As the updated reboot of MacGyver—the action series with a practical science twist—rolls out its third season on CBS, the first season of the original 1980s series starring Richard Dean Anderson as Angus MacGyver, the most resourceful secret agent in the world, makes its Blu-ray debut. As the cliché goes, MacGyver saves the world week after week with a Swiss Army knife, a roll of duct tape, a stray paperclip, a gum wrapper, and other junk he picks up during his latest assignment. In this first season, MacGyver is the only regular character and the episodes follow a familiar formula: a pre-credits action sequence is narrated by MacGyver as he completes the final stages of one mission, followed by a new assignment that he generally undertakes solo. This was made before the fall of the Berlin Wall and there's a Cold War quality to many of the stories. Dana Elcar joins midway through as his boss Peter Thornton (showing up only periodically in the first season) and Teri Hatcher makes the first of numerous series appearances as Penny Parker in the episode "Every Time She Smiles." Theory gets pushed to the limits in some of MacGyver’s more inventive solutions, but it makes for a different kind of spy show with a swashbuckling Mr. Wizard, a boy scout of an American spy with a disdain for guns who resorts to his wits and ingenuity in the face of brute force and impossible odds. The series was immortalized when "MacGyver" was adopted into the English language as a verb meaning to improvise a repair with objects at hand. Compiling all 22 episodes of the 1985-86 debut season, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)
MacGyver: The Complete First Season
Paramount, 5 discs, 1,045 min., not rated, Blu-ray: $55.98 Volume 34, Issue 2
MacGyver: The Complete First Season
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