Ah, nice one Coops! Interesting about the Camaro/Firebird's being used heavily in the show. Someone involved in the show definitely was a fan!

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

It would be nice to resolve this discrepancy -- though of course not all that urgent!



Right, Jay -- Hubby and I were saying all along that it had to be her. But somehow they did blindside us with Bruce Kunkle being her accomplice! Even though Suzi had been introduced as his date at the party, he was such a backgroundish kind of character that it just never occurred to me that "the accountant did it."


A couple of bits still puzzle me, though. At the beginning, we see someone's glove-clad hands sneaking the manuscript INTO a safe. I kept expecting it would turn out that either it had been put into Higgins' safe to make him look like an idiot if he reported it missing, or else that someone (possibly even Higgins) was being framed as the thief. The safe is finally identified as being in Suzi's hotel room. But Suzi is identified as the thief! So who was sneaking the manuscript into her safe -- and why?

Also, didn't Higgins say that the messenger service turned out to be bogus? Then what was that place on "Kauai" that apparently gave Magnum the address of Suzi's hotel? Did I miss something?

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Carol

Suzi apparently likes to keep her ammunition cleverly disguised, but handy, on a bracelet, almost taunting the two P.I.'s to catch her!

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

This scene shows why you should always drive a manual. Had he been driving a manual he could have slowed the car down to a halt by using the gear shift.

Actually I did, but how come you did?

Having both circuits of the brake system fail completely, short of tampering, is extremely rare. The emergency brake can also be used, and turning off the engine while in gear causes quite a bit of mechanical drag. All this doesn't make for exciting television, however.

Pahonu, Magnum PI has taught us that evil never rests. You can never be too careful!

Incidentally, Higgins tries to use the handbrake but it seems to have been tampered with too.

Ever-present evil certainly does make for exciting television.

I find a certain amount of irony in the fact that after the Indiana Jones themed episode 8.10, 8.11 has a scene similar to the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... A girl who could fall to her death, but the hero tells her to give up on the "treasure" to save her life.

And this was the year before Last Crusade was released...

Ahead of their time.

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Trust Me!!!

You can do the same thing with an automatic; that's what the L2 and L1 positions are on the gear shift indicator, i.e., 2nd and 1st gear.

Additionally, scenes like this (and there have been countless ones like it in movies and TV shows) are absurd, since the car always continues to go at a high rate of speed after the driver discovers that he has no brakes. What, the accelerator pedal is stuck too? How would someone even rig a car to make the gas pedal get stuck at the exact same moment that the driver discovers he has no brakes, but not be stuck earlier when he first takes off in the car?

And even if the gas pedal were stuck you could still shift into neutral. Is the gear shift lever stuck too, on some sort of a time delay mechanism to get stuck at a later point in time so as to allow the person to shift when they first take off in the car but get stuck when they find they have no brakes? And even if it were stuck, one could turn off the ignition with the key ... oh, is that stuck too, via a similar time delay mechanism? Who the hell is sabotaging all of these plot-device TV/movie cars? MacGyver?

On another note, "Colt Super Elite" was an error. The Colt Super Elite is a real gun, but it is a .38 Super, and only a .38 Super (which is where the "Super" part of the name came from). The pistol in this episode was a Colt Delta Elite, which was a 10mm Auto, and only a 10mm Auto, as well as Colt's only 10mm Auto (10mm Auto being the cartridge the pistol in this episode was said to be chambered for).

The Delta Elite and the Super Elite look similar, because they are both based on the 1911 platform, but there are some visual differences. The Super Elite is a Gold Cup variant, and as such, it has the slanted Gold Cup slide serrations, flat mainspring housing, serrated front strap, adjustable slotted Gold Cup trigger, adjustable sights, and a ribbed slide. They were also two-tone, i.e., stainless steel frame and blued slide, like so:



The Colt Delta Elite mostly looked like a standard Colt Government Model (like Thomas Magnum's pistol). The main visual differences were: round lanyard-style (AKA: Colt Commander-style) hammer with matching Commander-style grip safety (the Government Model and Super Elite have a standard spur hammer), larger sights with white dots on them (standard Government Models got the same sights a few years later), and a longer trigger:





I think it is funny that they made the effort to obtain an actual Colt Delta Elite for a prop, yet they didn't make the effort to read the words "Delta Elite" on the side of it.