Any Sparks Left?

At first, the clever conundrum on “Moonlighting” was: Will they or won’t they? As in Do It, Get It On or, as David Addison used to say to Maddie Hayes, “Boink.”

Now, the consummate question is: Can they or can’t they?

As in whether the Blue Moon detectives can rekindle their romance with viewers and keep the TV series alive in the Nielsen ratings this season. And do it without the services of the show’s creator, executive producer and heart, mind and soul, Glenn Gordon Caron.

Consider, for a moment, the situation after last season’s debacle (including one misguided plot twist in which a very-pregnant Maddie married some wimpy stranger she met on a train instead of David.)

Critics who just two years ago were praising “Moonlighting’s” spirited spunk seemed ready to pull the plug on its life-support system because of too incredulous a story line and too many repeats of repeats. Even ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard feared “Moonlighting” had lost its pulse and reportedly considered canceling it.

Add in the complications of Cybill Shepherd’s twins, Bruce Willis’ overexposed career and tabloid headlines about everyone’s off-screen shenanigans--”Glenn Hates Cybill,” “Cybill Hates Glenn,” “Bruce Hates Cybill,” “Cybill Hates Bruce,” “Is Farrah Far Behind?”--and suddenly that idiotic dream device used by “Dallas” to wipe out a bad year starts looking smarter and smarter.

No, nothing like that is planned in tonight’s season-opening episode (9 p.m., Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), co-written by Caron and chief writer Charles Eglee, though it does finally resolve Maddie’s pregnancy once and for all. (Eglee jokes that there was talk of “sending the Blue Moon baby over to ‘Hooperman.’ ”)

But it’s not enough that “Moonlighting” is proceeding on budget and on schedule so far this season (16 or 17 new episodes are planned). Or that the stars are getting along swimmingly: “We are having a wonderful time on the set,” Shepherd reports. “Everything seems to be going very well.”

Producers know that to win back viewers and critics alike they must return to the comedic formula--and away from last season’s emotional black hole--that made the series a hit in the first place.

“We want the show to be fun again,” says Jay Daniel, Caron’s co-executive producer who took over full stewardship this season. “From show No. 2 forward, we’re really back to David and Maddie dealing with cases again and dealing with each other in a little more light-hearted way than they were able to with the baby and everything else.”

The only problem is that “Moonlighting” has never been a formula show. And that distinction points up the creative dilemma in which TV’s innovators often find themselves: How to take risks on a popular show without risking alienating that show’s loyal following.

“It’s a tightrope. There’s no question about it,” Daniels says.

“An audience likes to feel comfortable with a show, and along with the comfort sometimes comes predictability, and along with predictability ultimately comes boredom. So we’ve always taken surprise over comfort. But at times it’s made our audience very un comfortable.”

Creative consultant Roger Director, formerly the show’s chief writer, agrees that “people seem to have this conception that last year was a huge head-on collision where we messed up. But I see it as a laudable achievement given the fact that we had to build a whole story line around some very physical realities because of Cybill’s pregnancy.

“Plus, Glenn’s credo was that if you’re not getting the characters in trouble, then you’re not doing an interesting show.”

What Caron didn’t bargain for, it seems, was that he would get himself in trouble as well.

According to the official version, Caron voluntarily left the show last spring to pursue full time his fledgling career as a feature film director (“Clean and Sober”). But other sources say Caron was pushed out by the network because of all the turmoil.

Both Caron and ABC refused comment on the circumstances surrounding his departure. But sources say a long-brewing conflict between Caron and Shepherd, who returned to the show last January after her twins were born three months earlier, reached such a crescendo that the entire spring shooting schedule was jeopardized.

According to one calculation, the actress was working only 2 1/2 hours a day and costing the production $8 million in delays. “First, there were creative differences about her character,” says one source. “Then there was the frustration of not being able to get her out of her trailer.”

Shepherd denies this account, maintaining that when she returned from maternity leave, she worked a full day, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The 2 1/2-hour figure is inaccurate, she says, because it does not account for makeup, hair, lighting and set changes. The only time she was in her trailer, she says, was when she was nursing.

Nonetheless, sources say the problems escalated to the point that ABC’s Stoddard threatened to cancel “Moonlighting” altogether unless the producers could tell him where they were going with the show both in terms of budget and content.

Caron will only say that “I take full responsibility” for last season’s plot derailments, including the notion that Maddie would get pregnant without knowing who the father was and the decision to place her in a quickie marriage.

Angry letters and phone calls poured into ABC as soon as Shepherd and Dennis Dugan (playing Walter Bishop) tied the knot on screen. People magazine even suggested that Dugan may have been TV’s “most hated hubby” ever.

“If all those people tell you something is terrible, it’s probably terrible,” Caron sighs. “But I still think the chemistry between Cybill and Dennis was fascinating. And we saw a side of Maddie that hadn’t been revealed before.”

In fact, several writers on the show opposed the idea. “I resisted because it was terribly out of left field,” one explained. “We hadn’t been preparing the audience for that kind of thing. But, in the end, Glenn was the boss.”

In spite of all the complaints, “Moonlighting’s” numbers didn’t slide dramatically. After ending the 1986-1987 season in ninth place with an average audience of about 19.5 million households a week, the series only dropped to 12th last season with about 16.2 million homes a week.

More devastating was the sudden critical assault. After making the cover of Newsweek within a year of its mid-season debut, “Moonlighting” found itself standing in the shadows while “thirtysomething” basked in the limelight as the media’s darling of the moment.

“The frustrating thing is that, like cultural figures and political candidates, we build them up and inevitably take them apart piece by piece,” Eglee complains. “It didn’t matter what we were going to do. Because we were getting so much adulation and praise, somebody had to write the newspaper story that the bloom is off the rose over at ‘Moonlighting.’ ”

This season, because of budget constraints, there won’t be any attention-grabbing, dollar-gobbling episodes like the full-costumed Shakespearean remake or the Stanley Donen-directed musical number. But Daniels notes that episode No. 2 features a hot-air balloon chase “which I think is going to be fun,” and that plans are under way for a scaled-down show that pays homage to ‘50s-style horror movies tentatively titled “Attack of the 50-Foot Maddie.”

As for that on-again-off-again 3-D episode that had to be scrapped last season because of the writers’ strike, “it’s still a possibility,” he says.

Of course, that episode was the brainchild of Caron, who’s now described as an “unofficial adviser” to the series. Still, he is in almost daily contact with his pal Daniels and routinely talks with Eglee, Director and others. “It’s not like I went to another country,” Caron said, laughing.

“Anytime you’re without the services of an amazingly talented man like Glenn, it’s unfortunate. And, sure, that’s a concern,” Director acknowledges. “And the challenge for all the creative people involved here will be to continue doing all the same magic that the show did when Glenn was the guy in the Oval Office.”

Caron used to rewrite or touch up virtually every script on the series (and pen most of that snappy, snappish repartee for Maddie and David), but he maintains that “my contribution to the show has been overstated. The show is infinitely bigger than me.”

Both Willis and Shepherd have another year left on their contract after this, and ABC executives publicly say they hope to get at least another season out of “Moonlighting.”

Caron predicts the show “can last as long as the creative people at its center care. If they begin to lose interest, then the show can’t last.”