A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

Rate, review & discuss the episodes from the sixth season

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How Would You Rate This Episode?

10 (Perfect!)
0
No votes
9.5 (One of the Best)
0
No votes
9.0 (Excellent)
3
4%
8.5 (Very Good)
7
10%
8.0 (Pretty Good)
10
14%
7.5 (Decent)
23
32%
7.0 (Average at Best)
15
21%
6.5 (Not So Good)
6
8%
6.0 (Pretty Bad)
5
7%
5.0 (Just Awful)
2
3%
 
Total votes: 71

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Croix de Lorraine
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#21 Post by Croix de Lorraine »

Anyone else notice how much Claudia Cron resembles Ingrid Bergman? Surely not a coincidence...

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J.J. Walters
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#22 Post by J.J. Walters »

Wow, never thought of that before, but you're right! Her face does look an awful lot like Ingrid's! :shock:
Higgins: It's not a scratch! It's a bloody gouge!

MaximRecoil
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#23 Post by MaximRecoil »

Has any regular character in any '80s TV show ever come into a huge sum of money and been able to keep it? This happened quite a bit in '80s TV shows (maybe it still happens; I'm not familiar with more recent TV shows though). It happened twice on Magnum P.I. (to Magnum and Rick); it happened to Rosco on The Dukes of Hazzard, and on various other shows for which I can't think of specific examples off the top of my head.
J.J. Walters wrote:
DarCA wrote:I was just watching this episode and was wondering if this could be considered a flub. Magnum is asleep in the guest house bedroom when Rick is calling on the phone. He gets up to answer it, walks into the living room, but misses the call.

Why didn't he just answer the phone on the nightstand?
Hmm, the way they set it up, I don't think it would be a flub. You only hear one phone ringing, the phone/answering machine in the living area. No phone appears to ring in the bedroom (although it's hard to tell for sure). Maybe his bedroom phone is broken? Maybe once the answering machine picks up he can only answer that phone?
There is no way to tell how many phones are ringing if all the phones in the house have the same ringer and you are listening to a mono recording rather than actually being in the house. They would all ring simultaneously and they would all sound alike.

If you want to look at it from an "in universe" perspective, it couldn't have been Magnum's combination phone / answering machine that was ringing, because the sound was from an electromechanical brass dual-gong ringer, and that answering machine phone doesn't have such a thing; it has an electronic ringer, the same as nearly all phones have today. Magnum's other phones vary depending on the episode, but he usually has an Automatic Electric Model 80e in his room (and often on his coffee table in the living room too), which does have an electromechanical brass dual-gong ringer. When it is not an AE-80e in his room and/or on his coffee table it is an AE-182e "Starlite" (Automatic Electric's version of the Western Electric "Princess"), which has a single-gong ringer.

In reality, the phone ringing was just a sound effect, a common stock sound effect recorded from the C4A dual-gong ringer found in the venerable Western Electric 500 and 2500 series phones.

The chances of one of those old leased-from-the-phone-company phones being broken are slim. They were built to last because if they broke, the phone company had to come out and fix them at their own expense. They can easily go 50 years without anything going wrong with them. They are extemely robust.

Magnum's relatively modern answering machine phone that was probably built somewhere in Asia was far more likely to break down than any of his Automatic Electrics.

He would have been able to answer the call from any extension, regardless of whether the answering machine had picked up or not.

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runawayselleck
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Bruce Forsyth letter

#24 Post by runawayselleck »

Hi everyone,

I have always been a big Magnum PI fan and like a lot of people in the UK, was probably very suprised when Bruce Forsyth appeared in this episode.

I decided to write to him once to ask him his memories of being in the episode, and if he would like a copy of it! His reply was quite interesting and I thought you would like to know.

He wrote:

Dear Ben

Thank you for your letter and the very very nice things you said about me. Yes, Magnum was a good show and I did see quite a few episodes. I am only too pleased to answer your four questions so here goes:

1: A friend of the director suggested me for the part and I was really excited to accept, although very disappointed that it was such a small part.
2: It was filmed in Hawaii, which was where my wife and I spent our honeymoon in 1983, and strangely enough, she had just become pregant during that trip
3: No, we did not meet Tom Selleck, which was another disappointment. Larry Manetti, who played Rick was not very sociable, and I do not think he was well liked by the production team. I think...he was a miserable bugger!
4: Yes, I have seen the episode I was in, and thank you very much but I do not want a copy of it mainly because of my appearance being so small.

Thank you for saying I was excellent but when you go all that way to do so little it does seem futile. Nethertheless, thankyou for your interest and I hope this has enlightned you on the whole visit.

Good luck with everything

Yours sincerely

Bruce Forsyth.

I received this letter in 2003 and will always love it, mainly for it being the only Magnum related autograph where Larry Manetti is called a miserable bugger!

Thought I would share :) :D

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KingKC
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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#25 Post by KingKC »

People did not have a lot to say about this episode and they sure didn't have much good to say since the rating came in at a 7.3 which probably puts it it the bottom 10 overall. Heck, I kind of liked it. Then again I like it when kids are helped out. I know a lot of people think TC overplayed the do-gooder role but I disagree. Maybe there was some subtle, racial issues about needing more black men as mentors but I just liked the fact his character did those things, period. I think this episode depicted Rick in as much of a flake as he could possibly be and what happens when you are the ultimate flake. Maybe that was a little over the top for the writers but not that much given Rick's history. In some respects I think these friendships of almost 40 year old men are being tested by episodes like this.

KingKC

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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#26 Post by charybdis1966 »

I saw this one today for the first time and sadly it does have the look of a hastily written episode.

Rick comes across as a bit of a chump, and a gullible one at that, with the plot rather predictable however the character moments uplift the overall tone of this episode as is the case with MPI.

Also seeing Brucie Forsythe suddenly appear in this jolted me off my chair as he seemed so out of place because as a child of the 70's I grew up with him hosting The Generation Game on Saturday evenings, back in the days when the UK only had 3 TV channels.

Hearing him also sounded odd as I barely recognised his voice and for a moment I thought his voice had been dubbed, but it was the familiar effect of US programmes soundtracks speeding up a bit when transmitted in the UK in the 70's and 80's.

I recall TS saying in one of his interviews watching MPI in the UK made him think he sounded like a chipmunk as his voice sounded higher pitched than it really was.

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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#27 Post by thechickinthemiddle »

Anyone else remember Pat Corley (Dennis MacKenzie) from the Fresno miniseries? :lol: Of course in that, he was the actual landowner who didn't want to give his land up.

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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#28 Post by thechickinthemiddle »

This was an okay episode. Rick did seem gullible as hell, as literally the second time we see him and Jeannie they're engaged. And Magnum and T.C. spend about half their screentime in jail. :P Was that the lawyer guy coming up the stairs to the plane near the end as well? Did someone actually bail him out? :lol:

I did enjoy seeing the 5-0 building by the jail. :)

And since those two bad guys were literally in the audience waiting to follow the million dollar winner, that lotto show really needs to ramp up their security! :lol:

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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#29 Post by ceol »

Hi guys :D
Does anyone know or can anyone confirm that some scenes of this episode were being filmed in Hy's Steakhouse? It looks somewhat familiar.
If yes we should have it added to the episode details :D
Just in case someone else ever wonders about it? 8)

Otherwise if not, does anybody know where those scenes were filmed?
Mahalo :D

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charybdis1966
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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#30 Post by charybdis1966 »

Sad news today that Bruce Forsythe passed away at the grand old age of 89.

He was still on UK TV as recently as 2-3 years ago.

You can certainly say "didn't he do well!" Rip Brucie.

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K Hale
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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#31 Post by K Hale »

Mediocre. This kind of took Rick's reputation as a gullible flake and took it WAY over the top. The guy managed a large, prestigious club for years. He can't be THAT gullible/careless/irresponsible.

Surprised that Forsyth would call Manetti a miserable bugger.

Ep saved by appearance of Icepick and by JQH conducting Beethoven on the stereo. In some ways he reminds me of Snoopy...
I didn't realize you were so addicted to pool.
It's not pool.
Billiards.
Snooker!
Snucker.
SNOOKER!

marlboro
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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#32 Post by marlboro »

^Yeah, I think the characterization of Rick and TC in the later seasons was a bit off. Rick became comic relief all too often, and TC became a semi saint.

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K Hale
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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#33 Post by K Hale »

Someone called TC "Father Flanagan." LOL
I didn't realize you were so addicted to pool.
It's not pool.
Billiards.
Snooker!
Snucker.
SNOOKER!

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Re: A Little Bit of Luck, A Little Bit of Grief (6.20)

#34 Post by brianw »

I can't rate this one because I don't remember it, and also I missed most of it yesterday, I was mopping floors while it was on. It really didn't hold my interest, obviously.

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#35 Post by Luther's nephew Dobie »

Tuan Vu wrote:... I didn't quite understand the part about Blair Boyer being Dennis Mackenzie and what that had to do with anything and why Rick went into his office in the first place...
Hi Tuan Vu,
You asked the above question in 2011 and nobody has as yet responded. Well here it is 2019 and I just viewed this episode on COZI-TV and I have the same question.
The scene made no sense to me.
In fact just who was this "Blair Boyer" character?
I never saw him - unless I am mistaken - in this episode till he showed up at the end and is revealed as Mackenzie.
Is this another case of poor editing on COZI-TV's part, Boyer's earlier scene cut out?
The character wasn't listed in the Magnum Mania credits/story line nor in IMBd when I looked him up.
(I enjoy COZI but they butcher some series like Adam-12, inserting commercials not in the natural breaks as it was originally presented but in the middle of dramatic
scenes and reducing the effectiveness of the writing. As well as cutting out much of the patter between the two leads which was a large part of it's charm)
I have another question, by any chance is that the nightclub legend Bobby Short in a unbilled bit as the piano player in the bar who Rick tips?
I thought the following scene in this episode was very funny, as I was at the reopening of the Statue of Liberty in 1986 and there was a number of
Tom Selleck lookalikes in the crowd harborside. What happened was there had been a Gay pride parade that morning to take advantage of all the media there
and apparently there was a Magnum Drill Team contingent, all sporting big mustaches even the chicks.
I thought of that during this scene when Magnum and TC try to save the baseball field for TC's team -
Magnum: "What if we rent the (baseball) lot?"
Dailey, in fey, mincing voice: "Okay...5 grand a month."
Magnum: "Come on!"
Dailey: "Sell your Ferrari."
Cop: "It's not his Ferrari."
Dailey: "Oh. What a role model." (Smirking, he looks Magnum up and down) "Obviously then your're kept."
Magnum, aghast: "I am not kept."
Dailey, knowingly: "To be sure."

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