Laura (7.18)

[IKnowWhatYoureThinking]

It's amazing something like that is still around! You'd think they would throw those away after a shoot!

[SelleckLover]

IKWYT wrote:

You'd think they would throw those away after a shoot!

Oh, no...never! They never throw ANYTHING away! My husband worked at Disneyland as a wood carver (he worked on Toon Town in the early 1990s when it was being built) and he said the Disney Studio Warehouse had stuff in it going back to the 1950s! It was all categorized and archived very meticulously so it could be found easily. (We still have some gold coins that were used on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride somewhere in our apartment!) So it stands to reason that when on a small island where it's hard to procure things at a moment's notice, they would keep all the "stuff" they could.

[IKnowWhatYoureThinking]

Interesting. I would think something so small would have been trashed, but I guess it isn't surprising that these studios keep everything.

[golfmobile]

The "studio" didn't keep these; "Michael" did. I just got the impression that he was so impressed with working with Frank Sinatra that he wanted a little souvenir of his own of FS' presence on the set. I'm sure the studio didn't mind if he took these little pieces of, in essence, trash paper. JMO

golf

[IKnowWhatYoureThinking]

Gotcha Golf. I'm sure the studio keeps a lot but I had wondered about couch drop wrappers. You never know what they have in storage. Maybe there are some old bottles of Coops or Old Dusseldorf collecting dust somewhere.

[sgk4]

Hey I watched this episode again last night... and it only just now dawned on me - does anyone think that Doheny actually pushed that first dude in front of the truck??

[Rutledal]

Kevyn Major Howard just didn't learn in the 1980's, did he? After he raped and killed Paul Kersey's daughter in LA, Kersey shot him in a church.

Kersey kills him in a abandoned hotel. Believe me I'm a total nerd for Death Wish.

[308GTS]

Nearly at the end of Season 7 now (again) and this episode never fails to impress. What a powerful, dark performance from Sinatra. Very sad but a superb episode.

I'd have to say that Season 7 is one of the best seasons, almost up to the classic period, S1, S2 and S3.

Simply superb.

[Jaybird]

Absolutely one of the best. I especially like the section near the end. No dialogue, only music, Phil Collins, and the action. Talk about great directing! This is one of my top 3 or 4!

[A P Leyland]

I'm up to this one next. Looking forward to it. I distinctly remember this episode not being shown in the usual MAGNUM timeslot of 8PM in 1987 here in the UK, rather it was aired much later (10:35pm after the 10:00 news).

This happend with a few US shows if I recall.

Andy

[Jay-Firestorm]

Oh dear… I confess, I’ve really overlooked this one over the years – until now.

[rating=9.0]

Rick convinces Magnum to take a supposedly easy, high-reward job to track down a missing person, but the man who has hired him turns out to be a newly-retired New York detective, after those who raped and murdered his grand-daughter. Great guest and plot…

-----

This review contains spoilers.

I wonder what was wrong with my when I first watched this patch of season seven – I commented on the previous episode, ‘Forty’, that I liked it more now that I came to re-watch it years later. And that is the case even more with ‘Laura’ – it didn’t do much for me when I first saw it, many moons ago, but coming to see it again now to review, I see that it is one that I have badly overlooked for many years.

The episode is, of course, notable for its special guest star, Frank Sinatra. When Sinatra said he was interested in doing an episode of ‘Magnum, p.i.’, he was given three scripts to consider, out of which he liked this one best.

Sinatra puts in a very good, and very involving, performance – as he hunts for those who brutally raped and murdered his young grand-daughter (the Laura of the title), you really feel for him, and urge him on to get his revenge.
Although I am maybe a little too young to fully appreciate what Sinatra was all about, even so I’ve come to really like his performance as Doheny in this episode, which makes it one of the stand-out instalments of the season.

This episode does not have much of a typical MPI feel, especially when compared to early episodes. It has a much more stylistic feel, and – particularly with its use of music – at times almost feels more like and episode of ‘Miami Vice’. In fact, it is very much in the vein of ‘Death and Taxes’ from earlier in the season (which itself is often dubbed MPI’s ‘Miami Vice’ episode). And like ‘Death and Taxes’, it makes heavy use of a Genesis song, in this case ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’.

The episode is pretty much a serious fare through-and-through, with only T.C. serving as small but welcome comedy relief, when he learns that Magnum is making a documentary about being a Private Investigator, and senses a chance to advertise Island Hoppers.

The climax of the episode is particularly notable, with the aforementioned Genesis track playing for ages and ages, with no dialogue, as Doheny hunts down those who killed Laura.

I can’t believe that I’ve overlooked this episode for some long; As I said in my review for ‘Forty’, maybe my viewing tastes have matured over the years. Many would place this episode on their Top 10 favourite episodes of the series; although I wouldn’t go that far, even so I now consider it as one of the best of the season.

-----

Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* DVD version … abridged act breaks… blah blah blah

* On the episode’s opening trailer, when Magnum says to Doheny “That’s all you’ve got to say – we got off to a bad start?” in jail, the shot used does not match his speech – it is actually taken from a few moments later in the scene.

* Also on the opening trailer, when Doheny smashes the (what I presume to be) transvestite’s head through the window, the shattering sound is part of the effect that was used to make the sound of ‘Airwolf’s turbos engaging, which can also be heard in several other episodes (such as season six’s ‘Way of the Stalking Horse’, for example). In the scene in the actual episode, the Genesis song is playing and there is no sound effect.

* Magnum comments that missing persons cases are hardest; Is it just me, or have he previously (sometime season five / six) said that missing persons cases are one of the easiest types of case?!

* In the closing credits, after Doheny has put the transvestite’s head through the window, there is a shot of him pouring water over the (whatever); this shot was not used in the actual story. (EDIT – just noticed this has already been mentioned on the episode’s main page).

* When Five broadcast this episode in 2003, they edited it in a way that actually made the outcome of the story seem different. Firstly, after Doheny says “She was my grand-daughter”, they edited out “You slimy bastard. You beat her face to a pulp… you broke her body down to nothing at all… and then you threw her in an alley and left her to die. And I’m going to do the same thing to you”. The following fight is edited down to just a couple of punches before Geiger goes over the edge of the building, but… *they edited out the shot of Geiger pulling out a knife*. This makes it seem when Nolan asks Magnum what happened, that his response that Geiger had a knife was made up to cover for Doheny.

* Also on Five’s version, the episode, minus advertisements, only runs to about 42 minutes, whereas episodes would typically run for about 48 minutes. I’ve been through it (admittedly quickly) but can’t see anything removed other than the above mentioned edits, so don’t know why. I know they can adjust the speed programmes as they play, so maybe that’s what they did this broadcast?

[Little Garwood]

I voted "Very Good" on this one. At the time I remember all of the publicity that went into this, that the Legend was doing a guest shot on MPI. I didn't know much about Sinatra then, except who he was. In the twenty-plus years since, I've absorbed the man's music and movies (I'm a "Tony Rome" geek; a Sinatra movie filmed in Miami) and can appreciate the gravitas that FAS brings to the role. Intensity! Sinatra looked like a retired cop! He brought that megawatt star power to the small screen and all that hard livin'.

The Genesis montage was more of a dated distraction for me, and wasn't as powerful as other such pieces in MPI or Miami Vice. I do like how Joe Santos is brought in during these "intense" episodes; he's great as usual here. Effective night scenes as well.

I'm not sure this will make my top five for S7, but it's thisclose.

[MACattack]

For the record, that wasn't a transvestite that Doheny smashed through a window. It was a large Samoan with a bad hair cut eating a late dinner. The fact that Doheny would assault a large man like that shows his lust for vengeance. A harsh move on his part, but I don't blame considering his grief over his grand daughter.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I like the fact that Magnum allows Doheny's "justice" to happen, even though it goes against every fiber of his being.

If you're talking about at the end, where Laura's killer goes over the edge of the roof, my impression was that Doheny didn't push him, he fell -- that Doheny hadn't meant for it to happen that way (he looked sort of startled). He had just promised the guy that he was going to suffer the way Laura had, and I don't think he meant a quick death. Also, as I recall, Magnum didn't get there till just about the time that the guy fell, so there really wasn't much he could have done to stop it. However, the look on his face was pretty much the way you described his feelings -- sort of "well, the guy should have been allowed to stand trial, but he probably got what he deserved."

Hey I watched this episode again last night... and it only just now dawned on me - does anyone think that Doheny actually pushed that first dude in front of the truck??

Yeah, I wondered about that too, especially later, when I knew where that fellow actually fit into the story. I suspect that it was purposely left ambiguous.

[AmandaByNight]

Hi all,

I'm new here, but thought I'd start on this thread, because I've been thinking a lot about Laura.

Two things:

What I think I liked most about this episode (which is one of my faves) is at the end where Doheny is at Laura's grave and says, "We got 'em," and then falls into tears. I think this is one of the most poignant scenes ever on televsion. I wondered if the intention was that Doheny had allowed himself to go to the level of the bad guys and in the end, his granddaughter was still dead. That's the impression I got. It reminded me a bit of the closing shot in the original Last House on the Left.

Also, does anyone know what become of the little girl who played Laura? I only ask because it's her sole IMDb credit and I wondered if she knew at the time they took the photo of her with Sinatra that she was next to a legend? I would be curious to read what her memories were of that...