“MacGyver” (2016) isn’t really “MacGyver” (1985). The MacGyver of 1985 wore jeans and tennis shoes, never used a gun and occasionally stole a kiss from the damsel in distress. The MacGyver of 2016 (Lucas Till) is chic, has an expert sniper covering him at all times and has sex in the company’s IT room. In short, 2016’s “MacGyver” traded all the charm of 1985’s “MacGyver” for a rehashed Bond knockoff accompanied by an equally formulaic plotline.
The new interpretation opens with a flashback. MacGyver steals a biochemical weapon before he and his girlfriend are shot by mysterious villains who, the show later reveals, are planning to unleash the weapon on San Francisco. The plot plays out much like the latest “Bourne” or “Bond.” Ironically, the show re-skins MacGyver as James Bond, when the character is notoriously an anti-Bond secret agent.
Aside from the plot, writers clearly missed some of the original show’s distinctiveness and shamelessly glossed over the glaring differences. For instance, MacGyver is known for not using guns and never killing his enemies. Today’s MacGyver has no problem with either. He yells at Jack Dalton (George Eads), another semi-pacifist character from the original, to shoot a couple terrorists in the head while he defuses a bomb and then blows up a truck full of yet more terrorists.
Worse still, the character’s inventions are either uncreative, lackluster or just plain pointless in the reboot. In one scene, MacGyver mixes a few cleaning products to create smoke and set off the fire alarm. It sounds cool as he prattles on about the chemical composition of ammonia and aluminum, but pulling the fire alarm outside the door would have achieved the same effect.
The re-created character’s other MacGyver-isms aren’t as bad, but they’re ripped from the original and presented as the reboot’s own twist on the series. He copies fingerprints with plaster dust and autopilots a boat with his belt. Both scenarios are famous from the original but there’s no nod to the source. Instead, the reboot presents them as its own. These scenes are not just boring, they’re sad — a show promoting creative problem-solving can’t make up any creative new situations.
The “MacGyver” reboot isn’t a terrible show. It’s generic and moderately entertaining run-of-the-mill television, but in straying so far from the original series, the only similarities lie in the series’s name.
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