The Great Hawaiian Adventure Company (8.9)

[lutherhgillis]

My reaction to this entire episode is .

[IKnowWhatYoureThinking]

Doc, you bring up a great point about laying the ground work for Resolutions. I think, in a way, they tried to do much of that with season 8.

[MACattack]

I think that writers could have taken the subject matter a little more seriously. This fictional street gang 'The Shivs' don't act like biker gangs or street gangs in Hawai'i or anywhere else in the world. And this was the same year "Colors" came out in the theaters!
In past episodes, the drama was more intense, making the storyline seem almost real.

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I just don't give a damn!

[N1095A]

I just noticed this episode might have been shown out of sequence. My reasoning for this conclusion is a bit flimsy, but TM is wearing the MIA bracelet in this episode after he threw it away in 8.8 "Unfinished Business".
I'm going to go back and look at the rest of season 8, but I don't think he wore it in any of the remaining episodes.

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"But Higgins, I can explain."

[MACattack]

I was watching this episode again last night for a few laughs, and I couldn't believe how trite the plot was. It was like an afterschool special on TV.

In real life, if some gangstas thought T.C.'s son was a snitch, he wouldn't be walking around and talking to people, that's for sure! The second rate actors playing the "Shivs" are so cornball. It's possible they were picked right off the street.

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I just don't give a damn!

[gmt16750]

It was hard to understand why they wanted to finish the serie with season 7. But after viewing this episode and the next one ("the lost art") i do know why. It isn't at the level of the other seasons, at least these two episodes are too much campy, playing to the gallery of fans and seem to mean: well we are Magnum, p.i.'s crew, that's enough for making a good serie.

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Agatha: Why does he always do that, Jonathan?
Higgins: I don't know, Agatha. I think sometimes our creator is testing me. Indeed it could be for no other reason. If i thought otherwise i believe i truly would go irrevocably irretrievably mad!

[Frodoleader]

While watching this the other day, I kept thinking to myself that starting the Great Hawaiin Adveture Co. was a great idea! But then I thought, how many other adventure tourism-like companies are in Hawai'i? Probably alot!

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"You are three months at Dak Wei and still you crack jokes?" - Ivan

[lutherhgillis]

It seemed to me like the writers were past deadline and needed to write an episode very quickly. Someone said, "Here's and idea" and 15 minutes later they had the adventure company episode...

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Who's Dot Matrix, and what has she got to do with this?

[MACattack]

This is Bellisario's idea of a "Gangsta" story. I'd rather watch the Tom Selleck movie "An Innocent Man". That movie had a grittier theme and seemed so "Magnumesque"!

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I just don't give a damn!

[Jay-Firestorm]

What a strange episode. Not bottom-of-the-barrel, but very odd.

[rating=8.0]

The rest of the gang are too busy with their own endeavours when Thomas tries to get them interested in a potentially lucrative business venture, particularly T.C., whose son Bryant falls in with a juvenile biker gang, landing him in trouble with the Police. A strange ep…

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This review contains spoilers.

Although most of the episodes in the final season follow on from each other, ‘The Great Hawaiian Adventure Company’ (working title: ‘Taking Stock’) seems to be set quite a time after the events of the previous ‘Unfinished Business’. Far from the traumas he experienced in that episode, Magnum here is back to his old self, and Higgins, T.C. and Rick are also in the middle of various changes to their lives.

As I say, time seems to have passed since the events of ‘Unfinished Business’, most noticeably son Bryant (introduced in the sixth season’s ‘Missing Melody’) staying with T.C., which feels to have been in place a few weeks by the time of this story. Rick is also moving on, dating Cleo (from season five’s ‘The Hotel Dick’ and season six’s ‘Straight and Narrow’), and Higgins is taking a different tact on the writing of his memoirs at suggestion of a publishing company.

With all of the change in the air, this episode really has feel of being very near to the end of the show’s run. Coupled with that, the story also has feel that they were starting to run out of steam, and – as much as I would have liked to have seen another season – maybe wisely decided to call it a day.

Although the eighth season has some good episodes, one of my main complaints is that there are few real cases for Magnum to really get his teeth into. To me, the title of this one, ‘The Great Hawaiian Adventure Company’, conjured up maybe a daredevil band of tricksters up to no good or suchlike; but as it turns out, it is just the name of a lucrative business venture that Magnum is trying to get people interested in.

The episode is very much character-driven, and for the most part, very little of note really happens in the plot department. I’m all for episodes that dare to go with the leads (who are all very strong on-screen) instead of being more story-based, but on this one, it very much feels like a late-in-the-day half-hearted effort.

With Bryant mixed up with the teenage biker gang (who I couldn’t help but find unintentionally amusing, and very unmenacing), I thought we might be headed towards an exciting big biker showdown (maybe in the style of ‘The A-Team’s classic first season episode ‘Black Day at Bad Rock’, or ‘Knight Rider’s similar first season ep ‘Good Day at White Rock’), but at the end, the whole biker element just petered out, and never feels anywhere near concluded.

Then there is the climax of the story, with Bryant racing off in the small boat to get away from the bikers (…huh?) and naturally needing rescuing at sea. This came totally out of nowhere, and felt to be stuck on by the writers / producers at the last moment just to try and add some danger to the storyline. It doesn’t work, and as I say above, the whole biker plot is never satisfactorily resolved and just disappears.

For all that is wrong with it, I wouldn’t quite rank this episode as bottom-of-the barrel – I like that it deals more with a slice of the character’s everyday lives, and I can think of *far* worse episodes. It begins to sow the seeds for the series finale, and with the sense of change in the air, really has signs of being a very late episode. But I just expected it to be so much more exciting!

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Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* The working title of this episode, ‘Taking Stock’, is actually quite clever with its double meaning – in one sense, the four main characters are taking stock of their lives and making changes; but it can also refer to Bryant stealing the car parts from T.C.’s delivery.

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JAY FIRESTORM

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