Professor Jonathan Higgins

Episode Number: 97
Season Number: 5.13
Air Date: 1/10/1985
Writer: Jay Huguely
Story: Mary Lee Gaylor
Director: Peter Medak
Producer: Reuben Leder
Exec Producer: Donald P. Bellisario

Recurring Characters

Gillian Dobb (Agatha Chumley)

Guest Stars

Jillie Mack (Sally Ponting), Ronald Knight (Frank Ohmar), Lynn Wood (Mrs. Finch), David Traylor (Timothy Finch), Allan Graf (Henchman), Tina Machado (Nurse #1 - uncredited)

Episode Brief

After Agatha and her friends are swindled out of $10,000 by a shady investment company, she hires Magnum to track down the crooks and retrieve their money. Meanwhile, Higgins's distant cousin arrives from England to marry the heir of a local socialite and turns out to be a punk rocker in need of a drastic makeover before she can be accepted into society.

Rating

7.9

(37 votes)

Rate Episode

Notes

¹ This is the tenth "Higgins-centric" episode of the series, following "Tropical Madness" (2.7), "The Elmo Ziller Story" (2.21), "Black on White" (3.6), "Foiled Again" (3.8), "Faith and Begorrah" (3.23), "Letter to a Duchess" (4.6), "The Case of the Red Faced Thespian" (4.12), "Holmes Is Where the Heart Is" (4.18) and "Luther Gillis: File #001" (5.10). Agatha also receives quite a bit of screen time in this one. We get to see her driving a car for the first time. We don't get a great look at the car, but it appears to be a '63 Rambler American!

² The title and storyline of this episode was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's classic play Pygmalion. The protagonist of that play is Professor Henry Higgins.

³ American Jillie Mack (Tom Selleck's wife of 20+ years) plays the British punk rocker Sally Ponting. Sally is Higgins' cousin, five times removed. Jillie Mack had a minor role in "Rembrandt's Girl" (4.14) as a British New Wave'r, and had a brief, uncredited appearance as a tap dancer in Season Five's "Fragments" (5.6). As many Britons have pointed out to me, her "Cockney accent" in this episode is just atrocious.

⁴ The man who gets into a fight with Magnum in the parking lot (Frank Ohmar's Henchman) is played by Allan Graf. Allan Graf is a famous stunt man, stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director. His thirty-year career behind the cameras includes the staging of stunts in over five dozen films while directing second unit action on two dozen features (including Another 48 Hrs., Jerry Maguire and many others). He's also an ex-NFL player, and was a starting offensive guard in the 1973 Rose Bowl for USC.

⁵ The second time Magnum picks the lock on the building which houses Frank Ohmar's office, he appears to do it correctly! He uses a pick AND a tension wrench. Usually when he picks locks, he works the cylinder with just a pick, which is impossible for many locks, and very difficult for others. (Noted by N1095A)

⁶ The wedding scene was filmed at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Honolulu. This same church was used for the wedding scene in Season Three's "I Do?" (3.17).

⁷ The song that Sally sings at the party at the Estate is called "The Lambeth Walk", a famous English Cockney dance song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl. (Noted by Jay-Firestorm)

⁸ Kengi the workman and Keo the maid are seen briefly at the estate. This is Keo's first appearance (although with no lines). Kengi was previously seen in "No Need to Know" (1.5), "Computer Date" (2.14), "Echoes of the Mind (2)" (5.2), "Blind Justice" (5.7), "Little Games" (5.12), "All For One (2)" (5.16), & "Ms. Jones" (5.19).

⁹ At the very end, during the "Bit of Britain" pub scene, Higgins delivers a line with an amusing cockney English accent.

Quotes

¹
Sally Ponting: (in a Cockney accent) Here. You're Cousin Higgins. I took me a cheaper flight. Oh, pull me a beer, love. Let me sit on me tush before I bloody drop.
Higgins: Oh, my God.

²
Magnum: It's you. That is not Sally talking, it's Jonathan Higgins, or Henry Higgins.
Higgins: I beg your pardon?
Magnum: You're doing to Sally exactly what Rex Harrison did to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. You're using her as a guinea pig for your own self-indulgant experiment.
Higgins: If there were a comparison to be made it would be what Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree did to Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the G.B. Shaw classic Pygmalion, but there isn't. I'm simply trying to help Sally have what she desires, Mr. Timothy Finch.

Flubs

¹ After Sally arrives she, Higgins and Agatha go into the Study. Sally is wearing very heavy make-up and fairly dark lipstick. As Higgins is explaining to Sally that Timothy's family will never accept her as she is, she is wearing the dark lipstick. Magnum comes barging into the Study and when Sally gets out of her chair to talk to Magnum she does not appear to be wearing the dark lipstick anymore. (Noted by IslandHopper)

² When Magum is searching through Frank Ohmar's files and papers on his desk, the guy in the light blue sports coat catches Magnum and wrestles with him and they make their way out of the office and into the parking lot where the guy in the sports coat fires at Magnum several times and the gun sounds as if there is a silencer attached to it. However, the gun does not actually have a silencer. Later, when the same guy fires at T.C. as he is posing as an IRS agent, the gun, which appears to be the same gun as before, sounds like a typical loud, unsilenced gun firing. (Noted by IslandHopper)

³ During the scene where Sally works with Higgins and Agatha on what she will say to Mrs. Finch to apologize for her outrageous conduct, the first time you see her pouring tea it already shows that she has overflowed on to her plate. The second time you see the plate it doesn't have any overflowed tea. The third time, the plate is once again full with tea. The final time they show the plate it is only half full of tea. (Noted by Mark Seaman)

Shoot me an email if you'd like to have something added or corrected

---

---