Maybe I was easy to please as a child, but I really liked S3 and S4, and didn't have a problem with them being together (I was 8 when the show ended). Actually, when the show was rerun, I was always impatient to get to the part where they get together! <g>
I'll agree that some S4 episodes weren't as good as earlier ones, but I think that has more to do with the silly plots than the relationship. Aside from that one episode where they had a fight, this show was too wholesome to show what struggles a relationship really includes (that things aren't magically awesome after you say "I do"), so since the relationship stuff was filed under "happily ever after" they had to come up with SOMETHING to write about... which was apparently sewer dwellers who thought they were the spawn of Lex Luthor... It didn't have to be that way -
House, for instance finally got the two romantic leads together but there is still a lot to explore for both of them - the relationship is definitely not getting boring to watch. (Although maybe in the case of L&C is did have to be that way, because the wholesomeness is what I loved about it. It is a superhero, good-conquers-all story, after all.)
I don't buy into the Moonlighting curse because that's never turned me off a show, personally. What
is rapidly starting to annoy me about certain shows is the will-they-won't-they thing. There's only so long you can stretch it out for til the viewers can't take it anymore, haha. XD (I have to mention that the X-Files is an exception, because I LOVE that show - not getting the partners together til S7 and only hinting that it was happening offscreen - but I also watched it within a few weeks rather than over the course of its original run, so I couldn't say how it would have felt then. But also they weren't intended to be a potentially romantic couple at first.)
And definitely yes, a very early engagement.
Julie
