A Pretty Good Dancing Chicken (5.22)

Rate, review & discuss the episodes from the fifth season

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How Would You Rate This Episode?

10 (Perfect!)
0
No votes
9.5 (One of the Best)
1
2%
9.0 (Excellent)
3
5%
8.5 (Very Good)
9
15%
8.0 (Pretty Good)
14
23%
7.5 (Decent)
18
29%
7.0 (Average at Best)
11
18%
6.5 (Not So Good)
2
3%
6.0 (Pretty Bad)
2
3%
5.0 (Just Awful)
2
3%
 
Total votes: 62

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Mark R.Y.
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#11 Post by Mark R.Y. »

I just wanted to note that this ep. was co-written by Joe Gores, one of the most celebrated mystery/detective novelists of the last four decades. Currently, I'm reading his latest - "Spade and Archer" which is a prequel to Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon."

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Doc Ibold
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#12 Post by Doc Ibold »

Maybe I'm being really obvious here.... but I'll say it anyway!

Gorilla Suit/Toms Gorilla Mask?

Plus the manager said that he would make a great dancing gorilla (although he's too tall).

I would say that if Paper War is the practical joke episode, this would be the "inside joke" episode, in correlation to what James and golf said!

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J.J. Walters
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#13 Post by J.J. Walters »

Mark R.Y. wrote:I just wanted to note that this ep. was co-written by Joe Gores, one of the most celebrated mystery/detective novelists of the last four decades.
Hi Mark R.Y.. Welcome to the site!

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't heard of Joe Gores until now. In looking at his bio on thrillingdetective.com, I see that he has had quite a career. Three Edgars for three different categories: Best First Novel, Best Short Story and Best TV Series Segment. That's pretty impressive! His TV Series Edgar was for Kojak: "No Immunity for Murder" (1975). He also did a Remington Steele ("Let's Steele a Plot"). I'm gonna have to check those out.

Thanks for pointing this out Mark.

What an interesting collection of writers this episode has - a celebrated, award-winning mystery/detective author, a shady "P.I. to the Stars", Anthony Pellicano (who now sits in a federal pen on wiretapping and racketeering convictions), and Jay Huguely, longtime MPI writer/producer.
Higgins: It's not a scratch! It's a bloody gouge!

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Mark R.Y.
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#14 Post by Mark R.Y. »

Thanks for the welcome, James! This site is really enhancing my enjoyment of watching the MPI DVDs.
Mark

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Jay-Firestorm
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#15 Post by Jay-Firestorm »

Finally I reach the end of the disappointing fifth season. This episode is fair, but feels like such a missed opportunity to me.

[rating=7.5]

When Magnum is asked by Carol to investigate the disappearance of her 17-year-old niece, he goes undercover as a convict on a prison farm to check out an inmate who was last seen with her. Passable, but such a missed opportunity…

-----

This review contains spoilers.

I want to like this episode. I really do. It has such potential. Sadly, like many other fifth season offerings, it never hits its stride, feeling somewhat unpolished and half-hearted, and comes off as so-so at best.

Without wanting to continually compare to other favourite shows of mine, I’ve always liked prison-based episodes (see ‘The A-Team’s ‘Pros and Cons’ (season 1) and ‘Breakout!’ (3), ‘The Fall Guy’s ‘That’s Right, We’re Bad’ (1) and ‘Knight Rider’s ‘No Big Thing’ (1) to name but a few), and many stand as classics of those respective series. So when I first read the synopsis of this MPI episode when it was scheduled to air, many years ago now, I was really looking forward to it – I thought that a prison-set ‘Magnum’ episode could potentially be a series classic. But, to put it bluntly, it isn’t.

The whole first act is wasted, being too over-talky and slow to get going. The actual prison section of the episode isn’t even introduced until the second act (more of that in a moment), coming in far too late. In the meantime, Magnum checks out ‘Anagrams’, a company where people dress as various animals to deliver greetings messages. This may be vaguely amusing, but to me feels over-forcibly ‘wacky’, trying too hard to recapture the wonderfully quirky touches of episodes of earlier seasons.

When Magnum does eventually go to prison in act two, the story abruptly jumps – we see nothing of Magnum being inducted into the prison or suchlike, instead suddenly leaping forward in the story. I would have liked to have seen some of the slow, wordy first act omitted and more of Magnum’s induction featured instead.

The prison scenes themselves are very routine, again not living up to the potential that they had. And once Magnum has effectively broken out of prison to go after the escaping Jacobs, there is more disappointment – imagine a story where Magnum is being hunted by the Police. Sounds exciting? Not in this episode, it isn’t.

The final scene rounds off things as well as can be expected, but with Becky probably about to spend a spell in prison, it continues a trend of the final episode of the season ending on a down note (see season three’s ‘Faith and Begorrah’ and season four’s ‘I Witness’).

I really want to like this episode, and there is a very good story in there somewhere. But ultimately it suffers the same as much of the fifth season, and ends up sub par.

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Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* Nothing to note on this one, other than that on the DVD version, all of the act breaks are abridged.

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Fifth season overview.

After four great seasons of ‘Magnum, p.i.’, things sadly took a nosedive with the fifth season. Magnum (both the character and the series) was maturing, and that was no bad thing, but there was something else – stories now lacked the sparkle and great little touches of earlier instalments.
The season opens with the two-part ‘Echoes of the Mind’, which I found hard to get into, due to the noticeable sudden change in feel from the previous seasons. Ironically, compared to some of the weak episodes of the season, this would ultimately turn out to be one of the season’s better stories.
Following ‘Echoes of the Mind’ comes ‘Mac’s Back’, and of the season, this is the only episode that I consider a classic – it comes second to the fourth season’s excellent ‘Home From the Sea’ as my all-time favourite MPI episode. The story serves to reintroduce Jeff MacKay back into the series, after the original Mac was killed off in the third season’s ‘Did You See The Sunrise?’ (freeing MacKay up to play Corky in ‘Tales of the Golden Monkey’, which only lasted one season).
Sadly, after that, the season quickly goes downhill, offering a number of so-so-at-best episodes. Some, such as ‘Under World’ (for pure example) are watchable, but ultimately forgettable and unlikely to make anyone’s ‘Top 10’ list. Most of the episodes are also more straight dramas, noticeably lacking the well-balanced blend of drama, comedy, adventure and action of earlier examples.
There are some better episodes – I like the two-part ‘All For One’, for example – but the season is mostly made up of episodes that would at best be ‘fillers’ in other seasons. Sadly, this continues for much of the sixth season – bar a few episodes, it won’t be until season seven that things start to pick up again.
And one more thing that I noticed with the fifth season – Magnum’s hair goes from long in one episode, to short in another, back to long again in the next, where the episodes were shown in a different order to they were produced. A minor thing, but it stood out to me.
JAY FIRESTORM

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My A-Team site - http://thea-team.org aiming to be the most detailed A-Team site on the Net - if I ever get around to updating it!!

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#16 Post by AmandaByNight »

I think I'm in the minority here, but this is one of my favorite episodes. I love the story as a whole and feel a gut punch when we originally think that guy left his girlfriend to die. I also like that she doesn't get out of her own mess and re-bonds with her father.

I don't know what I can add, except this episode always moves me. There's something there...

Maybe it's the gorilla in the background! :)

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#17 Post by erock308 »

This is a great episode, my favourite part is when TM backs out of the parking spot in the Ferrari only to pull into the one with time still left on the parking meter. I laugh every time I watch this part :{)
"Don't worry, Higgins, I like your stories."

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#18 Post by steveadl »

Doc Ibold wrote:
And, maybe it's just me, but you think that another guard would have noticed that the cons hit the yard guard over the head with a shovel.

You're telling me there were NO other guards around when a truck was stolen and driven through the gate, a guard gets beat over the head with a shovel, a fight and conversation take place for several minutes and then Magnum is allowed to just run away (presumably for several miles) until he gets back to Robin's Nest.
Watched this episode last night. Doc, whilst you're right to a degree - if you watch the scene again - you'll notice that at the same time the first guard gets knocked over the head, you can see in the distant background another guard getting hit simultaneously (perhaps even two background guards - can't remember off hand). So I guess the theory was it that it was planned well and there was at least one inmate on each guard ready to smack them out.

To be honest, the part I didn't understand was the big crook in jail agreeing to facilitate the guys escape even though he was disgusted that he left his girlfriend to bleed to death???

But you're right about the police asking to search the grounds and Higgins stalling them. They'd be there within 30 mins and I doubt they'd be asking politely for permission to enter the grounds to search for an escaped fugitive. :lol:

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#19 Post by nha trang »

While I do not consider this episode to be a nuisance as some of the worst MPI episodes can be (basketball willie), seeing Magnum in his denim prison uniform has a certain "jump-the-shark" quality to it.

I suppose it could have been worse if they wrote the story so that Magnum actually gets framed and goes to what I assume is the big "pen" (as we've already seen Mag in the slammer several times - including next to, you got it, "scrunge-O").

I agree with previous reviewers, story might have been a better two-parter, but again I would practically re-write the whole episode. In my book the premise of the episode wouldn't be worth revisiting anyway.

The episode has Carol in it so I wasn't overly surprised when I didn't like it. I think the only "Carol" episode I've liked so far is the episode previous to Torah Torah Torah.

In this episode, when she is walking on the beach next to Magnum and says "Magnum, I'm scared I need your help" I wished Magnum would say "Who cares?" just once...lol.

The character of Carol's uncle was quite unconvincing and poorly acted, we weren't introduced to the niece long enough (or at all) in order to actually care about her whereabouts, and it doesn't serve as a serious enough premise for Magnum to go undercover into the jail, other than as a favor to Carol...again.

I agree again with earlier reviews, in this episode and in several of season 5 episodes, there is a half-hearted quality. Take for instance, the scenes in the guesthouse which can sometimes be very enjoyable...the best part was Higgin's coming out of hibernation quip, but it's appeal is quashed due to the presence of grade B acting by Carol's uncle...lol The whole sequence where Magnum wakes up is half-hearted compared to how they approach waking him up in other episodes.

I find myself watching my Magnum DVD episodes rather quickly, getting some enjoyment out of average episodes, but really hoping there are more classic episodes coming, like "Home from the Sea." I do like the episodes where Magnum soul searches the best, and that show a lot of scenic shots, including the tidal pool. More to the point, I guess I enjoy the Magnum traditions/rituals and his soul-searching...maybe that's why I also really enjoy "Home from the Sea" because it combines all of these qualities along with the typical Magnum "never say die" attitude. Can someone please tell me if there are more classic episodes on the way? Just say yes or no, no spoilers please (please don't tell me the score on the Tiger's game, I taped it lol)



PS I don't think that is a rubber chicken in the Gorilla's mouth. In an earlier scene when they walk in you can also kind of see some yellow color by the gorilla, and it matches the chicken feathers on the dancing chickens....just a thought.

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Mark R.Y.
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#20 Post by Mark R.Y. »

There ARE more classic, "soul-searching" MAGNUMs to come. No worries! :)

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#21 Post by MaiTaiMan »

This one was decent...but only because it was Carol's neice and she asks Magnum to help. If it had just been some other girl or person, I probably would've rated this one "Average at Best."

I really don't like the "prison" episodes of TV shows...as they are all the same: one of the main stars has to go into a prison, under the guise as an inmate, to learn info or catch someone. Not that interesting or entertaining. :?

I like the character of Carol...and she, Agatha, and Lt. Tanaka are my favorite recurring characters in the show. However, despite a couple decent action scenes, and Carol actually looking fairly "hot" in the tropical/Hawaiian dress, this is probably one of my least favorite Magnum/Carol episodes. :?
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#22 Post by mandolabar »

I loved this one, if only because I laughed myself silly at Higgins in the topless bar. OMG.

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#23 Post by miltontheripper »

MaiTaiMan wrote:This one was decent...but only because it was Carol's neice and she asks Magnum to help. If it had just been some other girl or person, I probably would've rated this one "Average at Best."

I really don't like the "prison" episodes of TV shows...as they are all the same: one of the main stars has to go into a prison, under the guise as an inmate, to learn info or catch someone. Not that interesting or entertaining. :?

I like the character of Carol...and she, Agatha, and Lt. Tanaka are my favorite recurring characters in the show. However, despite a couple decent action scenes, and Carol actually looking fairly "hot" in the tropical/Hawaiian dress, this is probably one of my least favorite Magnum/Carol episodes. :?



Completely agree, as much as I like Carol, this episode doesn't do much for me. The circumstances that had TM going to a prison farm, pretty weak plot. And the actor playing Jack, Carol's uncle was pretty aweful as well. Not one of the worst but certainly a forgettable episode that I only watch when going in order. The lone bright spot would be higgins at the gentleman's club....HILARIOUS!! It was pretty funny to see Rick enjoying himself during his visit as well.

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#24 Post by Croix de Lorraine »

mandolabar wrote:I loved this one, if only because I laughed myself silly at Higgins in the topless bar. OMG.
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Re:

#25 Post by marlboro »

mandolabar wrote:I loved this one, if only because I laughed myself silly at Higgins in the topless bar. OMG.

Image


She's not bad...but she's no Agatha Chumley.

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