…Higgins was the only part of the new show that worked for me. If you are going to reimagine the character, then reimagine the character. When the theme song kicked in all I kept thinking of was that I was watching these people **pretend **to be their namesakes. Magnum was pretending to be Magnum. TC pretending to be TC. Rick was pretending to be Rick.
It physically hurt when the theme song started playing. I cringed.
I laughed when we were introduced to Magnum’s best buds. It was the Star Trek episode of Futurama, “Here’s Magnum, here’s Rick, here’s TC and here’s generic Red Shirt Number 6 Sebastian.” Tired lazy writing.
I was really hoping that John Rogers version of Magnum was going to get the greenlight: which was a continuation of the original Magnum series but with Magnum’s daughter taking the lead. I love all of Roger’s shows. Even the bad ones. I don’t like anything made by these showrunners. And how they treated Dae Kim and Park from Hawaii 5-0 was just a disgrace.
Okay, I watched the pilot yet again. Yes, I’m a Magnum geek. Here are my further observations:
The Magnum voice-over mentioned how Rick ran one of the hippest clubs in the islands, but never mentioned it by name. But… when Rick and Magnum took the boat out to find the sunken ship full of gold, you could see the name on the back of the boat: “King Kamehameha Club.” I suspect the name of the club will eventually be mentioned in the dialog in some future episode. At least, I hope so.
Tom Selleck clearly had the iconic porn-stache. As a producer of a reboot, what do you do? Include the stache? Or not? They very cleverly took a middle road: give him the Gen-X three-day goatee shadow. Is this a cowardly way out? Or a compromise? Hard to say. But I thought it was a good way to derail the possible controversy. I’ll be curious how it is handled in future episodes.
Chest Hair! Tom Selleck famously sported plenty of chest hair. In one brief scene in this pilot, we see Magnum changing his shirt, and he is clearly chest-hair free. Not that I give a crap one way or the other, but I thought it was a bold move on the part of the producers to decide that this Magnum would be free of chest hair. Possibly reflecting changing public tastes, or at least Hollywood’s perceptions of public taste.
She should have used a Texas accent. Seriously, it blows my mind that John Hillerman’s accent in “Blazing Saddles” was much closer to his true accent than Higgins was.
I was excited to see this… I was underwhelmed; but I’ll give it another shot.
Juliett Higgins/Perdidta/Weeks was a weak spot for me. She was mostly annoying.
I kind of like Jay Hernandez as Magnum; but am I the only one who would rather Zachary Knighton be magnum, and Jay Hernandez be Oriville ‘Rick’ Wright?
There were to many “I’ll get in trouble if I give you that information/Help You!” type moments. Geez, you had Captain Buck Green (James Remar), Higgins, The medical examiner Dr. Noelani Cunha (Kimee Balmilero), the police detective Gordon Katsumto (Sung Kang). My God, they were one step short of having a police captain hell at them over a desk! Which in a way they did with their old CO Capt. Buck Green. It was just too cheesy for me.
Hopefully the writing will settle down, and the won’t try to always give every actor a zinger.
Much of the production crew are the same people from the Hawaii 5-O reboot. So my guess is that they’ll take a similar approach: primarily standalone episodes, with one or two “arc” episodes per season.
Let’s see. The new guy doesn’t have half the personality Tom Selleck did. Substituting a sexy blonde for a charming character actor doesn’t fly. I too will stick to MacGyver for my stupid action fun.
Well that’s just unfair. Even Tom Selleck didn’t have half the personality of Tom Selleck after one episode. You gotta give them some time to grow into the roles.
I’ve got to say I don’t hate it. Not loving Rick, but he was pretty bad in early episodes of the original too so I’m hoping.
Not exactly high brow drama, but neither was the original. The core was always about friendship and that has carried over.
I’ll give a few more episodes a look.
I only watched a few episodes here and there of the original.
I did enjoy this but I won’t be watching it because I’m trying to cut back on TV after adding a few hobbies.
I was happy they had the original theme music, unlike MacGyver.
While predictable, I thought the story was done well.
If I had any issue, it was with Higgins gender swap. Sadly, since I won’t be watching it, I can’t say if the reason why I don’t like it will happen, so will have to wait and read about it here. I liked the animosity of the original characters without being any potential of sexual tension between them. If they actually have a man and women on a show respecting each other, not being attracted to each other, I will be impressed.
Overall, though, if I did pick up a new show, this one would be fine.
FTR, I watched the first season of the new H50 and it was okay but not my typical show. Also, I was sorely disappointed with MacGyver reboot. The two things I remembered most from the original show was the theme song and his use of brains, not violence, to solve things and they threw that out early.
I own the original on DVD. Best Christmas present ever. What you say is exactly what I thought when first heard that Higgins was female. Hollywood being Hollywood, sexual tension between Higgins and Thomas is almost inevitable and icky.
