The episode starts off with a statement that has been debated numerous times since the original screening date. Not a year goes by without University lecture halls housing debates as to if MacGyver was correct in asserting that humans want to hear nothing more than running water at 80 decibels. While the statement may be contentious, it acts as the perfect set up for the opening scene, a dockyard, where there is lots of water. Actually it isn't that perfect as the water isn't rushing at 80 decibels. Come to think of it, the statement has fuck all to do with the episode at all and would have been best preserved for an episode involving a waterfall or something.
MacGyver is at the dock as he'd just returned from East Germany on a ship, indicating that his funds may be running out, as there is no way you'd get a boat from East Germany to the USA unless you were broke as fuck. He has taken some time off recently so that could explain it. His drug habit could also be getting out of hand. It really is difficult to say. I'm sure he has some money coming his way as he did blow up that Nuclear Plant and rescue the General last week. He probably gets paid monthly and is just having a short term cash flow problem.
MacGyver smuggled some important information out of East Germany and is waiting for his contact so he can make an exchange. While waiting, he helps a girl out who was trying to catch a fish unsuccessfully, by making a lure out of a gum wrapper. She catches a fish approximately 8 seconds after dropping the line into the water, proving gum wrappers are the most effective lures.
MacGyver meets up with Pete Thornton for the first time in the series, a guy that I always knew as MacGyver's boss from watching the show as a kid. He was in the pilot episode but playing a different character, the head of that underground fucking laboratory. MacGyver has a list of terror suspects to hand to Pete. The East Germans are also there at the docks to intercept the package. Pete tells MacGyver to get the intel out of there and he'll handle the Germans.
Pete gets shot in the arm immediately, proving that he isn't really that great of a dude to have on your side. With him out of action MacGyver decides to hide the intel in the base of a street lamp as he is drastically outnumbered and doesn't want to hand the list back to the Germans.
MacGyver approaches a cop, who turns out to be one of the Germans dressed as a police officer, a spectacular ruse. This fake cop takes MacGyver out with a blow to the head and MacGyver is taken away to an old warehouse.
MacGyver is interrogated at the warehouse, but ever the patriot he refused to give up the location of the terrorist list. The East Germans have numerous interrogation techniques at their disposal in order to get information they want. Today they decided to go with the lethal injection that takes 6 hours to kill the person it has been administered to unless an antidote is taken. All MacGyver has to do it give up the list and the antidote will be his. The lethal injections other symptoms include disorientation and hallucinations, things MacGyver has to deal with on a daily basis with his extended drug use.
MacGyver is locked in a room containing a bed and a sink. Anyone who knows MacGyver knows that this is more than enough for him to use to escape, even under the influence of hardcore hallucinogens, so fuck knows why they left him in there in the first place. Couldn't they have just stayed with him for the 6 hours? Even MacGyver would give up the list eventually. Instead they decide to lock him in the room which he'll inevitably escape from.
The escape took even less time than I expected. MacGyver uses water from the sink to short out the fuse box downstairs luring the guards to his room. MacGyver then lets loose with a slingshot he'd made out of the bed, knocking the guards into a pile of barrels giving him enough time to escape.
By this time MacGyver is tripping pretty hard. Any normal man would have crashed out on the road, their attention fully occupied by flying unicorns, or they'd be beating the shit out of imaginary pirates, but not MacGyver. He's been here before. It's a dark place. A really dark place, but MacGyver has the experience to focus and work his way through it.
These drugs must be pretty hardcore as MacGyver is looking really fucked. He almost gets hit by a truck and then falls to the ground possibly distracted by those unicorns from before.
In an unlikely twist of fate, Lisa, the chick MacGyver helped catch a fish at the start of the episode just happens to be walking down the same street. She sees MacGyver all cracked out and ignores the rather sound advice of her friends to leave a drugged out stranger alone.It turns out that Lisa is a runaway and she takes MacGyver back to her squat, something that really isn't advised. Sure MacGyver is a sound guy but it could have just as easily been the ruse of a serial rapist, help someone catch a fish then act all cracked out hours later so the person you helped get the fish takes you back to their place and then, boom, rape time. Lisa was stupid, but she got lucky this time. Let's hope for her sake she doesn't pull this shit again in the future. She has enough problems as it is, living in an abandoned building with pretty poor insulation that will be a nightmare in winter, possibly the catalyst for the naming of this episode, and such limited funds that she has to catch her dinner from a dock that will no doubt lead to her getting heavy metal poisoning.
Lisa tells her story to MacGyver who is now hallucinating way less. Lisa has an abusive father, who beat her, resulting in a court case where all the Judge did was tell her father to get his act together. Lisa tells MacGyver that "he got his act together all right, on my face". I'm not going to take to liberty to suggest that there was incest action going on and that "his act" on her face meant jizz but many others no doubt drew that conclusion from the fact that Lisa doesn't have any bruises. Either way MacGyver was certainly angry with Lisa's father for the abuse.
The East Germans track down Lisa's friends who give them her address. The friends were justified in giving away her location, after all the last time they saw her she was hanging out with drug fucked stranger so probably feared for her safety. They make their way to Lisa's place to get MacGyver back and find out once and for all where that fucking list is.
The injection MacGyver was given erased his short term memory but he gets it back at this point in the episode telling Lisa his story. He looks at the watch he was given by the Germans and realises just what it's counting down to and that his time is almost up.
The guys looking for MacGyver are outside so he rigs up a MacGyver Time Buyer ® using a car battery and a TV tube. When the door is opened the TV tube will explode, buying them valuable seconds.
MacGyver attracts his pursuers to their location with a transistor radio shredding out some gnarly 80s rock. This acts as a double time buyer as the face melting guitar work should entrance the Germans long enough to get a few more escape seconds.
The first guy there opens the door, setting off the TV tube explosion. He is undoubtedly blinded by the glass flying into his face from the TV screen.
MacGyver then uses a fire hose to fake an escape from the building. The pursers now think MacGyver has left the building and leave too.
MacGyver tells Lisa to call Pete Thornton of the Department of External Services at the Federal Building and explain everything. MacGyver is headed back to the warehouse to get the antidote before it is too late.
When Lisa and MacGyver part ways some seductive saxophone music is played, the type of music that is usually reserved for lovers in films, which could be deemed as inappropriate as Lisa is seriously about 15. Then again, she could just look young for her age and the music could be an indication of things to come later in the episode.
Back at the warehouse, MacGyver is confronted with a guy that up this point has been busy eating a sandwich in every scene he's featured in. This scene proves to be no exception and as everyone knows it is always easy to overcome a guard who is eating, especially when other characters have made reference to how the guy is always eating at various times throughout the episode. Whenever you hear a "do you ever stop eating", you just know the character will at some later point get the shit kicked out of him because he is distracted by food.
With the guy eating a sandwich, MacGyver is easily able to get past him, stick a nail in a car tyre attracting the him to the other side of the car, and then smash him in the face with a car door when he bends down to have a look. If he didn't have a sandwich none of this would have happened.
Lisa's message finally gets through to Pete after a someone on the Department of External Services switchboard decided that it wasn't serious. I hope they get fired. MacGyver's life is at stake for fucks sake.
Once inside the building, MacGyver takes out the other guards by setting off the smoke alarm and then dropping full water cooler bottles on their heads when they come to investigate. Having successfully taken out all the guards, the mastermind behind the poisoning operation is now the only guy left and is forced to confront MacGyver himself. After a brief scuffle, MacGyver's nemesis throws the antidote down a drain, sealing MacGyver's fate. There are only minutes left before the poison takes over MacGyver's body and as it is so precisely made, it will take effect after exactly 6 hours, not a minute before and not a minute later.
MacGyver is pissed that he's about to die at the hands of an East German so musters together all of his remaining strength and knocks him the fuck out. Just at this time Lisa shows up to help MacGyver out.
You can never write MacGyver off, and I had a feeling he'd be able to get that antidote back. At first I thought that Lisa was going to fish it out of the drain using a lure made out of a gum wrapper harking back to the heady days of 6 hours ago but I was wrong. A real missed opportunity from the writers on that one. People love it when things come full circle in the space of an hour. It gives people the opportunity to say to themselves "hey, that happened earlier, what great writing to tie it back in at the end".
Instead MacGyver makes a magnet out of a pipe. He must have noticed earlier that the antidote was housed in a metal case. After a failed first attempt, MacGyver gets the antidote and takes it with merely minutes remaining. Everything is going to be just fine.
Fuck knows where Pete got to, but it turned out MacGyver didn't need him in the end anyway. He probably would have just got shot again.
MacGyver recovers the list of terrorists from the street lamp and meets up with Lisa again down at the docks. MacGyver has had a talk to Pete and the Department of External Services have decided to arranging a government scholarship for Lisa so she can complete her studies.
Judging from the sexy saxophone music played previously, Lisa's elation at the scholarship and the fact that MacGyver could get his way out of any potential future statutory rape charge by sighting the fact that hallucinogens had been administered to him against his will, therefore rendering it impossible for him to have the required mental state at the time to be responsible for his actions as a defense, it is likely that at this juncture MacGyver took Lisa back to her place to bang her.
MacGyver showed that having a history with mind altering substances can be advantageous and that you can use the excuse of being drugged to bang underage chicks.
1 comment:
I laughed so much that I cried. I just watched that episode!
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