It’s a holiday episode and it opens with Magnum (Jay Hernandez) is on a case watching for a bail jumper, Barry (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette) to show at a pawn shop disguised as a mall Santa while Higgins (Perdita Weeks) is an elf taking photographs of Santa and the kids.

But that’s just the beginning of the episode as a ransomware attack on the Honolulu Police Department causes lots of issues. Katsumoto (Tim Kang) asks Higgins to help out with her tech knowledge.

Better Watch Out was written by Katie Varney and it first aired on 10 December, 2021.

La Mariana gets all decked out with Kumu (Amy Hill) promising to make dinner for everybody, with the addition of Barry, and possibly Lia (Chantal Thuy) if the firepit gets dug in time. And Rick (Zachary Knighton) and T.C. (Stephen Hill) gift Cade (Martin Martinez) a truck he was looking at and the young man begins to realize how important he is to the the group, but it doesn’t go as well as planned. Cade is upset that he may be developing into a new family, and he’s afraid that he will lose it, just like he was abandoned by his mother.

Lia has to reveal a family secret to Magnum and Katsumoto that her father is a crime boss and her brother, Pin (Leonard Wu) is the one responsible for the ransomware, but that’s all a smokescreen for something more. So Magnum and the gang race to stop Pin, restore HPD’s files and have a happy holiday.

All these new characters that have expanded this version of Magnum give a really nice sense of family and community to the series. And with all the things that happen because of family in this episode, Lia and Magnum may be just about over.

Dream Lover first aired on 7 January, 2022 and was written by David Wolkove. The episode opens with a dream sequence that seems to portray that Higgins’ feelings for Magnum are beginning to change. Something that Magnum starts trying to get her to admit to, or at least admit to a steamy dream.

The duo are hired by Emily (Brooke Nevin) to find a man she felt a spark with during a spontaneous encounter at a coffee shop. But as the pair work to track the man down, they find out there’s something more going on when they track down Mason (Logan Donovan) who has assumed someone else’s identity, and he may have picked her to hide something in her purse.

Looks like he’s trying to get evidence that the company produced a herbicide that killed his sister. He’s been trying to get justice for her, and figured he could change his identity and get inside the company. And guess where thse files currently are? But even when the duo bring Katsumoto into the investigation, they begin to wonder if the company did something to keep Mason quiet for good.

Meanwhile, Magnum has convinced Rick to help him serve some divorce papers, but things get difficult for him as he really has to go to the bathroom after over-hydrating on the stakeout, and the subject keeps eluding him. But he and T.C. will get their man in the end.

There’s more to come next week when I continue my exploration of Magnum P.I. – The Complete Series on DVD, available now from Paramount Canada. Aloha!