Magnum Mania!

I Never Wanted to Go to France, Anyway...

Episode ID: 118
Episode Number: 6.12
Air Date: 1/2/1986
Writer: Reuben Leder
Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman
Producer: Chris Abbott
Exec Producer: Donald P. Bellisario

Recurring Characters

Kwan Hi Lim (Lt. Tanaka)

Guest Stars

Geoffrey Lewis (Gus Zimmer), Clive Revill (Walter "Inky" Gilbert), Anne Schedeen (Audrey Gilbert), Skeeter Vaughn (the Chief), Tommy Madden (Charles, the Dwarf), Richard Alfieri (Mike Janes), Karen Price (Robin)

Plot Outline

The Inky Gilbert Traveling Carnival & Midway brings fun, glamour and tragic accidents to the island.

Rating

7.5 (16 votes) MM Episode Forum Thread & Poll

Notes

1 Another episode notable for having the main cast in costumes. Magnum spends most of the episode dressed as a Carny, and he dresses up as a convict for the apple dunk. Rick finds himself dressed up as a Native American in the Chief's knife throwing act, and Higgins appears as a clown! T.C. is only seen at the beginning of this episode, and escapes having to wear a costume on this occasion.

2 This is one of the few episodes to have elements of light horror - the dark, spooky "Tower of Terror" carnival attraction, the Jason Voorhees mask, the disfigured (face burns), scary looking appearance of the main character, Gus Zimmer (aka Donald Gilbert), a carnival geek for over thirty years, and the fiery Carrie-esque ending! Season Two's "The Woman on the Beach" (2.3) and Season Five's "Fragments" (5.6) also had some light horror elements.

3 Geoffrey Lewis (Gus Zimmer) previously appeared in "The Return of Luther Gillis" (4.16).

4 Rick ran away with a carnival for three weeks when he was 14 years old. He also apparently ran away with a circus at some point, or so he says anyway.

5 Karen Price (Robin) is a former Playboy "Playmate of the Month" (Jan. 1981).

Quotes

1
Inky Gilbert: There's got to be a "little boy" inside you to stay in this racket, god know it's not going to be around long. The carnivals that criss-cross this country playing country fairs, or revivals, are soon going to be a thing of the past. A dying piece of Americana. The midway and the sideshow will soon be replaced by the computer arcade, or the cheap horror films that are churned out every five minutes. They don't leave anything to the imagination. Mind. The kid in all of us. I don't know, maybe America has grown out of this?! Maybe, the "little boy" grew up too fast?! He blinks his eyes and he becomes a lawyer, or a computer operator, or a bank teller. We carnies just try to get by ... and we try to reach out to the kid out there. (looks at Rick) I'm glad we reached you. (smiles)

2
Magnum: ... because even when I was nine years old and my Grandpa took me to the carnival at the county fair, I found myself asking too many questions. Questions like, in the basketball shooting concession, why was the ball so full of air that it would bounce off the too-small rim, and there goes your quarter. Or, why did the beautiful blond lady in the "dollar-a-kiss" booth smell like a distillery from twenty feet away. Or, how come the biggest stuffed animals you could possibly win in the shooting gallery always had an inch of dust on them. And now, a lot of years later, who would want to make a murder out of a sideshow? (Narration)
[audio]

Flubs

1 Magnum says that one of the clues that helped him solve the mystery of "Donald Gilbert" is the fact that Higgins never mentioned "North Africa, August of 1942" in all of his years of "ramblings". Well, in Season Three's "Basket Case" (3.15), Higgins tells the story of when he was in Tripoli in August of 1942. After enduring heat, malaria, and bad food for weeks, he tried to raise morale by organizing a basketball game and created what was later known as the 'floating zone', or sphere defense.

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