MacGyver episode 19 review: Mac’s past; Bozer and Riley’s future

There are many things that we’ve learned about Angus MacGyver throughout this season, but on MacGyver episode 19 on Friday night, we had a chance to learn more about the title character’s time at MIT. He was a brilliant student, someone capable of a fantastic job that would probably make him a millionaire many times over.

Yet, he ended up going in an entirely different direction, and a good part of Friday’s episode was learning more about the journey that got him to the point that led to him being a secret crime-stopping badass with the Phoenix Foundation. Much of this story was told through the perspective of his close friend Frankie (Aly Michalka), a woman he went to school with who ended up faking her own death. Someone was doing everything that they could in order to ensure that she died before the results of her research officially came out. She felt the need to go into hiding, and MacGyver and Jack had to do their part in order to find her.

When they did, that’s when some of the story about Mac’s past started to come out — we had a great chance to see more of his genius, and having a new foil for him here in Frankie was rather fun. While it was clear that the Mac she knew was very different from the man he is now, they picked almost where they left off. The “boy genius,” as she called him, is someone who could remain in her life in some capacity. We won’t be mad if the show does find a way to bring Michalka back to the show, even if we know she’s got a pretty jam-packed schedule these days.

Oh, and did we mention that Bozer’s facial-reconstruction skills were essential to the case? He wasn’t out in the field, but he did still have a victory.

Bozer comes to terms with Riley

We all know that he has feelings for her, but she in turn has feelings for her new beau from Hawaii. He tried to put him down and fight to spend time with her, but after getting some advice from Matty, Jack, and others, he realized that this wasn’t going to be the way to win her heart. Maybe there would be some hope for the two parties over time, but this wasn’t it. He eventually realized that he should be happy with what they have, and this produced a fun moment between the two.

Now that we’ve said all of this … we totally do still want to see the two characters together. We just can’t help it!

Overall, this episode was a lot of fun, as Mac reminded Jack why he loved his job — even though he may have been an excellent MIT researcher and someone who could’ve done great things around the university, he loves the work that he does now. Meanwhile, Bozer also came to terms with where he was. While this wasn’t the most significant episode in the show’s history, it was certainly a great hour of TV that was entertaining throughout. Grade: B+.

For a preview of next week’s new MacGyver episode, be sure to head over to the link here right now. (Photo: CBS.)