Magnum P.I. Season 5 Episode 15 Review: The Retrieval

Magnum and Higgins uncovered a personal question they needed to answer while conducting a missing-person investigation.

Fortunately, that didn’t slow them down during a complicated case on Magnum P.I. Season 5 Episode 15.

Also, the couple got to experience the added wrinkles that technology could throw at them.

In what had to be a first for them, they held a virtual meeting with three clients scattered across Continental North America, three aficionados of the online game Battlecraft.

The trio reported that another of their number, Oahu-based gamer Artie, had gone missing, and they were concerned for his welfare.

Not surprisingly, HPD wasn’t willing to investigate an unresponsive gamer who hadn’t picked up for only a couple of days. He hardly qualified as a missing person. Hence Thomas and Juliet’s involvement.

Making things more difficult was that none of their clients knew the real name for Artie, an abbreviation of his lengthy gamer name, let alone his home address. Such is a complication of the computer age.

The gaming footage supplied by Minka, the most conversant of their clients, revealed little beyond psychiatric observations offered by Magnum.

Fortunately, Higgins, the more techno-savvy of the pair, picked up on Artie’s takeout order and, after cracking the Doormates server, she revealed his name and address.

Kilo’s (aka Artie) broken-into apartment yielded evidence of a violent struggle; all they needed to confirm their clients’ worst fears.

What wasn’t immediately clear was when they looped in Katsumoto and HPD. It should have been at this point, but the speed of events likely caused them to wait.

A gaming rival of Kilo’s turned out to be a false lead, but Chewy did point them toward Kilo’s last-known location, his workplace, the Oahu Family Clinic. That’s when the essence of the case was revealed.

That’s also where Thomas and Juliet began debating the question of children as they posed as prospective parents.

Understandably, that question had never come up much before. The two were so busy dancing around their feelings about each other for the series’ first four seasons that they wouldn’t have given children any thought.

Growing up in very different families, it makes sense they would value quite disparate approaches to parenting, which they began hashing out in front of Dr. Lim.

Their disagreement served their cause as Lim left them alone to regroup, allowing Juliet to determine that frozen embryos had been stolen the previous night using Kilo’s keycard.

Lim begged them not to call the police as the thief had threatened to ruin the embryos if that happened, even though she had no way to pay the demanded ransom.

Once they tracked the GPS transmitter attached to the embryo cooling unit, they found Kilo’s body, and they had no choice but to bring in Gordie and HPD.

He wasn’t happy they came to him so late in the game. But he’s accustomed to them operating that way.

The thief/murderer changed his approach, extorting the most vulnerable patients separately.

Except for one such patient, Lana, which should have seemed suspicious. Why didn’t Lim mention that custody battle over Lana’s embryos, which would have brought her under the microscope sooner?

That would have avoided the fake police sting and the chase at the mall. But that wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting, would it?

Now let’s see if Thomas and Juliet pick up the kids discussion again during the final five episodes. After her pregnancy scare on Magnum P.I. Season 5 Episode 11, things appear to be heading in that direction.

In the weaker of the two storylines, T.C. engaged in a potentially dangerous form of physical therapy.

Once again, T.C. got sucked into doing a favor for Jin or, more specifically, Bo, Jin’s former partner in crime.

You would think Bo, after working with Jin, would know better than to trust him to keep his cut from their last job safe while he was in prison. But apparently not.

Was anyone surprised Jin had buried the cut and then lost the map to show where? Still, any adult male experienced a nostalgic fondness at the mention of the Mad magazine fold-in style map.

Because T.C. inexplicably is a soft touch regarding Jin, he agrees to help Bo recover his money.

Such a short time after being shot and paralyzed, T.C. should know enough to stay away from any escapade that includes the words “crime boss.”

And, of course, Jin had stashed the missing map behind a dryer that his landlord had subsequently sold. Higgins was smart to help Jin quickly and send him on his way so that she and Thomas could return to their more critical case.

Didn’t Jin, Bo, and T.C. do an impressive job of snowing that poor lady about the energy savings she could realize from her ancient dryer with just a few tweaks? T.C. must have learned from all that exposure to Magnum’s B.S.

It wasn’t spelled out how long it had been since T.C. gimped out of the V.A. hospital on Magnum P.I. Season 5 Episode 14. He shouldn’t have been doing all that digging, however.

It was to be expected that Jin had misremembered, and T.C. and Bo had been digging for nothing. It was fitting they made him fill in those two holes.

To revisit Jin’s prior appearances, watch Magnum P.I. online.

At what point did you realize the theft was an inside job?

Will Thomas and Juliet have children?

Is this Jin’s finale in the series, and do you care?

Comment below.

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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.