Okay, that’s a little too cheerful, isn’t it? Well, when God gives you lemons, pour yourself a double shot of Tequila, I always say. It’s sure as hell better than lemonade.
No, the return of Magnum, P.I. to television won’t compensate for much of anything, but the “good news” is that’s significantly less irritating than the (fortunately) inimitable original, which I furiously ridiculed in a review done for the Bright Lights Film Journal way back in 2007, “Tight Pants in Paradise: Tom Selleck Is Magnum, P.I..
I found the original Magnum—as I explain (at length) in my review—to be so mannered and artsy-fartsy as to be unwatchable, a defect I attributed to a fanatical fanbase so in love with massive boy-toy/human teddy bear Thomas Magnum (Thomas Selleck) that the usual paraphernalia of a successful TV show—plots, action, suspense—went by the boards. The writers were free to wallow in self-indulgence, and they did.
Well, out with the old, in with the new, and why not? The new Magnum has been, quite reasonably, chickified, via the retooling of über bitchy Brit major domo “Higgins” (John Hillerman), who could have given “fussy” lessons to Franklin Pangborn, with classy Brit Perdita Weeks, who has very nice legs, not to mention suitably demure breasts and buttocks—because I am totally not one of those phenomenally large breasts and tight buttocks guys.1 Not at all!
As virtually everyone who “cares” about such things has noticed, Jay Hernandez, the “new” Magnum, is, well, no Magnum. They don’t try to make him “Hispanic”, which would be going too far, I guess, but they don’t make him anything else either. He’s just a guy, not a sort of chicklit demi-god.
As for the rest of the show, well, it’s there. As Gregg Easterbrook points out, in a very intelligent takedown of TV crime shows for the Weekly Standard,2 there is virtually no crime in Hawaii, and therefore no reason, really, for Magnum’s services.3 And you could say the same thing about the show as well. Well, there’s always Gibbon.
- Perdita’s so easy on the eyes that I don’t even mind her accent. But I hope no other Brits show up. ↩︎
- Easterbrook and the Standard unfortunately bury his excellent comments near the bottom of his lengthy “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” ruminations, which I rarely read. ↩︎
- In episode 2 of the new show, Magnum thwarts a “major terrorist attack” while tracking down a stolen $500,000 blue fin tuna. (The “plans” were in the tuna, of course.) Despite any number of manufactured “plots” engineered by the FBI, 9/11 was the first and last major terrorist incident directed by a group outside the U.S. in this century, but a plot point is a plot point, goddamn it! ↩︎
