Title: Last Stand
Airdate: 11/17/1985
My age at Airdate: 2 years, 4 months, 1 day
Episode Type: Hostage
This episode is one I remember watching as a youth. And it also is special because it is from the set of this episode that we get the famous RDA "Oh I didn't see you there, but I'm happy to see you" opening credits shot (at the top of this entry). So let's not waste any more time talking about it....let's start talking about it!
OPENING CREDITS
No Opening Gambit this week. The episode has so much packed into it, I'm amazed there's not a shortened credit sequence...
The episode begins with MacGyver jauntily driving to "the ol' fishing hole" that his Dad took him to as a kid. He is the bastion of health as he eats an apple and makes his way to Sparrow Ridge Airport to ask for directions.
There's a waitress and a guy in front of her. A guy playing pinball. And outside, watching MacGyver walk in, is a shaggy-haired, hoodlum-looking guy. Mac walks in and asks where he could find Sparrow lake. Pinball Guy says they're closed, but Waitress (we know she's not going to be Mac's next kissing conquest because she lovingly stroked the hand of the guy in coveralls as Mac was walking in) tells him it's 2 miles thataway. She seems jumpy. The black cook (at the back of the restaurant. typical) looks nervous, too.
There's an awkward moment and then MacGyver asks for coffee. Waitress owns the joint. Her Dad was a flight instructor at there.
MacGyver takes a sip of coffee and sees HELP written on the inside of the mug. Hairy Hooligan sees the message and tells MacGyver to "finish it....or I will" and has a big gun pointed at him. HH looks at the mug and slides it down to Pinball. MacGyver tries to break the tension by saying the coffee was a little strong, but when Pinball laughs, it doesn't get better. It's a creepy laugh.
Pinball introduces himself and tells us that Black Cook will make him breakfast while he empties his pockets.
HH does this weird "hit on you and threaten you" thing to Waitress and Black Cook ambles over (he's old, too.) and tells him to knock it off. HH has a temper, clearly. He grabs OBC by the shirt and looks menacingly at him. But Pinball says that they should try to get along and stay calm and they'll be gone within 3 hours time.
HH hits on Waitress and this time Coveralls stands up for her. HH gets mad again and threatens Coveralls. OBC says that if he points the gun at her again, he'll show him where he can stick the gun. So HH goes over and threatens OBC. Most of this guy's role is looking scarily at the last person that talked. Pinball says that HH likes killing people and he'll take any excuse to do it.
Meanwhile a tractor trailer is rolling up to the diner. Pinball has been expecting it and has everyone in the diner go outside to meet the truck.
Leathervest and Excited Teenage Thug hop out of the truck. ETT is played by the guy that was the loose cannon pitcher in the original Bad News Bears and would go on to play, among other roles, the Sex Offender in Little Children, and Rorshach in Watchmen. I think he has the most lines in this episode by a mile. He's a talkative fellow. And he wears a headband like a champ.
He tries a Bogart impression on Waitress but is interrupted by Pinball telling him to unload the truck. He says that it's Storage Van from Dallas as a van backs out of the tractor trailer. I guess it's like an armored truck? There's a guard inside the van who has no key, so they're going to just blow the door and probably kill the guard.....
....but MacGvyer won't stand for it. He says that if they blow the door, the money inside will burn up. He could open the door and no one would get hurt. He'll make a thermite torch, of course. The magnesium from a bicycle, rust from rusty paint cans, mixed together with a road flare as an ignition source. This is kind of a CLASSIC MacGyver maneuver.
Pinball: MacGyver what do you do, as a profession?
MacGyver: I, uh, move around a lot.
--MacGyver being coy with his adversary
The thermite torch cuts through the lock like the hot knife through butter that MacGyver claimed it would. The guard comes stumbling out...and HH shoots him anyway. These guys are kind of messed up, you know?
HH tasks Coveralls and MacGyver with burying the Guard. This gives MacGyver a chance to get to know Coveralls (and, of course, take a look around the surroundings to see what he can use.) Coveralls used to be a Medivac pilot, but he was taken prisoner in Vietnam. The Vietnamese soldiers made him dig his own grave and then psyched him out by just holding a gun to his head and letting him stew. It messed him up. He's showing severe signs of PTSD.
Coveralls: You and [Waitress] are about the only one's who didn't just pass judgement.
MacGyver: I can't stand in judgement of you, [Coveralls]. I'm not perfect....yet.
--MacGyver being egotistical AND lightening the mood. And also still sounding kind of Messianic.
Inside, Pinball, Leathervest, and HH are counting the money. ETT comes back with Coveralls and MacGyver and fawns over the money, and then starts touching Waitress's ass. She slaps his hand away, Coveralls looks upset (we're going to have to get him to have some courage by the end of the episode, aren't we? It's kind of like it was with DSLI in "The Golden Triangle", isn't it?), but it's HH who tells him not to touch her. ETT asks HH if he has a claim on her or something and she says NO ONE has a claim on her. HH gets all creepily sadistic and Mac steps in and tells him to have a little class, for a change.
HH, as is his wont, goes for his gun and his menacing look, but Pinball stops him before he can do anything.
Right at that moment, a call comes in over the radio. It's the charter plane to Mexico that the bad guys are using to get away. He's having electrical problems that they'll need to make repairs on, but he'll see them in 15 minutes. I wonder if MacGyver will have to make those repairs.....
Yep, he's going to make the repairs. ETT, MacGyver, and Waitress go out to look at what spare parts they have on hand. Waitress is confused about why MacGyver needs to jury rig the switch when the repair is so simple. He tells her that they're the only ones that know that.
Now Mac gets to have his heart to heart with Waitress about how she and Coveralls usually make a good team, but he's freezing up today and all that. Mac asks if the fire truck in the garage works and she says it does, but they would be going up against 4 guys. So, to even the odds a little, Mac takes a random heavy metal object over to ETT. When ETT asks what it is, MacGyver says "Lateral. Cranial. Impact. Enhancer." and THWACKs him on the side of the head with it, knocking him out. Kind of badass, actually.
Ok, so now this is where MacGyver makes the same bombs that the kids would later use at Columbine, I believe. I don't have proof of that, but I remember this scene was full of dark portent post-1999. Fertilizer+starter fluid = bomb, basically.
Mac sends Waitress back inside so that she can get OBC and Coveralls out when shit starts going down.
He throws a fertilizer bomb and all the bad guys run outside, leaving their prisoners alone to escape. The good guys all run out to the fire truck. HH jumps on a dirt bike but is immediately blasted with the hose. Leathervest drives a car while Pinball shoots at them. The water tank on the fire engine goes dry, so it's a good thing MacGyver made so many fertilizer bombs.
HH, back on his bike, speeds past the fire truck and takes out a tire. The truck crashes and Coveralls and MacGyver jump off the top of the truck, preparing to fight, but HH is suddenly there, holding a gun to Waitress.
So now they're recaptured and EVERYONE is pissed at MacGyver (well, ETT and HH, mostly. they're fighting over wanting to kill him in a callback to the way they fought over Waitress, minutes ago)
The charter plane finally arrives.
Pinball takes Coveralls out to meet it.
HH throws MacGyver and Waitress into the meat freezer and puts a spoon into the latch so that it's locked. HH and Leathervest take OBC out to get on the plane, leaving MacGyver and Waitress to try to escape, or die trying!!!!
The MacGyver Thinking Theme starts playing and MacGyver uses a meat hook to unscrew the knob on the door.
Meanwhile, the Pilot and Coveralls set to work fixing the plane with Pinball and HH pointing guns at them.
MacGyver takes piece of cardboard and puts it into the hold where the knob was. Then he pulls the track where the meathooks were hanging off the ceiling. Then he pulls the cage off the lightbulb overhead.
All this time, Mac and Waitress are talking about Coveralls and how messed up he is. But it'll be ok. And she loves him and all that stuff.
So now comes the obligatory "MacGyver, what are you doing??" question that is the ONLY reason she is in there with him. Because now he can explain about how water expands as it freezes, but he doesn't have to do it in an inner monologue. I mean, he COULD, but this way he doesn't have to.
So the setup is this: He has a piece of ice. He has hitched the meathook track to the cage that is hinged to cover the lightbulb. The track runs down to the cardboard that goes into the door. So he'll melt the ice up at the lightbulb, the water will run down the track, and, by the time it goes into the door, it'll be freezing. It will expand and pop the door open. Easy peasy.
Dave and the Pilot have gotten the plane fixed enough and the bad guys are about to leave as MacGyver and Waitress get out of the freezer. The radio's busted, but MacGyver sees a remote control airplane and some olive oil. He still has a fertilizer bomb (why didn't they take it from him??) that he tapes to the plane and covers in olive oil. He lights the fuse on the bomb and gets the RC plane going. He lands the RC plane next to the real plane and all the bad guys run to investigate and Waitress runs out to herd OBC, the Pilot and Coveralls to safety. Seriously, why don't the bad guys leave one guy behind to watch the prisoners? It's just poor planning, you know?
So now the bad guys are looking for MacGyver. Stalking him. He ducks under the tractor trailer. The rest of the good guys are in the garage. ETT gets taken out by MacGyver. HH is wandering towards the garage, but then Leathervest calls him over to see if they'd heard from ETT.
Waitress gives Coveralls some tough love about flying the helicopter that he already told MacGyver he couldn't fly. Newly resolved, he sets off.
MacGyver takes out Leathervest.
Coveralls is kind of freaking out, but he's at the helicopter. All he has to do is get in and fly!
Pinball tells HH to warm up the plane.
MacGyver runs up to Coveralls trying to convince him to fly the helicopter. MacGyver and Coveralls argue about why they should stop the bad guys and MacGyver wins by pointing out that they killed that guard. He runs off and jumps on the back of the plane and starts steering the plane by moving the....rudder? Is it still a rudder on a plane?
Pinball starts shooting at him but I think he's probably pretty safe (Stormtrooper Aim)
Suddenly, there's Coveralls in the helicopter. He knocks Pinball over with one of the helicopter feet (which is what we're calling them from now on).
HH stops the plane and jumps out with his gun, he sees Coveralls in the helicopter and raises his gun, but MacGyver jumps from the plane and dukes it out with HH. HH pulls a knife, so Mac SOCKS him with the butt of his gun. He's knocked out. Coveralls runs over and turns off the plane as the rest of the good guys run up.
Coveralls and Waitress embrace. Everything's better with them. Yay!
Good episode. It always reminds me of that Jamie Foxx movie Held Up. Similar setting I guess. You know, watching the episodes like this is probably the only way I would have seen the similarities between this episode and The Golden Triangle episode. Fun stuff. See you next week!
NEXT WEEK: HELLFIRE
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