Shocking Flubs!

[J.J. Walters]

Okay, I got one. Just watching "Almost Home" -- the scene where Magnum and TC sneak into the warehouse and the bad guys coming chasing them in the red jeep, and TM and TC are running for TC's helicopter to escape. TM and TC jump in the chopper and immediately take off.

NOT!!! It takes a heli from 5-7 minutes (minimum 3-4 minutes) to warm up and get the rotors spinning enough to be able to lift off. There's no way they could have jumped in the chopper, started the engine, and taken off, the way you can in a car. Helicopters just don't work that way.

Oh, great flub spot golf!

You know, for some reason, I don't think I've ever thought that ("The chopper needs to warm up") in any episode! Surely, this must have occured several times in the show!?

[golfmobile]

I think usually they just had TC stay in the heli with the engine running and rotors turning, but there were probably other "fast getaways" when they might have done this -- I just don't recall any right now. But it's something to watch for, I guess, now that we're aware of it.

golf

[N1095A]

This is something I noticed through out the series as well. They seem to use clever cutaways, and camera shots to suspend time during those quick take-offs. I'm kind of a helicopter junkie. I paid $25.00 for a 5 minute ride in a Hughes 500 (Y tail) this past weekend at Cabelas.

[golfmobile]

N,

Me too! I haven't ridden in a MD500 (but I would sure love to!), but I flew a Robinson 22 in Hawaii in April:

golf's attempt at hovering

If you can stand the jerky video (Larry didn't have a tripod and really needed one while zooming to get this), you can see my hovering was an utter disaster. But after I gave up on that, the instructor let me fly it down the coast and back, so I was actually flying it all by myself, totally under my control, for about a half hour. I did fine with that (after about 18 months of practicing with MSFS).

My only other "flying" is with Microsoft Flight Simulator, and with THAT I fly TC's chopper a lot! That's where I got the clips for the intro I'm making.

golf

[IslandHopper]

Way to go Golf. You are getting good at the flub spotting. I have noticed this too, but just figured it was the only way they could shoot action scenes, rather than waiting for the thing to warm-up, etc. I guess it requires "a suspension of disbelief" (I think that's how it goes), as someone previously said in a different thread.

My brother-in-law was an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He flew mainly Hueys (UH-1) as a medivac/dust-off pilot. The "Huey" (officially nicknamed the "Iroquois", but commonly referred to as "Huey") is larger than the Hughes 500D, but the start-up time should be pretty close to the 500D. I'll ask him and let you know what he says.

[golfmobile]

IH,

The Huey (UH-1) is signficantly larger than the MD500, so I would imagine it would take proportionately longer for it to warm up and have the rotors spinning fast enough to lift off. But I'm interested to hear your brother-in-law's thoughts on the subject. As a Vietnam vet, is he an MPI fan?

golf

[IslandHopper]

I will definetely let you know Golf. I'll have to ask him if he is an MPI fan. He is a pilot (flys 767's), so he travels a lot, and he spends a lot of his spare time rebuilding "MOPAR" muscle cars. He will probably know about the 500D even though he primarily flew Hueys. During Vietnam, Hughes 500's were often used by the Army as scouts/recon (pink team). Since he was attached to an Army aviation unit while in Vietnam, I'm sure he has some experience with the Hughes 500.

Although we often talk about flubs, there are obviously many things about the show that are done exceptionally well. Since we are talking about TC's chopper, this a good time to bring this up...

...One of the things that has always impressed me about the show are the shots of TC and Magnum (or whoever else is in the front seat) where the camera is looking up at them while TC is flying the chopper (the camera appears to be in the chopper). As you are looking up at them you can see the blur of the rotor blades above as if TC is actually flying. I don't know if this is a special effect, or if the blades are actually rotating (while they are on the ground), but this is consistently well done. The "whinning turbine" sound is also heard in the cockpit which adds to the realism. That's why it's kind of perplexing on how much care they took in those shots to make it look like TC is actually flying the chopper, but in many other scenes, stock footage of the chopper flying is used which does not match from one shot to antoher, i.e., in one shot you see the skids without the fittings (skinny skids) and seconds later you see the skids with the fittings (fat skids), or as in "The Look" you see the banner and in the next shot it's not there, etc. Anyway, those close-up shots of TC and Magnum in the chopper look and sound very realistic, to me, anyway.

[golfmobile]

N,

I confess, my favorite shows are usually the ones with lots of helicopter shots! These shows are quite entirely the reason I got hooked on helicopters and wanted to fly one when we went to Hawaii -- and why I bought Microsoft Flight Simulator to learn to fly helicopters virtually so I would have SOME idea of what I was supposed to do when in a real helicopter.

I love the helicopter chase scenes -- remember when the Bell 206 was chasing TC and the gang, and Magnum asks, "Can you get above them?" and TC says, "You got it," and he does and they shoot the Bell down. And I'm awed by the dead hover above the pool outside the temple in the second part of "Did You See the Sunrise?" With the Bell 206 right beside TC's MD500 -- AWESOME piloting!

When we win the lottery . . . .

golf

[golfmobile]

Back on to flubs:

"Of Sound Mind" -- when the Grim Reaper breaks Magnum's cane (Magnum is in the suit of armor) and knocks him down, he's like a turtle on his back and can't get up. Higgins, as Henry VIII, comes in and with great effort, Magnum is helped back to his standing position.

Then Magnum charges after the Grim Reaper and does the slam-into-the-door thing twice, the second time breaks through and falls down. And then he CAN get up by himself. Granted, he's on his side and not his back, but this doesn't make much sense. In the previous scene he can't get up, can't even roll over -- now he can pop back up? Rather a quick contradiction in condition.

Oh, and this episode has another reference to the "Hungarian acrobat" -- Carlton apparently solicited one for Wilson MacLeish, the millionaire who supposedly left Magnum his $50 million.

On another note, this is the episode where Magnum has his right foot in a cast. If I recall. someone mentioned that this was a true injury that had to have a story line go with. What was the real accident? What happened and in filming which episode?

golf

[HIGGIE BABY]

I was watching season 1-episode 18:"Beauty Knows No Pain" and had noticed this scene. The main flub is already recorded under this episode on this web site but I'll just set the scene. The scene is when Magnum is getting reading for the Iron Man race and Rick, TC, and Higgins are there on the beach. If you notice, TM is wearing black speedos but right before Higgins reads a letter from Robin Masters wishing him good luck, Barbara in the scene has Magnum bend over to stretch. As he slowly comes up from stretching, he is not wearing the speedos, but wearing black swim trunks. But then throughout the rest of the swim scene he is wearing the speedos. Pretty funny the director didn't catch that. Now, I don't think this can be justified to be a flub but this is what I noticed in the same scene and is not a major one but the race announcer counts down the minutes to race time in the background of the exact same scene from 2 min. to 1 min. to 30 sec. Well, if you count the seconds between the 2 min. warning and the 1 min. warning, it's only approxmately 16 seconds. Then from 1 min. to 30 seconds it's about 26 or so. I just thought the difference between the 2 min. and 1 min. warning was interesting. Time flys when your having fun.

[Doc Ibold]

Got another one!!!!

In "Little Girl Who", when Magnum is roaring up in the Ferrari and parks by Higgins, he's hiding Lily from him.

Higgins demands to know where the costumes are, and when Lily appears behing Magnum, she starts speaking in French to Higgins, who promptly responds in French.

Magnum asks what she's saying, and Higgins is incredulous that he doesn't know French.

Magnum says he knows "a little" and that he tried speaking to her in Vietnamese, but it was getting "rusty".

NOW

It has been established in an episode that Magnum is trilinugal and could converse in someone in either English, Vietnamese, OR French.

(James, help me out with this one)

Plus, adding the fact that Lily is only like 5 or 6, it wouldn't be that hard for someone who knows French, even rudimentarily, to understand the gist of what she was saying.

(of which something to the effect of whether or not Higgins was her au pair)

Flub?

Going once, twice?!

[J.J. Walters]

Yeah, in China Doll he can speak French. Unless we can find another reference to Magnum and his French speakng abilities, these two kind of cancel each other out (which one is right?). "Notes" for now, maybe a "Flub" later.

[grapeshot]

Well, a lot would depend on how well Magnum knew French, and how long ago did he use it regularly, and how much time did he spend speaking it. I took French in high school, but that was 30 years ago, and although I'm surprised at how much of it I retained, I can't understand but every 12th word or so when someone is speaking conversational French.

I would've imagined that Magnum's French amounted to being able to say and understand some phrases. Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps he got some special intensive language training as part of his special assignment duties in Viet Nam. Even so, if you don't use it, you lose it. Perhaps it was even a surprise to Magnum himself how little he understood French anymore. Or his ear was flummoxed by his daughter's childish lisp, whereas Higgins had a firmer grasp of the language.

Or...perhaps I'm reading too much into a couple lines of dialog.



On another note, I'm very intrigued by this fetish with the Hungarian acrobats. My parents were Hungarians, and I can't imagine what could be so special about Hungarian acrobats. My brother is a Hungarophile, and maybe he can come up with some sort of reference. Otherwise it has to be some sort of an inside joke.

[lutherhgillis]

James and Guys,

I believe I have a shocking flub due to the continuity break and the fact that the proof is found in a episode from the same season. This flub occurs in Jararro Farewell from season 4.

Flub: Notice when Magnum and Rick are watching the game sitting on the grass just after the boys get into a fight at 2nd base. Rick is writing something on paper and Magnum gets on his case about gambling on a child's baseball game. Rick then apparently reveals that he is wrinting a recipe for chicken marsala to send to his mother. Rick's mother and father are both dead as we learned in Distant Relative which was shown several weeks before this episode. I believe this was a little bit sloppy. The show typically had great continuity.

Thanks,

Luther H Gillis

[IslandHopper]

James and Guys,

I believe I have a shocking flub due to the continuity break and the fact that the proof is found in a episode from the same season. This flub occurs in Jararro Farewell from season 4.

Flub: Notice when Magnum and Rick are watching the game sitting on the grass just after the boys get into a fight at 2nd base. Rick is writing something on paper and Magnum gets on his case about gambling on a child's baseball game. Rick then apparently reveals that he is wrinting a recipe for chicken marsala to send to his mother. Rick's mother and father are both dead as we learned in Distant Relative which was shown several weeks before this episode. I believe this was a little bit sloppy. The show typically had great continuity.


Thanks,

Luther H Gillis

LHG,

I agree that this is a flub. Back on April 12, 2007, I discussed this exact scene and flub under the Season 6 "Rapture" Thread, as we were discussing the shows continuity or lack thereof. Check it out. Great minds think alike I guess.