MacGyver Mondays: "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1)

Title: Pilot
Airdate: September 29, 1985
My age at Airdate: 2 years, 2 months, 13 days.
Episode Type: Rescue

And here we go. We're opening on a majestic canyon. "....Somewhere in Central Asia. Present day" A dude in a funny hat is climbing an almost sheer cliff. The sultry voice of Richard Dean Anderson comes on the voiceover. Telling a story about a horse. As I recall, MacGyver is a lot more country than he became later on.

This is what's known as the "Opening Gambit". It has nothing to do with the episode itself. It just serves to get the adrenaline pumping.

There's a downed fighter jet. Mac has taken out a guard and taken his clothing, his coffee, and his gun. Weird to see him holding a gun. He hates guns.

This horse story is serving as the skeleton for him rescuing the pilot who has been taken prisoner by these anonymous Asian guys.

HAHA. He just tossed his Swiss Army Knife up to the prisoner to cut himself free. He threw it and it stuck perfectly in one of the wooden jail bars. Awesome.

So now he's in a tent with "the missile". Pulling out some tools. Uh oh. Looks like the missiles going to explode unless he.....YES! Pops an unbent paper clip into the missile and stops it at the last second. That's what I'm talking about.

So then he sets a gun to fire on a matches/taut string timer and they escape! Huh. There's MacGyver returning fire briefly. Weird.

So he shoots himself and the prisoner off the cliff and floats away on a parachute!

OPENING CREDITS.

Ok, so who's pumped up? The opening gambits would slowly peter out. I'm sure they were expensive.

So, we establish that Mac lives in the Griffith Observatory? And is Big Brother to a friendly black pre-teen. So far so good. Wait. Did he LIE to this kid? He can't really live in the Griffith Observatory, right? That's...shady.

Now we're in Bannon, New Mexico. A cute blonde, Barbara Spencer, is both gorgeous and brilliant. This kind of woman will constantly resurface on this show.

Two old scientist dudes are playing chess for hours. But oh no! There's a bomb! Bright chemicals flying everywhere. And a vat has cracked and is leaking "acid" (It looks more like puke, but who asked me?) 20 people are trapped 300 feet below the surface (it's mainly an underground lab. you know how there are, like, underground labs?)

Who, oh who, will they get to solve this? Yes, MacGyver is the ONLY option.

Hmm, the guy that is giving MacGyver his orders isn't Pete Thornton. That's weird, too. Oh wait. There he is. He's not "Mac's best buddy", yet. And he's "Andy Colson".  And he smokes. Weird. Pilots are weird.

LOL!!!! This clown who Pete will replace just had to have "Aquifer" and "Sodium Hydroxide" explained to him.

Colson: "It's going to take a lot more than what you can carry in that knapsack to get you through all this"
MacGyver: "Well, the bag's not for what I take, Colson, it's for what I find along the way"

That's MacGyver in one exchange, right there.

He's mic'd up and by himself. This is where it gets good. He's at an elevator shaft that is filled with high voltage lasers. He uses 3 cigarettes borrowed from Colson to smoke out the invisible lasers and the mirror from his binoculars to reflect the laser back onto itself. Easy peasy.

Next problem: the bio lab is blocked by rubble and girders. Mac hears a tapping sound, taps back, and hears a response. There's life down there!

To move the girder that's in his way, he's gotten a fire hose, knotted it and put it under the girder. Turning it on, he can loosen the girder enough to burst through. He's saved the day!

But those two scientist guys are still trapped. And the blonde is going to help him get them, despite Mac's protesting. He is constantly getting bulldozed by strong, beautiful, stubborn women. This is what impressionable me was watching when I was 7 or 8. Explains a lot.

Whoa. The door she was taking him through has a fire on the other side of it. They have to go through "the gas chamber": a series of airlocks around a common lab that works with toxic gas.

Mac stops to grab some chocolate bars. Wonder if those will come into play later.

SUDDENLY THE AIRLOCKS START TO CLOSE! But they get through. Barely. Man this is exciting!

Cute Blonde and Macgyver see that all those people in that toxic gas lab are dead. Probably from toxic gas.

So, the time crunch here is that they're going to flood the labs with Sodium Hydroxide (strong base) to offset the acid leak. I guess that Mac only has the time it'll take the tankers to get to the lab. And then, SLOOSH, skin separates from bone, and so forth.

They're trapped behind the airlocks. They have to go through the toxic gas lab to get to the Vacuum Evacuation pump which can't be turned on remotely because the circuits are fried. Seems like poor planning on whoever designed the lab.

Mac gets a good luck kiss from Cute Blonde and they each put half his flannel shirt over their mouths to protect them. He turns on the pump. Phew.

Unfortunately, not-Pete (Not Colson, who would become Pete, but the guy that's doing Pete's job for the pilot) finds out that, in addition to the Sodium Hydroxide, they're also going to shoot an underground missile at the lab. You know, to really seal things in. Or something.

I'm not sure what it is that Cute Blonde does, but her high heels and skirt tell me that maybe she's not a chemist. In either case, she's walking all over the acid. But that's a non-point.

They're going to seal the rupture with the Candy Bars. Basically,  SULFURIC ACID + CHOCOLATE = TEMPORARY RESIN SEAL. It works like gangbusters.

Unfortunately, their walkie-talkies have been left behind and they still have those two scientists to get. Mac deduces that it was a bomb and not an accident.

Cute Blonde: "Don't tell me you know how to make a bomb out of a stick of chewing gum"
MacGyver: "Why, you got some?"

They have to bust through the rubble to get to the scientists. And they only have 6 minutes before they get missiled (it's a word. just don't look it up, ok?). He's going to pop some Sodium into a pill capsule. Pop the capsule in a glass jar of water. When the water dissolves the capsule, BOOM he's in. Easy peasy. Haha what a clean, rectangular hole. Chemistry is so neat.

OH NO! The scientist that Cute Blonde works for has a gun!

I'm pretty sure that they just over-dubbed Mac saying "Goddammit" into him saying "Gosh Darn it."

We're going to get the "villain monologue" now. Dude wanted to set his experiments back 20 years by killing himself and the world's only other expert in the field because the military was trying to turn his into a weapon. A bold sacrifice. Speaking of sacrifices...

Cute Blonde saves the other scientist by throwing herself in front of the gun. Shot in the stomach, she needs medical assistance. Plus the missile. Plus the Sodium Hydroxide. Thinking quickly, Mac controls the master power to convey a Morse code message via the lights. Hooray! Everyone's saved! And MacGyver gets to kiss Cute Blonde goodbye. And never see her again, ever. He's kind of a kiss slut, it turns out.

Ok, so the epilogue is in Macgyver's room...IN THE OBSERVATORY (which means 1) He didn't lie to the kid, which is good and 2) He lives in the Griffith Observatory??). Where he plays Nerf basketball with his Little Brother (also never seen again. He's a busy man, you know?)

 That was fun. But I think it's clear that once a week will be good enough. That was long! It's just there's so much to talk about! Well, I hope you enjoyed it. If this takes off and I make shirts, they'll say MACGYVER: EASY PEASY. And they will be glorious. See you next week.

NEXT WEEK: "THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE"