What are you watching?

What am I watching? Moonlighting.

Moonlighting?

Moonlighting. You know, the goofy private eye show from the 80's. Cybill Shepherd, Bruce Willis, a zillion lines of dialogue a second?

Is it good?

Is it good? Does Google goog? Does Spielberg spiel? Does Buffy buff? Yeah, it's good. No, scratch that. It's great.

Great?

Greater than great. Greatest.

Greatest?

Greatest. Imagine it --

I'm trying not to.

No laugh track for the funniest dialogue in twenty years. No web pages detailing the trials and tribulations of the heroes. Some of the best supporting actor work you'll ever see. And what's got to be the small screen's most incendiary, compulsively watchable relationship ever.

Compulsively watchable? Does that even make sense?

And then there's the whole "talking to the camera" thing.

Are you listening to me?

They just turn and make snide remarks straight to the camera. "The writers made me do it." "The network won't let us."

Why are we even pretending this is a dialogue?

"I'm a TV character."

The people who are reading this know it's just one person.

One person?

One person. The blogger.

But it's not.

It's not?

No, you don't see the big picture.

The big picture?

On the small screen.

The big picture on the small screen?

When they start talking to the camera, to the audience, don't you see? It's like saying these characters -- these PEOPLE -- exist outside the show. They don't exist in our world because yeah, they're fictional, but they're still people. They have an internal world of their own.

I wish you'd stay in your internal world. But I see what you mean. The show is telling us that even though we all know these are fictional characters, we can still believe that they're real people and still care about what happens to them.

It's the old razzle-dazzle.

Razzle-dazzle?

Razzle-dazzle. Tell 'em what you're gonna do, explain how you're gonna do it, then go ahead and do it right in front of them and get away with it.

I don't know if they get away with it. Not forever.

Nothing's forever.

It is gutsy, though. I guess that's why I like it.

You like it?

I like it. They're saying "We know these characters aren't real, and we know you know these characters aren't real, and we're even going to TELL you outright that they aren't real, just to make sure you know we know you know they aren't real and we're STILL going to make you care about them."

That's gutsy.

Gutsier than just ripping off the style and using that to pad a post.

Pad a post?

Pad a post.

Labels: Film, Review