The Plan

Twenty years ago, my sister and I would probably have qualified as reasonably serious MacGyver fans. To give you some idea, we were never quite on the level of convention attendance (are there MacGyver conventions? Were there ever?), but if Dana Elcar was in a TV movie, we were pretty likely to know about it. Maybe six or seven out of ten, something like that. At that time, I was probably pretty familiar with the ins and outs of the show, but that was quite some time ago. Now, I basically have only a vague idea of what MacGyver is all about, or for that matter, what (Angus) MacGyver is all about. How does he know the things that he knows? What are his politics? How does his character develop over the course of the series? Does he have magical powers of some kind? What kind of world does MacGyver live in, and what if anything can it teach us about our own? These are the kinds of questions I intend to explore as I report on the series, episode by episode, in the coming months. I will also attempt to answer some easier questions, like what happens in this or that MacGyver episode? Which MacGyver episodes are especially good, which aren’t so good, why? What ingenious inventions does MacGyver throw together in order to save the day in any given episode, and what is their basis in actual scientific principle? Ultimately, I hope that by paying more attention to this twenty-year-old CBS hour-long adventure/drama than probably should be paid, I may be able to attain some new insight into MacGyver and, perhaps, to in some way enrich the MacGyver viewing experience for others. It may not all be easy street (apparently Angus’s voice-over narration goes on for two whole seasons), and of course there is always the possibility that I will discover something about MacGyver that no one, including myself, wants to know. We’ll cross those streams when we come to them. For the time being, look for my report on the 1985 MacGyver pilot, coming soon.