So, K and I have been thoroughly enjoying our Netflix subscription, and getting our money’s worth out of it. On a whim a few weeks ago, I decided to add the first season of Magnum, P.I. to our queue, and it has been so much fun! I mean, Tom Selleck, complete with his glossy, lustrous mustache and teeny little shorts, really hasn’t changed much at all since the early 80s. The hair has been tamed to be a little less Knight Rider-esque, but he really looks pretty much the same. Although here are a few fun things I’ve noticed:
- He’s too tall to sit in the Ferrari – that’s why the top is always down. If you look, you’ll see the top of his head sticking out of it, with his curly hair ruffling in the breeze as he zooms down some road or another, in studly pursuit of the bad guys. Apparently, the bad guys never need pursuit when it’s raining.
- Higgins wears the most absurdly high-waisted pants and shorts, with some kind of bizarre, shiny waistband that looks like a cummerbund. And to make it worse, they’re pleated. Whoever was in charge of the wardrobe wasn’t very nice to John Hillerman in the early 80s.
- Because Tom Selleck is so tall (6’4”), everyone else is always wearing heels of some kind (yes, even his trusty sidekicks T.C. and Rick). I think it was partly the style of the late 70s/early 80s, but Tom Selleck was always tooling around in his trademark white sneakers – so I think they figured heels were the easiest way to go.
- John Hillerman (Higgins) is totally and completely not British. He’s actually a Texan. I don’t know if I noticed it as a kid, but he mostly just speaks about Queen and country with an authoritative tone and uses the word “bloody” every so often – his vowel sounds and intonation remain, for the most part, quite American.
- For the first part of the first season, the theme music was not the uber-rockin’ music that we all remember. Instead, it was the most pimp-tastic example of late 70s/early 80s overwrought orchestration EVAH. Kind of like pseudo-porn music, complete with the bass line.
However, for all of the silly things that I’ve noticed, it’s been really fun – and is actually still a good show (it could have gone either way, since some shows do not hold up at all). I completely missed all the Vietnam references when I was a kid. Perhaps they weren’t so prevalent after the first season, but it’s been mentioned in almost every episode so far. It gives it a whole other subtext that I was completely unaware of. Who knew the show was all deep and issues-oriented and stuff?? Certainly not I.
But that may be because it’s easy to be distracted by the abundant man-thatches on display, thanks to all those unbuttoned shirts. It was 1981, after all.
