Luther Gillis: File #001 (5.10)

[J.J. Walters]

This is the official MM thread for Luther Gillis: File #001 (5.10). All discussions and reviews for this episode should go here. If you wish to rate the episode, please do so with the poll. The avg. score will be the official 'community rating', which will be used on the episode page (updated monthly).

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Original Air Date: 12/6/1984
When Robin Masters and Higgins both ask Magnum for help in cases that could have dire repercussions for them, Magnum recruits the rather blunt St. Louis-based P.I. Luther H. Gillis to help him with some delicate matters.

[N1095A]

The red University of Southern California cap that Magnum wore in "Squeeze Play", 4.7, is seen hanging on his hat rack as Higgins walks past it. It is also seen on the hat rack in "Tran Quoc Jones" 5.9, but Magnum is never seen wearing it except in "Squeeze Play".

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" It's also very dark between here and Kahoolawe."

[J.J. Walters]

Another fun Luther Gillis episode. Eugene Roche is Luther! I believe this episode also contains the longest bit of Orson Welles dialog in the series (during an answering machine message for Magnum).

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

[IslandHopper]

This is an excellent episode with some great scenes.

A flub occurs when we see Higgins and Luther dressed in black at the dock looking for Warren. The camera is behind a dumpster focusing on Higgins and Luther as they are walking. As they get closer the inside of the dumpster comes into view, and as Luther is singing "Anchors away my boy" you will see Warren in the left-front corner of the dumpster moving his left hand and breathing. This is a flub because Warren is supposed to be dead.

Not necessarily a flub but when we first see Luther going to his office he uses his key to unlock the door. Why was this necessary because Higgins was already inside waiting for him? How did Higgins get into the office? At the end of the episode, Magnum and Higgins had to break into the office using Magnum's credit card.

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The answer is obvious, old man. Logic is irrelevant. It's simply Tropical Madness. (J.Q. Higgins)

[J.J. Walters]

[wilko]

Not sure if you'd call this a flub or anomaly.

When Higgins recounts his time in Kenya during 1954 to Luther he says that he was the youngest one in his platoon. In 1954 Higgins would have been 36, it is hard to believe that he was the youngest, especially when you consider that in 1953 he was a Sergeant-Major leading troops aged 20 or less (Episode Black on White) against the Mau Mau.

[J.J. Walters]

Nice catch there wilko. There is no way Higgins, as a mid-thirties RSM, would have been the youngest person in the platoon!

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

[Jay-Firestorm]

Although Luther episodes are generally fun, I really feel the fifth season was starting to plod along by this point.

[rating=8.5]

Robin asks Thomas to work on an embezzlement case. But when Higgins wants to hire him at the same time, he hands the case over to p.i. ‘friend’ Luther Gillis, and the pair investigates the blackmail of Higgins’ old flame. Another middling fifth season ep…

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When Luther Gillis first appeared, in the fourth season episode ‘Luther Gillis: File #521’, I couldn’t really decide whether I liked him or not. But by his third appearance here, Eugene Roche’s portrayal of him had softened into a well-meaning but bumbling oaf, and I started to warm to him more.

This is a ‘Magnum-lite’ episode – he takes a backseat working on an embezzlement case for Robin Masters, while Higgins and Luther take the spotlight for the bulk of the story. It is a fun pairing, and John Hillerman and Eugene Roche work well together.

Talking of Robin, this is the final time in the series that the legendary Orson Welles provides the voice for the unseen author (Robin’s voice was provided by a different actor in the sixth season’s feature-length / two-part ‘Deja Vu’).

I find the title of this episode to be a little strange – ‘File #001’ suggests that it is Luther’s first case. Maybe it is implying that it is his first case in Hawaii (where he has relocated to in this story); still, it is a little odd.

As I say above, Hillerman and Roche work well together; the highlight of the episode is probably when Higgins and Luther visit the cowboy bar for a lead, with Higgins adopting the Texan drawl of his half-brother Elmo (from the second season’s ‘The Elmo Ziller Story’). It is always amusing to see Hillerman break out of Higgins’ upper-class English accent into another voice, and it is easy to forget that Hillerman – despite the perfect English accent – is actually a Texas native himself.

The plot on the whole is reasonable, but sadly it suffers from the trend of fifth season stories which are watchable, but lack the polish of earlier episodes, and don’t have as much re-watchable value.
It is one of the marginally better episodes of the season, but as with most other episodes of the season, doesn’t really stand out from the series overall.

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Other notes, bloopers and misc.:

* I spotted something in this episode that I hadn’t seen before: on Magnum’s hat-rack by the guest house door, alongside his regular caps, he has a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ deerstalker hat!

* After the brawl outside the bar (which we never actually see), Luther’s band-air, over his left eye, changes size and angle in different scenes.

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JAY FIRESTORM

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