Wow. That was quite a withering review of MPI. The charm of this show is completely lost on that viewer, eh?
It's difficult to take an article with such ill-informed facts seriously. The most casual google or wikipedia search, or eBay search, would've shown that this show is still popular, and its artifacts are still sought after.
Worse yet, this is a very mean-spirited article. Personally, I tend to discount reviews that have incorrect facts, especially if written with such a mean tone. This author has an ax to grind, and I don't want him/her grinding it on me.
This right here is quite a howler:
It’s a good guess that Bellisario and Larson had an appetite for noir, both on paper and celluloid, and the glamour of old-time Hollywood. But in 1980 what was hot was not LA noir but Vietnam, thanks to the massive critical and box-office success of The Deer Hunter (1978), plus the more than massive publicity surrounding the release of Apocalypse Now (1979), hardly dented by the fact that the film was a huge disappointment to all but the most devoted Coppola fan.
This is so ill-informed that it's hard to know where to begin.
A quick look at Donald Bellisario's
body of work, and you can see that he has no particular penchant for "noir". Actually, how can this author pretend to know what motivated or inspired Bellisario? On the other hand, if Bellisario had wanted to make a "noir" series, what's wrong with that? Why the sneering tone?
I never thought MPI was a particularly "noir-ish" show, Furthermore, "LA noir", whatever this author might imagine it to be, has never been either "hot" or not "hot". That is, "noir" productions are generally not popular with mass audiences, so most movie studios don't make lots of them. I can think of no television show that was, or is, even remotely "noir-ish". Indeed, the author seems to have only a vague conception of the term "noir", and would've been smart to take the time to
look up what the term actually refers to before throwing it around so casually.
However, I do remember that there was a minor fad for Humphrey Bogart and 30's glamor in the seventies. (Remember Woody Allen's "Play It Again, Sam"? Or even "Young Frankenstein"?) As such, MPI's occasional reference to the thirties and forties, i.e. Rick's affinity for the Bogart character in "Casablanca" (also called Rick), or Magnum's dream episodes, would've been nods to popular cultural references -- something that all Americans engage in. IIRC, more than one show had done an homage episode or two to 30's glam. ("Moonlighting is one such show that comes to mind.)
As for Viet Nam being "hot", wow. That's just an utterly stupid statement. Up until 1980 there were only a handful of films that dared to touch a subject that was still a painful one for the nation. This author can only cite two such movies, hardly a "hot" trend in movie making.
However, on television, the Viet Nam war as a dramatic subject was completely invisible. The only way the subject could even be broached was sideways -- like the way MASH was ostensibly about the Korean War, but the hidden sub-text was the Viet Nam war. The "success" of movies such as "The Deer Hunter", "Apocalypse Now", and "Platoon", or even the two Rambo movies not withstanding, the Viet Nam War was never a "hot" concept for Hollywood. (Oh, and "Apocalypse Now" was actually a critical success, and continues to land on the "best movies of all time" lists even today.) I suppose the closest that Hollywood came to making the subject of Viet Nam "hot" was with the second Rambo movie.
As you can see, this author has packed quite a large amount of ignorance into this short paragraph. At this point, I stopped reading the rest of the article. Someone this ignorant isn't worth my attention.
I guess the good thing about the internet is that everyone can air their opinions. The bad thing about the internet is that everyone can air their opinions.
Or, maybe he believes that readers will take him at his word since he doesn't seem to think there are any Magnum, P.I., fans left (no fan websites) who will know his article is only suited to line the bottom of the bird cage of Elizabeth Barrett's Macaw.