MacGyver was a dramatic series, and as such frequently dealt with subjects that were at
least ostensibly pretty serious — international politics, terrorism,
nuclear meltdowns, kidnapping, environmental disasters, local musical theater, bigfoot,
your new girlfriend turning out to be an assassin hired to kill you, etc. Despite this,
because it was a cheesy 1980s action/adventure show, it was pretty lighthearted. Usually.
One thing about MacGyver, though, is in the relatively rare instances when it got dark — it
got daaark! This goofy so-bad-it’s-good television trifle about a likable guy with a mullet who
invents his way to saving the day could leave you feeling downright shell shocked if it felt like
it — not so much because it was ever actually emotional devastating — it’s still MacGyver,
after all, not a Lars von Trier movie — but because it was usually such a silly
lark that those occasional grimmer-than-usual episodes almost always took you by surprise.
We find one such episode in MacGyver’s third season: “Kill Zone”. See, the title makes it
sound like a lively hour of typical MacGyver hijinx, huh? Kill Zone! Could be the title of
a Super Grover sketch on Sesame Street! Fun for the whole family! The episode itself, not so much!
Things start out on a typically exciting note — MacGyver is being helicoptered into the wilderness
to search for a downed satellite. However, the episode takes its first dark turn very early on
when we find out that the reason it’s so important to recover this particular satellite is that it
was carrying an organism that, while in space, had mutated into a deadly pathogen. When the satellite
crashed, the pathogen spread to the surrounding area and immediately started killing off the local
wildlife. MacGyver, clad in a hazmat suit and using the 1980s equivalent of a GoPro to transmit
live video to Pete and this military guy at an off-site bunker, has been tasked with locating
the canister containing the original sample of the organism so it can be removed for study before the
army obliterates the entire area with napalm to stop the pathogen from spreading any further.
Now, that’s a little darker than usual just because of the potential ramifications if
MacGyver fails — if this pathogen spreads too far, it could endanger countless human lives,
or wipe out entire farms full of livestock and threaten agriculture, or who knows what else.
Plus, if MacGyver gets a rip in his hazmat suit, he could be exposed to this organism
that seems capable of knocking birds out of the sky and dropping a whole herd of cattle
right where they stand. Pretty heavy stuff, but we don’t expect anything like that to
actually happen — it’s just there to be a threat for Mac to work against.
Things do get a little interesting, though. Right after locating the satellite, Mac takes a tumble
down a hillside, damaging his hazmat suit’s radio and cutting him off from Pete and Phelps,
the military guy. Immediately assuming the worst, Phelps is like “We should napalm the whole place
right now!” But Pete argues that they should stick to the agreed-upon timetable and give
MacGyver a chance to complete his mission, pushing back against Phelps,
taking things right up to the edge of getting fussy. Better watch it, Pete!
Keep your emotions in check or they’ll feed you a bottle and put you down for a nap!
Phelps wins that argument and calls in an airstrike, meaning that instead of having
about half an hour before they napalm the place, MacGyver now has about a minute and
a half. Fortunately, he can still receive through his damaged radio, so he knows he
has to work fast. He scavenges some parts from the satellite to repair his radio and contacts
Pete to let him know he’s okay, and Phelps calls off the airstrike in the nick of time.
They take the pathogen sample to the Phoenix Foundation — specifically,
to Phoenix’s super cool high security underground lab. When MacGyver shows up
he turns the sample over and then heads straight to decontamination, where the doctor watches as
MacGyver and Pete strip and rub each other down with disinfectant gel — no, I’m sorry,
I got confused for a second. What actually happens is, MacGyver strips and steps into a chamber where
an intense burst of ultraviolet light blasts off the outermost layer of his skin, leaving MacGyver
feeling clean and powder fresh, and giving us this cool shot for the show’s opening credits!
I guess they don’t have that technology in 2151.
Meanwhile, Pete finds Dr. Sandra Milhouse, the scientist conducting the research into the
organism, and they have a little talk. It turns out, Dr. Milhouse kinda, sorta snuck that organism
onto the satellite without permission. She tells Pete she had no choice — her work couldn’t wait
to be cleared through all that bureaucratic red tape! Besides, it’s not like she knew the damn
satellite was gonna fall out of the sky! Why isn’t Pete yelling at whoever designed that broke-ass
satellite? Can’t even stay in space — that’s the main thing a satellite is supposed to do!
Dr. Milhouse is unmoved by the day’s events. She’s ready to continue her research. Pete’s like,
“Are you even listening to me? Ain’t gonna be no research. That thing in
the satellite got unleashed into the forest and killed everything
it touched! We just had to firebomb, like, so much of southwestern Canada!”
“That’s too bad, but I don’t work for the wildlife
department — I work for the space germs department! Now gimme my space germs!”
They’re conducting some tests on the space germs a little later — hey,
I had a robot arm like that when I was a kid! Well, not quite that big. My Pap got it for
me from Radio Shack. The ol’ Armatron. I loved that thing. Remember Radio Shack?
The perfect combination of specialized electronics and mechanical components you couldn’t easily
obtain anywhere else, and weird random shit no one could ever possibly use. God, I miss it.
Anyway, MacGyver talks Dr. Milhouse out of killing a lab rat to prove how lethal the organism is,
reasoning that, ya know, that’s already been established in the wild. Dr. Milhouse is like,
“Fine, ya tree-hugging wuss, I’ll just find another reason to kill the rat later.” Then,
they examine the organism under a microscope and after studying a few seconds of stock footage
on this monitor, Milhouse confirms that it has mutated into an entirely different form of life,
and that it’s “getting stronger,” whatever that means in this context. Can it do a pull-up now?
Unassisted? That’s . . . I mean, that’s not bad.
Phelps shows up with some test results from the animals killed in the field and it turns
out the space germs cause rapid aging. The government wants it destroyed right away,
but Dr. Milhouse is like “Wait, why don’t we look at the potential upside of this? Sure,
my space germs killed everything they came in contact with today, but if we could control this
rapid aging effect, instead of killing stuff, it could allow crops and livestock to mature
in less time, speed up reproduction — maybe even allow parents of young children to fast-forward
right past the terrible twos! Can we afford to turn our backs on that kind of progress?!”
Pete’s like, “Yes. I hereby sentence your space germs to be zapped with a laser until dead.”
Milhouse isn’t happy about that, but there’s no time to argue about it — the laboratory goes on
red alert! The safety seal has been compromised! The space germs they were studying are eating
right through it! The computer gives MacGyver and the gang seven minutes to repair the seal and keep
the space germs from escaping. If they can’t, it will activate the lab’s self-destruct system.
So, after stopping Pete from touching the section of the seal where the space germs
are eating through — you can’t take your eyes off him for a second! — MacGyver gets
to work MacGyvering a solution. He improvises a torch using a bunsen burner and some rubber
hose attached to the gas feed and uses that to melt the sealing compound and close the hole,
then yanks the freon unit out of a refrigerator and uses it to freeze the sealing compound solid
again. Pete correctly explains the process to Phelps, and MacGyver’s like, “Not bad for
someone who almost poked his finger into the instantly lethal space germs a minute ago!”
MacGyver’s repair job works, the computer turns off the red alert,
and Pete’s like, “Okay, warm up the killin’ laser!”
Dr. Milhouse protests again, just for a second, then reluctantly goes along with it. She zaps the
vial of space germs with the laser, and then, to confirm that the space germs have all been
destroyed, she brings the lab rat back out and uses Armatron to release it from its container.
The rat walks around in the containment chamber where the space germs had been,
and seems fine, so the space germs must be dead! MacGyver’s like “See? If you’d killed
the lab rat earlier, you couldn’t have used it for this just now!” And Dr. Milhouse is like,
“Dude, don’t be such a shithead, I have so many more lab rats.”
With the space germs destroyed, MacGyver, Pete and Phelps head out. But on their way through
the parking lot, MacGyver and Pete grow suddenly suspicious that Dr. Milhouse gave up too quickly,
that maybe the reason she zapped the vial of space germs after only a mild
protest is that she’s got extra space germs stashed somewhere in the lab.
So, they rush back down there. MacGyver catches Milhouse red-handed, holding a sample of the
space germs which she’s somehow preserved. She locks herself in the lab to keep MacGyver
out — I guess the plan is she’ll just stay in that room until her research is complete?
I hope there’s a bathroom in there. And, I hope the dog is potty trained.
Speaking of the dog, while Milhouse and MacGyver are arguing over the ethics of
her disobeying orders to preserve a specimen of a pathogen that could potentially wipe out
all animal life on Earth, the dog jumps up and knocks the petri dish containing
the specimen out of Milhouse’s hands. The dish hits the floor and shatters,
instantly exposing both the dog and Milhouse to the pathogen.
See, this is why making sure your dog gets enough exercise is so important!
If he wasn’t cooped up in a subterranean biochemistry lab all day, maybe he wouldn’t
be so rambunctious that he dooms himself and you to rapid, excruciating death. Think about it!
Anyway, the dog dies, and it’s sad because, in case I forgot to mention it, a dog dies,
and the facility’s computer detects the space germ contamination and goes to red alert again.
MacGyver runs to get some hazmat suits for him and Pete and when he comes back Dr. Milhouse has
turned into a mummy, like, so fast! I know the pathogen is supposed to act quickly,
but did she drink from a false grail while MacGyver was in the supply closet? Jesus!
The computer announces that the self-destruct mechanism will be triggered in seven minutes
to stop the spread of the space germs — which, Dr. Milhouse has noticed,
have now mutated to be able to kill plant life, too — that seems . . . worse. Milhouse
begs them to at least save her research, so that her work might still do some good
someday. MacGyver races to her office to grab the computer disks containing her research,
while Pete remains at the window like, “I’ll just stay here and tearfully watch you die, I guess.”
MacGyver returns with the disks, Pete shows them to Dr. Milhouse and promises to get them
out. Milhouse manages a feeble “thank you” and then succumbs to the space germs. The computer
comes over the intercom like “Seriously, I’m activating the self-destruct!” So, MacGyver
and Pete make a run for it. They get past all the doors that are closing to seal off the facility
and reach the elevator shaft. The elevator has been deactivating, but MacGyver has an idea:
climb on top of the elevator and bypass the computer by using the maintenance override switch.
Great idea, Mac! Just one problem:
pressing the override switch only moves the elevator up an inch or so at a time,
and the entire place is gonna explode in four minutes. Time to whip out that Swiss Army knife!
MacGyver jumps out of the elevator and yanks a transformer out of the wall behind a control
panel in the decontamination closet, wires that into the elevator’s override switch,
and hey, whaddya know, it makes the elevator go faster! They go zipping up the elevator shaft,
reach the top and go running out of the elevator just before the explosion from the self-destruct
comes blasting out behind them. We get a cool push-in two-shot of Mac and Pete that also
subsequently makes it into the opening credits, Pete shakes his head and says regretfully,
“What a loss . . .” They turn and walk away as the elevator shaft burns behind them —
— And that’s it! That’s the end of the episode! No upbeat epilogue to take the sting out of it
where Pete tells MacGyver that Phoenix Foundation scientists have been working with Dr. Milhouse’s
salvaged research and it’s already yielding some very promising results! No scene where Phelps the
military guy shows up at Pete’s office and tells Pete and MacGyver that the near-disaster caused by
the space germs has convinced the nations of the world to take the threat of biological warfare
seriously and they are convening an international panel to strengthen safeguards to make sure this
sort of thing, or something even worse, can never happen again! No lesson, no silver lining,
just death, destruction, and MacGyver and Pete just barely escaping with their lives.
Jesus! Did one of the producers watch The Andromeda Strain on
the same day he had to have his dog put to sleep, or something?
As I said at the beginning, this episode isn’t actually all that depressing — it’s
still MacGyver — even when the subject matter is heavy, it’s smothered in a thick and creamy
cheese sauce. There’s the contrived tension of the first act — Oh no, MacGyver fell down
and broke his antenna! Oh no, the military guy wants to rain fire on MacGyver and Pete can’t
talk him out of it! There’s the gratuitously futuristic stuff at the Phoenix lab, with the
fancy decontamination chamber and the talking computer and the jumbo sized Armatron. There’s
the ridiculously over-the-top old age make-up poor Judith Chapman has to wear for her final
scenes as the prematurely elderly Dr. Milhouse. It’s pretty goofy — but, holy shit, is it grim!
However, it’s also an example of one of my favorite qualities of the series:
the elasticity of its premise. There’s an even better example of this quality
in an episode from season two which I will definitely be making a video about at some
point and I’ll talk more about this aspect of the show then — but, the basic idea is,
because the only thing that was really necessary for the show to work was the presence of MacGyver,
and because MacGyver is established as being an absurdly versatile individual,
the creators of the show could make an episode of MacGyver about almost anything they could imagine.
Spy thriller? Heist story? Rescue operation? Detective story? Didactic examination of a
pertinent social issue? They could do all of those and more — and they
did — and it always fit the show, because what the show was, was amazingly flexible.
Look at “Kill Zone” through that lens: there’s no real villain, there’s no political or social
message being sent — except maybe “don’t send germs into space without telling someone first,”
which, okay, solid message — and at the end of the episode, MacGyver doesn’t save the day. The
spread of the space germs is stopped, but not because of anything MacGyver does. He collects
the specimen at the beginning so it can be studied, not to stop the outbreak — the outbreak
has already happened, and it’s the napalming that stops that from spreading. Likewise,
when the space germs are released in the Phoenix lab by Dr. Milhouse’s lovable but,
alas, poorly trained dog, the spread of that potential outbreak is stopped by the automatic
sealing-off and destruction of the lab. Dr. Milhouse dies. Her dog dies. All MacGyver
does is grab some computer disks and hotwire an elevator so he and Pete can get to safety.
Something terrible happens, something even worse is prevented from happening,
a scientist and her dog die, and the heroes survive. That’s this episode. And when you
describe it that way, it doesn’t sound like the breakdown of a MacGyver episode,
yet it doesn’t feel out of place among other MacGyver episodes when you watch it because
the scope of the show is just that broad, and MacGyver is such an appealing character,
and Richard Dean Anderson is such an appealing actor, that as long as he’s there, it works.
I have a lot of fun with MacGyver, I talk about how so much of why I enjoy it is because of its
cheesy, corny, so-bad-it’s-good qualities, but this is something about it that is unironically
and unequivocally good. What other show that ran as long and left as lasting of
a footprint in popular culture was anywhere near as versatile and adaptable as MacGyver?
It wasn’t just about a dude who had a Swiss Army knife — the show was a Swiss Army knife.
And this episode? This episode is like . . . um . . . the hook!
Because when you first see it you might think, “What’s that doing there?” But then, one night,
you come home drunk, you stagger to the bathroom, you’re taking a leak,
you drop your keys in the toilet, even in your plastered state you don’t relish having to
reach into your own lukewarm piss water to fish ‘em out, when suddenly you remember — ! Ehhh?
Christ, the ending for this one got away from me,
didn’t it? . . . “This episode is the hook”? What even was that shit?