Miguel Ferrer and Anne Lockhart play young lovers on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Flash forward to the early 80s and those characters are played by their real-life parents June Lockhart and Jose Ferrer.
Jose did a ton of television work but he was so far above most TV actors it's ridiculous. When his character is a Supreme Court nominee, you believe it. June brings a wonderful dignity and class to her character. You'll want to bring her home to meet your grandkids. Heck, maybe you still could. As of this writing June is still alive and closing in on 98. As for Anne Lockhart, she's stuck with a faux-40s hairdo in this episode but my goodness what is her secret; she gets more remarkably good looking as she gets older. Miguel (RIP) is gone too soon; nobody can ever forget his performance in RoboCop.
There's a blackmail plot but that's a bit of a Macguffin. What's really magical here is the romance angle between people separated by nearly a half-century.
There are plenty of twists but none so crazy that a viewer can't keep up.
There's a very amusing secondary plot involving Higgins and his Thursday afternoon bridge game.
If that weren't enough, the piano player (in sort of a nod to Casablanca) is Scatman Crothers. And the beauty of the week was Miss Hawaii 1978, Elizabeth Lindsey. Rrrrooowwrrrr...
And if THAT weren't enough, we get a cool little recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Since there was no CGI garbage back then, those have to be actual planes flying around. I don't know where they got that footage (Midway, maybe?) but it's pretty cool.
This is a nearly flawless early Magnum P. I. episode.