One cop is killed with a big medieval ax.
And a friend and community leader of a boy's/girl's based club gets his throat slashed.
What the hell?
As fun as it is whenever he MacGyvers something, why the serious and drama of the deaths?
Trump lies:
Mexico is going to pay for the wall.
I can stop federal funds.
I agree; last night's episode that included the throat slashing really bothered me.
Why ain't you at the garden party you heathen?
Yeah, and then in the epilogue, the widow is over it and smiling.
I know they don't mourn in TV but they should have made an exception.
We saw her crying when they bring his body out. Well, time to move on!
Trump lies:
Mexico is going to pay for the wall.
I can stop federal funds.
I thought you were going to mean the PREACHY nature this show takes as its identity in the later seasons.
It was a good premise, but this show, like zillions of others, were watered-down and ruined by the corporate capitalistic greed, so maybe that's why they thought at least they can put some gruesome murders in it to make it more edgy or something, who knows.
This could've been a great show if it hadn't suffered from the 'typical TV stuff' so much.. is MacGyver really stupider than some redneck viewer that 'gets the clue' faster than he does by reading the first letters of some stupid poem, conveniently arranged so the viewer doesn't even have to struggle?
Come on, if a poem's first letters spell 'Murdock', MacGyver would've spotted it way faster than the viewer can, and Murdock wouldn't make it THAT easy, he would construct the stuff in such a way that you need at least a LITTLE bit of detective work to get it. But nope, it's just straight-up 'neatly arranged first letters that literally spell the name 'Murdock' visibly' so the viewer doesn't get confused.
What happened to "Police Squad!", happened here also, just in different way. Corporations don't allow cerebral TV shows that would make the viewer actually think and ponder, they don't allow neat, technological solutions to problems, and there always has to be a 'romantic interest'.
Having said that, this show had some potential, and some of the 'MacGyverisms' are really cool and well done, but as a kid, this didn't quite measure up to more fantastic shows like 'Knight Rider', where the car is not as limited as MacGyver is.
I guess I always liked more 'unlimited' premises than just some dude putting some chemicals together so they explode so they get a diversion so they can clumsily beat up a guard.
Still, there were some good episodes, like the UFO one, but they were a bit too rare.
As fun as it is whenever he MacGyvers something, why the serious and drama of the deaths?
TV and movies in general were much more grim then. I recently caught Total Recall while channel surfing and was surprised to see how graphic it was in comparison to today's movies.
spoiler
The scene where Richter gets his arms ripped off by the elevator was a bit of a shock to me. I didn't recall the scene from the first time I watched it more than 30 years ago.
They didn't shy away from the violence back then. Look at any of the action movies. Robocop, Predator, or whatever. Blood splatter and dismemberment. Today's comic book movies would never.
Today's comic book movies would never.
Now they play the directors/uncut version of Total Recall - a lot of the stuff was cut out for some theatrical and TV showings. Same as the original Robocop - it's brutal lol.
shareIt just struck me the other day, the similarities between this show and Magnum. This one just has the gimmick of gadgets and the other Hawaii. Many of the MacGyver eps are driven by detective work, with the voice over, and frequent human interest stories. But yeah, this show (and Magnum) can be surprisingly stark, just like the movies of the era. It's unusual. You had even odds things were going to go pretty poorly for the guest star that week. (Same for Miami Vice on that count.)
shareBoth MacGyver and Magnum had similar 1986 episodes. In an October episode called Final Approach, MacGyver was supervising four juveniles before they all got stranded in the wilderness. In a December episode called Autumn Warrior (ironic title), Higgins supervises three juveniles during an island survivalist trip but things also go wrong. Both episodes have one of the boys being critically injured.
shareJust watched Final Approach today. H&I aired it this morning. Like a lot of these "save the youth" episodes, you start off annoyed but by the end, it's a really good yarn.
shareIt's sad that they never did crossover episodes. This even extends to the reboots where Magnum did a crossover with Hawaii Five-0 as did MacGyver, but never was there a crossover with the two M shows.
Back in the '80s, the only crossover episodes that Magnum had were with Simon & Simon (forgettable) and Murder, She Wrote.