#121: A Prisoner of Conscience (30 April 1986)

Pete has taken an unannounced trip to Russia in search of Alexander Karsov, an old friend in trouble with the secret police. MacGyver, worried for the safety of his boss follows him there. Pete is extremely surprised to see MacGyver, but glad to have a friend in these trying times. It seems Karsov died 3 days ago while under police interrogation because of his contact with an American secret agent. That agent was Pete, who now feels responsible for the death of his friend. Pete fears the police will now arrest and kill Karsov's daughter Maria, so his mission is to find and protect her.

Pete tells MacGyver he doesn't want any help, to which MacGyver replies "I've travelled 10 000 miles to be here, so like it or not you've got me". The only place 10 000 miles from Moscow is Africa, so MacGyver must have flown there directly after his prison experience.

The location of Maria is conveniently just a few minutes walk from where MacGyver and Pete had rendezvoused. Pete wants to meet Maria alone. MacGyver agrees to this, but the second Pete's back is turned he starts following him and hides in the bushes outside Maria's house.

It immediately becomes clear why Pete wanted to meet Maria alone, he wants to bang her. The warm welcome she gives him indicates that will probably happen, especially as she'll need someone to comfort her after the recent death of her father. It looks like Pete has taught MacGyver everything he knows.

Just as things are about to heat up in the cabin the secret police show up, ruining everything Pete had hoped would happen in the next 8 minutes.

The police are there to arrest Maria, just as Pete had suspected. As they try to enter the house, Pete slams the door in their face sending them into the water out the front of Maria's cabin. This gives the pair time to escape. MacGyver is right behind them, he just has to jam a potato into the exhaust pipe of the police officers car first.

As expected the car wont start so the chase takes place on foot. MacGyver and co. jump into a nearby speedboat, as do the police, taking the chase to the water. We have another high octane persuit on our hands.

MacGyver needs to get them off their trail, so be ties a few cans, a blanket and a life jacket to a rope and throws it into the water. This causes the police officers boat to lose control, run aground and explode.

They've managed to avoid capture thanks to Maria's great driving and MacGyver's quick thinking. Pete did fuck all, but was probably still thinking about banging Maria.

Maria reveals that her father isn't dead, he is being secretly held in a state mental hospital. The media announce his death and if there isn't much protest from the public they will kill him. There doesn't seem to much protest meaning that apart from Maria and Pete no one really gives a fuck about Karsov, so the only option they have is to break him out of the mental hospital.

Pete and Maria are heading to Leningrad to break Karsov out. MacGyver asks "what about me, I've never been to Leningrad, I hear its a real party town". They agree to bring him along for the ride.

The plan is for MacGyver to pretend to be a mental patient, with Pete playing a doctor sent to Russia to observe him. Once inside they can find Karsov and break him out in a plot that sounds only marginally different to that of the one in the last episode. I guess the network assumes people don't watch the show every week.

MacGyver's acting work has been superb up to this point in the series, so him playing a mental patient should prove to be nothing short of spectacular. It's the role he was born to play.

MacGyver and Pete check into the hospital with minimal effort. Dr. Suvarin informs Pete that the hospital is full of people with mental issues as well as political prisoners. MacGyver is immediately into character as a convincing mental patient.

Dr. Suvarin leads MacGyver into the common room where he is introduced to  the other patients, a typical cast of characters you tend to find in pretty much all mental hospitals on TV and in film. There's the huge crazy guy who looks like he could kill you, the guy who seems normal so you don't actually know if he's nuts or not and the guy who has an unhealthy obsession about something to the point that every time he has a line, he either talks about this obsession or makes references to it while engaging in otherwise normal conversation. In this instance it's chess. There are also some other guys that weren't introduced in this scene so they won't have a speaking part but will have to act crazy during a scene later on in the episode.

MacGyver doesn't want to be caught out as sane, so starts his "I'm bat shit crazy" routine by stealing chess guys chessboard and jumping up and down on a bed. The dudes bed he's jumping up and down on doesn't seem impressed at all. This seems to do the trick and within a few seconds one of the guards has pistol whipped him. They don't take any shit in this mental hospital.

I'm not sure if it's Russian style or if the hospital just doesn't have the budget for straight jackets but the method of restraining MacGyver after his outburst was to wrap him up like a mummy. Pete was called into the room to take care of things and just laughed at what a dick MacGyver looked like. He eventually unwrapped him but waited for a good 30 minutes before doing so. Those crazy Russians and their restraining methods.

Pete has only brought one set of lock picks with him, which is a problem as MacGyver needs to break out Karsov and Pete needs to break into the drug cabinet and secure some drugs for an as of now unspecified purpose. Possibly to give to MacGyver in lieu of payment for the mission. Who knows what sort of budget issues he has to deal with.

The big issue for MacGyver is that he has no idea where Karsov is hidden in the hospital. Once Pete gets him back into the common room he sets about asking the other patients if they know where he can find Karsov. I would have assumed trying to get reliable information out of mental patients would be very difficult if not impossible but MacGyver is able to get the answer he requires after about 2 minutes from the chess guy who answers "ward zero, bishop to queen four", just in case we'd forgotten from the last scene that he was the chess obsessed guy.

MacGyver takes a light bulb from one of the lamps, smashes it, removes the Tungsten and uses it to pick the common room door lock before wittily commenting "let there be light". The mental patients didn't find it that funny. Tough crowd.

MacGyver finds ward zero easily enough after getting directions from the 'I don't know if he's crazy' guy. The entrance to the ward is guarded by one guy so MacGyver is going to have to create a diversion. 

MacGyver is the fucking king of diversions so even in a mental hospital with limited resources he'll be able to come up with something effective. He finds the janitors storage room and quickly gets to work. MacGyver coats a metal bucket with some kind of sealer and adds another chemical to create what he refers to as Russian crazy glue. He then attaches a mop handle with a white flag on one end and places this in a sink full of water. When the guard returns he sees a stick with a white flag that appears to be waiving at him. He heads into the storage room to investigate, picks up the crazy glue bucket which becomes attached to his hands and cannot be removed. He tries and tries but that fucking bucket is stuck for life. He may even need to have his hands amputated. 

MacGyver sneaks past the guard into ward zero where he finds Karsov. He enters his cell, introduces himself and the two plot their escape. The guard spots MacGyver and triggers the alarm. The huge crazy patient shows up and beats the the shit out of the guard with the bucket stuck to his hands. It wasn't really a fair fight as it's hard to defend yourself when you're stuck to a bucket but the huge crazy guy would have pummelled him anyway.

Two other guards come to investigate and the huge crazy dude beats the shit out of them also. MacGyver and Karsov are able to sneak out of the infamous ward zero to safety.

Just incase you'd forgotten we were in Russia, the director zooms past a well placed portrait of Lenin reminding the viewer exactly where this jaunt is taking place. I saw the body of Lenin when I was in Moscow and lets just say it looked like a deleted exhibit from Madame Tussauds.

The other patients are going absolutely apeshit in the common room, a scene I predicted would occur earlier, as you can't have anything set in a mental hospital without a scene involving the patients getting crazy as fuck.

Pete picks the medicine cabinet lock and grabs a heap of drugs, including a few bags of suspicious looking powder that have MacGyver's name written all over it.

The huge crazy guy is finally brought under control and Dr. Suvarin threatens to inject him with something that will render him paralysed permanently. The other patients may be mental but they quickly get the point that they shouldn't fuck around. Dr. Suvarin looks like he's on the fringes of insanity anyway, so I wouldn't fuck with him.

Dr. Suvarin leaves the common room without injecting anyone with anything. He stumbles upon a bag of drugs in the hall that Pete had recklessly dropped. For fuck sake Pete, you had one job, to get the drugs and do it with stealth. I thought you were more careful than that. You could blow the whole mission.

MacGyver sneaks back into the common room with Karsov and makes sure none of the guards will be able to discover his location by hiding him behind a curtain. It's so simple it might just work.

This completes phase one.

Phase two involves Maria posing as a local girl and getting a job in the dining room. Once she's inside, she'll drug the staffs food with the shit Pete took from the medicine cabinet. With Pete dropping some of the drugs and MacGyver receiving his mission payment in a large portion of the rest, I just hope she fucking has enough.

Pete will kick off stage three in the morning.

Dr. Suvarin confronts Pete and one of the other doctors in regards to the drugs. He believes Pete and the other doctor are working together to steal the drugs and sell them on the black market. He places them under house arrest. They will not speak to, nor see, anyone.

Dr. Suvarin also believes MacGyver is in on the drug operation and confronts him too. MacGyver pretends to be a KGB agent sent into the hospital undercover to actually stop the drug smuggling. Dr. Suvarin doesn't believe MacGyver and decides the best way to uncover the truth is though chemical interrogation. It sounds good in theory but MacGyver has built up such a tolerance that I doubt the drugs will have any effect on him anyway.

Just as Dr. Suvarin is about to administer MacGyver with his truth drug cocktail, chess guy starts going fucking crazy and, metaphor alert, knocks out Dr. Suvarin by breaking his beloved chess board over the doctors head. 

Destroying the only thing he held dear to take down the oppressive regime, all in slow motion might I add, makes this one of the most powerful scenes in the series. 

MacGyver takes out two other guards, one with a badass flying two handed spinning punch, and they make a run for it.

The 'I'm not sure if he's crazy' guy yells "Power to the people" and then looks at one of the guards and says "Remember I'm mad". It seems the power had shifted from the guards to the inmates which is always a positive thing in a mental hospital. In real life, one of the inmates would probably freak out and cut MacGyver's throat, but I don't see that happening here for some reason. 

MacGyver tracks down Pete and releases him from his captivity, which was just his office with the door locked. Pete passes the psychotropic drugs over to Maria who puts them in the staffs tea.

Meanwhile chess guy is playing a game with Dr. Suvarin who now finds himself in a straight jacket. There isn't a board but that really doesn't matter in a place like this. Some wacky music lightens the mood bringing some much need 'comic' relieve to this otherwise serious episode. 

Karsov and Maria are finally reunited in the dining room after all those days. The drugs kick in 30 seconds after ingestion making the staff relaxed and carefree. This allows MacGyver and co. to simply walk out the front door.

Everyone is free, including some people potentially dangerous to society but MacGyver and Pete don't seem too worried about that.

Pete suggests they get out of Russia. They can do some of MacGyver's patented border fleeing into Finland, but Karsov wants to stay. He is too famous to kill now and he can use this fame for good.  MacGyver states "with more people like you around, juts about anything can happen".

Maria has decided to go to America but Karsov is insisting on staying. He gives a stirring speech about how Governments can change, but the soil cannot, it is part of him and he wants to remain, even in the bad times, which he knows will change and that he isn't designed for exile. The speech is ruined by MacGyver who for some reason is wearing a ridiculous fur coat. That's all I could focus on, so Karsov's words were lost on me and probably the entire audience. 

The daughter bids her father farewell in what is truly an emotional end to an emotional episode. 


This episode taught me that it's possible to get into a mental hospital with nothing more than solid acting skills, that boats explode if they touch land and that most people in mental hospitals are loveable characters with hearts of gold.