s1e1 Pilot
cold open begins with a normal 1980s man going out for a run when a 1980s punk with large dyed mohawk and welding goggles starts running barefoot along side him. he’s unnerved by a man not conforming with straight-laced 1980s fashion and runs away from him into the street where he’s immediately hit by a car and killed. the punk steals the dead man’s watch and searches his body for something else but can’t find it before the police come. he gives them a fake name and runs off.
next we see cybil shepherd in a nightgown in her fabulous mansion arguing with her personal chef. her nipples must have been showing through the nightgown in this scene because they’ve been subtly blurred out in postproduction. it’s really subtle, you’d have to be staring directly at her nipples to even notice they’ve edited it. but i spotted it during the normal course of ranking every episode accurately. jerry seinfeld’s tv mom is cybil shepherd’s maid, but i don’t think we’ll see her again because we meet cybil shepherd’s character as she’s finding out her business managers robbed her or all her liquid assets and her staff is quitting. she’s a very successful businesswoman who doesn’t even recognize all the businesses she owns as her accountant explains the situation to her.
one of the businesses she owns is a private detective agency run by a man resembling bruce willis but young and with a full head of hair. or 95% full, anyway. he’s a fast-talking smooth talker and it comes naturally to him, he even smooth talks fastly to himself when he’s alone.
unfortunately for the young man with hair resembling bruce willis, cybil shepherd is there to liquidate his business, and a large amount of smooth talking in a short period of time falls on deaf ears. at the end of the day he’s let the office know and he’s left there alone.
cybil shepherd in 1985 looks almost exactly like christine taylor (ben stiller’s wife), it’s eerie.* she’s dressed up at a charity gala and the detective shows up unannounced to confidently beg her for his job back. he explains he was instructed to lose money as part of her tax avoidance scheme and did a good job at it and if the new goal was to make money he would do a good job at that too. his logic is sound, but she still isn’t convinced as the punk from the cold open is chased into the gala and killed while escaping white businessmen in suits (the REAL villains). the punk hands off the dead man’s watch to cybil shepherd before revealing he’s been stabbed in the back and is now himself dead.
bruce willis is taken to the police department and interrogated about the murdered punk. he charms the shit out of the cops and as they’re walking out of the interrogation room he’s explaining to them how to copy music albums onto blank cassette tapes and making plans with them to hang out later.
he still hasn’t warmed her icy heart when he drops her off at her front door, and they’re accosted by two white guys in business suits who hold them at gunpoint and torture them for information about the wristwatch. cybil shepherd swears she gave the watch to the police, and they eventually believe her. but when they’re alone, bruce willis reveals he switched the watches and was wearing it the whole time. now we got a story going. THIS is the story.
turns out there are NAZI DIAMONDS hidden in los angeles but don’t worry, our heroes don’t end up profiting off of them, although they did try. at the end of their adventure, david (this is bruce willis’ character’s name) still hasn’t convinced cybil shepherd (don’t remember her character name yet) to keep the detective agency open. she says she’ll think about it
*google image search results of cybill shepherd and christine taylor to prove i’m not crazy
