Title: Thief of Budapest
Airdate: October 13, 1985
My age at Airdate: 2 Years, 2 Months, 27 Days
Episode Type: Espionage
OPENING GAMBIT
A man with a very awesome mustache sits in a tent in the desert. He is in the tent with a horse. Mustache has stolen the horse from a king and it's considered to be one of the most valuable horses alive.
MacGyver takes out the guard and steals his turban. Yep. There's MacGyver in a turban. A perfect disguise.
Mustache is practicing sword-based Martial Arts while Mac saddles the horse and rides it out of the tent. For some reason, a shepherd is among those who try to stop him. So MacGyver steals his crook (shepherd lingo. it's something i do.)
MacGyver leads the chase with his deft, one-handed horseriding. They're on a beach. Hopefully Mac has a plan.....
He's surrounded by Mustache and his men. So what's left to do but joust. Sword vs. Crook. The first pass, Mustache cuts the end off Mac's crook, the next pass, Mac clotheslines Mustache with the hooky part of the crook.
And then the chase continues.
Suddenly, there's a helicopter with a tow line. MacGyver grabs it, hooks the hook to the saddle and the horse lifts into the air. Turns out it was a harness and not just a saddle that MacGyver put on the horse.
Horse (neigh-over): Whinny!!
MacGyver (voiceover): I'm with you, pal. I hate heights
OPENING CREDITS
MacGyver is in, of course, Budapest. He gets an ice cream cone and very cooly eats it without dripping on his snazzy white shirt. He looks good, you guys.
He eats the ice cream and throws the cone away. If there's one thing MacGyver hates....it's probably guns. But if there's TWO things MacGyver hates.....well, probably guns and heights. But if there's THREE things MacGyver hates, you've gotta give the bronze to ice cream cones. Apparently.
He checks out some sort of fancy yellow car and moves on. But the camera lingers as an adorable Street Urchin Girl in a Jaunty Cap and a Fancy Necklace runs up behind him. She runs into him and CLEARLY picks his pocket. Mac catches her and criticizes her technique. She asks him if he's a gypsy. Haha aw, she's cute. I think her name is Yanna. I dont want to call her Urchin the whole episode because she's cute.
So, Yanna closes the scene by successfully picking Mac's pocket.
There are two KGB agents monitoring MacGyver's double agent friend Nicky. He's Russian. It's the 80's.
So, Nicky doesn't want to give MacGyver the names of the KGB agents he has out in public. He says to meet him at Cafe Mozart. (is that how you spell Mozart? It looks wrong...) so, he walks away.
Yonna trips him with some marbles and steals what is almost certainly the list, but she doesn't know any better. Unless......maybe she's a covert KGB agent! It's brilliant! Employ the cute gypsy youth. It'll be the KGB-CGY project!
The KGB agents (there are like 4 of them now. They must double like tribbles...) yell out Nicky's name and he runs into oncoming traffic and is hit by a truck. Whoa. He's way dead.
The KGB leader searches him but...gasp...no list! They figure that MacGyver must have the list. But then they watch the surveillance tape and see Yonna (have I changed the spelling of her name? Maybe Urchin would have been easier) pick his pocket. So they're after both of them.
KGB Leader is talking to the guy who plays the Dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and he's like the head cop of Budapest or something. Clearly a dirty cop.
MacGyver tries to catch Yanna/Yonna to get his knife back but she's a clever gypsy.....but not clever enough! He knows that she took the watch, too. Man, she's a horrible thief. She said that she gave the watch to her brother, Bruno.
They're going to go talk to him, but the police get to Bruno first! Fuckin' Hungarian Pigs. Whoa it looks like they arrested her whole damn family.
Greek Wedding Inspector also has an AWESOME mustache, too.
KGB Leader tells Greek Wedding Inspector to be a hardass with this family, despite his qualms. GWI is basically a good guy, I think.
So, first things first. Mac and Y?nna have to break her family out of the work camp/prison.
Haha, there's an Asshole Prison Guard in every work camp/prison, you know? This one just picked on Bruno (? I'm not sure if that's Bruno or, like, someone else in her family)
Mac puts a lightbulb (where the hell did he get an intact lightbulb in the Hungarian countryside?!) between two boards ("Think of it as a lightbulb sandwich....and hope they swallow it." Mac always needs a skeptical observer to explain what he's doing in charming, down-home ways) and Y?nna pulls it across the road as the Supply Truck arrives.
WHOA. There's like 7 lightbulbs in that sandwich! Was there just a whole bunch of lightbulbs laying around out there?!?!
Also, why didn't the driver of the Supply Truck notice the wooden board that was crossing in front of the path of his Truch apparently of its own volition?!?1
Naturally, he DOES swallow it, thinking he's popped a flat. He stops and goes around to inspect all the tires, giving MacGyver time to get into the truck. Locks, people. Put locks on your Supply Trucks.
MacGyver puts on a Black Prison Uniform and exits the truck. He fills a bucket with Battery Acid?
Haha he tells a quick anecdote about his mom's chili while he's making a bomb from salt, sugar, weed killer, and the battery acid (or something. it looked mostly like white powder and cloudy water to me).
He makes contact witht he family and tells them to "hang tough".
Under the prison uniform, he has a guard uniform. The gypsies cause a diversion while he takes out the guard of a forklift or something. Oh. Bulldozer. With barbed wire attached to it.
The barbed wire separates guards from prisoners and the bulldozer knocks over the guard tower a la F Troop.
Everyone (by which I mean Bruno and Y?nna's grandpa) loads onto the Supply Truck and escapes!
MacGyver: Now where's my watch?
Bruno: I sold it.
MacGyver: You sold it?!
--comedy genius
So MacGyver has to go talk to a Gypsy Fence named Reena. Bet she's gorgeous. Who wants to bet me?
An obligatory barfight later (wasn't much of a barfight actually. Two guys vs MacGyver. Mac dives behind bar and lights something explosive back there and it flashes like Phosphorous. What could it be? Red powder behind a bar? Anyone?) MacGyver finally meets Reena.
MacGyver: You know, I really don't drink too much.
Reena: Virtuous or suspicious?
MacGyver: Habit.
--Possibly one of the reasons I don't drink is because I saw MacGyver not drinking. True story.
The watch is hanging from a necklace around Reena's neck. MacGyver levels with Reena. And she kisses him. Haha she says that that's how she knows he's not lying. Nice lie detector. Someone's always kissing MacGyver. Have you noticed that?
MacGyver shows her where the list is hidden on the watch. Why is he trusting her so much? That's weird. After all that, she asks what he's offering to pay. The KGB have come into her bar. She says he can't afford to buy it, so it's a gift. He slides down the roof and calls for a taxi.
Welp, that looks like the end of it...hm much more quickly than usual....
Wait. That guy driving the taxi is Y?nna's brother Bruno. So the other guy was her...Dad? Yeah, that makes sense.
Y?nna tells MacGyver that her family wants to defect.
The whole family is now dressed in mechanic's uniforms. They're going to steal racecars from a rally in Budapest to drive across the border.
MacGyver is jamming slices of a credit card into the timer on the traffic light.
Uhoh. KGB Leader and GWI got news that the Taxi had been found, so they're on the way.
Huh. The racecar's are red, white, and blue minis. I mean, they're not mini-Coopers and I never saw the original, but is this, like, an homage to The Italian Job? I think it is!
The traffic light trick slows KGBL and GWI down, but the motorcycle cops are still on their tails.
There's all sorts of racecar shenanigans going on. MacGyver has Y?nna tape her transistor to the police radio(....which they took at some point...I just rewound the episode to see if I was typing when they stole it, but I didn't see anything of the sort...) to jam the radio with non-descript "rock and roll" if they can get it high enough. Fortunately, there's a balloon salesman right there and they stop and buy all his balloons.
The radio/transistor combo is attached to the balloons and the police radios are jammed!
Greek Wedding Inspector: "They're heading for the border!"
--No duh.
The speedy American colored cars make it across like a fjord? or something, but one of the cop cars is swept away.
They're in a sewer pipe now (I think we have car chase BINGO, here.) and some of Y?nna's cousins have raised the grate for them. But they put it down so the last cop car runs into it and off the road.
With so many helpful cousins, why have they not defected before?
They roll into Austria. They're safe.
KGB Leader yells "MACGYVER!" and Mac salutes him sarcastically.
EPILOGUE
MacGyver comes out of the guard booth and tells Y?nna's family that they have successfully escaped. He goes to walk away, but Y?nna has some last words. She's upset that he's leaving. So he gives her his Swiss Army Knife and SHE GIVES HIM A CURSE WHERE HE KEEPS GETTING THINNER AND THINNER....no, I'm kidding. She gives him her gypsy charm necklace. They hug and we go to credits.
Man, that episode had EVERYTHING!
Thanks for watching/reading!
NEXT WEEK: THE GAUNTLET
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