#12: The Endangered

Season: 3

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:

After a brush with death, MacGyver heads to the mountains to visit Karen, an old girlfriend who is a park ranger.  He is surprised to see that she has a serious boyfriend, and he struggles to come to terms with it.  Meanwhile, some poachers who are shooting bears on park land end up wounding Karen and then try to kill her and MacGyver. 

Memorable Quote:

Now I know why we never say goodbye.  Too damn hard.   ~Karen

Highlight:
The scene where MacGyver is sleeping (or pretending to) and Karen's ranger boyfriend Sam comes home. As Karen and Sam talk quietly and the Lost Love theme plays in the background, we see the sorrow and regret in MacGyver's eyes, and then he is startled as Sam throws his cowboy hat on a nearby chair. A somewhat tragic yet poignant moment that gives the character depth and makes us empathize with him in a powerful way, and it's perfectly played by RDA.

Lowlight:

Hard to think of something. I guess I'll go with the Earl character (played by frequent guest star Robin Mossley) - he seems overly wimpy and not too bright (not unlike Wilt Bozer, another Mossley character). 

Best MacGyverism:
Some good ones to choose from.  I like how he grinds the limonite rock into a bright powder and sprinkles it on some pieces of wood to form an arrow that the search helicopter can see. 

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• I love the juxtaposition in the opening as the loud 80's nightclub abruptly gives way to a helicopter flying over the woods.  Very effective.  And then the great opening continues with some old musical favorites: the Lost Love theme immediately segueing into the Jack of Lies music as MacGyver sees Karen. 
• You can practically smell the pine-scented air emanating from the television screen. I talked recently in The Invisible Killer recap about why I love the nature episodes and why I had wanted to be a park ranger once upon a time. It's also worth mentioning that I'm an INFP on the Meyers-Briggs personality profile, and I think the NF (Intuitive/Feeling) part is especially relevant in how I rank the episodes and what appeals to me.  There are several episodes that may have a better plot, production value, etc than this episode does, but the episodes like this one that are filmed in the woods of Vancouver often get extra credit from me because they make me feel quite warm and fuzzy.
• I'm a big Karen fan.  She's intelligent, capable, and has great chemistry with MacGyver. She's not afraid to call him out or stand up for herself when she feels that he's out of line. And I think she would have been great for him - an outdoorsy park ranger seems like just his type. For that reason, I'm putting her at #1 on the top Love Interests list.  Karen is played very well by Moira Walley-Beckett who has gone on to be a featured writer for some show called "Breaking Bad," not sure if you've heard of it.
• Another great moment where MacGyver sees the big boots in Karen's cabin and wonders who they belong to.  And then it seems like a goof where Karen says "you didn't just expect to fly back into my life after three years," despite MacGyver saying earlier they had a relationship in college. Are they implying that MacGyver is only three years out of college? 
• It looks like a real bear that is in actually in front of MacGyver and Karen in the scene by the lake (as opposed to some kind of special effect). Maybe they had someone with a tranquilizer standing off camera in case the bear made a move. I didn't quite understand the humor in MacGyver's joke about the difference between the grizzly and the black bear, and it leads to the following cringeworthy conversation:
• "That's an old joke."  ~Karen
• "I'm an old boyfriend."  ~MacGyver

• Interesting how MacGyver says his brush with death got him to thinking about what's important.  What about the other 257 brushes with death from earlier in the series?
• This episode leads the way with "stuntmen making cameos."
• Steve Blalock (RDA's stuntman) as Sam the ranger
• Don Davis (Elcar's stuntman) as one of the poachers
• Vince Deadrick, Jr. (another RDA stuntman) as a ranger
• I like the scene in the restaurant and MacGyver's quick head turn when he hears the waitress mentioning the bear steak. Though I'd think having bear on the menu that close to the park would have aroused some suspicion before MacGyver arrived on the scene.  And then a fun conversation with the waitress:
• "So what'll it be, cherokee?" ~Waitress
• "How about a salad."  ~MacGyver
• "And?"  ~Waitress
• "House dressing."  ~MacGyver
• The redneck poachers are surprisingly competent, especially Don Davis's character, Wyatt, who always seems to know just what MacGyver is up to (reminiscent of Chanthara in The Road Not Taken).  Eddie, the head poacher, is played with great menace by John Dennis Johnston. According to IMDB, Eddie and Wyatt's last name is Porter, so maybe they're supposed to be brothers, but later Eddie tells Wyatt that he'll kill his family if he walks away, so maybe not.  
• I wonder if the ranger cabin is the same one as the Phil Crow cabin in Trail of Tears. At first glance it looks similar from the outside.
• MacGyver's use of the tranquilizer darts to take out the bad guys made me wonder why he can't always have them as part of his arsenal.  He could get the Phoenix Foundation to order or develop a high powered tranquilizer gun that wouldn't kill people but could put them down accurately and from distance.  Think of how many times that would have come in handy.  
• A symbolic handoff at the end as MacGyver delivers the wounded Karen into the arms of Ranger Sam. Almost brings a tear to the eye. 

Final Analysis:
The warm and fuzzy factor is off the charts in this one, a wilderness adventure in a national park with elements of romance, longing, and loss.  Just as in The Negotiator, we see some great subtleties in acting from RDA, who masterfully plays the part of an old boyfriend coming to grips with the fact that his former love that he left on his own terms has now moved on without him. Great story, great music, great acting, great locale, great episode.

Now we move to the top 11. You may remember that I mentioned in previous posts that there's one episode from each season.  Given that I specified "top 11" rather than "top 10," you may surmise that perhaps one of our seasons will be formally laid to rest with the next episode recap.