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When someone finds out I’m a
fan of the original MacGyver,
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the question they ask me most often
is, “What’s your favorite invention?”
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Actually, that’s not true — the question
I’m asked most often after someone finds
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out I’m a fan of MacGyver is, “Do you
like Stargate?” Which — yeah, I get it,
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Richard Dean Anderson is the star of both shows,
but — when someone finds out I like Star Trek,
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their first question is never “Do
you like T.J. Hooker?” I dunno . . .
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So, maybe the second most common
question I get as a MacGyver fan is,
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“What’s your favorite invention?” To which
I have a stock response: it’s a tie between
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the printing press and those grocery store mobile
apps that let you scan and bag your items as you
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shop. Then the person says, “No, I meant what’s
your favorite MacGyver invention?” And I say,
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“Oh, that’s easy!” Because I have
a stock response for that, too.
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The shorthand for the inventions and
improvisations MacGyver comes up with
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in most of the episodes of the show
is “MacGyverism.” When MacGyver makes
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bombs out of pine cones, or uses eggs
to plug holes in the radiator of a Jeep,
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or rigs a vending machine to automatically
eject soda cans to distract some guards,
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that’s a MacGyverism. Throughout the seven
seasons of the show, we see hundreds of them,
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and there are some popular favorites, like
the time MacGyver made a hot air balloon out
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of a parachute and some scraps of fabric he
found lying around an abandoned mine, or the
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time MacGyver made a parasail out of a fan and
some material he cut out of the side of a tent,
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or the time MacGyver made a two-person ultralight
aircraft out of bamboo, duct tape, and trash bags.
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But believe it or not, my favorite
MacGyverism is not any of those! It’s
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not even one of the other popular ones that
are often celebrated by fans of the show,
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or mocked by those who enjoy making fun
of the show — I feel a strong attraction
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to both of those groups, incidentally —
I’m bi when it comes to MacGyver . . .
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. . . anyway, my favorite MacGyverism comes
from the show’s first season, the richest vein
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of MacGyverisms in the entire run, when the dude
was just rattling off half a dozen inventions per
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episode, MacGyvering like there was no tomorrow!
Maybe if he’d known he’d have to do this for six
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more years, he would have paced himself a little.
Regardless, the episode I’m talking about is the
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seventh episode of MacGyver, originally airing
November 17, 1985, and it’s titled: “Last Stand.”
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MacGyver is driving out into the middle of nowhere
in Arizona in search of a place called Sparrow
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Lake where he used to go fishing with his dad when
he was a kid. He stops at an airport/diner to ask
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for directions, and walks into an oddly
tense scene: there’s a waitress, Kelly;
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a guy at the counter in mechanics coveralls,
Dave; a cook, Tennyson; and two other guys,
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Terry and Buddy, who seem like customers,
only when MacGyver walks in Terry says “Sorry,
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we’re closed,” like he’s the boss or
something. Also, we can see that Buddy
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is carrying a semi-automatic rifle, which is
probably not going to lead to good things.
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Picking up on the “something’s wrong
here” vibe, MacGyver ignores Terry’s
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“we’re closed” announcement and sits down at
the counter for a cup of coffee. Kelly serves
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MacGyver’s coffee in her special “HELP” cup, which
Buddy immediately notices and shows to Terry,
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who at that point drops the act and just
tells MacGyver to order something to eat
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and get comfortable, and also to empty out
his pockets because, yeah, this is a robbery.
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What kind of a robbery? As it turns out,
an armored truck robbery. Only thing is,
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the armored truck isn’t here yet. It arrives
shortly, though, hidden in the trailer of an
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18-wheeler being driven by Terry’s associates
Turk and Elias. Turk lays eyes on Kelly and
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immediately tries to impress her with his
Humphrey Bogart impression, but it doesn’t
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work cause his Bogart isn’t that good, and also
he’s a member of a gang of violent criminals.
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Terry takes a second to brag to MacGyver about
how eclectic his team is. “Surprised to see such
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a diverse group of individuals working with a man
like me?” he asks. See, Terry’s not just a guy
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with a crew trying to steal some stuff — he’s one
of those villain-of-the-week types who the writers
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try to flesh out by giving him a whole deal. He’s
not just a thief — he’s a thief with a philosophy.
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“This job was planned down to the last detail and
timed perfectly,” he says proudly to MacGyver in
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particular, because I guess he knows MacGyver is
the protagonist and really wants to impress him.
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Turk backs the armored truck down out of the
trailer, and Kelly notices that there’s still
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a guard inside the back — the “inside man,”
stationed in the back with the loot. Terry
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explains that the guard doesn’t have a
key to the door, so he has no way out,
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and they have no way in — because I guess when
they stole the armored truck they didn’t bother
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to lift the keys off of the other guards
who they stole it from? I thought the job
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was planned down to the last detail, Terry! Why
didn’t your plan include getting the keys? Terry?!
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Terry’s solution to the “no keys” quandary is
to have Buddy put a bomb on the back of the
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armored truck and blow the door off. MacGyver
points out that the explosion will not only
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kill the guard inside, it will probably burn up
all the money they’re trying to steal, as well.
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I’m beginning to feel slightly suspicious
that perhaps Terry isn’t actually the
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criminal mastermind he presents himself as.
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But, luckily for Terry — and the guard in the
back — MacGyver has a solution. He volunteers
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to open the armored truck safely, in a way
that won’t damage the guard or the money.
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And it’s at this point that he invents
my favorite MacGyverism. Turk asks how
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MacGyver plans to open the door,
and MacGyver tells him, casually,
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as though it’s the most obvious thing in the
world, as though he assumes everyone else was
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already thinking the same thing: “I’ll make a
thermite torch out of that bicycle over there.”
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Terry, who receives this suggestion calmly, as
though it’s a reasonable and not at all bonkers
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thing for one human being to say to another, says
“Okay, MacGyver, you can try to open the armored
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car by making a thermite torch out of a bicycle.”
And then, that’s exactly what MacGyver does. He
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takes apart the bicycle, shaves some filings off
of its frame, mixes it with some rust scraped off
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of an old paint can, packs it into a length of
pipe, ignites it with a road flare, and there
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ya go, an improvised cutting tool capable of
opening an armored car in a matter of seconds.
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The body of the bike is made of magnesium,
see, and apparently when you mix magnesium
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with ferric oxide — the rust — and pack
it into a pipe and light it on fire,
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you get a super hot torch that can slice through
an armored car. I’ve never tried it . . .
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Anyway, MacGyver uses his torch to cut the lock
out of the armored car’s door, pops the door open,
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and everybody is an appropriate level
of impressed — except for the guard,
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who staggers out and is immediately shot and
killed by Buddy, because Buddy is the mean one.
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MacGyver and Dave are forced to dig a grave
for the guard, because the crooks don’t want
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buzzards flying around and tipping anyone
off to their criminal shenanigans. Right,
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because when anyone sees buzzards circling in
a remote scrub desert like this area, their
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first thought is “There must be a murdered human
being somewhere nearby — let’s go investigate.”
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As they start to dig, MacGyver notices an old
fire truck in the garage right next to them,
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and a helicopter sitting on a pad nearby. He
asks Dave if he knows how to fly, and Dave
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says “I used to be a med-evac pilot, but I don’t
fly anymore because of my tragic backstory where
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I was shot down in Vietnam and held prisoner
for over a year and forced to dig graves and
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the last grave I dug was supposed to be for me
but then instead of killing me my captors just
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laughed, sorry.” MacGyver’s like, “It’s cool.”
Turk, who is watching them from the garage,
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is like “Hey, enough exposition, you
two! That grave ain’t gonna dig itself!”
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Later, after they’re done planting the guard,
Kelly gets a call on the radio from a plane that’s
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on the way to the airport. Terry is planning
to commandeer the plane for their getaway,
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so he orders Kelly to tell the plane to land
as scheduled. The pilot informs Kelly that
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his plane is in need of some minor repairs,
which Dave warns he might not be able to fix,
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but Terry’s not worried about that — if Dave
can’t fix it, surely MacGyver can. Turk goes
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back out to the garage with MacGyver and Kelly so
MacGyver can scrounge for parts to fix the plane,
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and after they exit Buddy informs Terry of
his intention to kill MacGyver before they
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leave the airport, presumably because Buddy is
threatened by MacGyver’s mechanical competence,
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effortless charm, and flawless hair
— and this is pre-mullet, mind you.
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While they pretend to look for airplane parts,
MacGyver and Kelly discuss Dave’s backstory
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some more. Dave and Kelly are a couple, but it’s
been difficult since Dave’s horrific experience
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as a Vietnam POW has turned him into a giant
wuss. Luckily, MacGyver has an escape plan
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involving the fire truck that won’t require
Dave to fly the big scary helicopter. First,
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MacGyver takes care of Turk by caving in the
side of his skull with a spare part. Then,
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he and Kelly use a can of starter fluid,
cotton from a seat cushion, some fertilizer,
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and a newspaper, to do a variation on one
of MacGyver’s favorite inventions: bombs!
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Seriously. Especially in the early seasons of
the show, MacGyver is always making bombs. He
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can make a bomb out of almost anything! He’s
ardently anti-gun, which I love him for,
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but he’s enthusiastically pro-bomb. Well,
at least when it comes to little bombs,
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anyway. There’s a limit to how much you
can like bombs while still being one of
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the good guys. I believe the boundary is
called the Henry Kissinger Event Horizon.
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Kelly leaves MacGyver to his bomb-making, and
heads back inside the diner. When MacGyver sets
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off the first bomb, Terry and the other bad guys
run out the front door to see what’s going on,
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and Kelly, Dave, and Tennyson flee out the side
door and make for the fire truck. A chase ensues,
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with Terry shooting at the firetruck as they
all speed down the runway. MacGyver bums a
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light from Dave for another bomb and uses it to
knock Terry and Elias out of the pursuit. But,
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Buddy speeds ahead on his motorcycle and
shoots out the tires of the firetruck,
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leading to Mac, Kelly, Dave
and Tennyson being recaptured.
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The pilot in the charter plane arrives
and Terry heads out with Dave to meet him.
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Terry pretends to be a customer taking
a fishing trip — for about ten seconds,
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then he says “Oh, to hell with it,” and
pulls a gun on the pilot. Meanwhile, Buddy,
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Turk and Elias have put Tennyson to work in the
kitchen making sandwiches for their plane trip,
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and locked MacGyver and Kelly in the walk-in
freezer to keep them from making any more trouble.
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Dave and the pilot work on repairing the
plane, and in the diner MacGyver disassembles
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the door and improvises a way out of the
freezer while Kelly shares some of her
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backstory — she and Dave were together before
he went to Vietnam, she thought he was dead
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while he was a POW so she moved on and got
married, but it didn’t work out so now she’s
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back with Dave, who returned from Vietnam
with emotionally crippling PTSD as a bonus!
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Not wanting to rest on his laurels after the
bicycle torch bit, MacGyver decides to open
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the freezer door by holding up a chunk of ice to
the light bulb, which melts the ice into water,
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which runs down a rail MacGyver has hung from
the light to the door, into the door lock,
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where it freezes back into ice and expands,
eventually popping out the lock and enabling
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MacGyver to smash through the door. Incredibly,
all of this happens within a few minutes.
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The plane is repaired, so everyone is headed back
inside the diner so Buddy can kill them and leave
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no eyewitnesses behind. Before they get there,
MacGyver tapes a few more of his bombs onto a
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remote control toy plane and drives it underneath
the wing of the real plane, where it explodes.
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Worrying that MacGyver could throw another bomb at
the plane after it takes off and ruin their whole
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day, Terry sends the gang out on a hunt. Dave,
Kelly, Tennyson and the pilot hide in the garage.
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MacGyver takes out Turk by tripping him and tying
him up. Terry gets impatient and says “Hey, did
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you find MacGyver yet?” And Buddy, in his imitable
way, responds, “I’ll look around, brutha!”
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Actually, I shouldn’t say “inimitable,” because
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that was one hell of a Buddy I did just
now. If you’ve seen the episode lately,
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you can back me up in the comments — I
fucking nailed it, that was an A-plus Buddy..
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In the garage, Dave tells Kelly, “I can’t
fly that helicopter.” And Kelly says,
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“No — you won’t fly it, because you’re a
shell shocked fucking coward — there’s a
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difference.” Tennyson chimes in with some wise
words about this being a moment of truth for Dave,
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so Dave sneaks over to the helicopter — but
he just can’t bring himself to do anything
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but stand next to it and cry. MacGyver knocks
out Elias, then runs over to the helicopter,
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where Dave says “Hey, why can’t we just let
them go? I don’t care if they stole some money!”
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“They killed a man,” MacGyver reminds him.
“Remember? The guy whose grave we dug? I care
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about that.” And Dave’s like, “Ugh, fucking
morality, what a pain in the ass!” So, while
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MacGyver runs over to the airplane where Terry and
Buddy are preparing to take-off — Buddy’s a pilot,
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by the way — Dave finds the courage
to climb into the helicopter and take
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off. MacGyver climbs into the tail
of the plane and turns the rudder,
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causing the plane to drive around in
circles on the runway. Terry jumps
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out to shoot MacGyver off, but Dave swoops in
with the chopper and clips Terry from behind.
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That just leaves Buddy, who stops the
plane and jumps out for his long awaited
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one-on-one with MacGyver. MacGyver bests
the psychotic murderer in solo combat,
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and Dave lands the helicopter and runs over to
help out, grabbing Buddy’s gun and passing it
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to Tennyson, who happily uses it to march Buddy
away to, I dunno, wait for the cops to show up,
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I guess. Dave gives Kelly a big hug and says
“As soon as the rest of these people are gone,
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you and I are gonna make sweet love,
to completion, and if I scream and cry
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it will be from pleasure, not terrifying POW
torture flashbacks, because I’m cured, baby.”
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See, all Dave had to do in order to permanently
get over his fear of flying the helicopter was
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fly the helicopter! Living through this new
trauma canceled out his old trauma, because
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that’s how that works! As long as you’ve been
traumatized an even number of times, you’re good.
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“Last Stand” is a pretty solid first
season MacGyver episode. It’s got a
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supporting cast full of well drawn albeit
stereotypical and predictable characters;
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it — like the subject of my previous MacGyver
video, the episode “Birth Day” — begins
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with MacGyver unknowingly entering an ongoing
situation and getting pulled into an adventure,
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which I love; and, it’s got some
truly top quality MacGyvering.
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And I’m not even counting Mac using this
airplane part he finds lying around in
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the garage to crush the side of Turk’s face!
By the way, yes, that is Jackie Earle Haley
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as Turk — he would go on to play Rorschach in
the Watchmen movie, and Freddy Krueger in the
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reboot of Nightmare on Elm Street that nobody
asked for, wanted, or saw. That’s one of the
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fun little side benefits of watching a show like
MacGyver — you never know who’s gonna show up!
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If you think about it, Rorschach is kind
of like MacGyver. Sure, he’s a violent,
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unstable, misanthropic, right-wing conspiracy
theorist, but he does exhibit a certain
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improvisational genius. As a great man once
said, everyone’s blessed with one special thing.
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For proper MacGyverisms, there’s MacGyver’s
little cotton and fertilizer bombs — which
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he uses only to create distractions, not to
actually hurt anyone. There’s the intuitive
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genius of using ice to escape from a freezer
— would that actually work? I have no idea,
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but that’s not the point. I assume most
MacGyverisms wouldn’t actually work in real
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life, or at least wouldn’t work as quickly and
effectively as they do in the show — the point is,
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do they make sense in context, and does
the cleverness of the invention override
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how preposterous it is? I think all of the
MacGyverisms in “Last Stand” pass that test.
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But that bicycle torch, man — that’s
MacGyvering on a different level. It’s
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the sort of seemingly random, out of nowhere
invention that makes sense in hindsight that
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we all wish we would be able to come up with in
the same situation. For some of us, it might be
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more than a wish — I think many of us MacGyver
fans secretly, or maybe even not so secretly,
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believe that we would be able to do something
like build a torch out of the filed-down body
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of a bicycle and some rust. It’s a result
of the relatable everyman quality Richard
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Dean Anderson brings to the character —
it doesn’t look difficult when he does it,
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so why couldn’t I do it? Like, if I were trapped
in this room, I bet I could use . . . um . . .
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. . .
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. . . this stool, and . . . take
it apart using my Swiss Army Knife,
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which I always carry because I watched MacGyver
when I was a kid, and then I could . . .
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. . . file down one of the legs using the file
on my knife, which would produce aluminum powder,
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which is explosive. So, I would take this . . .
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. . . candle, and use my knife to dig all the wax
out of it, and fill the jar with aluminum dust,
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and cut off the longest power cord I can find on
one of the many electrical devices in this room,
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and fray the ends of the cord and stick it
in the jar with the dust and close the lid,
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then tie the jar onto the knob of the
front door over there using my belt . . .
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. . . or maybe one of my socks, in case I need
the belt to zipline later — take the plug end
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of the power cord a safe distance from the door
and plug it in, sending electricity into the jar,
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triggering the explosion, and blowing
the doorknob and lock off of the door,
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freeing myself I succumbed to the poison gas
or whatever the ticking clock threat was,
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I dunno, I forgot to mention that at the start.
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Piece of cake!
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Fuck!
