#106: Trumbo's World (10 November 1985)

Episode #106 starts off auspiciously with a shot of MacGyver wearing only a towel. With the exception of Top Gun, the towel has never fully been utilised as a costume. Here MacGyver shows that if used tastefully, the towel can have a huge impact on the narrative.

MacGyver has been sent to the Pyrenees to rescue another fucking chick. You may be wondering about the towel, well the towel is his subtle disguise as a group of guys nearby are waiting for a shower, and yet again it is effective.  

The chick is pretty excited to see MacGyver, so I'm guessing she'd been a hostage for rather some time. She gives MacGyver a hug and judging by the expression on his face, and the easy access to his dick that a towel provides, she went straight for it. 

After a brief hand job it was down to business. MacGyver changed into actual clothing, grabbed a rope and made a run for it with the chick in tow. He'd created a diversion with the shower too just in case you were wondering how he bought enough time to escape.

With an armed group on their tail, MacGyver had to act fast. He rigging up a rope at the edge of a cliff, abseiled down, set the rope that he'd earlier dowsed in kerosene on fire, threw an inflatable boat in the river and took off down the rapids.

The guys persuing them took a few shots at the boat but were unable to puncture it. They rigged up their own abseiling rope and made their way down.

A few hundred metres down the river, MacGyver set up a barbed wire trip wire in the water. This punctured his pursuers boat, destroying it and sending the men into the water. If the trip wire was set just a little higher there could have been some awesome decapitations. While this was a major fuck up on MacGyver's part, he did have time for the comical “those guys are all washed up” line.

Once on land, there would have most definitely been some dicking.

ROLL OPENING TITLES

MacGyver "travels halfway around the world to help a friend with a weird problem in a strange part of the amazon". 

It seems a dozen species of birds have been spotted in desperate flight, terrified in the heart of the rain forest. With every other motherfucker in town too scared to see what the fuck is going on, it's up to MacGyver and friend Charlie to see what is so frightening. The part of the amazon they want to investigate is too dangerous for the inexperienced, however all of the local guides are too weak as piss to take them in. The local lawman mentions a man named Trumbo who lives in the region. He warns them against going down there as Trumbo is a man who plays by no rules and acknowledges no laws. The last time he saw Trumbo he was shot at. MacGyver is a man who often throws caution to the wind, so decides to go and visit Trumbo anyway.  

Within seconds of locating Trumbo's lair, MacGyver and Charlie had been shot at. While this is far from an ideal welcome, they had been warned. Trumbo tells them to get the fuck out of here. MacGyver notices that a water pump is broken and offers to repair it for Trumbo in exchange for a guide. Trumbo tells MacGyver to fuck off, he doesn't want to put any of his men in danger. MacGyver offers to fix it anyway and Trumbo accepts the gesture, showing that he can be reasonable when free labour is offered.

MacGyver makes an electric arc welder out of some jumper cables and a quarter, repairing the pumps damaged piston, impressing Trumbo in the process. Charlie asks Trumbo for a guide again, in which Trumbo replies once more that he won't risk his men but because MacGyver helped him out of bind, he will take them himself. MacGyver and Charlie were pretty stoked and the posse of Trumbo, Charlie and MacGyver was formed, or as I like the call them, the original three amigos.    

There is definitely something out there in the jungle scaring the animals but what could it be? I was hoping for a predator type creature and even suspected that this episode could have been the source material for the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger film. Unfortunately for me and everyone who has ever seen this episode I was wrong. This vicious and frightening phenomenon was nothing more than ants. Billions of ants, but ants nonetheless. Weak as fucking shit.

MacGyver and Trumbo rescue a girl trapped under a canoe in a nearby town while Charlie takes some pictures of these troublesome ants. While snapping away, he slips and falls into an ant pit. And dies. What a fucking weak cunt. I imagine MacGyver is going to have to contact his wife or loved ones and inform them of his death. Imagine that conversation:

Wife: How did it happen?

MacGyver: He fell into a pile of ants.

Wife: ...

MacGyver: Yeah I know, what a fucking weak cunt. 

MacGyver and Trumbo didn't even bother recovering the body. Charlie wasn't the smallest guy going around so fuck carrying him all the way back to Trumbo's place. MacGyver can at times be harsh, but he is always fair.

Using some fucking tracking system, MacGyver was able to identify that the ants were heading in a north easterly direction, exactly towards Trumbo's plantation.

MacGyver found a drawing Charlie had done of him just before his unfortunate ant related passing. Trumbo commented that Charlie had really captured MacGyver well, but to be honest the picture was kinda shitty. This put MacGyver is an awkward position as the picture was too shit to keep but the guy who drew it had just died. It was pretty unfair of Charlie to be honest. We don't see the picture for the rest of the episode so it is safe to assume that MacGyver burned it.

With the three amigos now two, the increased workload MacGyver faces is something he clearly isn't stoked about. Having to take out billions of ants is a rather daunting task when you have three in your planning committee, so with one less it's a fucking nightmare.  

To make matters worse, some old cunt tells everyone working at the plantation to get the fuck out of there as he's seen the ants before and they are too dangerous to fuck with.  

Trumbo is pissed. He knows with all of his staff gone he'll have fuck all chance of defeating the army of ants. He starts shooting the boats so nobody can get away, but MacGyver tackles him to ground and a brief punch-up ensues. MacGyver is of the opinion that if the want to go they can. All Trumbo is asking for is a little help from his employees and if I was him I'd be pissed too.

With only MacGyver, Trumbo and some other dude Trumbo found in the jungle when he was a kid left, the odds are stacked against them. MacGyver saw what those ants did to Charlie and knows that they aren't fucking around. The ants killed MacGyver's friend, so this time it's personal.

The plan is to fill the irrigation ditches around the plantation with water, creating a moat the ants will be unable to penetrate. The young dude starts filling the ditches with water but the ants are able to get across as the water is too shallow. He tries to pump in more water but the ants get to him and claim their second victim. These ants are brutal and this young man, well he was a boy really, never stood a chance. He was also a bit of a pussy so that was undoubtedly a contributing factor.

Plan B involves MacGyver and a home-made flame thrower. He burned the fuck out of a heap of ants but it wasn't enough. They ran out of gasoline before they could get all them.

Plan C, the last resort, had to be engaged. This plan involved blowing up the dam, flooding the entire plantation and drowning the ants while destroying the entire crop in the process.  

MacGyver made an explosive out of fertiliser, tree bark and acid to use to destroy the dam and also made a suit of armour manufactured out of melted plastic pipes to protect him from the ants.

MacGyver reached the dam covered in ants and I suspect if it wasn't for the suit he'd made  he could well be dead. He planted the explosives, destroyed the dam and let the water do the rest. The sound effect used to denote drowning ants was monumentally fucked but that aside the ants were dead and the plantation was saved, apart from all the destroyed crops.

Trumbo was happy even though his crop was destroyed and was already planning to rebuild. He didn't mention the dead guy he had raised like a son at all. He probably didn't like him that much and he was a bit of a pussy who was killed by ants, so his life will be better without him anyway.

Throughout the episode it wasn't mentioned exactly what Trumbo was growing on his plantation, but it was most definitely coca. He had a plantation a few hundred miles from the nearest town, didn't obey laws and even went as far as shooting at the local police officer when he came near him. Balance this with the fact that his name is fucking Trumbo and there is no way that this guy wasn't manufacturing and distributing cocaine.

I found it strange that MacGyver would help a drug manufacturer. MacGyver is a super perceptive guy so there is no way that he didn't know Trumbo sold drugs. When you look at the fact that MacGyver chose to ignore Trumbo's involvement in drugs and that MacGyver is always making wise cracks, has a lot of self confidence, loves banging the bitches and fears absolutely nothing, it is obvious without a shadow of a doubt that MacGyver is a heavy cocaine user. I'm sure he is coked up 24/7. He has the cash, the means and is constantly flying into Central and South America, so it all makes perfect sense in hindsight. I feel I'm getting closer to finding out just who MacGyver is.

Trumbo asks MacGyver to come back in 12 months time to see his new and improved plantation, so I have a feeling we may be seeing more of Trumbo either later in this season or in season 2. Hopefully MacGyver and him will go on a massive coke binge and get reckless as fuck.

Overall this episode was pretty weak. It was based on the 1938 short story by Carl Stephenson, Leiningen Versus the Ants. 5 episodes in and already they are sourcing stories from elsewhere? I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. It seemed 25% of this episode was made up of stock footage of ants and the rest of dudes getting unrealistically killed by ants. The amount of cocaine destroyed by the flooding of Trumbo's plantation was about equal to that used by the producers who allowed this piece of shit to be made.

MacGyver showed us that ants are deadly but you can fight back with water and home made plastic suits and that it is all right to help drug manufacturers when they are in trouble.

THE END