My mom mentioned to me today that she wanted to find an episode of Simon and Simon that she remembered starting out with some ghostly ninjas attacking somebody. I poked around on the web a bit, but I couldn’t find any reference to an episode with ninjas. Does anybody know what episode this could be?
Maybe she was thinking of **The Master **with Lee Van Cleef and Timothy Van Patten, the dutch ninjas.
She says no, she’s never seen that show. I also found an episode of Magnum P.I. involving ninjas, but she knew that episode and said it isn’t what she was thinking of. She’s sure it was an episode of Simon and Simon that started out with some ninjas that were moving like ghosts and were almost invisible. I’ve never seen more than one or two episodes of the show, so I don’t know what it could be. I guess I could watch the first three seasons on Hulu and see if any of those fit… but that would be a big pain.
Could she be confusing it with Crazy Like A Fox, Riptide, or Hardcastle And McCormick, which were all interchangeably similar to Magnum PI and Simon and Simon?
What an absurd statement. Riptide had a robot. Other than that, I think they all just recycled the scripts from Hawaii Five-O.
“Book 'em, Danno.”
Stranger
Heh heh … she says she’s never seen any of those shows except Hardcastle and McCormick, and it wasn’t that.
I liked Simon and Simon but your mother has a better memory than I, all I can remember is the Sand Dabs/Cooler of Death episode.
I still have no idea what a Sand Dab is and I was a zoology major, must be some rare San Diego species.
A Sand Dab is a kind of fish. I ate one once and it was terrible.
There’s definitely a Magnum P.I. with ninjas and a samurai The Arrow that is Not Aimed. The samurai (played by Mako) and Thomas had to protect an ancient bowl or something. At the end, Mako slaughters 4 or so ninjas in a matter of seconds, then calmly gets on a plane with the bowl and somehow avoids facing the authorities.
I do seem to remember a Simon & Simon where they find a throwing star as part of a case - IIRC correctly Rick tries throwing it at his dartboard for a while.
Try the third season episode “Harm’s Way”. The Simons are hired for a missing person case; IIRC, the person missing uses ninja tricks to keep from being found.
Just looked that episode up on TV.com. Unfortunately, there’s not enough details in the summary to mention ninjas, but I did notice something interesting.
On the left hand side of the screen, there’s something called “Episode Buzz”, which gives the ‘rank’ of the episode compared to all the other episodes of television shows listed. This particular show is listed as ranking “213,995 out of all 114,921 episodes”. Wow. Almost 100,000 ranks beyond last place. Must be pretty bad.
thwartme
In the movie “Big Trouble in Little China”, a Chinese gang kidnaps a woman from the gate at the airport, just off the plane. Complete with knives and guns.
Even at the time of the movie, I had a problem with that scenario.
Yeah, I asked my mom about the Magnum PI episode first, because that was pretty easily found via Google, but she immediately recognized it (they have all the seasons of Magnum PI on DVD and are big fans) and said no, that wasn’t it.
Thank goodness it’s 3rd season, since the first three seasons are all on Hulu. I’m checking it out right now.
I might think she was misremembering some other show, but she’s been right about this kind of thing before – she once described an episode of Perfect Strangers that sounded ridiculous, with Balki dressed up like a ninja and hiding up on a shelf, then attacking Larry in their living room. I thought for sure she was confusing it with some other show, but turned out to be an accurate description of a scene in the third season episode “Karate Kids,” where Larry gets beaten up by a bully at a bar and they take karate lessons and fine-tune their skills by attacking each other in the apartment.
Well, in the middle of “Harm’s Way,” at around 19m45s on Hulu, AJ’s friend/sensei just demonstrated some kind of powder that seems to hypnotize whoever you throw it at for a few seconds, letting you appear to vanish into thin air. AJ said “Ahh! Sensei, this what ninja use?” So at least this episode does mention ninjas …
Yeah, and one of the previews for the episode before the credits roll shows a group of ninjas in a hallway.
Just finished watching it. It doesn’t seem like that was the episode she was thinking of, but I’ll have her watch it and make sure. Thanks, Lute Skywatcher – even if it’s not the right episode, that’s the closest I’ve come so far!
You’re welcome and good luck.
I just happened to remember the bit with the hypnotic powder but wasn’t sure which show it was.
Netflix Online has seasons 1-8.
I don’t fancy watching all of them, but if you get clues on any more individual episodes I could check them out.
Oh, awesome. They might have a subscription to Netflix already. Does Netflix Online charge you a fee to watch each episode, or is it like their rentals, where you get unlimited rentals for a flat monthly fee?