It's happened over the years at least a few times. Something becomes so popular that I decide it just can't be anything worthwhile, and then I find myself doing a complete 180. This guy Selleck was too good looking in an old Hollywood way (Clark Gable), his voice seemed an octave too high for a man of his size and looks, so damn many women were positively orgasmic when they talked about him and women are notorious for going after some really shallow males, and the few times I caught a scene or two flipping through channels, he seemed smug, or at least that's how I perceived him. And then one Thursday evening there was nothing on the network channels and nothing on any cable channel and I flipped on CBS just as Magnum P.I. started. It was the first two hour episode that introduced Michelle and had a spectacular gunfight at the end on the streets of Little Saigon. My two favorite movies have always been Rio Bravo and Casablanca, and this episode seemed to be an updated melding of the two. Like Duke in Rio Bravo, Magnum had loyal friends to back his play as he tries to set things right when no one else will help him, and like Bogie in Casablanca, Magnum has an ill-fated love affair he is going to have to give up to a higher duty. And then there was the gunfight at the end. After years and years of so-called do-gooders trying to get violence off the TV, and somewhat succeeding, there was a real hero like Duke or Bogie, who wasn't going to apologize for putting a few well deserved .45 slugs into a few bad guys. Women liked Magnum because he was so charming and good looking and mischievous like a little boy. I liked him because, like Duke and Bogie and Gable, for all of his faults, he was a man! <br /><br />The show seemed too good to be true, a good looking old Hollywood sort of guy who carried my favorite pistol and wasn't adverse to using it, a show at times filled with humor, sometimes filled with drama, and Magnum, like Selleck, was just the sort of guy you always wanted for a friend in good times and bad. And then the next season or so there was the two hour episode that introduced Magnum's and T.C.'s old Soviet torturer and nemesis from Vietnam, Ivan, who just happened to be on the islands for a long weekend to "look up some old friends" and assassinate a world leader. Magnum and friends have to relive their haunted unresolved past in Vietnam, prevent an assassination, not only in Hawaii but also in other areas of the world, and seek justice and retribution when the powers that be can not put Ivan in jail. In the final 30 seconds of the show, Magnum with his .45 became as powerful an image on screen as Clint and his big .44, even it was only a curved 23" TV set! <br /><br />I remember reading an article that discussed the types of TV shows popular during certain Presidential administrations. There was the straight forward, safe, family values sort of programs that reflected Eisenhower's quiet dignity in the '50s. In the early '60s during the Kennedy administration, Jack and Bobby's determination to right wrongs over missiles in Cuba or in mob-controlled unions gave us The F.B.I. and Robert Stack as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. Later, having shamefully abandoned Vietnam for purely political reasons, our Presidents like Nixon and Ford and Carter seemed rather impotent, like the always wimpy Alan Alda (Hawkeye) in M.A.S.H., and the always intimidated and beat up James Garner in The Rockford Files. Reagan got into the White House and suddenly his no nonsense, straight shooting philosophies, his search for right and wrong and black and white, and his jovial sense of humor was reflected in Thomas Sullivan Magnum or Magnum P.I. And just as suddenly TV had, in Selleck and Magnum, as good a character, if not better, as anything Hollywood had come up with for the larger screen in the previous 20 years.<br /><br />Today I have four seasons of Magnum P.I. on DVD, and whenever I want something to watch and can not decide on something from my library, I pull out the private investigator in Hawaii and go back to a time not all that long ago, when life seemed somewhat more clear and safe, and certainly younger, and a tall man in a Tiger baseball hat and Hawaiian shirt, with a red Ferrari and a Colt .45 auto, went out to do the decent thing and right the wrongs of the day.<br /><br />George Clooney or Vince Vaughn as Magnum P.I.??? You've got to be kidding!