Season 3, Episode 4: The Eighth Part of the Village

 

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 books for some donation, but when Magnum gets there, he finds a Japanese woman in the crate. Just as this discovery is made, a couple of goons show up and start to fight Magnum. Magnum takes a punch, but delivers a couple more and manages to escape with the woman.

Once back at Robin's Nest, it is discovered that this woman was the daughter of an old friend of Higgins from Japan whom he met during World War II. (On a side note, it occurs to me that this episode was filmed closer to WWII than to the present day). In any case, the daughter tells Higgins and Magnum that her father was upset that she had married a Westerner and was keeping her captive on his estate in Japan. The father was a rich pearl farmer and wanted to keep his daughter close at all costs. Nonetheless, she escaped on a freighter to Hawaii, where her husband was waiting.

Magnum tries to find the husband before the goons hired by the woman's father find him. He doesn't have any luck at first. While chasing down a lead, a couple of other guys break into the estate and kidnap the daughter, leaving Higgins with a bruised forehead and a slight concussion. Higgins had to call his friend who was now flying in from Japan.

Eventually, Magnum tracks the husband down at the Honolulu Zoo. He discovers that he is there with his wife(the daughter of Higgins' friend). Then who was the original woman in the crate? It was her sister. She knew that her estranged sister lived in Hawaii and staged the trip in the crate and her eventual kidnapping in order to lure her isolationist father to Hawaii. There she could kill him and inherit his business. Seems like an evil, yet convoluted plan. In any case, just as she is about to have her assassins kill her father and Higgins, Magnum and T.C. show up in the helicopter. Magnum shoots and kills two assassins from the chopper. Case closed.