Magnum Mania!

I've liked Magnum for a long time, but haven't watched the episodes in a long while.
I've read that the last two seasons show a more mature Magnum, both in terms of the tone of the show and the character, and that Magnum ditches the Aloha/Hawaiian shirts and shorts in the last two seasons for jeans and polos - is this true?

Welcome to the forum!

I watch MPI fairly often but it was only this last go around that I noticed him wearing the Aloha shirts and shorts a lot less and by the time he *does* wear them, it actually looks a bit strange! I mention this in my post on the season seven episode Out of Sync. Most of the time, Magnum wears the safari-looking shirts and long-sleeve button ups with the sleeves rolled up, too.

Magnum is also not in so-called "Beefcake" mode as often, so his female viewers are denied seeing a shirtless Selleck. I think that comes down to the aforementioned maturity aspect, which goes back to season six; The Hotel Dick episode in particular covers this. I also think that Tom wasn't as trim as he was in previous seasons and that is probably another reason why.

Hope this helps!

Little Garwood wrote:Welcome to the forum!

I watch MPI fairly often but it was only this last go around that I noticed him wearing the Aloha shirts and shorts a lot less and by the time he *does* wear them, it actually looks a bit strange! I mention this in my post on the season seven episode Out of Sync. Most of the time, Magnum wears the safari-looking shirts and long-sleeve button ups with the sleeves rolled up, too.

Magnum is also not in so-called "Beefcake" mode as often, so his female viewers are denied seeing a shirtless Selleck. I think that comes down to the aforementioned maturity aspect, which goes back to season six; The Hotel Dick episode in particular covers this. I also think that Tom wasn't as trim as he was in previous seasons and that is probably another reason why.

Hope this helps!

I notice too that around Season 7 his mustache is much more trimmed than it was in the early seasons, almost a little "Higgins-esque" compared to the bushier mustache of earlier seasons. Perhaps yet another way to subtly convey Magnum's blooming maturity?

It wasn't just Thomas Magnum getting shorter hair. A.J. Simon (Jameson Parker) of Simon & Simon got a short, "little boy" haircut in season five of that series--which coincides with season six of Magnum--Rick Simon (Gerald McRaney) cut what remained of his own hair and trimmed his mustache, too. It's quite a difference from what all three characters looked like in the early 1980s, when longer hair was still popular and sort of a leftover from the more liberal 1970s. By the time of U.S. President Reagan's second term in 1985, the continuing conservativism of the nation was evident in many a U.S. TV series, right down to the short haircuts.

Another possibility is that Selleck merely had to either grow out or cut his hair short for between-season movie roles, but then that doesn't really explain away the shorter hair and 'stache suddenly being more evident in those later seasons.

Also you'll notice he moved to looser pleated shorts in the later seasons and the Aloha shirts became much looser. They still used the same material patterns.