting. The heroes of this show, David and Maddie, had such great, antagonist chemistry and fans of the show longed for the day when the two would embrace their feelings instead of repressing them. Except, once they did, something bad happened … and television writers have been using that as the cautionary tale ever since.

Why did I walk you through (quite poorly, I’m sure) the history of Moonlighting you ask (In fact, your question might have been, “I’m a television cliquester who is reading a blog about television … you think I don’t know about Moonlighting?”)? Because, frankly, I’m tired of this excuse. I think we should expect more out of the shows that we’re fans of. If writers truly believe that certain characters don’t belong together, that is one thing.  But if they are dragging things out for other reasons, then that’s where we have a problem.

Jeff Jensen over at Entertainment Weekly wrote a great piece a couple weeks back on the whole “shipper” phenomenon. In it several writers and showrunners, including Bones’ Hart Hanson, Castle’s Andrew Marlowe and several others, were interviewed trying to explain the “other side” of the dynamic. They raise good points, things that I’m not indifferent to. Relationships do have a natural life cycle; they ebb and flow, and there’s generally a “magic hour” in which all things come together and everyone, as they say, lives happily ever after.  In the instance of my first personal “ship,” timing was an appropriate obstacle.

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that knows me, but it was Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, and the participants were one Joshua “Lemon” Lyman and Donna Moss. It took these characters seven seasons before the timing was right, something that irritated me a great deal when the show was airing. But they both had a good deal of growing to do before they could enter into a romantic relationship as equals (her professionally and he, naturally, personally).  I had to endure Amy Gardner – though endure is never the right word to describe my feelings towards Mary-Louise Parker – and Donna’s myriad Republican boyfriends — but in the end, I was a happy camper.

In Jensen’s piece, Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse was quoted as saying, “The conventional wisdom is that once you consummate sexual tension, you zap a show of its magic.” I’ll take it a step farther, and point directly to concept that it is the chemistry between the two involved parties that changes. And — this is where this particular post might take a turn you’re not expecting – this is a reasonable fear to have.

If that’s the case, though, is the problem really in the writing? In fact: is the original success of the chemistry in the writing either? Last I checked, it is actors that have chemistry, and not script pages. How many shows have succeeded, or failed, on how well the two leads played on screen together? Would Bones have worked as well as it did if David Boreanaz and Emily Deschenel didn’t have great chemistry to start with? Would Castle?  X-Files? Moonlighting?

But conventional wisdom is hard to argue against. We’ve talked about Moonlighting, but other widely accepted examples exist out there, like X-Files – I’ve been told the whole relationship fell apart after “the baby.” But conventional wisdom is just that: conventional, tired, outdated and … well … shortsighted.

Why is it so hard to transition from the courting-stage to the together-stage? The best written relationship on television in my recent memory was Friday Night Light’s Eric and Tammy Taylor – it was successful both because the writing was top notch and because the actors played off of each other so well. I’m not sure that I could buy into the idea that if, for some crazy reason, the show had a season or two where the characters were just finding each other and were living in the “will they/won’t they” zone, that writing their eventual relationship would turn out differently?

Earlier, when I quoted Cuse, I cheated; I didn’t share the back half of the quote, where he basically made the same argument I’ve been making for years: “I’d love to see some bold showrunner go against that conventional wisdom and produce something great.” We’ve seen utter brilliance out of television writers in the past several years. From The Wire to Veronica Mars to Homeland to Lost, we are truly in the renaissance of dramatic television. Are we to believe that, as we have writers that have been able to produce works of art like these, that others can’t find a way to make a believable, enjoyable way to put certain characters together without eight seasons of manufactured obstacles, complications and pitfalls (I’m looking at you, Mr. Hanson).

I think that there’s a difference in expecting that couples be put together nearly instantaneously, as Hanson jested in the EW article. But if you look at Grey’s Anatomy and the relationship between Derek Sheppard and Meredith Grey, there’s a different model at play — one that worked. The characters found themselves together early on, and then faced a realistically rocky road as they navigated their collective baggage. I’ve never found their relationship, even in its darkest hour, to feel overwrought or disingenuous – at least any more or less than I found the show in general – I’m not going to deny that the season of the last writer’s strike was not Grey’s best. If these two crazy kids – and Shonda Rhimes – can make it work, why can’t more shows pull it off too?

Clacked by Ivey West
on Mar 07, 2012 @ 13:30 EST5EDT