The WORST episodes of Magnum, P.I.
Every episode of Magnum, P.I. ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Magnum, P.I.!
Former Naval Intelligence officer Thomas Magnum resigns his commission to become a private investigator on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. He lands a home in the guest house on the estate of millionaire author Robin Masters in exchange for testing the estate's security, but is forced to work under the strict and ever watchful eye of Jonathan Higgins, a former British Army soldier who serves as the estate manager, and constantly patrols the grounds with his two "lads" Zeus and Apollo, who are loyally trained Doberman Pinschers always ready to pounce on Magnum. Magnum makes good use of the perks that come with working on the estate, including driving Masters' sporty red 308 GTS Ferrari, Audi, and all-terrain Jimmy, as well as equipment such as high-end cameras and telescopes.
#1 - The Ugliest Dog in Hawaii
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 1/29/1981
Higgins volunteers Magnum's services to guard a wealthy socialite's quarantined dog, after the attempted dognapping of the canine. "Sir Algernon Farnsworth" soon finds himself to be the most wanted dog in Hawaii, when his former owner, ageing gangster Victor DiGiorgio, has need to get him back. Magnum and an animal regulations officer are soon on the run with Algie from the would-be dognappers - and the fact that the officer seems to be scared of dogs doesn't exactly make matters any easier - but just why does DiGiorgio want the mutt back so badly?...
#2 - Summer School
Season 6 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/9/1986
After being expelled from a number of expensive schools, R.J., Robin's rich, careless, teenage nephew, arrives at the estate to be reformed and educated by Higgins. R.J., however, has other ideas and decides to impersonate Thomas after being impressed by his adventures. Hired by a woman to find the only witness to her husband's murder, R.J. manages to get Thomas and everyone else involved in the case targeted for death by the men who killed the woman's husband.
#3 - Squeeze Play
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/17/1983
After a high stakes game of poker against high-flying men's magazine publisher Buzz Benoit, Robin Masters wagers use of his Hawaiian Estate for a year, to be decided in a softball game between the King Kamehameha Club softball team and a team assembled by Buzz. Higgins, upon learning that Buzz intends to use him as a butler, plans to leave the Estate if the King Kamehameha team loose, but Magnum is less worried, looking forward to a luxurious year on the Estate surrounded by Buzz's beautiful glamour models - until he learns that as a result of Buzz's planned changes, there will be no place for him on the Estate either. Meanwhile, Magnum is working for one of the members of the softball team, trying to find her missing ex-husband who owes her alimony money, but things look gloomy for Higgins and Magnum's future on the Estate when they find that ruthless Buzz has hired a professional team of players. But it looks as if Magnum's team may have a glimmer of hope when it turns out that t
#4 - A Pretty Good Dancing Chicken
Season 5 - Episode 22 - Aired 4/4/1985
Thomas is hired by Jack Damon, Carol’s Uncle, to find his seventeen-year-old daughter Becky, who has been missing for two months, after leaving home against his wishes to pursue a career as a dancer. After a little investigating, Thomas finds that the last person known to have seen the girl was her former boyfriend Darryl Jacobs – who is now behind bars after being involved in a stolen guns deal that went bad. Magnum decides the only way to find out from Jacobs what happened to Becky is to go undercover as a convict at the prison farm where Jacobs is being detained...
#5 - Skin Deep
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/15/1981
When a beautiful model-actress is killed by a shot-gun blast, in a scenario closely resembling a scene from the script of an upcoming film, it is seemingly suicide. Magnum is hired by her former producer and lover to investigate any other men that she may have been seeing before her death – a case that Magnum is reluctant to take, but, feeling guilty for not taking it before the girl was killed, he agrees. But as the investigations unfold, it becomes apparent that there is much more to the case than first appears, and the supposedly murdered woman was being hounded by the obsessive former lover... The case reaches it’s pinnacle when Magnum, still haunted by nightmares of the Vietnam war in his dreams, finds himself reliving it in much more reality, in a deadly hunt down on a deserted tropical island...
#6 - Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Big Ones Too
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 12/25/1980
It's the Christmas season, and against his better judgement, Magnum agrees to being hired by five young schoolgirls to find their teacher, who has seemingly gone missing after falling in love. While he's working on the case, Magnum manages to convince Higgins to let the young girls stay on the Masters Estate, but he's unaware that he's being deceived in a scam over a valuable painting recently purchased by Robin Masters...
#7 - A Little Bit of Luck...a Little Bit of Grief
Season 6 - Episode 20 - Aired 4/3/1986
T.C. and Magnum are fighting the demolition of T.C.’s club-house for underprivileged and troubled youths, which has been ordered to be destroyed by a greedy, obnoxious local land developer – even though he doesn’t use the land. Their seemingly no-win struggle only results in a brush with the law. Meanwhile, unbeknown to them, Rick, on a trip away, wins the $1,000,000 jackpot in the Western States Lottery. Now a rich man, he meets a young woman who becomes his fiancée, but with his new wealth, he begins to neglect his responsibilities at the King Kamehameha Club, and gets mixed up with a couple of crooked poker players. Rick is so wrapped up in his whirl-wind new life that he risks loosing his job, and even more importantly, his friends, not to mention his newly acquired wealth...
#8 - China Doll
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/18/1980
Magnum is hired by a beautiful Chinese antiques dealer that he's making a play for, to protect a precious ancient vase, "the Soul of Soong", until it's buyer arrives in Hawaii to collect it. But unbeknown to him, the priceless ornament is wanted by a Tong gang from the girl's home country, and a deadly martial arts assassin who can kill in the blink of an eye is hot on the trail...
#9 - Echoes of the Mind (1)
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/27/1984
Thomas is hired by Diane Dupres, who was kidnapped as a child with her twin sister, and who now believes that someone is trying to kill her. Although Rick and T.C. think that the woman spells trouble, Thomas begins to fall in love as he spends time with Diane investigating who might want to harm her. Higgins's old flame, the recently widowed Lady Ashley, travels to Hawaii so that they can be married, but Higgins quickly becomes disheartened by his former love's snobbery. Complicating matters, Higgins botches the announcement of his forthcoming nuptials to Agatha, leading her to believe that Higgins has proposed to her.
#10 - The Big Blow
Season 3 - Episode 22 - Aired 4/7/1983
A hurricane battering the islands isn't enough to stop Robin Masters's spring equinox party, a lavish event attended by a close circle of friends, but the arrival of an about-to-give birth young woman and two ex-cons intent on grand larceny does. Further complicating matters is Robin's assertion that one of his guests is plotting to kill him that evening, and Thomas's plans to trap the culprit with the help of Rick and T.C. have been foiled by both the weather and the intruders.
#11 - Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii (1)
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 12/11/1980
When Thomas's childhood friend and Naval comrade Dan Cook turns up dead, Thomas is adamant that the official cause of death, a burst bag of smuggled cocaine, is bogus, and enlists the aid of Dan's sister Alice in taking on the Navy to uncover the true nature of the top-secret assignment Dan was working on before his death.
#12 - Thicker Than Blood
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 2/26/1981
T.C. makes a late-night flight to land on a tanker, but on the journey back he is cornered arrested by the Coast Guard for transporting drugs. Magnum and Rick are certain of their friend's innocence, but are bemused when he intends to accept the charges and refuses their help. Magnum investigates, to find that T.C. trip to the tanker was to collect and bring home a man who once saved T.C.'s life in Vietnam, a deserter who is now a supposedly reformed drug addict, who was calling in an old debt to be flown back in to U.S. territory...
#13 - All for One (2)
Season 5 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/7/1985
Conclusion of this two-part story. Magnum, Tyler and Higgins are held prisoner by the Vietnamese Major that has a reign of terror over Chong Ker. As Rick lays recovering from his wounds, T.C. works with a local he's befriended trying to repair an old helicopter for their escape, but it becomes apparent that Tyler has been deceitful about the true nature of the mission...
#14 - Old Acquaintance
Season 6 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/3/1985
Thomas meets up with an old friend from high-school, Goldie Morris. He finds that she has lost her rather goofy looks from her younger days to become an attractive woman, but hasn’t lost any of her extremist protestor ways – something that comes to the fore when she voices her disapproval when learning that he is delivering some important papers on behalf of Higgins to a visiting unpopular third-world President, known for living a luxurious life while letting many of his people starve. But Goldie has a job for Thomas, hiring him to find a trained dolphin that was recently kidnapped from a local sea life park. She admits that she was part of a liberation group that took the dolphin, planning set it free, but it becomes apparent that the two men that were in on the dolphin-napping plan to use the highly-trained creature in a far more sinister plot...
#15 - Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii (2)
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 12/11/1980
Conclusion of the feature-length / two-part Pilot. Magnum and Alice continue in their quest to find out the truth behind Lt. Dan Cook's death, and find themselves uncovering a case of gold smuggling, and a criminal mastermind whom Magnum and Dan once knew in Vietnam. But in trying to find out what really did happen to his deceased friend, Magnum puts his own life on the line as someone tries to stop him from investigating, using any means necessary...
#16 - Blood and Honor
Season 6 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/21/1985
Magnum is called back to Naval service by Admiral Hawkes, who has reason to suspect that there is a security leak at his Naval base that is leaking coded information, but can’t ask any of his personnel to investigate for any one of them could be the “mole” behind the breach. He needs Magnum to root out the mole and plug the leak within three days, when he is due to receive some important submarine manuals written in code, which could be potentially very dangerous if they got into the wrong hands. Thomas’ prime suspect is the fiancée of the Admiral’s son, but when some stolen classified information is planted in his car, he himself accused of espionage...
#17 - A Sense of Debt
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/1/1983
Eager to attend a ten day Tiger home stand, Thomas convinces T.C. to finance the expenses for the trip in exchange for Thomas's collecting the $10,000 fee that T.C. was stiffed by a man from Motor City, and handing T.C. the keys to the Ferrari while he's gone; while tooling around in the car, T.C. literally runs into Leon, a fellow Vietnam vet turned professional boxer, and his young daughter Ima; feeling responsible for Leon's broken collarbone, T.C. offers to take his place in the two remaining club fights Leon needs to win to claim the purse that will lift him out of his financial difficulties; T.C.'s eagerness to substitute for Leon dims when he learns that these are bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred fights, and that there are many more than two fights he must win before collecting Leon's purse from a promoter who turns out to be crooked; back in Detroit, Thomas is having more difficulty than he anticipated collecting T.C.'s debt and attending a game, until two strangers in a bar take
#18 - Way of the Stalking Horse
Season 6 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/20/1986
Magnum is hired by meek insurance salesman Dan Wolf to locate his father, who he has not seen for thirty years. But unawares to Thomas, the client is actually an impostor hit-man who is using Thomas to help locate his victim, wealthy businessman Theo Wolf, whom he plans to kill to make a name for himself. In the hit, Magnum too is shot, bringing him close to death. Despite his wounds, Thomas becomes hell-bent on going after the hit-man to claim revenge for the dead man’s widowed wife and son – and for himself...
#19 - All Thieves on Deck
Season 6 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/30/1986
Magnum is to spend a week aboard a luxury cruise ship guarding an Amakua, a valuable wooden Hawaiian statuette recently purchased by Robin Masters, to be displayed on the liner while en route to the Hilo Museum. But Thomas and Higgins find that Apollo has been shot and seriously wounded after thieves attempted to steal the artefact from the Estate. Expecting the would-be robbers to try again during the cruise, Thomas secures Rick and T.C.'s additional help in guarding the artefact, but they find themselves on-board with a ship load of suspects, all potential thieves of the Amakua...
#20 - Birdman of Budapest
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/10/1983
Robin Master's mentor, Elizabeth Barrett, arrives at the estate with her macaw Merlin to research a book on ornithology. The former teacher hits it off famously with Thomas, but becomes so much of a thorn in Higgins's side that he bribes Thomas to help in bringing her visit to an expeditious end by finding Dr. Albert Tessa, the reclusive bird expert she's come to the island to interview. Thomas soon discovers that Elizabeth isn't Robin's mentor, but a K.G.B. agent on a mission to assassinate Tessa, a refugee freedom fighter from the 1956 Hungarian revolt. Meanwhile, Thomas has troubles collecting his fee from a man whose beautiful employee is tough enough to shoot out the Ferrari's windscreen to keep Thomas at a distance from her boss.
#21 - Never Again...Never Again
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 1/22/1981
When Saul and Lena, an ageing couple who run a local shop, abruptly make plans to leave town, suspicious Magnum and Rick, who are friends with the couple, investigate – only to arrive at the pair’s home to see Saul whisked away in an ambulance after suffering a heart attack. Yet when they check at the hospital, he’s not there. It becomes apparent that Saul has been kidnapped, and as Magnum houses Lena at Robin’s Nest while looking for her missing husband, she explains that they are Holocaust survivors, who are being hunted by neo Nazis. But there’s a twist that Magnum doesn’t foresee...
#22 - Paradise Blues
Season 4 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/9/1984
T.C. drags a reluctant Magnum along to the newly-opened club of an old flame – a beautiful jazz singer who he fell in love with in Vietnam – who has just moved to the islands. Thomas doesn’t dislike the woman, but insists to T.C. that trouble always follows her wherever she goes – but T.C., still infatuated with the girl, refuses to listen. But sure enough, the woman is in trouble, searching for a man who owes her $18,000 and mixed up with Detroit drug dealers that are out to kill her...
#23 - Double Jeopardy
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/25/1982
Magnum returns from a case out of Honolulu, to find that the Masters Estate is being used by a film team to shoot a new movie, based on one of Robin's books. What's more, he is employed to be the stunt double for one of the film's stars, Jack Martin - something which Thomas is highly unenthusiastic about, until he learns that Martin's wife Olivia Ross, of whom Thomas has always greatly admired, is also starring in the film, and relishes the opportunity to get close to her. But things take a dramatic turn when, during filming of a key scene, Olivia shoots Jack with a prop gun, but the bullets turn out to be real instead of blanks, leaving Jack in critical condition. With his idol Olivia the prime suspect in trying to kill her husband, Magnum investigates the "accidental" shooting to find just how the bullets came to be changed, and by whom...
#24 - On the Fly
Season 7 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/21/1987
T.C. is giving Thomas helicopter flying lessons when he is shot. With T.C. hospitalised, Mac appears on the scene, "volunteering" his services to stand in running Island Hoppers. But it seems that the assailants were actually gunning for Magnum, after a week previously, somebody impersonated him when trying to blackmail a Mexican Mafia King. With Magnum marked as a dead man as a result of the mistaken identity, confusion and chaos reigns, and as per usual, Mac 'just happens' to be in the middle of it all...
#25 - The Eighth Part of the Village
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/14/1982
After narrowly avoiding being shot during a case, a fortune cookie has convinced Thomas that it’s time to repay his friends and associates. As a favour to Higgins in one such payback, he heads to collect a crate of books from the docks, only to find that the crate contains a Japanese stowaway, and promptly upon the discovery he his is attacked by two goons. The stowaway woman is the daughter of an old war comrade of Higgins, who claims to have hidden in the crate to escape from her father in Japan, whom she claims is nowadays a cruel man. Although finding it hard to believe that his old acquaintance has now turned so cruel, Higgins feels obliged to help the girl, who is searching for her American fiancée. Magnum however, is more sceptical, but investigates for himself in case Higgins is becoming entangled in some sort of trap...