CBS' MacGyver: Is the New Mac Loaded With Enough Cool Features?
MacGyver is back, still packing his trusty Swiss Army knife and so many paper clips. Will the CBS reboot be able to hack it in 2016?
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The freshman drama makes clear quite early on that Lucas Till’s Angus “Mac” MacGyver, as an operative for the Division of External Services, is a bit more physical than Richard Dean Anderson’s original mulleted problem-solver, able to handle himself decently in close0quarters combat, nor thinking twice before holding into an airborne jet’s landing gear for dear life. At the close of the first op we see, Mac “loses” his field analyst girlfriend Nikki (Revolution‘s Tracy Spiridakos) to a negotiation-gone-bad, though the eventual twist is one we’ve seen often before. (Heck, even her first words to Mac, while “held” at gunpoint, were, “I’m sorry.”)
Three months later, Mac (who lives with his oblivious best bud Bozer, played by Rush Hour‘s Justin Hires) is called back into action, with former CIA agent Jack Dalton (CSI‘s Goerge Eads), DXS Director Patricia Thornton (House of Cards‘ Sandrine Holt) and convicted hacker-turned-field analyst Riley Davis (Vampire Diaries‘ Tristin Mays), to intercept the bioweapon they lost custody of in the opening op. Soon enough, Mac lays eyes on a very alive Nikki, and ultimately corners her inside the aforementioned jet. That leads into the final action sequence, where Mac drops from a helicopter into the baddie’s transport truck, to fend off one goon and then extract the bioweapon from the bomb it is attached to — before “paragliding” up and away to safety, the deadly virus intact.
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In the coda, Thornton reveals that DXS is being disbanded and reconstituted under a different name — and Mac chooses “Phoenix,” after the mythological bird featured on a pendant he has from an apparently very interesting Cairo op. Nikki, meanwhile, escapes her prison transport, using the bobby pin trick her beau once taught her. Oops.
Of course, many a MacGyver episode is judged by its clever “hacks.” Such as:
√ Fingerprint cloning (what is this, Charlie’s Angels circa 1976?)
√√√ Jamming comms with a handmade electromagnet
√ Fooling a biometric scanner using plaster dust (huh?)
√√ Deflecting bullets with 12-gauge steel cocktail tray
√ Frisbee-ing said cocktail tray to KO a goon across the room
√√√ Rigging unmanned boat to crash into baddies
√ Freeing Riley from her prison cuffs
√√√ Setting off fire alarm with tin foil
√ Conspicuously dropping a fire escape on Vinnie Jones
√ Causing landing gear malfunction
√√√ Turning truck’s canvas top into parachute (but in 30 seconds??)
What did you think of CBS’ Mac reboot?
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