ABSTRACT
Moonlighting played with the television form as few had done before. While nominally a drama, the constant banter between David and Maddie was more reminiscent of 1940s-era screwball comedy, putting it in the still-fraught “dramedy” category. A niche show that gained prime-time success before segmenting and tailoring content was common, Moonlighting overtly employed metatextual strategies to both pay tribute to its filmic forebears and provide commentary on its process of creation, narrative, and distribution at one of the many inflection points of shifts in television, when regulatory and broadcast changes now common were new. With its blend of film and television references, quick humor, and relationship dynamics, its influence on contemporary television can be seen across several genres of television, but its assumption of a media-savvy audience and purposefully blurred lines between performer and audience, allowed it to comment on its process of creation, narrative, and distribution while gesturing to a television future in ways it could not have imagined at the time.
