Magnum P.I.: The Complete First Season [4 Discs] [DVD]

The first season of Magnum, P.I. opens with the two-hour pilot episode, as former Naval Intelligence officer-turned-private eye Thomas Magnum takes up residence in a guest house on the Oahu estate of mystery writer Robin Masters, for whom he has agreed to work security. But Magnum's first job is a personal one, as he and the sister (Pamela Susan Shoop) of his childhood buddy Dan Cook travel the length and breadth of the island to solve Dan's murder. Later episodes find Magnum continuing to take "outside" assignments, much to the disdain of the never-seen Masters' snooty manservant Higgins (John Hillerman). By episode three, the viewer has made the acquaintance of not only the protagonist but of his two Vietnam buddies and sometimes assistants, chopper pilot T.C. (Roger E. Mosley) and nightclub owner Rick (Larry Manetti), the latter having gone into business with Masters as co-manager of the exclusive King Kamehameha Club. In one episode, Magnum comes to the rescue of one of Higgins' former comrades in arms, who has been targeted for assassination by the IRA (not that this makes Higgins any friendlier, of course). And in another installment, Magnum has a nightmarish "Vietnam flashback" while seeking clues to a model's death on a secluded island. Episode nine, "Missing in Action," marks the first appearance of Magnum's pal (and key information supplier) Mac Reynolds (Jeff MacKay), whose "history" on the series developed into perhaps the most remarkable of any of the regulars, including a horrible death and a highly suspicious rebirth. And "Lest We Forget" is the earliest of Magnum's "homage" episodes, set in 1941 and appropriately filmed in a lush, black-and-white Hollywood classic style. The 18th and final first-season episode is "Beauty Knows No Pain," in which Marcia Wallace (The Bob Newhart Show) plays a client who has only enough money to hire Magnum for a single day -- and he'll need every minute of it to locate her fiancé before one of the missing man's many enemies beats him to it! ~ Hal Erickson