It didn’t take very long to get the old gang back together.
That doesn’t mean that everything was the same after Magnum P.I. Season 4 Episode 1.
I should say it didn’t take long for viewers. Higgins left to go with Ethan on a Doctors Without Borders trip on Magnum P.I. Season 3 Episode 16. And now she’s heading home.
In Magnum’s world, it’s been five months, about the right length for a summer hiatus. And things had changed for most characters.
Not for poor T.C., of course. His role remains to resignedly shake his head at Magnum’s antics and provide aerial surveillance. The only development for T.C. was that Shammy was training to become a pilot.
Thomas had moved on in a big way after his P.I. partner/unacknowledged crush left town with her lover Ethan. He was secretly dating Katsumoto’s lovely new partner, Detective Lia Kaleo.
The couple appears to be well-matched, and, as Magnum pointed out, the secrecy makes the relationship hotter.
The secrecy makes sense for Lia as she’s attempting to make her way in a boys’ club. Also, Magnum likely isn’t universally popular at HPD.
Magnum should have wanted to keep their coupling secret as well. He and Gordon’s prickly relationship has been thawing, and Thomas dating Gordon’s partner would only set that back.
Then again, Katsumoto is pretty sharp. He’ll soon pick up on the body language between them. How he will react is a question for another episode.
Sadly, their relationship is likely to be short-lived. The writers, especially Robin Masters, are working to push Thomas and Juliet together as a couple. As if that hadn’t already been happening for the first three seasons.
The opening and closing scenes featuring re-enactments of chapters from Robin’s latest White Knight novel effectively examined the underlying sexual tension between Magnum and Higgins.
Sure, this is one of the oldest T.V. tropes: the couple who appear to irritate each other but smolder for each other inside. Everyone has their favorite such pairing.
Thomas and Juliet’s public critical analyses of Robin’s latest book reinforce their previously stated positions toward each other. But what they are reading, especially the steamy Chapter 9, might serve to get them further thinking, “what if.”
After all, they are the only ones in their social circle that don’t already view them as a couple, however reluctant.
Now that they’re back on the same island, it’s just a matter of time until they get together. But remember the Moonlighting curse. Having the leading characters become a couple doesn’t always improve the final product.
The best part of this development is that Higgins is a secret agent again, however grudgingly.
Juliet has been wasted as the acerbic estate manager and Magnum’s smarter partner. Finally, after just hints of her Mi-6 past, we got to see her in full-blown solo action.
Why she and Ethan thought that a Doctors Without Borders mission to Kenya would be a romantic tropical vacation is beyond me. He was busy; she was bored.
Then vaccines earmarked for the darling native children with whom Higgins was playing soccer got stolen by Kenyan bandits.
So enter Juliet Higgins, international woman of mystery.
After she turned the tables and asked Magnum for a favor, Higgins walked into a bandit bar, took out three of them, and retrieved the vaccine. Easy peasy, right?
Only Juliet had stepped into a political quagmire of which she was unaware, pissing off Mi-6 assets in that gang and putting herself, and adjacently the medical volunteers, in its crosshairs.
So she was stuck having to agree to work for Mi-6 in exchange for them protecting the medical team from the bandits. And she had to leave behind Ethan.
It was inevitable. While Ethan has quite a few admirable qualities, he’s not an action figure. Like Higgins. Like Magnum. He doesn’t fit into their little mystery-solving Scooby Gang.
So the time has come for Juliet and Ethan to be pulled apart by their demanding careers. So watch out, Lia!
The next question is how long before Magnum and Higgins figure out each other’s secrets. They know each other well, so I’m betting it won’t take that long.
Thomas has recalled how to operate on his own as a P.I. Well, as much as he ever did. Yet, he still managed to rope Juliet into his current case, waking her up in Kenya to have her dig up missing single mother Jenny’s financials.
Mostly, it was Magnum being Magnum, cajoling T.C., Rick, Gordon, and now Lia to help him find Jenny.
The case itself was fairly involved for a Magnum case, as Jenny went from being a missing person to a relapsing drug addict to the target of hitmen. It was intriguing to watch his investigation evolve as Thomas hunted for his maternal substitute.
Of course, it was Magnum alone, against long odds, in the end.
Poor Rick still couldn’t catch a break. Suzy, his crush but also his employee, resigned, making them ethically able to date.
But she got accepted to an art residency, so she was off to San Diego, just as their relationship began.
To revisit Magnum and Higgins’ relationship, watch Magnum P.I. online.
How do you like Magnum and Lia together?
Will Thomas and Juliet give in to their feelings?
What does Mi-6 want Higgins to do?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.