User Reviews

Not a bad episode, and kind of a soliloquy that one expects from season 7 of this fine series. I love Magnum's reference to The Fly, with his preference for the original one (black and white), not the Jeff Goldblum-Geena Davies remake. Talking of which, the previous episode was called On the Fly.

Magnum tended to meander somewhat, but still I guess this episode was a prelude to Limbo, the season 7 finale. If I introduced some to Magnum (the original one) for the first time, I'd steer them clear from this episode first time around.

Prescott Ogle played Hunter #1 and Tony Troche played Hunter #2. A search of the internet shows little trail of their lives post-Magnum.

The season 4 opener, Home from the Sea, is by far my least favourite episode of Magnum (so far, at least.) I hated it so much that I couldn't even bring myself to write a review on it, despite my prior decision to write one on all particularly bad and particularly good episodes plus random others.

I'm just instinctively turned off by programmes and films which work so hard and so obviously to tug at the heartstrings, as Home from the Sea did. Then elements such as Magnum frightening off a shark by calling it names, his friends suddenly becoming psychic, Rick's girlfriend randomly turning on a radio at just the wrong moment, and chubby, little, old Higgins being the one to jump out of a helicopter into the sea to save him made things even worse.

Well, I must have been in a very small minority with my opinion. Home from the Sea was obviously so popular that they decided to do basically the same story again, with Magnum this time being trapped under the wreck of a fighter pane rather than lost at sea. There are initially lots of flashbacks from Home from the Sea, just to make clear to us the source of inspiration for this episode.

But, luckily, Solo Flight has more than that. There are clips from season 3 opener Did You See the Sunrise?, with Magnum and TC as abused POWs, fantasy sequences, and Magnum's elaboration of a case from which he's just been fired for failing to solve. He also makes the acquaintanceship of a spider and a fly! And, despite my initial fears, Solo Flight doesn't spend all its time time blatantly trying to make the viewer cry.

In the end, Magnum frees himself, without the need for telepathy or an unbelievable rescue by his friends. The experience seems to have made him more mature, a constant theme throughout this season. And there's a funny final scene.

All in all, not a great episode, but nowhere near as bad as the one that's it's inspired by. I'm hoping that, despite Magnum's newfound maturity, we can get back to having a percentage of the episodes be comedy ones. Purely serious Magnum for the rest of the series could become depressing, not to mention boring.