Billy Joel: “Big Man On Mulberry Street” (Amazon Advent Calendar Day 4)

Billy Joel: "Big Man On Mulberry Street" (Amazon Advent Calendar Day 4)

Big Man On Mulberry Street

Billy Joel

The Bridge

Genre: Pop

Oh, why the hell not: I'm going to link today's song to yesterday's song, thematically. But don't expect me to make a habit out of this.

As with Kate Capshaw's performance of "Anything Goes," which kicked off "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom," "Big Man On Mulberry Street" is a flashy, classic MGM-style musical number that showed up someplace where you wouldn't have expected it: an episode of "Moonlighting."

If, at any point during this show's original late-1980′s run, you were still struggling to transform gills into lungs and thus aren't familiar with the series, here's a quick primer. David Addison and Maddie Hayes are partners in a Los Angeles private detective agency. They initially hate each other, but soon realize that their just diverting their deep-seated mutual attraction into an emotion that each one knew how to deal with. The rest of the series played out as an endless game of "will they or won't they?"

Meanwhile, Bruce Willis and Cybill Shephard are actors on a hit primetime dramedy. They initially get along with each other, but soon realize that one is an up-and-coming action movie star who resents being forced to delay the next step in his career and the other is a past-her-prime movie actress who was assured that the whole show would be built around her character and that she wouldn't have to share the spotlight, and resents the fact that the TV show her agent talked her into launched her unknown co-star's film career instead of restarting her own. The rest of the series played out as an endless game of "When will their passive-aggressive hostility towards each other and the show cause the series to self-destruct?"

(Answer: barely five seasons…and even then, things got so out of hand that two minor second-banana characters had to be promoted to co-leads just to cover for the stars' absences.)

This clip comes from a Season Three episode. David has returned to his New York hometown for his brother's funeral. Maddie has learned that David was briefly married during his bartending days, and imagines what that relationship had been like.

"Anything Goes" was staged as a 1930′s MGM Busby Berkeley-style musical number. "Big Man On Mulberry Street" is a dead ringer for a 1950′s MGM Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen-style musical number. And for a good reason: like a 1950′s MGM Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen musical number, it was directed and cho...