MacGyver Final Season DVD Review

Well, the DVD of the Final Season of MacGyver is finally being released today. I don't want to spoil it for you but it turns out that Mac had a son. Or as I like to call him, the little spinoff that wasn't.

Clearly the producers were prepared for the end, besides setting up the idea of a Young MacGyver franchise, they tried to launch a spin-off based on the Colton brothers, a fraternal bounty-hunting duo whose main crime-fighting asset appeared to be a super-intelligent dog. For the brief time that Mac appeared in the episode, aptly entitled "The Coltons", he's tied up in a basement, a timebomb ticking away nearby. Meanwhile we watch the Coltons engage in wacky misadventures. The absolute nadir of the series occurs when the superdog miraculously finds MacGyver, then manages to knock a jar of sulfuric acid to the floor where Mac can use his feet and a ruler to fling the JAR OF SULFURIC ACID over his head and directly onto the ropes that bind his hands. Why the dog didn't just grow hands and untie MacGyver, I'm not sure. It seems equally plausible.

But hey, in a season that also includes MacGyver teamed up with Merlin, yes the one of King Arthur fame, we shouldn't have high expectations. The witty title of this two-part episode, "Good Knight MacGyver". After being conked on the head, MacGyver wakes to find himself in King Arthur's Court. Hey Mark Twain, you better call your lawyers. MacGyver proceeds to unravel a murder plot with Merlin as a skeptical sidekick. If you ask me, that's a third spin-off right there. Having fully thrashed the premise, I'll admit that the episode was chockful of truly inventive MacGyverisms in a season that decidedly wasn't. He made a kite, a balloon, even chemistry equipment from medieval implements. That's the MacGyver I know and love.

Of course, Murdoc makes a fey, meglomaniacal appearance, in "Obsessed". MacGyver uses one of my all-time favorite tricks, spraying Formula 409 on lightbulbs to make them explode. It doesn't actually work sadly, but it seems so cool.

The final season is, by far, my least favorite. Not that it's not entertaining. It's good stuff. But for me, the series went downhill after MacGyver left the Phoenix Foundation. When the series started MacGyver was a superspy fighting evil all over the globe, when it ended he was just a really smart guy living off unemployment in Venice Beach.

MacGyver Final Season: Two knifes out of five.

SEASON 7 MacGyverisms
(excerpted from the appendix of The Unofficial MacGyver How-to Handbook)

126 HONEST ABE
Accessed the computer of a special helicopter with a flashlight
Blew up a door with alcohol and a fuse made from candle wax and cloth
Signaled a helicopter to fire its weapons with a razor and a mirror

127 THE HOOD
Escaped a torturer’s rack with a stake and a skeleton hand
Enhanced printing on burned matchbook with candle wax (Mac’s explanation: the wax holds the ashes together, the ink had a metallic substance that wouldn’t burn.)
Knocked an assassin off his scaffolding by threading a fire hose through it and attaching the fire hose to an elevator

128 OBSESSED
Escaped from a missile launch pad using his boots and liquid nitrogen
Created a diversion with window cleaner and a light bulb

129 THE PROMETHEUS SYNDROME
Disarmed a bomb with a pin and a magnet

130 THE COLTONS
Escaped being blown up by a bomb while being tied to a chair with a ruler, a cardboard tube, sulfuric acid and a dog. (Most absurd escape ever!)

131 WALKING DEAD
Escaped from a coffin in the back of a truck using a rope and a bumpy road
Booby-trapped a tunnel with a brick, barrels, and some wire

132,133 GOOD KNIGHT MACGYVER I & II
Made an antidote with egg whites and charcoal
Created an electrophoresis to isolate vanadium (a poison) with alcohol, wire, a candle, a zinc pot, a copper pot, and glass tubes.
Made a fire extinguisher with baking soda, vinegar and a wine bag
Escaped a firepit with the corkscrew on his knife
Made a dog whistle with a copper tube and a piece of paper
Made gooey lettering readable by burning it with gunpowder
Shined a silver barrette with ammonia to make a mirror
Escaped a dungeon with a homemade kite (silk, quills, clothe strips), gunpowder, a wine bag inflated with hydrogen produced from a combination of vitriol and zinc

134 DEADLY SILENTS
Survived a 100 foot drop by poking his knife through
a wallet and then insert the knife into a curtain and
allowing the resistance to slow his descent
Escaped a water tank by using his shoe and a hose to
hook a rope ladder outside the tank
Blew-out truck tires with a board full of upturned nails
Used a fake movie building front to stop thugs

135 SPLIT DECISION
Made boxing training devices with automotive repair equipment
Made a chill bag with sodium thiosulfate (a chemical fixer for photos) and water
Attacked thugs with construction crane

136 GUNZ ‘N BOYS
Broke into shipping office by tearing off air conditioner
Blew open a door with a beer keg torpedo
Picked the lock on handcuffs with the wire that surrounding the cork of a champagne bottle

137 OFF THE WALL
Melted the plastic tie-wraps binding his hands by pulling a heating element out of a space heater with a coat hanger and then turning on the space heater
Blew-up car by throwing a bomb down a construction chute into the path of a moving car

138 THE STRINGER
Escaped a cargo hold using a high pressure washer, 3000 PSI of water pressure, a steering wheel, and seat belts to make a water jet pack
Created a smokescreen by lighting the powder inside a flare

139 THE MOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
Escaped from a jail with an electric door with a scarf, a test tube, and access to the electric control box conveniently located inside the cell
Used a ladder as a battering ram