Magnum P.I. has been on a hot streak in Season 5. This is why I hate admitting that the latest episode, titled “NSFW”, is where they drop the ball a little. It’s not a horrible episode by any stretch, but it just doesn’t do much world-building, and mostly is focused on the case of the week.
Much like the last few episodes, “NSFW” revolves around Greene’s murder. It starts with Magnum and Katsumoto talking about the man, speculating on why there’s suddenly blowback 7 years later. Thomas wants Gordon’s help getting a file on Greene, but the former detective is worried doing so might jeopardize his hearing to get his job back. So he refuses the request, and it’s clear Magnum is hurt.
There are a couple of small side stories that happen in the episode as well. Rick isn’t willing to give in to fear of reprisal from the group that killed Greene, and he’s pleasantly distracted by the arrival of his sister Ruthie. Though he is worried she probably is up to no good and needs something from her big brother.
We also get to meet T.C.’s gorgeous new girlfriend. When they aren’t spending time in bed, he’s busily upping security, worried about gathering shadows after Greene’s abduction and murder. While I really like T.C. as a character, his arc is pretty minor, and mostly involves being upfront with his girlfriend about his fears, and then working with her to improve security.
Back to the main story, it involves a clean energy startup being faced with a hostile takeover from an oil-backed hedge fund. Higgins initially thinks it will be a simple corporate job, but it’s anything but. The man paying them is named Jordan, and he needs them to find his CFO, a woman named Sandra Perez. She’s the only thing that can prevent the takeover, and she’s been missing for a few hours. When Thomas and Juliette suggest that’s not a long period of time, he says Sandra has no social life outside of the business, and it’s worrisome they haven’t been able to get a hold of her. Jordan is so worried he sent security to check her house, but Sandra’s phone and car are there, even if she’s nowhere to be found.
Higgins and Magnum split up, though reluctantly on her part. She’s worried about Magnum’s safety and tries to convince him to stay at the office. He eventually convinces her that he’ll be safe, and gets a lingering kiss for good luck that nearly keeps him from leaving.
Higgins searches Sandra’s office with help from a kindly janitor named Will. He says Sandra is good people, and that she helped him through a rough financial patch. Then Higgy finds a bunch of shredded paper and asks Sandra’s aide about it. Apparently, he usually shreds things for her, but the other day she was shredding things for 10 minutes straight.
As for Magnum, he goes to Sandra’s house and quickly finds things that don’t add up. According to Jordan, Sandra has no social life, but he finds a man’s shirt in her bedroom. He calls the company that makes the shirt and gets the ball rolling on identifying the mystery man. Then he calls Higgins, who is crankily dumpster diving for clues. She suddenly finds a bag with blood on it and then looks up to find Sandra’s corpse stuck in the chute above her.
Detective Childs gets looped in, and Magnum and Higgins tell a bereft Jordan about Sandra. He wants them to find Sandra’s killer now, which leads us to Bentley, the owner of the hedge fund trying to buy out Jordan’s company. Despite his protestations, it’s clear he’s very much a business bro, but he says he didn’t kill Sandra. In fact, he respected her and was trying to poach her to work for him. That’s the package he sent Sandra before she wound up dead, which she later shredded. Or as Bentley puts it, “I kill companies, not people”. It seems like leads are drying up, until Magnum gets a call from the T-shirt company, and finds it belongs to Jordan.
It’s clear now Jordan hasn’t been completely honest with the investigators, so Thomas and Juliette go to his house, meeting his wife Lena and daughter Zoe. Lena says Sandra was like family before they talk with Jordan. In private he admits he and Sandra had been having an affair for a year, but he gets furious when they push further and fires both of them. Higgins does her hacker thing and finds Jordan’s phone was at home the day of the murder. What’s suspicious is that when she tries to hack Jordan’s security system, she finds videos from the day of the murder have just been deleted.
Back in side-story land, Ruthie and Rick go for a walk by the beach, and it’s clear Rick suspects Ruthie needs financial help. He’s totally wrong, and she says she’s now the regional manager at the spa she works at. More interesting, she’s getting married to her longtime girlfriend, Jenny. When Rick asks how long Ruth knew she was gay, she admits she’s known all her life, and that he was the last person to find out.
Rick’s hurting and distances himself from Ruth to dwell on his feelings at the bar. Kumu talks some sense into him and says that the sudden distance between the siblings was due to him leaving for Afghanistan years ago. While Rick was always a father figure to Ruthie, his suddenly disappearing for several years slowed down the relationship. But there’s nothing to say that can’t be fixed now.
Thomas and Juliette tell Childs about the affair, but he says they already arrested the killer, and they have Will the janitor in handcuffs. There’s a bunch of evidence pointing to the man, including messages he sent Sandra, a check of hers he cashed himself and a bloody wrench they found at the crime scene. Despite all this, the man insists he’s innocent.
The investigators manage to sneak into the lockup and talk with Will more. He sticks to his story and says that on the day of the murder, he and Sandra were at the office, but he had propped the door to the stairwell open. He later heard voices arguing, and says it wasn’t a man and a woman, but two women. This means the prime suspect is now Jordan’s wife, Lena.
Lena gets interrogated by Magnum and Higgins, and she’s not happy about it. She claims Jordan had multiple affairs over the years, the price of being with a driven man. She says she accepted it and gets really defensive when facts that point to her are thrown in her face. So she warns the pair she’ll call HPD on them if they try and talk with her again, angrily driving away.
Higgins can’t find proof that Lena was at the scene of the crime but then stumbles onto a promising nugget. Apparently, the entire family had access to the security system that got deleted, meaning it could have been the daughter, Zoe. Then Juliette finds texts that show she knew about the affair. When they drive frantically to confront Zoe at the house, her father Jordan is being marched away in cuffs by Childs, who says he confessed to everything.
Once more, Magnum and Higgins talk with Jordan in lockup. They tell him they suspect his daughter did the dirty deed, but he sticks to his story. Besides, he says, they have no proof to contradict it. So Jordan falls on his sword, protecting his daughter from liability. The only good thing is that Will goes free as a result of his false testimony.
“NSFW” ends with Gordon finally relenting and giving Magnum the file he asked for, saying some things are more important than a job. Then Ruthie and Rick play some pool, and they both apologize to each other and make up. Better yet, she asks him to be the best man at her wedding, and it ends with a brief cameo from Suzie as everybody chills out at Rick’s bar.
Definitely not a horrible episode, but here’s hoping next week’s Magnum P.I. is a lot more compelling and complex.
