Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "magnum"

Christmas is almost upon us, and the time has come for me to dust off my favorite Christmas-themed DVDs. Now, it's true that the speedy passage of time often makes me wonder aloud, "Christ, is it time to watch these bloody things again?" But this feeling of dismay never prevents me from viewing the films and television episodes in question. Indeed, I watch them whether I'm in the mood to do so or not. Like eggnog, mistletoe, and hideous green-and-red sweaters, they are simply part of the fabric of Christmastime, and you've just gotta deal with it.

MAGNUM, P.I. : "Operation Silent Night" (Season 4, Episode 10). I grew up with MAGNUM and this episode is a fine example of the mix of witty writing, superb chemistry and deep but never sloppy vein of sentimentality that ran all through the long-running series. On Christmas Eve, T.C. (Larry Mosley) is transporting his buddies Magnum (Tom Selleck) and Rick (Larry Manetti), as well as frenemy Higgins (John Hillerman), to various spots in the Hawaiian islands in his trusty helicopter. T.C. is, as always, feeling angry at being used as a flying chauffeur, especially since he's planning on flying home in the morning to see his family in New Orleans for the first time in years. T.C.'s evil humor triggers the usual four-way squabbling between the group, which intensifies when engine trouble forces them to set down on a deserted little island in the middle of nowhere. It turns out the island is deserted because the U.S. Navy uses it for gunnery practice, but our heroes don't know that -- yet. They're too busy fighting, trying ridiculous ways to get off the island, and making grisly discoveries left over from WW2. A perfect balance of comedy, dramatic tension and Christmas spirit (the scene where Magnum insists on a proper military funeral for the long-dead Japanese Zero pilot discovered in his wrecked fighter is beautiful and touching), this episode is really about family -- and how adversity forces these four people to recognize how much they love each other, even if they really do prefer to fight most of the time.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: "The Blue Carbuncle" (Season 1, Episode 7). Dozens of men, including some of the very best actors ever to walk the earth, have played Sherlock Holmes over the last century or so, but there really is only one Holmes, and it was Jeremy Brett. His turn on Grenada TV's superb HOLMES series (41 episodes, five of which were feature-length films, shot from 1984 - 1994) is a masterclass in acting. It's a horrific pity that Brett died so young -- before the Internet, really, and certainly before cable TV had the omnipresence it has today; elsewise he'd be as beloved and revered as Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen or any of the other Elder Statesmen of Acting. The difficulty of playing Holmes, of course, is in making such a cold-blooded, unfeeling character, one prone to arrogance, rudeness and a complex form of self-pity, likeable to an audience. And Arthur Conan-Doyle's "The Blue Carbuncle," written by John Hawkesworth and Paul Finney, must have been a particular challenge, because it takes place at Christmastime, a holiday which runs somewhat contrary to Holmes' rather Scrooge-like outer nature. Yet Brett pulls it off and delivers one of the most touching -- yet unsappy -- Christmas tales of my experience. In this tale, a thief steals the famous Blue Carbuncle gem from the Countess Morcar. A convicted jewel thief, now working as a plumber, is arrested for the crime, but Scotland Yard can't find the stone itself, and the plumber insists on his innocence. Holmes is more than surprised, then, when a local commissionaire appears on Christmas Eve and tells him he's found the Carbuncle -- located in the belly of a Christmas goose, no less! Holmes, with trusty sidekick Watson (David Burke) at his side, immediately investigate, but this mystery taxes even the genius of the world's best detective. And when he finally solves the puzzle, he's presented with a moral dilemma which forces the icy logician to choose between bringing a criminal to justice or dispensing a more humane, Christmas-themed justice of his own. The last scenes of this episode are deeply moving, and the atmosphere of 1880s London in December strongly reminiscent of Dickens. Which leads me to....

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1984): There are nearly as many versions of this story as there are actors who have played Sherlock Holmes; originally penned in 1843 by Charles Dickens, this is arguably one of the most famous stories in history, and ne'er has it been done as well, much less better, than in Clive Donner's made-for-TV adaptation starring the late great George C. Scott. Though best-remembered for his brilliant portrayal of General Patton in the film of the same name, I would argue that Scott, who had an enormously storied career, was never better than in his portrayal of the heartless, ruthless miser-businessman Ebenezer Scrooge. Scott was notoriously tough and uncompromising in real life, and he brings those qualities to Scrooge, who defends himself stubbornly against the three Ghosts (four, if you include Jacob Marley) who come to reclaim his soul from the abyss of greed into which it has sunk. It would be pretentious of me to outline the plot of such a well-known story, but I can say that Scott's blistering performance is well-supported by David Warner (as Bob Cratchit), Edward Woodward (as the cheerfully menacing Ghost of Christmas Past), Frank Finlay (a badass Jacob Marley), Susannah York (tough but loveable Mrs. Cratchit), Anthony Walters (adorable as Tiny Tim), and Roger Rees (Fred Hollywell). There are so many goosebump-inducing, tear-jerking moments in this gem as to defy description, so I'll just say that the scene near the end, where Scrooge shows up to his hitherto estranged nephew's home -- well, the reaction of Rees to his dread uncle's appearance ("My God! It's uncle Ebenezer!" gets me every time. So too the entire film.

A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983): I'm sorry, but if you don't like this movie you either don't understand childhood, have no sense of nostalgia for a simpler, less cynical era, or you just fucking lack a pulse. This instant classic is the story of Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), a kid growing up in 1940s near the Great Lakes, whose sole desire in the world is to own a Red Ryder B.B. gun. Ralphie's dream is frustrated at every step by the seeming indifference of his old man (the crustily wonderful Darren McGavin), and the complete disapproval of his mother (perfectly portrayed by Melinda Dillon), teacher (Tedde Moore), and hell, even the Santa Claus at the mall (Jeff Gillen). I don't know what I love more about this movie: Ralphie's single-minded obsession with obtaining the rifle as a Christmas present (he stops at nothing), the hilarious narration of adult Ralphie (voiced brilliantly by Jean Shepherd), Old Man Parker and his various fetishes (lamps, turkeys and swearing, in that order), the brutality of winter in the Midwest, or the trouble Ralph has with neighborhood bully Scott Farkus (Zack Ward). Somehow writers Jean Shepherd and Leigh Brown and writer-director Bob Clark have captured childhood at its very essence in this movie. Ralphie's belief that owning the B.B. gun will somehow complete him is not so much a comment on hollow materialism as it is a frank statement of the reality of American childhood, but this movie is not about bullshit, social-commentary subtext; it's about the simplistic yet utterly honest way children think about their parents, kid brothers, teachers, friends and life in general; and it's about love and the strange forms it takes, especially at Christmastime, when we express our love with bowling balls, hideous lamps, and Red Ryder B.B. guns.

M*A*S*H: "Dear Sis" (Season 7, Episode 15) and "Death Takes A Holiday" (Season 9, Episode 5). When a show runs as long as M*A*S*H, it's bound to touch on certain themes/holidays more than once. M*A*S*H touched on Christmas stories a number of times in its 11-year run, but never more poignantly than in these two stories. The first, "Dear Sis," is written from the point of view of the hospital's company chaplain, Father Mulcahy (William Christopher), at Christmas. The chaplain, writing his nun-sister, bemoans the feeling of uselessness that beset him at all times, but especially now. No one comes to confession; no one attends his services; he can't perform surgery and he wonders what good he's doing in this miserable, bone-chilling, war-torn landscape. Hawkeye (Alan Alda) intervenes to make Mulcahy realize that he provides more strength to the rest of the company than he realizes, but it's a tiny act of compassion the priest gives to the snotty, insufferable, miserly Maj. Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) that makes this episode a goosbumper: “You saved me, Father. You lowered a bucket into the well of my despair and you raised me up to the light of day."

"Death Takes A Holiday," while even darker, nevertheless properly communicates the spirit of Christmas as I understand it. In this jarring story, a married-with-children soldier who has been shot through the head on Christmas Day is taken to the hospital, where B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell), labors to keep him breathing even though his brain has been destroyed. B.J.'s theory is that no family should have to remember Christmas "as the day that daddy died." Joined in his private crusade by Hawkeye and Margaret (Loretta Swit), B.J. finds himself in conflict with Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) and Father Mulcahy, who have different reasons for questioning what B.J. is doing. The acting in this episode is superb, aided by a crackling script written by Mike Farrell himself (who also directed). When B.J. snarls, "You can't have him!" to Mulcahy, who is trying to administer the Last Rites, the priest's response is epic: "I try to stay out of the way because what you people do here is so important but, understand, at a time like this, what I have to do is just as important. And no one, not you nor anyone else is going to stand between me and the performance of my sacred office." As if this wasn't enough, there is a terrific sub-plot involving the normally villainous Maj. Winchester and his attempt to perform an anonymous act of charity, which -- no good deed being unpunished -- leads to him being further ostracized by the unit. This sub-plot concludes with a beautiful moment between Winchester and Corporal Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), in which they use each others' first names which, after all these years, touches me just as it did when I was a little kid.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: "Amends" (Season 3, Episode 10, written & directed by Joss Whedon). It has been said by many that BUFFY was never better than during its various "holiday/birthday" episodes, and "Amends" is certainly evidence in support of that argument. The story revolves around the character of Angel, Buffy's on-again, off-again love interest, who left the show for his own spin-off series at the end of this particular season. For those not familiar with the lore of the show, Angel (David Boreanaz) is an vampire from the 18th century who was so vicious, so diabolically evil, that after 150 years of vile atrocities he was cursed with a soul as punishment for all the horrible things he had done. Explaining the brooding misery in which he lives to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Angel says, "You don't know what it's like to have done the things I've done...and to care." With Buffy's help, Angel uses his superhuman abilities for good, helping her slay demons and right wrongs, but he carries a core of guilt for his long history of wanton violence that he cannot escape. In "Amends," which takes place on Christmas Eve, Angel finds himself tormented by the ghost of one of his victims, Jenny Calendar (Robia La Morte). Forcing all of his guilt and self-loathing to the surface by making him re-experience his atrocities, and driving him to the brink of madness, Jenny eventually offers him a way out...by encouraging him to commit suicide. If this sounds grim, it is; the episode is unsparing in its depiction of the gleeful sadism with which Angelus (the evil version of Angel) dispatched his helpless victims. The Christmas-spirit moments come later, when Buffy discovers that Jenny's ghost is perhaps not what it appears to be, and tries to save Angel's life. I can't say more without giving away the store, but the ending of this episode is not what you'd expect, but somehow falls fully within the spirit of Christmas.

Well, that about sums up my list. It's hardly exhaustive and I suppose some will mock me for not including, for example, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or MIRACLE ON 34th STREET, to the pile, but Christmas is all about family tradition...and these are mine. I wish you the best as you indulge in yours.

If you were alive in the 80s and conscious of your surroundings, then the chances are you were well-familiar with MAGNUM, P.I. whether you wanted to be or not. In an age crowded with iconic prime-time television shows, MAGNUM stood at or near the top of the heap, both in terms of popularity, quality and longevity. The dimpled, mustachioe'd face of its star, Tom Selleck, was inescapable: if you didn't see him on TV, you'd surely see him in the supermarket, on the cover of PEOPLE or TV GUIDE or some other staple magazine of the era. It happens that this was not as annoying a phenomenon as it probably appears, because Selleck, in addition to being the sort of handsome that is not obnoxious to behold, was a very talented and likeable actor and MAGNUM a particularly good show. Indeed, there was a definite comfort in tuning in, year after year, and seeing him and his cohorts fighting crime to the tune of that beyond-iconic theme song. MAGNUM was, in many ways, the background of the 1980s. It was always there.

Recently I made the decision to rewatch all eight seasons – all 162 episodes – of this legendary television show which ran from 1980 – 1988. It was a deliberate trip down the nostalgia rabbit hole, but it was also made consciously out the memory of MAGNUM as first-rate entertainment. What I came away with following the experience, however, was far more than nostalgia or even a feeling of satisfaction (or regret) at having spent so much time in front of the boob tube. I actually learned quite a bit about myself – who I was in the 80s, and who I am now, in 2019. I picked up on themes which went over my head – or distinctly turned me off – when I was a teenager but resontate very strongly with me now.

For those who have forgotten or don't know, MAGNUM was the story of Thomas Sullivan Magnum (Selleck), a Vietnam vet and ex-Navy SEAL who hailed from an old Navy family and was early into a brilliant military career when he chucked it all away, and went to work in Hawaii as a private investigator. When asked why he did so, Magnum would invariably reply, “One day I turned 33 and realized I'd never been 23.” Although invariably broke, Magnum lived a life of luxury as a permanent guest of the mysterious, ultra-wealthy novelist Robin Masters, who kept a huge estate on Oahu and allowed Magnum to use his red Ferarri 308 GTS. On the other hand, he paid a steep price for his free room and board, in the form of Johnathan Quayle Higgins (Johnathan Hillerman), the pompous, tyrannical snob who managed the estate for the always-absent Robin and made Magnum's life a constant misery.

Magnum was (unwillingly) joined in his investigations by his Vietnam buddies Theodore “T.C.” Calvin (Roger E. Mosley) and Orville “Rick” Wright (Larry Manetti). The hulking T.C. ran a chopper service called Island Hoppers and often served as Magnum's aerial chauffeur, though he never did seem to get reimbursed for gas money or for the bullet holes invariably punched in his plexiglass; diminutive Rick managed the swanky King Kahmehameha Club and utilized his vast network of underworld contacts to facilitate Magnum's sleuthing.

I ought to note here that prime-time television during the 80s (or for that matter, the 50s, 60s and 70s) generally tended to use a formula known as “status quo ante.” Recurring characters were relatively infrequent, story arcs spanning multiple episodes were almost unheard of, and no matter how tragically an episode might conclude, or how badly battered the hero was at the end of a story, he appeared in the next as if nothing whatever had happened to him, physically or emotionally. This sort of storytelling had in mind the idea that a new viewer should be able to tune in and “get it” immediately, and not be repelled by arriving in the middle of some over-arching plot he knew nothing about. It also freed the writers from the cumulative tedium of worrying about continuity. The practical effect, however, was to prevent the characters of television shows from growing and changing over time. In life, human beings learn more by pain and defeat than they do pleasure or success, yet the formula of “status quo ante” meant that all life-lessons were sponged away at the end of an episode, leaving the characters as fresh, and as blank, as they were when it began.

MAGNUM departed from this formula in a number of ways: it featured a number of recurring characters, stories that played out in small pieces over time, and it did not always return Magnum to the status quo after a harrowing episode. (At the end of the two-part episode “Images,” for example, Magnum's mentally ill girlfriend-client [played by Sharon Stone] kills herself in front of him; in the following episode, “Mac's Back,” we find him in a drunken, bearded, guilt-ridden stupor, suffering from terrible flashbacks). Most importantly, MAGNUM did something no show I'd ever seen before (or since) ever did: it broke the fourth wall. He, and occasionally other characters, would sometimes look directly at the camera – usually to smirk, occasionally to raise an eyebrow or just plain roll their eyes. This information is not just trivia: it plays heavily into why MAGNUM had such an impact upon me then, but most especially why it affects me now.

When I began watching MAGNUM, at the age of 7 ½, what I most enjoyed about the character was his mix of toughness and humanity, knightly honor and juvenile irresponsibility. Magnum was a total badass, but he was just as often a chump, subject to all manner of ridicule and humiliation by Higgins, and to a lesser extent, his friends. He was a decorated Vietnam vet, capable of being moved to tears by a sunset or a memorial, but also a guy who loved eating chilli dogs while swilling beer and tossing around his lucky rubber chicken. He'd been through the wringer in Nam, but was determined to recapture his youth when not working on his cases – dating beautiful women, swimming in the ocean, entering surf-ski races and triathalons, roaring around Oahu in a luxury sportscar he didn't own, and coming back to a luxurious guest house that wasn't his. And indeed, the first four seasons of MAGNUM, which lasted until roughly my twelfth year, were very much in this vein. Thomas was, beneath all his .45 wielding, villain-punching, Ferarri-driving badassery, just a big, handsome kid. The oppression he dealt with at the hands of Higgins was the oppression I dealt with every day from my parents and my teachers. The scorn he often faced from his friends Rick and T.C. due to his indolent, sophomoric lifestyle was the scorn I endured for my inattention in class, my poor grades, my unwillingness to face up to adult responsibility. And yet, because of his badassery, and indeed, his irresponsibility, Magnum was also something I could aspire to.

At some point within the fifth season, my relationship with the show began to change. It was a subtle change, and probably not one I understood at the time, but in retrospect it is fairly obvious. After four full years of playing in the surf with bikini babes when he wasn't taking criminals to the figurative woodshed, Magnum began to show the first signs of transitioning from what Patrick Swayze, in ROADHOUSE, called “a forty year-old adolescent,” into something else – a grownup. The show began -- very slowly -- to pull Magnum away somewhat from his habits of running miles along the beach every morning or his penchant for entering triathalons and surf-ski competitions – the habits of a young man – and allowed a certain self-doubt to creep into his mid-life career choice. In season three, for example, he sharply rebuffs T.C. for suggesting he might want to sidle back into the military via the reserves, but a year later, during narration, he ponders “when he will have to grow up,” suggesting his career as a P.I. is really just an elaborate dodge of the inevitable.

I do believe this line upset me when I heard it as a kid. It upset me more as a middle-aged man, for reasons I'll disclose in a moment. But I didn't really get upset with MAGNUM (as a teenager) until the sixth season, when I saw the episode “The Hotel Dick.” 'Dick,' for you perverts out there, is old-school slang for detective, and the story in question finds Magnum having left Robin's Nest and his P.I. gig to work as a hotel detective. He wears a suit (rather than his trademark Hawaiian shirt and Ocean Pacific short-shorts), uses glasses to read, and takes rafts of shit from his boss without fighting back. As a 13 year-old kid who equated Magnum's lifestyle not only with rebellion but successful rebellion, the idea that he would take such a job really bothered me. It constituted, in my mind, a progression toward “adulthood” that I did not want to see him take. It reminded me that “growing up” was not something that could be avoided forever – not even on television. The decision of MAGNUM's producers to let age and consequences slowly dissolve the status quo was difficult for me to swallow: it contained reminders of infirmity and mortality. Then, in season seven, came “Paper War.” In this episode, Magnum accuses Higgins of actually being the elusive, never-seen Robin Masters, and Higgins' evasions and denials were less than convincing. It seemed to me then that MAGNUM was taking “breaking the fourth wall” to new levels and actually inviting us, the audience, to question the very foundation the show – any show – actually rested upon: the identity of its characters. Could I believe in nothing?

The final season of MAGNUM disturbed me on several levels. The episode “Unfinished Business” offered Magnum a chance to kill the murderer of his wife, Michelle; Magnum declined to take it. He passed on vengeance to serve a greater good. What the fuck was up with that? In the climax of season three's notorious two-part episode “Did You See The Sunrise?” Magnum coldly executes a Soviet officer who tortured him as POW in Vietnam and later murdered his friend “Mac” Reynolds (Jeff Mackay) in Hawaii. Though shocking as hell for the time period -- it really was a scandal -- I heartily approved of him taking the law into his own hands. How could that same judgment-passing Magnum pass up on killing the cold-blooded murderer of his own wife? What had happened to my hero? Why was he forgoing personal satisfaction for the sake of others?

But it was the series finale that really did me in. In “Revelations, Part II,” Magnum makes the decision to hand over the keys to the Ferarri, leave Robin's Nest, and rejoin the Navy. After nearly a decade of woman-loving, bad-guy bashing and check bouncing, he cuts his hair, puts on the white uniform of a commander, USN, and decides to resume his military career – as a single dad, to boot! In essence, the show seemed to be saying, “It's been real, kids, and it's been fun – but it hasn't been real fun. Everyone has to grow up sometime, and for Thomas Sullivan Magnum, that time is now.”

For me, as a 16 year-old kid, this episode was a flat-out insult. We – the audience – had only come to know Thomas Magnum through his life as a private investigator, through Higgins, and through his long-suffering buddies Rick and T.C. Now we were being told that this whole period, this near-decade of adventure and do-gooding, was really just a kind of belch that occurred between courses in Magnum's life, an attempted escape from adulthood that had run its futile course. He was like a man who had run away from his wife and kids and drank it up and whored it up and then come home, hung over and contrite, to resume the life of a husband and father. It had all just been an idyll, a soujourn, a tryst, a fling, an affair. It signified nothing except a failed attempt to recapture a youth he had lost in the humid, insect-infested rice paddies of Vietnam.

All of this, I suppose, is why the first four seasons of MAGNUM are so clear and fresh and vital and immediate in my middle-aged mind: testaments to my own desire to stay forever 23...even when I was thirteen. At the same time, they are the same reason I can scarcely recall more than ten or twenty percent of the stories from the show's second half, its last eighty-plus episodes. As a teenager, I just didn't want to hear this shit. I didn't want to see Thomas Magnum in reading glasses, feeling a bit too long in the tooth for surf-ski competitions, experiencing existential angst about the course of his life. To see that meant acknowledging that some day I too would have to give up athletics, to wear knee braces and ice packs, and have to choose between life on the couch with a bag of cheetos resting on my gut or the ice-cold comforts offered by the alarm clock, the rat race, and the weekly paycheck. And folks, volk, wolves, dogs, homies, peeps, niggas, party comrades, friends, Romans and countrymen – I just didn't want to do that.

On the other hand, rewatching MAGNUM at my present age offered series of fresh epiphanies and fresh feelings. “The Hotel Dick” resonated with me so hard I felt like a goddamned tuning fork when the credits rolled. And why not? I could – I can – relate.

I graduated from college in 1997. From then until 2004 I worked in the criminal justice system with great success – as a parole officer, investigator for the district attorney, and correctional specialist. At the height of my career, however, I chucked it all away to go back to school and write creatively. I did this because I felt I had been outraging my true nature by pursuing a conventional career when my creative talents were going used. I got myself a luxurious apartment, a wide circle of friends and lovers, and for about four years, lived essentially lived on the early Magnum level, sans responsibility. At the end of 2007 I came out to Hollywood to double down on my dream of living off my talent rather than a set of abilities I had learned but did not feel passionately about. And to make the parallel complete, I even worked periodically as a private investigator myself, right down to the occasional high-speed chase (unfortunately without music). I published novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories. I was paid – poorly and disingenuously, but still paid – to write a screenplay. I racked up an shelf-load of literary awards, and unlike some, I got them on my own merits (I don't ride coat-tails, and I don't take credit for things I didn't do). Yet after about ten years, part of me – what Magnum would call his Little Voice – started whispering, “Is this adulthood? Is this what grown-ups do? Where is your 401K? Where are your health benefits? Where is your house, your wife, your kids? Where is your actual contribution to the society in which you live? What have you sacrificed to live the life of a forty year-old adolescent?”

What, indeed?

Thomas Magnum came to a conclusion that, after eight years of snuggling hot guest stars like Morgan Fairchild, Sharon Stone, Marta DuBois and Erin Gray, eight years of ripping 'round Hawaii in a knife-prowed Ferarri, eight years of eating chilli dogs on the couch in the guest house of Robin's Nest while watching VHS tapes of his favorite movies or delayed-broadcast Army – Navy games, eight years of going .45 to .38 with his enemies, well, the time had come to take off his Hawaiian shirt, get a haircut, and slip back into that horrible thing we call adulthood. He'd had enough of being 23.

I can relate to that, too.

I've lived in Los Angeles for 12 years, having experiences I never dreamed possible when I was working as an underpaid parole officer in a small town. I've been paid tens of thousands of dollars to play video games (yes, you read that right), I've befriended (or at least partied with) TV stars whose work I long admired, I've had meetings with bombastic cigar-chewing movie producers who were so cartoonishly crass and egotistical that I left feeling as if I myself was playing a small part in a cruel comedy about Hollywood. I have, in short, lived out the vast majority of shallow fantasies I once harbored as a hard-working but unfulfilled member of what we refer to as The System. I don't regret a moment of it, any more than I regret the four years previous to that, spent studying, drinking oceans of beer, chasing women and doing whatever the hell I wanted to do whenever the hell I wanted to do it. It was all enormously fun and strangely productive. But sitting here, now, tonight, a little bagged, a lot tired, a little wrung-out, well, it all seems a little frivolous to me. A little silly. A little meaningless. I came here as a guy in his middle thirties with stars in his eyes, but I'm not in my middle thirties anymore, and those stars, I think, became rather salty droplets of ice-cold water a few years back, with a tendency to sting. Magnum, in “The Hotel Dick,” is trying to prove something to himself – essentially, that he still knows how to adult – and I guess I am, too.

Interesting fact: a man gets older. He starts having to wear reading glasses and to double up on the aspirin after a really tough workout – and even then, he doesn't recover like he used to. He walks down the street, and the cute redhead with the fine ass, who was precisely the type who used to stare him up and down like a side of beef and drop him a wink, now struts past him as if he isn't there, doesn't exist, has never existed. He goes on a bender after a tough week, and it takes him damn near a week to recover. His bills and debts have caught up to him, so he can't afford a flashy car anymore – Christ, he can't even pay his fucking rent anymore, because $3,700/month is no mo'fuckin' joke. He opens his social media accounts to see charlatans, frauds, fakes, thieves, cowards and clowns are accelerating past him on the career curve, dropping the hammer on their puny short-dicked four-cylinder engines, when sometimes he can't even get his massive V12 to even roll over, much less hit 200 MPH. So he discovers that he has a choice. He can continue wearing the Hawaiian shirt, which is no longer such a good fit, and continue to guzzle his Old Dusseldorf, which doesn't taste quite so sweet anymore, or he can say to himself, “It has been real, Thomas, and it has been fun, and it has been real fun, too; but that fun – that particular type of fun – is over, and it's time to do something else. It's time to find the fun somewhere else.”

In the end, I guess what I discovered – or re-discovered – watching MAGNUM again as a middle-aged man, was one of the hardest, coldest, and most unavoidable truths of all. We can escape everything in life except our destiny, and that destiny is not determined by others. It is not determined by the stars, or by genetics, or by fate: it's determined by ourselves. By where our own hearts take us. There is a time for discipline and asceticism, and there is a time for Hawaiian shirts and rubber chickens, and only we can determine which has come, and which has gone.

And which may come again.