Transitions (8.11)

[Jaybird]

I gave it an 8.0 and wasn't surprised to see that as the most popular rating. It just wasn't a favorite of mine and the story line was somewhat confusing and not believable. Is Higgins actually Robin Masters? Guess we'll find out next!

[Frodoleader]

I think this is only the second time I've seen this episode, the first being back in 1988. It wasn't a bad story. I agree with the lack of Rick & TC. As the penultimate episode of MPI, they should have had more of a role.
Two things I liked about this episode:
1. Randi Brooks...hubba hubba!
2. The ending shot, with TM and Higgins facing away from the camera. This could very well have been used as a last shot of the series, if this had been the series finale. A very poignant moment in my opinion.

[Jay-Firestorm]

The final of my double-review Fridays. For the final regular episode, I was rather disappointed in this one.

[rating=7.0]

Higgins asks Thomas to investigate when Robin Masters’ latest manuscript is stolen. Complicating matters further is the return of St. Louie P.I. Luther Gillis, who arrives for an unexpected stay. For the penultimate episode, rather disappointing…

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This review contains spoilers.

‘Transitions’ is the final regular episode of ‘Magnum, p.i.’, before the two-hour / two-part finale ‘Resolutions’, which originally aired a couple of months after this story.
And for the penultimate story, I found this one to be very disappointing in most regards.

This episode marks the fifth, final time that Eugene Roche guest stars as St. Louie gumshoe Luther Gillis. Although I wasn’t to sure about him in his first appearance (in season four’s ‘Luther Gillis: #521’), as I have commented in other reviews he soon toned down from being a gruff know-it-all to a lovable bumbler. So I was pleased to see the character to make one last appearance here – but wondered why the put him in the episode exactly. He has very little to do, and in many ways seems to have been added as an afterthought. Maybe they just wanted to give a popular recurring character one last outing, but I’d have preferred – if they couldn’t give himself and Magnum one last tough case to crack – that they had just given him a cameo in ‘Resolutions’ instead.

I find the story to be very bitty, and the plot seems to be about virtually nothing in places. For much of it, it plays as more of a character piece than case-driven, and while I don’t mind this occasionally in MPI, for the last regular episode before the finale, I personally would have hoped for something more.

The episode really plays upon the notion that Higgins might really be Robin Masters (a concept introduced in season seven’s excellent ‘Paper War’), and the thrust of the plot is that someone other than Magnum believes Higgins to really be Robin and is trying to kill him. This idea had a lot of potential, be it played out either as a comedy or more seriously, but here the concept very much falls flat.
The idea that the attempts on his life are reflected from Robin’s novel is again full of potential, but again handled clumsily and unclearly.
To me, the whole episode just feels to be thrown together late in the day, a filler to bump up the season’s episode count.

I also knew all along that the culprit behind the trouble would turn out to be Suzi Merill (Randy Brooks) – she is given such prominence throughout the story and just ‘happens to be there’ with little explanation, that I found it blatantly obvious.

I do like the final scene though, with Higgins (battered and in a wheelchair after the Audi crashes) looking across the city with Magnum, and Higgins almost giving too much away about whether he is really Robin or not, and then changing the subject with “Isn’t it a lovely day out”. Despite this episode’s disappointments, this line and the final shot are a lovely way to finish the last regular episode.

This isn’t my least favourite episode of the eighth season – that goes to the unfunny ‘comedy’ ‘A Girl Named Sue’. More than anything, this one is just such a disappointment.

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Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* On the DVD version, the first act break in the story is abridged, the rest are left untouched.

* Magnum smokes his sixteenth cigar of the series in this story.

* In a real rarity, Magnum and T.C. both wear their Da Nang caps at the same time – unless I am much mistaken, the only other two episodes in which this happens is in the fifth season’s ‘Blind Justice’ and season six’s ‘The Kona Winds’.

* When Magnum phones Higgins from T.C.’s helicopter (on the ancient 1G phone that others have already noted), when Magnum says “Higgins, no!”, Higgins has already put the phone down but does not cut off the end of Magnum’s “no!” (if that makes sense!).

[IKnowWhatYoureThinking]

Jay, as a cigar aficionado I love the fact that you are keeping up with the number of cigars Magnum has smoked in the series. I know there is at least one more on the way (Resolutions Part II I believe).

[Coops]

Found a flub. I guess only a Camaro freak like me could pick it out. When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail, there is a close up shot of the inside of the car with him pulling on the parking brake repeatedly. That is actually the interior of a 3rd generation Camaro (1982-1992). You can tell by the "baseball" shape of the shifter knob and the tell-tale shape of the vent on the forward part of the center console. The buttons on the stereo also give it away.

On a side note, as a Camaro/Firebird fan, I noticed that they were used a LOT in the show, not only as a villian's getaway car but also used in the background of a lot of scenes. Just thought I'd point that out.

[J.J. Walters]

Found a flub. I guess only a Camaro freak like me could pick it out. When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail, there is a close up shot of the inside of the car with him pulling on the parking brake repeatedly. That is actually the interior of a 3rd generation Camaro (1982-1992). You can tell by the "baseball" shape of the shifter knob and the tell-tale shape of the vent on the forward part of the center console. The buttons on the stereo also give it away.

On a side note, as a Camaro/Firebird fan, I noticed that they were used a LOT in the show, not only as a villian's getaway car but also used in the background of a lot of scenes. Just thought I'd point that out.

Ah, nice one Coops! Interesting about the Camaro/Firebird's being used heavily in the show. Someone involved in the show definitely was a fan!

[Carol the Dabbler]

This is the only time in the entire series that Magnum uses a mobile phone!

There was another episode where Rick and TC used a similar mobile telephone and one episode where TM used the mobile telephone installed inside the Audi. I cannot recall the episode names...

It would be nice to resolve this discrepancy -- though of course not all that urgent!

I ... knew all along that the culprit behind the trouble would turn out to be Suzi Merill (Randy Brooks) – she is given such prominence throughout the story and just ‘happens to be there’ with little explanation, that I found it blatantly obvious.

Right, Jay -- Hubby and I were saying all along that it had to be her. But somehow they did blindside us with Bruce Kunkle being her accomplice! Even though Suzi had been introduced as his date at the party, he was such a backgroundish kind of character that it just never occurred to me that "the accountant did it."


A couple of bits still puzzle me, though. At the beginning, we see someone's glove-clad hands sneaking the manuscript INTO a safe. I kept expecting it would turn out that either it had been put into Higgins' safe to make him look like an idiot if he reported it missing, or else that someone (possibly even Higgins) was being framed as the thief. The safe is finally identified as being in Suzi's hotel room. But Suzi is identified as the thief! So who was sneaking the manuscript into her safe -- and why?

Also, didn't Higgins say that the messenger service turned out to be bogus? Then what was that place on "Kauai" that apparently gave Magnum the address of Suzi's hotel? Did I miss something?

[J.J. Walters]

Suzi apparently likes to keep her ammunition cleverly disguised, but handy, on a bracelet, almost taunting the two P.I.'s to catch her!

[Croix de Lorraine]

When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

[Croix de Lorraine]

Is it just me, or did anyone else think "Supermac" when hearing about "Malcolm MacDonald"?

Actually I did, but how come you did?

[Pahonu]

When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

Having both circuits of the brake system fail completely, short of tampering, is extremely rare. The emergency brake can also be used, and turning off the engine while in gear causes quite a bit of mechanical drag. All this doesn't make for exciting television, however.

[Croix de Lorraine]

When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

Having both circuits of the brake system fail completely, short of tampering, is extremely rare. The emergency brake can also be used, and turning off the engine while in gear causes quite a bit of mechanical drag. All this doesn't make for exciting television, however.

Pahonu, Magnum PI has taught us that evil never rests. You can never be too careful!

Incidentally, Higgins tries to use the handbrake but it seems to have been tampered with too.

[Pahonu]

When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

Having both circuits of the brake system fail completely, short of tampering, is extremely rare. The emergency brake can also be used, and turning off the engine while in gear causes quite a bit of mechanical drag. All this doesn't make for exciting television, however.

Pahonu, Magnum PI has taught us that evil never rests. You can never be too careful!

Incidentally, Higgins tries to use the handbrake but it seems to have been tampered with too.

Ever-present evil certainly does make for exciting television.

[Kevster]

I find a certain amount of irony in the fact that after the Indiana Jones themed episode 8.10, 8.11 has a scene similar to the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... A girl who could fall to her death, but the hero tells her to give up on the "treasure" to save her life.

And this was the year before Last Crusade was released...

Ahead of their time.

[MaximRecoil]

When Higgins is in the Audi and the brakes fail

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

You can do the same thing with an automatic; that's what the L2 and L1 positions are on the gear shift indicator, i.e., 2nd and 1st gear.

Additionally, scenes like this (and there have been countless ones like it in movies and TV shows) are absurd, since the car always continues to go at a high rate of speed after the driver discovers that he has no brakes. What, the accelerator pedal is stuck too? How would someone even rig a car to make the gas pedal get stuck at the exact same moment that the driver discovers he has no brakes, but not be stuck earlier when he first takes off in the car?

And even if the gas pedal were stuck you could still shift into neutral. Is the gear shift lever stuck too, on some sort of a time delay mechanism to get stuck at a later point in time so as to allow the person to shift when they first take off in the car but get stuck when they find they have no brakes? And even if it were stuck, one could turn off the ignition with the key ... oh, is that stuck too, via a similar time delay mechanism? Who the hell is sabotaging all of these plot-device TV/movie cars? MacGyver?

On another note, "Colt Super Elite" was an error. The Colt Super Elite is a real gun, but it is a .38 Super, and only a .38 Super (which is where the "Super" part of the name came from). The pistol in this episode was a Colt Delta Elite, which was a 10mm Auto, and only a 10mm Auto, as well as Colt's only 10mm Auto (10mm Auto being the cartridge the pistol in this episode was said to be chambered for).

The Delta Elite and the Super Elite look similar, because they are both based on the 1911 platform, but there are some visual differences. The Super Elite is a Gold Cup variant, and as such, it has the slanted Gold Cup slide serrations, flat mainspring housing, serrated front strap, adjustable slotted Gold Cup trigger, adjustable sights, and a ribbed slide. They were also two-tone, i.e., stainless steel frame and blued slide, like so:



The Colt Delta Elite mostly looked like a standard Colt Government Model (like Thomas Magnum's pistol). The main visual differences were: round lanyard-style (AKA: Colt Commander-style) hammer with matching Commander-style grip safety (the Government Model and Super Elite have a standard spur hammer), larger sights with white dots on them (standard Government Models got the same sights a few years later), and a longer trigger:





I think it is funny that they made the effort to obtain an actual Colt Delta Elite for a prop, yet they didn't make the effort to read the words "Delta Elite" on the side of it.