"Oh my God!" - Jonathan Higgins (John Hillerman) expressing his dismay
Magnum, P.I.: The Complete Third Season DVD Review
By Jude Clement
It seems as if most TV private investigators ply their trade in the seedy back alleys of dank, dark metropolitan areas, but when Vietnam vet Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) retired from the Navy, he decided to become a P.I. in his adopted home of sunny Hawaii. He secured a cushy job testing the defenses of Robin's Nest, the palatial estate owned by author Robin Masters. Masters is always off globetrotting, leaving the estate in the hands of uptight Brit Jonathan Higgins (John Hillerman). Magnum doesn't get paid for the Masters job. Instead, he is allowed to live in the guest house rent free and is given use of Robin's red Ferrari. Higgins resents this arrangement and delights in siccing his "lads" - Dobermans Zeus and Apollo - on an unsuspecting Magnum. To support himself, Magnum also takes on other cases, often with the help of fellow vets T.C. (Roger E. Mosley), the owner of Island Hoppers helicopter tours, and Rick (Larry Manetti), co-owner of the swanky King Kamehameha Club. Let other detectives run around dirty cities wearing trench coats. Magnum is perfect happy solving crimes between games of beach volleyball while wearing the shortest shorts imaginable.
Magnum, P.I. admirably allows its secondary characters to shine, sometimes at the expense of its star. In "Past Tense," T.C. and Higgins are taken hostage when the Island Hoppers helicopter is hijacked by criminals on the lam. Mosley and Hillerman are funny and compelling as they snipe at each other while simultaneously struggling to stay alive. Mosley delivers a powerful performance in "Did You See the Sunrise?," an episode that riffs on The Manchurian Candidate. Hillerman shows his range by playing both Higgins and his half-brother - a tippling Irish priest - in "Faith and Begorrah." Excellent makeup renders the actor virtually unrecognizable, but it is Hillerman's performance that makes the character so memorable.
The third season contains a number of standout episodes. When a rich practical joker dies, he leaves his fortune to Magnum. Is Thomas a millionaire, or is the joke on him ("Of Sound Mind")? Magnum and T.C. coach peewee basketball in an episode that plays like a winning combination of The Bad News Bears, The Harlem Globetrotters, and Paper Moon ("Basket Case"). An ex-boxing champ who now earns a living as a wrestler asks Magnum to help him find his long-lost son, but Magnum fears that he isn't being told the entire story ("Mr. White Death"). Magnum goes undercover as a newlywed while operating a sting ("I Do?"). He teams up with an inept female policewoman to crack a murder case involving the death of his volleyball partner ("Legacy from a Friend"). In an episode that echoes Key Largo, Magnum and several of Robin Masters' houseguests are trapped in Robin's Nest with several escaped criminals during a massive hurricane ("The Big Blow").
Jameson Parker and Gerald McRaney appear in "Ki'ls Don't Lie" as A.J. and Rick Simon, the P.I. characters they played on Simon & Simon. The duo is out to retrieve a cursed idol.the same idol Magnum has been hired to protect. Originally, this was a two-part episode that continued on Simon & Simon in an episode titled "Emeralds Are Not a Girl's Best Friend." The episode included here, however, features an alternate ending that wraps up the storyline in one hour. Presumably, this ending was filmed for Magnum's syndication run. Oddly enough, both the original version of "Ki'ls Don't Lie" and the Simon & Simon episode were included as bonus episodes in Magnum, P.I.: The Complete First Season. (One could argue that rather than being a liability, this allows fans to own both versions of "Ki'ls Don't Lie.")
In the groundbreaking "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" episode of Moonlighting, the main characters imagine themselves as part of a famous 1940s murder mystery. As it turns out, this episode wasn't so groundbreaking after all - Magnum's "Flashback" did the exact same thing several years earlier. Hired to clear the name of a man convicted of murder years ago, Magnum finds himself trapped in 1936, the year of the crime. Stylish and humorous, this episode shouldn't be missed.
With its likeable performances and its pleasing mix of humor and adventure, Magnum, P.I. often proves to be irresistible. Selleck is charming, and viewers can have fun guessing exactly how short his pants will be in each scene. Hillerman, who played the heavy in shows like Hart to Hart, plays Higgins with just the right amount of bluster. Mosley and Manetti are the perfect Mutt and Jeff team.
The series also gets stronger with each successive season. The inferior orchestral theme song from season one has been replaced with the more familiar, rock-driven theme. Running gags (like the lads chasing Magnum) are used sparingly. Best of all, there are fewer instances where Magnum acknowledges the home audience by giving the camera knowing looks, a technique that just doesn't mesh with the show's overall tone.
Guest stars in season three include Jeff MacKay (Black Sheep Squadron), Jean Bruce Scott (Days of Our Lives), Lance LeGault (The A-Team), Paul Burke (Naked City), Bo Svenson (Walking Tall), James Whitmore Jr. (Black Sheep Squadron), Morgan Fairchild (Flamingo Road), Dick Durock (Swamp Thing), Ian McShane (Deadwood), Lynne Moody (That's My Mama), Paxton Whitehead (Marblehead Manor), Nicholas Hammond (Spiderman), Ernest Borgnine (Airwolf), Henry Gibson (Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), Kim Richards (Hello, Larry), Kathleen Lloyd (Equal Justice), Marcia Strassman (Welcome Back, Kotter), Elaine Joyce (Mr. Merlin), Roscoe Lee Brown, Mako, William Schallert (The Patty Duke Show), Dana Hill (National Lampoon's Vacation), Sylvia Sydney (Ryan's Hope), Keye Luke (Kung Fu), Annie Potts (Designing Women), Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Joanna Kerns (Growing Pains), Stuart Margolin (The Rockford Files), James Doohan (Star Trek), John McCook (The Bold and the Beautiful), and Barry Van Dyke (Airwolf).
The twenty-two episodes that make up the third season are divided onto three double-sided discs. The discs are housed in three slim, clear keepcases. The front covers feature a large photo of Tom Selleck along with smaller composite photos of the remaining cast. The back covers include episode titles and plot synopses. The double-sided coversheets show through to the insides of the cases, but the interiors are undecorated. The three keepcases slide into a cardboard sleeve which features the same images found on the keepcases.
The menus are easy to navigate. From the full motion main menu, viewers can play all of the disc's episodes, visit the episode index, or navigate to the languages menu. The episode index menus contain stills from the episodes along with the episode titles. Upon choosing an individual episode, viewers are taken to a screen that includes an episode summary and the original airdate. The entire episode can be played, or viewers may jump to a specific scene.
