‘Magnum P.I.’: Zachary Knighton on Directing Sweet Miggy Scene

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Magnum P.I. Season 5 Episode 17, “Consciousness of Guilt.”]

Magnum (Jay Hernandez) and Higgins (Perdita Weeks) spend the latest Magnum P.I. episode apart after a conversation with Rick (Zachary Knighton) and TC (Stephen Hill) prompts them to wonder: Are they spending too much time together?

Rick remarks that ever since he moved in with Suzy (Elizabeth Knighton) and Joy, starting and ending each day together is the best. “After we put Joy to sleep, our favorite thing to do is to sit and just talk and tell stories about all the things we missed when we were apart,” Rick says. TC echoes those sentiments about life since he and Mahina (Emily Alabi) got back together: “We’ve been loving catching up, too.”

That leads Higgins to wonder if she and Magnum spend too much time together, and she promises him it’s not a test. As he sees it, “We spend more time together than most couples, but I don’t think it’s too much.” She doesn’t either, but she’s “just wondering if maybe we’re missing out on missing each other” since “if we try to share stories with each other at the end of the day, well, they’re just the same stories. That makes them inherently less interesting.” He suggests they spend the day apart as an experiment and see how it goes.

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After doing just that, however, Higgins notes, “While time apart definitely works for some couples, I’m not sure it works so well for us, and unfortunately for you, it means you’re stuck with me.” And with that, they end the episode by sharing a sweet dance.

This episode was Knighton’s directorial debut. “I really wanted to take some time with that,” he tells TV Insider of that last scene. “It was actually the first scene that I shot on the episode, too, and I knew that we were coming off a long week the week before, and I wanted to basically take time but not take too much time. So I had a lot of cameras set up. I had a big wide, and I made sure one camera couldn’t see the other camera. So I actually shot it pretty quick, and I let Jay and Perdy — I didn’t mic them. I let them just have fun with it.

“I think it turned out really beautifully,” he continues. “And that goes a lot to the credit of Ted Tunney and Newt TerMeer and all the lighting guys. Everybody just made it look so beautiful and made my job so easy.”

Magnum P.I., Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC