Magnum Revisited

 Season 3, Episode #8 features Higgins taking center stage for the first time since Season 2, Episode 7's "Tropical Madness". Both episodes featured Higgins trying to protect women he was infatuated with, but at least with "Foiled Again", Higgins plays the fool for a woman his own age.  The episode starts off with a flashback to a British boarding school where a young Jonathan Higgins is being bullied by a classmate named Willy. Back to the present day and we find out that the same bully is in Hawaii to check on a mill that he owns which is run by his son. While in town, Willy signed up for the club's fencing tournament. He will be facing off against Higgins in the first match, much like they did back in England as tweens. Furthermore, we also find out that Willy had married Jonathan's onetime love interest, Velma, portrayed by Dana Wynter(who was last on Magnum only eleven episodes prior as the Murdering actress in "Double Jeopardy").  When th...

It's official, Magnum has the gift of "sight"! No, not that sight, we knew his eyes worked, but in Episode 7 of Season 3, "Flashback", Magnum confirms what we suspected in Season 2's "Memories are Forever" when Magnum dreams of a scenario, it plays out in real life. I never realized this when I was a kid watching this for the first time, but this show is getting spooky.  In any case, what am I talking about? Well, the episode starts, like many, with Magnum sleeping off a hangover in bed. But when the phone rings to wake him up, we see that it is an old timey phone and Rick is talking funny. Magnum gets up to find that the guest house is decorated in depression-era furniture and artwork. Also, Magnum's Hawaiian shirts and short-shorts have been replaced with boxer shorts and fancy white suits. After greeting Higgins and heading off to the club in an old car to meet a client(per Rick's phone call), Magnum realizes that he is not the subject o...

  Onto season 3's sixth episode, and the convoluted plots roll on. "Black on White" starts out in London where a dapper caricature of a British businessman meets a woman on the street, originally from Kenya. The clouds clear suddenly and a full moon is exposed. The man gets freaked out and hurries away, sweating profusely. He is being followed by someone(maybe the woman he just met), and a spear almost hits him. (By the way, it should be noted that this dapper British gentleman is being portrayed by Ian McShane, who we last saw in Season 1, Episode 6 playing a murderous Russ Meyer type filmmaker.) Anywho, on to Hawaii, where we find Magnum in his guest quarters when Higgins bursts in to complain about some loud music Magnum was playing. Uh Oh, Higgins just broke a quarantine. Magnum had been exposed to the African Hemorrhagic Fever and now Higgins would be forced to quarantine with Thomas for seven days. It sounds like a fun Odd Couple sitcom set-up.  But the plot soon ta...

 Onto episode #5 of the third season, "The Past Tense", where the convoluted plots roll on for the second week in a row. This is also the TC/Higgins episode where they get to spend a lot of quality time together. Apparently, a gun runner criminal, Morgen Lydon, who Magnum helped get locked up  three years ago while Magnum was still with Naval Intelligence, decides he wants to exact vengeance on his nemesis. So, does he hire a hitman to kill Magnum using some underground network from prison? No. Does he try to escape, get to a hiding spot and then think of a plan to get revenge? No. What he does do is use his underground connections to hire two goons from Honolulu to hijack TC's helicopter and land it in the prison yard at the precise hour of the day that he will be in the yard. He also coordinates with the other prisoners to start a dumpster fire at the exact same time for enough of a distraction. He will then fly to a remote island where he will await Magnum to come and ...

  Magnum 3:4 "The Eighth Part of the Village" starts out with Magnum mowing the expansive lawn of Robin's Nest with a manual lawnmower. When Higgins questions Magnum's motives, Thomas explains that last week he was working a divorce case and the husband and wife each started shooting at each other with him right inbetween them. Miraculously, Magnum was not hit by any bullets at all. He should have been dead. Thomas attributes this not to luck, but to some sort of karma or mystical force. Because of this, Magnum has decided that he needs to change his ways and pay back his debts, starting with his friends. This sounds a lot like Julius' motive to change his ways after nearly getting shot in Pulp Fiction...Hmm, maybe a young Quentin Tarantino was watching this episode in the Fall of '82... Anyway onto the real plot. As part of Thomas making amends, he decides to do a favor and pick up a heavy crate from the docks for Higgins. Higgins thinks it is a lot of book...

  Magnum 3:3 "Ki'i's Don't Lie" is a crossover episode with Simon & Simon. The Simons were hired by a Beverly Hills antique dealer who sends them to Hawaii to track down a "Ki'i" which is a Hawaiian relic cursed by the poison god(you know the trope). Apparently, this dealer was conned out of this expensive artifact by a woman. After losing it, he started to get sick, an effect of the curse of the Poison God. He needed to get it back to return it to the volcano in Molokai to break the curse. The woman who stole the Ki'i, played by Morgan Fairchild, came to Hawaii with the relic and, with Higgins help, set up an auction for the religious artifact and other Hawaiian cultural items. Right before the auction, Simon and Simon were able to sneak into the estate posing as a pest control guy and a surfer dude. They manage to steal the Ki'i back and return it to their client at the hotel. As soon as the client puts the Ki'i in his hands, he d...

  Magnum's 3rd Season kicked off with a jam packed two-hour season premiere that would end up being one of the signature episodes of the series. The Set Up: Magnum is watching Stalag 17 on VHS and flashes back to Vietnam to a period in 1972 when he and TC were captured by the Viet Cong and held prisoner in hot boxes for three months. In that time, there were a couple of other prisoners taken and housed in similar cages near them. They were routinely tortured by a Russian agent named Ivan. Ivan is shown shooting one of the prisoners to death and routinely calling T.C. the "n" word(which is a shock to hear on a network tv show). After awhile, T.C., Magnum, and another G.I. prisoner, Sebastien Nuzo, escape through the jungle. (Nuzo looks a lot like "Billy Bob" from the season #2 premiere...) Fast forward to present day(1982), and Nuzo shows up in Oahu to visit T.C. He tells T.C. that he was on lunch break from his post office job back on the mainland and saw Iv...

  Episode #22 of Magnum's 2nd season, "Three Minus Two" is a rather pedestrian season finale. The Set-Up: Magnum is hired by a bikini designer(played by Jill St. John) after one of her two business partners, Alan, is shot dead during a swimsuit fashion show. Apparently, the three owners of this fashion business set up the partnership with the survivors getting full ownership; potentially incentivizing them to murder each other... In order to get closer to the the other owner, Bart, and his cronies, Magnum and T.C. pose as bikini photographers. During their "investigation", though, the other owner Bart is blown to pieces with a car bomb. Aha! Jill St. John must be the murderer! Maybe not. Magnum and T.C. hop the fence of the police impound lot the day after the car bomb and do their own investigation on the car. They determine that the bomb was a claymore mine. A few phone calls from Rick and they determine that the first murdered partner Alan's wife has ...

  Episode #21 of Magnum's 2nd season, "The Elmo Ziller Story", must have been fun to film, but it sure was difficult to watch... The Set-Up: The first scene shows us a pick up truck driving through the Texas desert and a couple of cowboys shoot at it with a rifle causing the truck to crash. The cowboys then go down to the wreckage where the driver is slumped in the seat. They stuff a rag in the gas tank, light it up and ride away on their horses. A short while later the truck explodes. Now, we jump back to Hawaii. Magnum is returning to the guest house to find a short man with a long mustache playing a song on the acoustic guitar. It doesn't take long for Magnum to realize that he looks just like Higgins. The man, though, claims to be Higgins' illegitimate half brother from Texas, (you guessed it) Elmo Ziller. John Hillerman, who plays Higgins, was actually from Texas and must have loved this silly double role. Elmo is here to hire Magnum to protect him becaus...

  For season #2, episode #20, "The Last Page", Magnum is hired by a fellow Vietnam vet to find his missing girlfriend. The Set Up: Magnum goes to meet a fellow Vietnam vet(whom he doesn't know) at a cemetery. This guy, Taylor, was paying respects to a friend who died in front of him stepping on a mine in Vietnam back in 1971. Unrelated to that, Taylor says he was dating this girl back on the mainland and she came to Hawaii three weeks ago, but he has not heard back from her. He wants Magnum to find her so that he can get an answer as to whether their relationship is truly over. Seems simple enough, another missing persons case. This leads Magnum to track her down through a friend who worked at a strip club. Magnum finds out she is dating a new-to-town crime boss. When he gets too close, Magnum gets his arm nearly broken and told to stay away. He soon finds out, though, that this girl doesn't even know Taylor. It appears as though Magnum has been lied to, again, ...

  Season #2's Episode #19, "Double Jeopardy" finds Thomas subbing in as a stunt double in a film being made at Robin's Nest. The Set Up: Magnum returns from a two-week case in Bakersfield, CA to find that Robin Masters has agreed to have a movie filmed(in part) at Robin's Nest. The movie is starring the husband and wife acting duo of Jack Martin and Olivia Ross. Jack's stunt double was hurt, so Magnum is asked to step in. He agrees, only because he has long had a crush on Olivia. During the filming of one scene, Olivia's character shoots Jack's character. Only, after the shots are fired and Jack collapses, we realize that Olivia was using a real gun. Jack is rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Lieutenant Tanaka and the Honolulu P.D. investigate while Olivia is at her husband's side in the hospital. In the meantime, Magnum has to film some scenes fighting with the movie's bad guys, the karate fighting (prepare to put your head in...

  Episode #18 of Season #2, "Texas Lightning" finds Magnum stuck on a desert island. I'm surprised it took this long. The Set Up: Magnum is hired to be a bodyguard for a Texas widow poker player, Jeannie Lowry, as she is going to a high stakes game at sea on the yacht of a rich businessman. Magnum will pull 10% of her winnings at the end of the night. Great deal? Not so much. At one point, during the game, Jeannie goes to the bathroom, but really sneaks into the businessman's quarters and takes something from his safe. At the end of the game, she has won $300K, but when they go to cash out, they realize that something was missing from the safe. A fistfight ensues. Magnum is able to knock out one deck hand, punch another, and force the businessman into a locked closet before he and Jeannie escape on a lifeboat. However, they are fifty miles out to sea and cannot make their way back to Oahu. They end up landing on a deserted island. In the meantime, the businessman ...

  Episode #17 of the second season, "One More Summer" features a 36-year old Magnum reliving a bit of his glory days from when he was quarterback for Navy's football team in the 60's. The Set-Up: The "Blazers" pro football team is having their training camp in Hawaii. The team's star quarterback Dorsey, at the tail end of his career, was Magnum's understudy at Navy, being three years younger than Thomas. Before training camp begins, someone takes a shot a him during a party. Dorsey hires Magnum to be his bodyguard and to get to the bottom of the shooting. In order to properly investigate the case, Magnum needs to go undercover as a walk-on, trying to make the team. T.C., former tight end at Grambling, is also a walk-on, but he just wants to play ball. Magnum and T.C. get to put on the pads and throw the pigskin around, featuring some humorous takes of Magnum getting tackled and knocked senseless by the pro football regulars. Eventually, the sho...

  Episode #16 of season #2 finds Magnum outside of Hawaii for the first time(not counting Vietnam flashbacks). As a favor to Robin Masters, Magnum agreed to go to Sicily(by himself) to rescue to the adult daughter of one of Robin's friends who was now a mistress of a Sicilian mob boss. Most people would just move out of the guest house and tell Robin "no thanks". But not Magnum. He successfully extracts the woman(played by Ann Dusenberry of Jaws II fame). He has to sleeper hold one mobster, jump on another to knock them out, and stuffs a cook into a trunk, but our hero gets the job done and brings the mistress back to Hawaii. This is just the beginning of the drama though. Apparently, Magnum has been dating an acting teacher(played by Mimi Rogers). Magnum's trip to Sicily made him miss a date. She shows up at the estate and Magnum explains what happened. Of course, now is the time that the rescued woman shows up in her pajamas with breakfast as she now has develope...