We Hate Iambic Pentameter!

Season 3 of "Moonlighting" arrives on DVD in February 2006. This is the season that made the show the stuff of '80s legend: the behind-the-scenes fights, the fact that they were commissioned to produce 22 episodes and only managed to deliver 15; the story arc culminating in what was known as the "Big Bang," and the sudden collapse of the show in the following season (due to clumsy attempts to write around Cybill Shepherd's pregnancy) have all given the show a near-mythic status.

This was also the season when they really went wild with the gimmick episodes, including an episode done entirely in Shakespearean verse; an episode with a musical dream sequence directed by Stanley Donen; and an almost entirely self-referential episode where Rona Barrett interviews the characters on their behind-the-scenes conflicts. Best gag: when Shepherd makes her entrance in that episode, she holds up a screen in front of her face, a reference to her insistence that her close-ups be photographed through gauzy filters -- something that is all-too-noticeable on DVD, by the way.