‘MacGyver’ episode 8 review: Meet Murdoc
We didn’t love the pilot for “MacGyver” — let’s go ahead and get that out of the way right now. This was a show that started off struggling to figure out how much action it wanted to have in relationship to humor, and we even wondered whether or not this Mac was old enough to have the crazy experience and survival-skills that he does.
“Corkskrew” was a turning point for this series, and one that it desperately needed since it brought us the introduction of Murdoc, one of the most famous villains from the original series and the most compelling adversary to surface on this entire series to date. He is the first one to feel almost like a ne’er-do-well out of a comic book, someone who is firmly invested in besting Mac just because of the prize of doing so. To date, he’s the only rival to have defeated him, and the entire showdown at the junkyard was fantastic because if was one of the few times that our hero was genuinely on the ropes.
We have to assume that this man-of-many-names will come back, and we do think in time he’s going to have to do some crazy, even as terrible as kill someone important to Mac, in order to cement his status as Villain Numero Uno (if the show wants to go in that direction, given that Nikki is also still out there).
In looking at the second main order of business as presented during this episode, you do need to also remember that we got a chance in finally resolve another important story: Bozer being in the dark about what’s really been going on with his best friend. When Murdoc turned up at the house proclaiming that he was a work friend of Mac’s, he was none the wiser. That changed quickly. While we’re not entirely sure how we move forward from this with the character, we’re happy that he found out the truth now since it allows him to be much more involved as opposed to some tacked-on entity for the start and end of each individual episode.
It was a good thing in this instance that the writers didn’t try to cram too much into this episode, or really focus more than they had to on Mac’s skills and making something out of nothing. That’s important given that it is a central premise of the show, but we needed something of a game-changer and this story brought us that. The focus was just as much on character as action, and everyone had some really interesting stuff to do. If there is a weakness, you can argue that it took a little bit too long to get to this point given that by episode 8, some viewers out there have already bailed on the series.
Still, we do think that this episode was everything that a “MacGyver” remake should be. It captured much of what made the original very entertaining, while also bringing you a good bit of what makes the remake different, unique, fun, and at times scary. Episode Grade: A-.
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