Season 2, Episode 18: Texas Lightning

 


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 reports to the Coast Guard that Magnum and Jeannie left in a lifeboat at the end of the game and were very drunk. He then paid someone to deposit a wrecked life boat a 100 miles north of the area. This is all to steer the Coast Guard away from Magnum's likely location. Word gets back to Higgins, T.C., and Rick that Magnum has likely been lost at sea. They get drunk.

On the island, Magnum finally questions Jeannie about why she took something from the safe. She says that she was a government agent, and not really there to play poker. Apparently, the businessman had microchipped information on stealth technology that he was planning to sell to the Chinese. Jeannie was able to get it back. Now they must survive with the businessman and his cronies seeking to find them. It gets dark, though, and Magnum and Jeannie hook up on the beach.

By the next morning, Higgins convinced T.C. to fly his chopper around the area in case Magnum could still be alive. At the same time, the businessman and his henchmen are in another helicopter, bearing down on the deserted island. Magnum sees T.C.'s chopper and starts to light a signal fire. Jeannie points a flare gun at Magnum to stop him. Why? Because she was a government agent for MOTHER RUSSIA! She was stealing the stealth technology for her comrades. Magnum lights the fire anyways, figuring she won't shoot him. She doesn't. T.C. lands and picks them up, just as the businessman's helicopter is upon them. Shots are fired and Jeannie takes one in the leg. There is now a helicopter chase. Soon T.C. outmaneuvers the other chopper and Magnum fires a flare at their whirlybird, blowing it up and killing all three on board.



Once back onshore, Magnum takes back the stolen stealth info on the microchip from Jeannie's purse, but decides not to report her as a Russian spy. What a softie!


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