I Never Wanted to Go to France, Anyway (6.12)

[Jay-Firestorm]

I haven’t watched this one for a while – and it’s pretty bad!

[rating=6.0]

When a performer is murdered at a struggling carnival that is run by an old comrade of Higgins, Higgins asks Magnum to go undercover with Rick as carnival workers to discover who is trying to put the show out of business. A pretty weak episode…

-----

This review contains moderate spoilers.

Only on my review for the previous episode (‘Rapture’) did I comment that the sixth season wasn’t as bad as I remembered, and better than the fifth; then a terrible episode such as ‘I Never Wanted to Go to France, Anyway…’ comes along, showing that the sixth season still has some stinkers.

I can imagine the writers coming up with this one – “Hey, let’s do a story set at a carnival”. And they didn’t work on it much more than that – the plot really is that thin.

This is another of those episodes that the show liked to offer up every so often, where the main characters get dressed up. Magnum and Rick are dressed as carnie workers, and a little later, Higgins becomes a decidedly scary looking clown! T.C. only appears at the very beginning of this one, so is only seen in regular clothes.

…Talking of which, I wonder if the story would have been any more fun if T.C. had been part of the story more; Rick seems like spare wheel in this story, so maybe if he’d had T.C. to interact with, it would have been more fun. Or maybe not, considering how weak this story is anyway!

As poor as this episode is, I can think of even worse (the third season’s ‘Mixed Doubles’ springs to mind, amongst others), and the climax, with the fire in the ‘Tower of Terror’ is pretty good, with the explanation to the episode’s strange title, and a nice final shot of Magnum and Higgins.
But those points are few and far between – elsewhere, the story is slow moving and rather uninteresting, and hardly captures the fun and thrills of the carnival!

All-in-all, hardly a great episode. Probably a candidate for weakest of the season.

-----

Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* This appears to possibly be another episode working around the exterior of the Anderson Estate being unavailable. We get interior shots of the guest house and the study (filmed on a sound stage), but the only brief exterior shot we get is of Magnum driving up to it* in what is possibly stock footage).
(* - and what vehicle is that? It’s not the Jimmy.)

* More abridged act breaks… I wish they would leave them as the original version!

_________________
JAY FIRESTORM

Facebook: Jay Gathergood / Twitter: Jay_Firestorm NEW BLOG: http://thea-teamcaptured.blogspot.com/

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!!

[Bes]

I thought it was one of the season's best episodes.

[J.J. Walters]

Help me out guys. Does this look like Clancy Brown to you? His face and hair look spot on, but I'm not sure about the height. Clancy Brown is like 6'3". This guy appears to be smaller, but it's hard to tell. Clancy Brown is one of my favorite actors.

_________________
Higgins: It's not a scratch! It's a bloody gouge!

[rubber chicken]

It does look like it could be him, but I'm guessing it isn't. He had done enough acting by this time to make me doubt he'd show up on Oahu for such a small part.

Plus, this episode aired in January of 86, and Highlander came out in March of 86, so I'm thinking he would have been busy with, or just completed his Highlander role, and again, wouldn't take a small part like this. That's my take at least. Funny how the face and hair are so similar though.

[J.J. Walters]

His build is very similar, too.

But yeah, you're probably right rubber chicken. He would have already filmed Highlander (April to August of '85) at this point. Why would he come all the way to Oahu for a 3-second, fire breathing, uncredited appearance on Magnum P.I.? Maybe he was vacationing in Oahu after the grueling shoot in Scotland?

James Cromwell made a brief, uncredited appearance in "Photo Play" after he was already an established actor, so I guess it's possible.

_________________
Higgins: It's not a scratch! It's a bloody gouge!

[firefly]