‘MacGyver’ episode 3 review: Wreck-it Ralph

For those of you out there who wanted to see a side of “MacGyver” that was a tad more folksy and low-budget, there is a part of Friday night’s new episode that certainly delivered the goods there. We had impromptu surgeries, a touch of “Smokey and the Bandit,” and a little bit of “Chuck” since we were dealing with a rescue mission involving a guy with curly hair who was mostly helpless to do anything. In this case, he didn’t have the Intersect to back him up. (Yes, this does continue our quest to reference “Chuck” early and often — the show is far too good not to.)

Basically, the premise tonight was as follows: Angus and Jack wanted to do their part to stop a powerful organization from committing a dangerous attack, but herein lies the problem: They had to rely on Ralph, a money man who isn’t quite used to high-octane situations. In a word, he was fairly useless and spent a good two-thirds of the episode almost dying. Yet, seeing MacGyver work to save him was a big part of the fun.

Here is where things got a little more poignant: In order to execute the plan funny, Angus really had to make Ralph face his own mortality, which in turn caused him to panic about how long it’d been since he had spoken to his mother. In turn, this made Angus think more about the fractured relationship with his own father, which is a subject that came up earlier on in the episode. This led to a poignant moment at the end of the hour … but before we get there, Angus and Jack had to survive. That proved to be no easy task. Of course he did, and eventually the team had some semblance of success.

Ultimately, we wanted more of a zenith with the Ralph story than we had given how ridiculous he was — we suppose that for now, him surviving is enough. The funniest moment of the night has to go with Angus acting as a monster for Dozier’s movie with the little CGI balls all over him; it was ridiculous, and another reminder that this guy’s gotta get more involved eventually … right?

Episode Grade: B-. The entertainment value in this episode was spoiled somewhat by its predictability. For example, the moment that Ralph brought up the subject of his mother on the show, it became pretty darn clear that this was the direction the story was going — even if Angus choosing to write him a letter was a little bit of a nice twist.

What’s coming next week – We’ve got a preview up at this link for some more details. Let’s just say that it involves a Russian version of our title character. (Photo: CBS.)