Being a private investigator

[SignGuyHPW]

Throughout the entire run of Magnum P.I. people seemed to look down on the private investigator profession. Higgins, in particular, would mock it and refer to Magnum's "tawdry divorce cases" as if all a p.i. would do is follow spouces to catch them in an affair. TC and Rick would even laugh about Magnum's profession some times. It was often mentioned that being a private investigator wasn't a job for a grown man. That never ever made sense to me because it's not like children could get trained, get licensed, and have the knowledge and ability to solve a lot of cases. Why was there such a negative view of the profession on the show?

[MagnumsGMTMaster]

My guess would be that it is sort of a profession without boundries. The hours are odd and the PI sets them himself. The billing is squishy and subject to padding. It's really a lot like lawyers. And PIs are identified as part of the sleazy solo personal injury attorney or the divorce lawyer.

But I think the biggest part of it from the Magnum and Rockford eras was that the PI was outside the establishment, i.e. the police and their rule-bound investigations.

That said, here's an interesting article called the Death of the Private Eye that takes an expansive view of the profession in the context of a review of Inherent Vice, coming out in January.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magaz ... .html?_r=0

[SignGuyHPW]

My guess would be that it is sort of a profession without boundries. The hours are odd and the PI sets them himself. The billing is squishy and subject to padding. It's really a lot like lawyers. And PIs are identified as part of the sleazy solo personal injury attorney or the divorce lawyer.

But I think the biggest part of it from the Magnum and Rockford eras was that the PI was outside the establishment, i.e. the police and their rule-bound investigations.

That said, here's an interesting article called the Death of the Private Eye that takes an expansive view of the profession in the context of a review of Inherent Vice, coming out in January.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magaz ... .html?_r=0

I can see some of that.

[SignGuyHPW]

I think it bugged me that they looked down on Magnum for being an independent contractor when plenty of professions have those. It's not like he had a lemonade stand next to the estate. Plus, TC set his own hours, prices, etc. all of the time. Higgins, for that matter, was able to hold posistions in dozens of different organisations while having the loose working schedule for Robin Masters. He could pretty well set the time and how he worked in a given day on the estate based around whatever else he was doing. Of the main characters Rick had the most stable job and he was often trying to hustle some kind of scheme while at the club.