As far as I know, most Moonlighting fans didn't like season 4 and downright HATE season 5.
I don't belong to that group.
To me, the charm of this show was mostly Bruce Willis's David Addison and Curtis Armstrong as Herbert "Bert" Viola. Probably because Mr. Armstrong is such a nice and sweet person in real life and Bruce at least used to be back then.
I was never such a huge fan of Cybill Shepherd. Similar to Amanda Bearse on "MWC", you could tell SHE was the problem of the stars.
For me, the less Maddie we get, the better. It's honestly tiring and exhausting to see anyone want David to end up with a woman who actually does not want to be happy.
She complains that she lost Sam, the man she was supposed to end up with. But she didn't lose him over David per se, she lost him because as usual, she needed "time to think".
Maddie ALWAYS demands time to think when she actually wants to say no. Sam, who knows her well must have realized, so he was smart enough to leave. David came close in "I am curious, Maddie", but ultimately fell for her (his speech that he realizes why she is still single at 36 and that she is the problem).
Maddie also says she can't be spontaneous, she ALWAYS has to think about things.
Yet she could spontaneously go to Argentina or spontaneously leave David hanging and go to Chicago. Or leave her own company out to dry.
This shows us that Maddie is actually kind of selfish. The world has to be the way SHE wants it to be and if she doesn't get her will, she is angry. There's a lot of examples of hipocrisy throughout the show and season 4 shows them all (although they existed before).
I like that Maddie's dad calls her out on this. Ultimately, HE is the man she basically wants. Someone just like her dad, although she clearly doesn't want who he really is (shown by her inacceptance to accept his cheating), she just likes the idea of him.
I think it's the same problem with David or Sam. Maddie likes that guys want her, but she doesn't actually want to settle down, because then that attention would dry up.
So yeah, for me, it's much nicer to see some actual cases and the sweet Curtis Armstrong growing into his role as detective than more of the same dance we have seen for 3 seasons. Because by now, anyone should already know that David and Maddie shouldn't be together.
Maddie needs some kind of therapy first or some consequences for her actions before she can understand what she really wants (and more importantly, still deserves). And David also needs to step back and ask himself why he keeps chasing a woman he doesn't have much in common with when he met much more suitable women along the way and why he has such anger issues (shown well in this episode with the BMW).
I ultimately give this episode a solid 8/10 because I really liked the guy time with David and Bert, the case and Maddie in smaller doses worked better for me.