I rarely get to see MacGyver, i only saw one back in July on a day off and it was my favorite with penny parker and an old house and Macgyver recreating a skull with lead poisoning and pencil erasers. Normally i review Fantasy island and no one reads these or cares so here i go. I was really happy to see an episode that had a train. I got a two year old boy who loves them so he was busy playing and i thought he would freak out i changed the channel from cartoons. But he likes trains. He spent the first 15 minutes head butting me so i missed a lot but got the gist of the episode. So Macgyver is in some country where they wear turbans and is in a taxi and riding along side a train begging them to slow down so he can get on. Some little girl is always watching from the train. i expected her to get kidnapped or something. So he gets on, there is this nice white couple i got the impression he knew but thanks to my kid , i'm not sure. So he asks if he can find a place to eat and the conductor is like , go to the first car and i m like "all right food" ( i cant watch shows like say "Everyone loves Raymond" where they have food involved and are just sitting there ignoring it and I'm yelling "eat the food". So that said, it bothered me when he stopped to see that little girl and draw her a doll on a cloth over a ball or something. All the while you see glimpses of Indian guys wrapping dynamite and rigging a train bridge, enough to blow Mount Rushmore to bits (spoiler alert, explosions are really lame and tame). so eventually the two terrorist hijackers on the train are alerted by the outside Indians to proceed and take over the train and shoot a conductor, but it was totally by accident so okay. Macgyver does this gin and salt thing that blinds them like a clown spraying seltzer, runs on the roof of the train, and pours Indian flammable or inflammable booze all over it and then my kid hits me in the head and i miss it. My wife was watching for some reason when i said i had to rewind to see what happened when Macgyver lit it on fire but she was like it was pretty lame and i re winded and she was right. So the other Indians must have known these two guys were idiots and had the back up plan for blowing up the bridge. Somehow i think those two guys somehow made it to the bridge, that they were still outfitting with explosives. Like real last minute. Then the train goes faster but has to stop as little tiny explosions occur on the bridge from a crap load of dynamite. They are taken over, the head terrorist guy, who looks like the bad guy riding the mine cart chasing Indiana Jones in the temple of doom separates the westerners from the locals, and brings the locals somewhere nearby i guess and says hes looking for 2 westerners who sold his village crappy medicine that killed his son and a bunch of kids. So now he s a good terrorist, and not a good one and hes nice with everyone and besides wanting to execute the bad guys when he finds them is talkative and nice and one guy tries to escape cause his dumb girlfriend is scared and he is not shot but rather just rounded up by Macgyver who also isn't shot in the whole ordeal. So Macgyver makes a lie detector out of crap and an alarm clock. That flushes out the bad guys and this was after Macgyver convinced the head terrorist not to execute them but put them on trial ( which is dumb cause they were caught by a kidnapper which might have some effect on the trail) and then the bad guys run and one tried to run the train backwards but was electrocuted by a trap macgyver did to catch terrorists who may steal the train (before realized they are good terrorists) and i think the bad guy was dead. He looked like that picture of a dead Ted Bundy. so then the terrorist brings all the locals back wit hthat girl with the macgyver doll he made and gives it to him, the one armed guy i just metnioned now who is a doctor agrees to help the terrorists village, and some chic says "bye mom have fun , I'm sticking with him.". what a great episode.
3 Reviews
Refreshing mystery
ttapola7 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
After two not-do-great episodes this one was truly a pleasure. MacGyver's actual mission is already over and he's just returning from it. The way he tries to make it to the train is genuinely funny. When on board, Mac meets several people, who - for once - aren't cardboard clichés. They actually have depth! Even better, we don't know why the locals are preparing to blow up a bridge. There's a sense that we have pieces of a puzzle, but can't figure out how they fit together. Then two of the locals take over the train and it is revealed, that they are looking for two specific men, but not why. The purpose of the explosives on the bridge turns out to be a perfectly logical back-up plan, not one of those "evil genius one inexplicable step ahead of the hero" things we see way too often. Then, when the train is forced to stop, we finally are explained why all the trouble. These are not some bandits. They have a mission which makes perfect sense. And they are not "evil", rather "grey", which makes them believable. When we are told what the two men did to the locals, we aren't sure which of the characters previously introduced are the guilty ones. There are interesting twists which keep us guessing about which are the guilty ones. Pretty much everything makes sense in this episode, except for the cliché of one of the bad guys dying accidentally by his own hand, which happens WAY too often in MacGyver. It's as if he were some sort of black cat that brings bad luck. Or perhaps even Death itself, like in the Final Destination film series. The guise of a man who refuses to take a life would be the perfect disguise...
A Bit Slow But Worth It
aramis-112-80488011 October 2022
MacGyver and others are held hostage by angry tribesmen looking for the people who sold them tainted medicine.
It's a tricky situation. MacGyver must protect the (mostly innocent) passengers to isolate the guilty, then . . . NOT hand them over to the tribesmen but see they get their day in court.
The suspects include a shifty fellow with a lot of money he's eager to hide; a one-armed former doctor, bitter at the world; a young man a trifle too eager to marry a rather overweight young lady; and a man so ordinary he has too little character.
The writers do their best to pull the wool over our eyes but they need more characters and elbow room to adequately tell the story and make it tense. The exigencies of 1980s TV.
It's a tricky situation. MacGyver must protect the (mostly innocent) passengers to isolate the guilty, then . . . NOT hand them over to the tribesmen but see they get their day in court.
The suspects include a shifty fellow with a lot of money he's eager to hide; a one-armed former doctor, bitter at the world; a young man a trifle too eager to marry a rather overweight young lady; and a man so ordinary he has too little character.
The writers do their best to pull the wool over our eyes but they need more characters and elbow room to adequately tell the story and make it tense. The exigencies of 1980s TV.
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