MacGyver Reboot -- Episode 1: The Rising

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:

MacGyver is in Italy to commandeer a biological weapon, but some terrorists steal the weapon from him and kill Nikki, his girlfriend and co-worker.  MacGvyer tracks the head terrorist to San Francisco where he discovers that Nikki is not only still alive but also is working with the terrorists. After capturing Nikki and neutralizing the threat, MacGyver and his team abandon the now compromised Department of External Services and start the Phoenix Foundation. 

Memorable Quote:

What exactly do you do, Mr. MacGyver?  ~Riley
You know how you hack computers?  Well, I hack everything else.  ~MacGyver

Highlight:

I was very impressed by Lucas: excellent actor, good voice, charismatic, and able to be both serious and charming. If nothing else, I think the show will last because of him. And most importantly, his hair is much better now than in the scrapped pilot.

As for the best moment of the episode, it was when MacGyver sees Nikki in the San Francisco hotel. Surprising in the moment and some excellent dramatic tension.

Lowlight:

The music was a letdown, particularly the opening theme.  Somebody recently cut the original theme and replaced it with Lucas's MacGyver, and when I first saw that I got really excited thinking it was the actual theme that was being used.  Instead the theme they went with is pretty short and uninspiring.  To Peter Lenkov's credit, he said he had to fight the network just to get any theme at all because they see it as lost ad time.  That's a really dumb philosophy by the network people when you consider the degree to which a good theme song can engender devotion and distinctiveness to a show in a way that will pay big dividends in the long run, certainly more than an extra 30 second ad.

The rest of the music wasn't bad per se, but as one of the world's biggest fans of the original MacGyver score, it's going to take me a little while to realize that Randy Edelman, Dennis McCarthy, and Ken Harrison aren't walking through that door.

Best MacGyverism:
Mixes muriatic acid, ammonia, and tin foil to make smoke.  We've seen this MacGyverism (minus the tin foil) in D.O.A. MacGyver. 

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

• I haven't seen a new episode of MacGyver in 24 years, so I've broken out the popcorn, the swiss army knife, and my Phoenix Foundation t-shirt.  That episode in '92 was The Mountain of Youth which happened to be the worst episode of the entire series, so it can only get better from there, right?!
• Angus the cat is also ready to go (if you consider licking yourself ready to go).
• The series is not more than a minute old and MacGyver and Nikki Carpenter have already shown more sparks than in 6 episodes of the original (I talked at length about the original Nikki here).
• The boat chase in the beginning would have been the perfect time to bring back the boat chase theme from A Prisoner of Conscience.  Bear with me, I'm just going through the five stages of grief over the loss of the original MacGyver music -- in a few weeks I'll be all right.
• Some nice shots of the Griffith Park Observatory near MacGyver's home -- that's a throwback to the original pilot where it actually was his home.
• Speaking of his home, I like it -- seems like a chill place with a lot of natural light.
• Clever of MacGyver to notice the time on the bad guy's watch, but even if they know what time zone he's in, it's a stretch to think that it's enough for Riley to find him in 10 seconds considering that this guy is on 8 different watch lists.
• I like what I've seen from most of the core team:
• Jack Dalton -- obviously nothing like the original Jack but Eads has charisma and seems like he'll make a good sidekick to MacGyver.
• Riley Davis -- the computer whiz.  I like the actress and the character.
• Wilt Bozer -- I like that he doesn't know about MacGyver's real job. 
• The one character I wasn't wild about was Patricia Thornton.  I don't mind that she's a female (in contrast to Pete Thornton), but at least in this episode she didn't serve any real purpose to the story.  And she was also one dimensional and overly serious, and it's hard for me to see how they're going to develop her character and her relationship with MacGyver.
• The MacGyverisms in this episode were pretty weak (especially the parachute at the end), but there's plenty of time to improve on those.  I wasn't wild about the captions appearing on screen, but I'll get over it.
• The hour flew by which is a good sign.  As a child of the 80's and early 90's, I still prefer tv that breathes a little more and that is at a slower pace.  But that style of tv isn't coming back for better or worse, and so a fast pace it is.
• I didn't care for was the joking references to tin foil, bubble gum, paper clips, etc. It feels more like playing along with the stereotype of the character as opposed to taking it seriously.  I remember Jerry Freedman (director of the original pilot) said about Richard Dean Anderson, "A lot of what made the character work, besides the good writing, was Richard. He had good comic timing and brought a nice sense of irony and reality to the role. It could have been cartoonish and sitcomy, but he made it seem real."  I agree whole-heartedly with that and I don't want to see it become like a cartoon.

Final Analysis:

After the show ended I asked my wife what she thought, and the first word she came up with was "respectable."  And the connotation was positive because she was expecting it to be worse based on the mediocre reviews from the previous few days.  I think that "respectable" is a good word for it also. As an action-adventure it's my kind of show, and it certainly held my attention and I would like to see more. It wasn't perfect, but first episodes are probably the hardest to get right, and they'll have time to develop the characters and work out the kinks.

I'd like to see them get to a place where the series can stand on its own as something unique in the tv landscape, whereas presently it seems relatively standard compared to other shows.  The lone wolf hero isn't coming back (for some reasons that Mark and I talked about on a podcast recently), but they should try and develop his nonviolent character and his scientific expertise so that he is unique and distinguishable from other tv heroes. Whether or not they ever get to that point, I'll be watching.