YMMV / Magnum, P.I.

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Magnum The Hero or an Anti-Hero? The show plays with both, as Magnum is benevolent, but can be quite ruthless.
  • Is Higgins a Jerk with a Heart of Gold or just a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk? He doesn't really seem to like Magnum and doesn't really try to help that much (see "Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Big Ones Too" and "Tropical Madness").
    • Higgins more slowly warmed up to Magnum. After all, he is very British and Magnum is an American Surfer Dude.
  • While he had always been coarse and insensitive, could Magnum's stepfather Frank have gotten worse out of grief over the loss of his only child?
  • Amy Crane a.k.a. Carol Foster's intentions in "Don't Say Goodbye" are noble, but her having taken over Amy's identity after reading Agatha's letters can come off as more creepy than heartwarming to some viewers, not to mention her lying to her husband Stewart about her identity for their entire marriage, though since Stewart is an abusive Jerkass, we don't feel too sorry for him.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Younger viewers may find it unbelievable that B-movie producer David Norman in "Skin Deep" would also produce highly-regarded films like the one Higgins knows his name from. Back when the episode was made, however, many film producers financed output in both camps, most notably Dino De Laurentiis. Due to the decline of the B-movie genre and rising costs in filmmaking, combined with greater studio control after the Heaven's Gate debacle, this is seldom the case today. (A notorious aversion would be Peter Jackson, whose cinematic output is notoriously all over the place.)
• Angst? What Angst?: While the main characters' war backstories are an extensive part of the series' lore, things like the deaths of Rick's sister Wendy, Magnum's younger half-brother Joey, and Higgins accidentally having killed a comrade he mistook for an intruder get little, if any mention or show any visible effect beyond their respective episodes. A notable exception is the montage showing the deaths of Lt. "Mac" MacReynolds, Dan Cook, Wendy, Diane Dupres, and Magnum's father at the beginning of "Mac's Back".
• Awesome Music: The opening theme music by Mike Post.
  • The original theme by Ian Freebairn-Smith is also pretty catchy.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Luther Gillis knocking out an old woman who was running at him in a karate demonstration? Probably unacceptable today. Higgins' resulting "Oh, my, GOD!"? Hilarious.
• Crossover Ship: Almost a canon example. The end of the Murder, She Wrote crossover teased Higgins and Jessica Fletcher, although it never went past Higgins quite obviously crushing on Jessica, to her (and Magnum's) amusement.
• Fair for Its Day: Myrt Callahan in "Double Jeopardy", who's not only a female film director in 1982 (virtually unheard of at the time)^note Some of the earliest directors and producers in film were women, but as Hollywood became more commercialized, and then the Hayes code was put in place, women were sidelined more to subordinate roles. and but this is never commented on, much less made fun of. Her only negative trait is that like William B. Knox, she's too anxious to finish filming Tahiti Kill, despite the attempts on Jack Martin's life. In Real Life, Myrt's actress Kathleen Nolan was the first female President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1975 to 1979.
• First Installment Wins: Many fans actually prefer "Limbo" to "Resolutions" as a series finale, not because of Magnum's original intended fate, but because of the bigger risks "Limbo" took in its writing and acting.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Echoes of the Mind"'s backstory for Diane and Deidre Dupres takes on a much sadder tone with Sharon Stone's reveal decades later that she and her sister had suffered sexual abuse as children.
  • In "One More Summer" Magnum interrupts a player who is methodically pounding his unhelmeted head into his locker. The player advises Magnum that he should never interrupt a player in training who's trying to concentrate. While the episode in general has a strong message about the fallacy of "playing hurt" as courageous and sporting, this head-bashing routine is barely discussed again. Today, the debilitating and often deadly effects of head injuries in football even with a helmet are well known.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In "Past Tense", Higgins explains that telling T.C. his stories after T.C. had been shot was meant to keep him from slipping into a coma. In "Under World", that's exactly what rouses T.C. out of his coma.
  • Blink and you'll miss it in "One More Summer", but T.C. is revealed to be a graduate of HBCU Grambling University. In a few episodes he wears a Grambling t-shirt. And in "A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief" he's got one for the acclaimed Black National Swimming & Diving Championships - Alabama A&M 1986 (also an HBCU). Nice. (Possibly Roger Moseley's own shirts).
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The bad guy in "Don't Say Goodbye" is played by Ted Danson, several years before he and Tom Selleck were two of those Three Men and a Baby. Unfortunately Steve Guttenberg never appeared on the show to complete the set.
  • "Holmes Is Where the Heart Is" sees Higgins (all but literally) assuming The Watson role alongside his friend David Worth (who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes). John Hillerman would later actually play Dr. Watson in the 1990 TV movie Hands of a Murderer alongside Edward Woodward as Holmes.
  • "Photo Play" has a murdered gangster character named Carlos Solis.
  • In "Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii", Judge Reinhold's character is brought a meal by Ensign Healy. What is it? Fast food chicken.
  • "The Return of Luther Gillis": "Who's Dot Matrix and what's she got to do with this?"
  • In "Under World", Higgins tells a story involving a comrade named Nigel Thornberry.
• Ho Yay: Between Rick and T.C.
• Narm: Magnum during this exchange in "Skin Deep". Try and figure out why.
  Magnum: ...David hired me to find your lover.
  Erin Wolfe: I don't have a lover!
  Magnum: David believes you do, because of all the weekends that you disappear.
  Erin Wolfe: I was here! Alone!
  Magnum: David didn't know that. He figured wherever your lover was, that's where you'd be. That's why he hired me, to find your lover. And once I led him to your lover, then he'd kill all three of us.
  • When we first see Magnum spy on dangerous mobster Serge Bergos in "Innocence... A Broad", Bergos' bald head and sunglasses make him bear an unfortunate resemblance to Paul Shaffer.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Played with in "The Big Blow" and "The Case of the Red Faced Thespian", both with famous guest casts including James Doohan, Ronald Lacey, and John McCook (the latter in both episodes!). None of their characters turn out to be the attempted killer.
  • Played straight for viewers with "Echoes of the Mind", thanks to Total Recall and Basic Instinct.
  • If you've seen For Your Eyes Only and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it'll be fairly obvious who the Big Bad in "Deja Vu" is.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Ted Danson, one year from his breakout role on Cheers, appears as Stewart Crane in "Don't Say Goodbye".
  • Danny in "Murder 101" is played by future Ace Ventura and Liar Liar director Tom Shadyac.
  • John Dullaghan (Skid Row bum and later Salvation Army officer Ray Brewer in ten episodes of Barney Miller) played spit & polish Colonel Halver in "From Moscow to Maui" around the same time.
• The Scrappy: While intentionally written to be annoying, Cassie Yates' characters in "Kiss of the Sabre" and "Photo Play" aren't well-liked by fans.
  • To a lesser extent, some fans aren't fond of Luther Gillis and Carol Baldwin for similar reasons.
  • Goldie Morris in "Old Acquaintance" is seen as a Scrappy Girl of the Week due to her Soapbox Sadie character.
  • Pamela Bates in "Novel Connection", as not only does she not tell anyone why someone's trying to kill her (after an attempt's been made, mind you), but she's an absolute Jerkass to Magnum to boot.
• Special Effect Failure: The flying bats seen in "The Treasure of Kalaniopu'u" are obviously fake.
• Tear Jerker: John Hillerman (Higgins) passed away at the age of 84 on 9 November 2017. He made it onto the Turner Classic Movies end-of-year "TCM Remembers" short film, in a brief but memorable clip from Paper Moon. He's at 03:05 if you want to see him.
  • The end of the show has a rather potent one as its Post Credits Stinger depicting Magnum watching said last episode all the way to the closing logo and turns off the TV to wish the audience 'Good Night.'
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Charlie (Manu Tupou) in "The Curse of the King Kamehameha Club", a happy, laid back Hawaiian with a healthy sense of humor, who's also shown to be a kahuna at the end. Instead of appearing in future episodes to help Magnum with his cases, he's never seen again.
  • "Tropical Madness": Brice Harcourt (Roy Dotrice), a Chessmaster who manipulated Jennifer Chapman into romancing Higgins in revenge for what she thought was Higgins' betrayal of Harcourt and her mother. A Big Bad like Harcourt who had a prior history with Higgins would have had great potential for future storylines and Character Development for Higgins. Unfortunately, it turns out that Harcourt had no history with Higgins, simply targeting him in an attempt to steal art from Robin's Nest, and was completely dishonest with Jennifer, thus reducing him to a mere Gentleman Thief.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Subverted. In "Blind Justice", Magnum discovers that the man on trial for murdering his wife is actually innocent (she had committed suicide after years of his abuse), but that he had also gotten away with a different murder years earlier. When confronted with this fact by Magnum, the wife's mother, while her reasons are totally sympathetic, staunchly defends her cover-up of the suicide to get her son-in-law on trial. What even the episode itself doesn't touch on, however, is that the person whom the husband did murder likely had a family themselves and who would be denied justice by the mother-in-law's actions, though the episode ends before the trial's verdict.
  • The show makes it very clear he was found innocent of the first murder. He would have gotten away with the murder in all cases due to double jeopardy, and that is why they frame him for the suicide.
  • Luther Gillis, while a dedicated, legendary St. Louis private eye, is also a serious flake who abandoned his wife and kids, abandoned his loyal secretary-turned-fiancee at the altar, and even forgot his own son's name. And that's not even getting into his other traits that draw much of Magnum's ire.
  • While he had spent decades making an effort to lead a good, honest life, Theo Wolf in "Way of the Stalking Horse" still carried out a hit in Miami thirty years prior with no consequences until Driscoll got to him.
• Values Dissonance: Even though it was an homage to the original Sherlock Holmes stories, there is no way in hell Patrick MacNee in yellowface disguise would fly on television today.
  • Ivan calling T.C. by the "N" word in flashbacks was controversial even for the 1980s, but it certainly won't be said on U.S. network television now. Since, like the Edwin example below, it's completely realistic and appropriate for such an evil man, they'd find a way to let you know that's what Ivan said without actually saying it.
  • Edwin Clutterbuck in "Black on White" casually uses the "W" word to refer to Kenyans, and while done intentionally to highlight his racism and Smug Snake character, such usage could never happen today. Unsurprisingly, his uses of the word have often been edited out of UK airings.
  • "Tropical Madness" and "Smaller Than Life" use the word "midget" a lot more than would be deemed acceptable today. Magnum admits he doesn't know whether the man is a midget or a dwarf, and in any case by the 1980s "little person" was the polite term, whether you knew or not.
  • "Jororo Farewell": Even though it was for Danny Linn escaping the kidnapper's plane without telling him, the last scene of Magnum preparing to spank him would be seen as incredibly harsh today.
  • In "Skin Deep", Magnum says that women don't shoot themselves — specifically, he says they don't blow their heads off with a shotgun, especially if they're beautiful — hence his suspicions concerning Erin Wolfe's supposed suicide. While suicides by gun among women are still uncommon, the deaths of Shauna Grant, Mary Kay Bergman and others have made Magnum's words ring quite hollow today.
  • Higgins in "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime" stages a production of The Mikado with a traditionally all-white cast, which goes on with no problem^note  (save for an unrelated assassination attempt on his friend Sir Cedric). Nowadays, he wouldn't be able to do so without public outcry (the objections in that article were actually pretty reasonable). They could show some Asian actors in the cast and include a line explaining that they just chose whoever was best for the role.
  • "Luther Gillis: File #521": Good luck seeing an old woman being punched out cold for comedy on TV today.
  • Magnum, Rick, and T.C. calling Lady Ashley a "dog" from her photo in "Computer Date" comes off as cringingly sexist now, besides being untrue: she has a sweet face and delicate features, just a somewhat severe hairstyle and glasses. The elderly actress playing older Penelope also has a pleasant appearance.
  • With TV shows having gotten far more comfortable with allowing their heroes to be less than incorruptible white hats, it's downright bizarre seeing Magnum executing the despicable villain of "Did You See the Sunrise?" in the middle of his gloating about diplomatic immunity presented as some kind of shocking quasi-Moral Event Horizon.
  • "Squeeze Play": Taphie the Buzzette's line "Five years of high school, right down the drain.", clearly making her a Dumb Blonde, can go over the heads of many non-American viewers, such as in Canada, where many high schools do cover five years^note  (grades 8 to 12) if the area has no middle/junior high schools.
  • As garbage disposal units are far less common outside the U.S., Rick's mention of them in "Of Sound Mind" can come off as even more outlandish, adding to Magnum's disbelief in having to look out for them.
• Values Resonance: Any time a female character is said to have an unusual lifestyle or arrangement (sexually or not), Magnum never judges them negatively for it. Considering this series literally aired in the Reagan-era Eighties, this aspect has aged quite well.

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