I said in the "Seinfeld" thread that I would do it....and I did it!
Yeah, yeah, I know. "MacGyver" is a relic of a cheesy bygone TV era full of hammy acting, one-dimensional characters, and self-contained episodes where everything is tied up with a bow by episode's end. While his gimmicks were theoretically based on real world science, extreme liberties and convenient logistics were afforded to pull off his stunts. With all that said, am I willing to even entertain an argument that the television medium has ever produced a better series than "MacGyver"?
Absolutely not.
As a boy growing up in the mid-to-late 80s, this was the perfect show that came out at the perfect time for me, featuring a fiendishly clever hero who served as a credible role model without being a complete caricature. It was an extremely fun show with lefty politics that was frequently howled at by various factions of the political right. Having recently revisited the entire series on DVD, I've found the majority of the episodes hold up very well...so long as you go in knowing you're gonna be watching a pulpy, campy show. It's also a show absolutely screaming for a GOOD parody...not the lame MacGruber skits perennially running on Saturday Night Live.
Now, I bring you...the 10 best!
- The Invisible Killer Season: 4
A wickedly well-crafted murder mystery set in the Cascade Mountains where a prison escapee (or two!) immersed himself with a cluster of strangers on a hike through the woods. The escalating paranoia throughout the hour became very intense. Highlights: MacGyver dangling from a suspension bridge over a river in the woods and turning a telescope in a state park observatory into a cannon.
- Legend of the Holy Rose Season: 5
This episode was released the fall after the third Indiana Jones movie and Paramount (the distributor of both MacGyver and the IJ movies) requested a big-budget Holy Grail-themed TV ripoff of the movie. The two-part episode delivered with an epic, globe-trotting adventure that began in Colombia and featured the series most over-the-top escape in history (assembling an ultralite out of bamboo, duck tape, and a cement mixer engine) to fly off a mountaintop enclave of the Medellin cartel. The remainder of the two hours were dedicated to the quest for the Holy Grail with an incredibly annoying female archeaologist sidekick and included a clever nod to Edgar Allan Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum", climbing through the fireplaces of English castles, and using an ancient solar-powered laser beam to blow through a man-made temple hidden inside a mountain laced with gun powder. Seriously!
- Deadly Dreams Season: 4
The serial killer Dr. Zito, brilliantly played by character actor W. Morgan Sheppard, is now unfairly branded a ripoff of the Hannibal Lecter character even the two had only surface-level similarities and the "Silence of the Lambs" film was still two years away from being released when this episode aired. Whatever the case, Zito's mind control over his escaped cellmate and fixation on snuffing out the female police officer responsible for his arrest made for the darkest and most intense MacGyver episode of all, with haunting mythological metaphors throughout the hour. Of all of MacGyver's adversaries, Zito was arguably the most worthy, concocting the "alkaline cocktail" to feign the heart attack that led to his cellmate's original escape....and MacGyver methodically figuring it out.
- The Human Factor Season: 2
In a hat tip to Kubrick's "2001", MacGyver's security test of a secret underground lab's computerized security system runs into serious trouble when the computer interprets the security test as a real threat and rains down terror on the lab's would-be predator. MacGyver has to deal with the withdrawal of oxygen from the lab, garbage disposal chambers that empty into acid baths, and the computer's cheesy 1986-era heat-seeking drones that fire high-voltage lasers at their targets (again, seriously!).
- The Madonna Season: 5
This was the series' only Christmas episode and one of the more impressive Christmas stories I've encountered. It featured a weaving together of narratives of lost souls, the theft of a Madonna statue from a church, and the arrival of a bag lady played brilliantly by the late character actress Jeanette Nolan. The episode was masterfully crafted with a number of genuinely tearjerking moments and well-directed imagery conveying the episode's themes so well that I found myself noticing new things every time I watched it.
- The Assassin Season: 1
Some of the best MacGyver episodes featured flamboyant villains worthy of going head to head with the protagonist. They didn't get much more worthy than Piedra, the European hit man in America to snuff out an archbishop armed with piano wire and plastique explosive inside his watch, throwing stars in the lining of his sports coat, pens that shoot poison-tipped darts, and even nitroglycerin-laced toothpaste!!! Piedra's capture ultimately led to his dramatic jail cell escape where his phony mustache contained lock picks and a phony appendicts scar contained a poison-tipped needle. The final scene's crucifixion metaphor following the failed archbishop assassination at the church seemed a little controversial to me, but nothing was more controversial than having formally killed off this kick-ass villain.
- Lesson in Evil Season: 6
Dr. Zito returns with more nasty tricks up his sleeve. If his first episode was a precursor to the "Silence of the Lambs" without the cannibalism, this sequel was a precursor to "Seven" without Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box. Again, the craftsmanship was impeccable following Zito's bloody escape from his sanity hearing, with the clues to his "lesson" leading from Point A to Point B very cleverly, and wisely using much of the same kinds of mythological allegories that made the first episode so great. The intensity was off-the-charts, and the challenge to MacGyver's personal pacifist ideals at the episode's end when put in a position to rid the world of the evil Zito was nicely drawn as well.
- Nightmares Season: 1
Many of the early episodes of the series hold up poorly due to bad acting and third-rate editing, but the show seemed to hit its stride with this episode featuring the standard-issue adventure show plotline of a captured agent given a poisonous injection for which he has X amount of time to spill his secrets or be denied the antidote that will save his life. I've seen this storyline play out on a number of shows, but never as well as on this episode. The delirious, hallucinating MacGyver's pair up with a homeless teenage runaway following his escape from the East German heavies added some needed character depth to the episode and raised the stakes for the intense ending. Highlights: turning a bedframe into a slingshot, rigging a car battery to overload when touching a TV tube, and magnetizing a conveniently located metal rod to fish an antidote case out of a manhole...with seconds to go!!
- Brainwashed Season: 4
This episode was just out there, featuring MacGyver's flamboyant and slippery pilot buddy Jack Dalton who was suffering bizarre side effects from being brainwashed over the weekend by a power-hungry couple from an African nation, all leading to Dalton assassinating the nation's President at a ceremony. The episode was very dark and the line between reality and dream was impenetrably blurry at times. Hard to explain this episode, but it seemed very original and clever, with a surprise ending revelation of a "second" would-be assassin.
- Cleo Rocks Season: 4
The series' most memorable and prolific villain was master-of-disguise hit man Murdoc, who always lit up the screen with his wildly over-the-top battle of wits with the one guy who always managed to outsmart him. While all of Murdoc's episodes were entertaining, the best was this deranged parody of the Phantom of the Opera where MacGyver's actress friend Penny Parker (played by a young Teri Hatcher) was used as Murdoc's pawn into a bizarre temple of death revenge fantasy featuring a dungeon constructed under the downtown theater, cages hovering over a pool of boiling water, as well as death threats written in the form of bad poetry. It's quite unlike anything I've ever seen before and seems to get mixed reviews, but most of the DVD reviews I read praised the episode. Definitely an episode that has to be seen to be believed.
Any other children of the 80s here who are with me in remembering this show fondly? Enough to either agree with my choices or offer their own???