"T. C.'s...doin' somethin'!"

Fridays are my day off. I drink tea and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on FX. Buffy finishes her adventures at 3 PM and it is then that I wonder if there's anything else on, or if I should get dressed and go do something else with my life. As I flip through the channel guide, I see that WGN Chicago is playing Magnum, P. I.

Every single time I see Magnum, P. I. on the channel guide, I think the same thing. "Could it be? Is today the day?" I am specifically looking for an obscure episode that ran shortly after the series had jumped the shark. I only saw it once as a kid and I was convinced for the longest time that the whole plot had been a figment of my imagination. I'd all but forgotten it until a couple of years ago when Cartoon Network's show Sealab 2021 did a 15-minute parody of this sick sad episode of Magnum. Problem was, I didn't know the title of the episode, so today I Googled for it and something turned up.

The Magnum, P. I. Episode Guide reports the title as "Solo Flight", and if you've seen the Sealab episode where Captain Murphy gets trapped under the BeBop Cola vending machine, you know what I'm talking about. In "Solo Flight", Magnum gets trapped under a World War II airplane fuselage, gets bitten by (I think) a centipede, and befriends a bug he names "Ben".

Seriously messed up episode, no question. But now I know what to look for. And no, it was not on today. According to my sources, WGN will be airing "Solo Flight" on Tuesday, August 23.

Gentlemen, set your VCRs.

Update, 2005-08-26: Apparently, Magnum doesn't name the bug, a fly, Ben. He names the spider Herman.