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MacGyver Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
22 Episodes 1985 - 1986
Episode 1
Pilot
Sun, Sep 29, 198549 mins
In the opening gambit, Mac must retrieve a top-secret pentagon rocket which crashed in Central Asia on a desolate, barren rock mountain and is already guarded by hostile soldiers. Mac's mountaineering, engineering and flying skills are put to good, daring and ingenious use... In the main story, Mac's scientist friend Gantner calls a big favor: an explosion in his top-secret science lab has trapped a group of researchers and caused a leak of extremely corrosive acid which will take only hours to contaminate the water in several US states, so the whole lab will be destroyed using an even worse counter-agent, regardless of the trapped people, unless Mac can stop the leakage and pass the good news. First Mac must get past a laser security system, for him simpler then a smoke-screen. When he is trough one scientist refuses to be evacuated, she helps him get to her research partner trapped in a cave-in. The army is getting restless, preparing a nuclear warhead, and was the explosion even an accident in the first place?
Episode 2
The Golden Triangle
Sun, Oct 6, 198560 mins
In the opening gambit, Mac takes a diplomatic case during an criminal hand-over, and outsmarts he armed fiends making use of the site, a car demolition junk-yard, which almost ended fatally 'depressing' for him. - In the main story, the Pentagon lost an airplane carrying weapons, including a secret canister, over Burma (SE Asian, bordering Thailand) and Mac accepts the search mission. The region in the 'Golden Triangle' is controlled by the sinister war lord general Nairan, whose goons terrorize the rural villagers to work poppy fields for his opium - and arms trade. Mac observes the abusive overseer Truang at work, gets the brave teen boy Chan to show him the crash site but is captured by surprise; Nairan orders him slowly executed 'as an example', bound on a rack in the sun. Chan's sister Lin is too scared for reprisals -whole villages were brunt down for disobedience- to help, but Chan gets him a stolen army knife. In no time crafty Mac frees himself, overcomes his guard and his relieve, and using the supplies from the plane in his unique way chases the local goons. The villagers fear this can only bring Nairan's wrath on them, but after delivering the canister to the pick up-helicopter, Mac returns to teach them to set up an elaborately improvised warm welcome for the heavenly armed opium harvest convoy, also a chance for Lin's lover Ming to show his brave side...
Episode 3
Thief of Budapest
Sun, Oct 13, 198560 mins
MacGyver sneaks in a Middle Eastern tribal leader's camp to return a priceless thoroughbred, the theft of which was fared to start a tribal war which might sparkle a big one, is cornered, wins the duel unarmed on horseback and is picked up with the precious mount; that story ends well right there. Just back, Mac is personally asked to receive confidential information from fellow secret agent Nikolaj Grodsky in then communist Hungary's capital Budapast. He catches gypsy girl Jana picking his knife from his pocket, only to find after he lets her go she struck again already. The thief picked Nikolaj's pocket too, unnoticed, just before he's terminally hit by a car when running for Russian agent Kossov, who searches the corps in vain for his watch but sees Mac and Jana on traffic camera recordings and orders both brought in, helped by Hungarian police inspector Jan Messic. When Mac finds Jana, she tells him in tears to fear for her family as she already passed the watch to her brother Bruno; once they find Bruno and the others in Borza political prison, Mac springs them free in his surprising explosive way, only to hear the watch was already sold to gypsy fence Reena, who lets him take it when Kossov and Messic arrive. The four gypsies asks Mac to take them to America, so it's a hot race to the Austrian border...
Episode 4
The Gauntlet
Mon, Oct 21, 198549 mins
In the opening gambit, Mac gets a map with a troublesome Arab regime's plans from a heavily guarded garrison and uses its cleverly as main tool for his surprise escape. In the main story, Mac is sent by a publisher to retrieve press photographer Kate Connelly from a corrupt Central American country, but she insists to finish her assignment first, so he helps her exposing the secret police chief, General Antonio Vasquez, who is suspected to plan a coup, making a secret arms deal with mobster Dave Ryerson, an old adversary of Mac. They are caught, but Mac uses all his tricks to escape and get the photos out too, impressive enough to turn her into a frisky friend, while the army uses all its resource to chase them to the Mexican border stream...
Episode 5
The Heist
Sun, Nov 3, 198548 mins
U.S. Senator Rhodes asks Mac to help his daughter Chris on the Virgin Islands to get back the diamonds which got stolen by Daniel Sims, the accountant he hired for his African famine charity and got shot himself by his accomplice Catlin, a former mercenary, who runs a hotel and casino on the Virgin Islands. Mac decides to steal the rocks back from his casino's top-security vault, which he plans to infiltrate, for once in Bond style (tuxedo), by cheating and asking his considerable winnings to be stored there. Catlin was warned and spots his tricked dice, but after a daring escape they return by the back-door with an elaborate diversion, at least Mac has learned the stones are not in the official vault but the private one in Catlin's office. However there are more surprises on both sides..
Episode 6
Trumbo's World
Sun, Nov 10, 198549 mins
In the opening gambit, Mac dresses down to a bath-towel to blend in with a Basque extremist group which holds captive a female scientist in the Pyrenees, then makes blow up their open air-shower as a diversion before they flee over a wild mountain stream. In the main story, Mac visits a biologist in Brazilian Amazonia, where an unknown phenomenon causes all kinds of animals to flee massively. Joining the head-strong plantation founder Lucien Trumbo, who employs whole villages of native Indians and created his own self-sufficient little world carved out of the huge forest, they soon find the natural force at work is the unexplained rare awakening of the marabunta, massed colonies of billions of soldier ants who form armies miles wide and long, unstoppable and capable of devouring anything, devastating the whole landscape from grass and grasshoppers to cattle and towering trees. Trumbo, his loyal local lieutenant Luis and Mac try every defense he can think up, from flooding irrigation ditches to a ring of fire; their last hope is fabricating explosive to spring the dam which caught the biologist's worried attention in the first place, it takes a triggered pseudo-natural disaster to counter a real one...
Episode 7
Last Stand
Sun, Nov 17, 198560 mins
On one of Mac's favorite trips down Memory Lane, looking in vain for his late father's favorite, perfect fishing spot, he gets lost as usual, this time ending up in a diner run by a boy's mother Kelly Nielson. As soon as the other guests lose patience, Mac gets held at gun-point with her and the cook by a bunch of criminals who took over the road café two hours earlier to rob a passing money transport from Dallas. Mac saves the driver's life by making a non-lethal blowtorch to open the 'can', only to see him shot anyhow. Mac now teams up with the other male hostage, Kelly's friend, traumatized Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot Dave Redding, and learns the troublesome fiends' plan to commit a hijack on the adjoining flying school's airstrip, which they try to counter, either obeying to survive or cleverly sabotaging, with more highly original McGyverisms, using anything around...
Episode 8
Hellfire
Wed, Nov 27, 198549 mins
During a trip to visit some friends, an accident starts a fire in an oil-well owned by MacGyver's friends. MacGyver and his buddy then go to fetch dynamite in an abandoned mine at great peril to themselves after they decide the dynamite is the only feasible way the fire can be put out. However, when they use it, the fire only becomes more intense. Can MacGyver and his Hellfire friend survive the incredible heat to put out the fire and save the oil buried underneath the well...?
Episode 9
The Prodigal
Sun, Dec 8, 198560 mins
A man wants to testify against his mobster brother in Federal Court,and Macgyver has the job of keeping him safe. There's a problem though. The man's mother is dying,and he wants to visit her. Can Macgyver help him visit his mother,and protect him from his brother at the same time.
Episode 10
Target MacGyver
Sun, Dec 22, 198547 mins
A team of assassins targets MacGyver after he destroys an illegal nuclear installation. MacGyver goes into hiding by going on a fishing trip with his grandfather who he hasn't seen in many years. Unfortunately, Axminster and his fellow assassins track him to his grandfather's place.
Episode 11
Nightmares
Wed, Jan 15, 198648 mins
Strolling along the docks at the San Pedro Harbor, MacGyver helps Lisa, a teen runaway, make a fishing lure out off a gum wrapper. It works instantly. Federal Agent Pete Thornton is there to meet MacGyver on his return from a 10-day sea voyage. MacGyver is in possession of a list of East German operatives that he has managed to acquire. The East Germans are no happy about this and send a top operative to hire some thugs and ambush the two U.S. feds. Pete is wounded while MacGyver is captured. Before capture, however, he quickly hides the list document in the base of a parking lot's light stanchion. An assailant team member dressed as a policeman gets the best off him. He is taken to a warehouse and given a poison that will kill him in six hours if he doesn't have the antidote. To get the antidote, of course, he must turn over the list. MacGyver escapes using bed-springs to make a door-smasher and wanders around the harbor in a hallucinogenic daze. He is spotted by Lisa, the runaway he helped, who takes him to her room in a different abandoned warehouse. Unfortunately, the kidnappers find a couple of Lisa's friends who saw her take MacGyver with her. When the trio comes calling, MacGGyver rigs up a TV tube to explode and a fire hose draped out a window to mislead them in thinking they have left the building. He then sneaks back to get the antidote. During a struggle with the German agent, the antidote container gets tossed through a drain grate. MacGyver must generate a magnet from an iron pipe to retrieve it in time.
Episode 12
Deathlock
Wed, Jan 22, 198648 mins
After returning from a dangerous mission in East Germany, MacGyver is sent to a safe house by his friend Pete Thornton. Unknown to the two men, an agent who is after MacGyver knows about their hiding place and will stop at nothing to finish the two of them off.
Episode 13
Flame's End
Wed, Jan 29, 198648 mins
Amy Austin, one of MacGyver's old girlfriends, is in trouble. She and her boss have discovered small, systematic losses of weapons-grade uranium from the nuclear reactor facility where she works. She is notified that her boss has just been killed in an automobile "accident" and now someone is snooping in her outer office. She frantically calls MacGyver to come help her. Following the phone call, she manages to stash a file folder with the evidence in an empty nuclear waste holding tank. He arrives at a beach where they used to go on dates. Shortly thereafter, she shows up in her car. She honks the horn, waves, and is then engulfed in an explosion. MacGyver is devastated to have watched her die before he could assist her in finding the missing uranium. After attending her funeral, he goes to the car and is stunned to find her hiding in the back seat. It was her roommate that was killed; she had sent her in the car to pick him up. Mac accompanies her to the plant to recover the evidence. They are discovered in the waste tank and locked inside. Soon a load of hot waste will be sent to the chamber. Mac manages to make the one-hour time lock quickly advance to release them. It seems that one of their classmates and another plant official have been accumulating the uranium to sell for millions of dollars to an unknown buyer. Somehow, Mac and Amy must overcome the two. One of the reactors has been manipulated to blow and cover the tracks of the thieves.
Episode 14
Countdown
Wed, Feb 5, 198647 mins
MacGyver gets called in, with his old Vietnam bomb-defusal partner, to deactivate elaborate bombs planted aboard an ocean liner before it goes off. Complications arise when MacGyver's partner sets off one of the bombs, and the bomber decides that DXS operated in bad faith and refuses to hand over the bomb-disarming instructions after he gets the extortion money.
Episode 15
The Enemy Within
Wed, Feb 12, 198647 mins
MacGyver accepts some East German intelligence in the form of a shotgun shell. The East German police quickly surround him. To distract their dogs, he throws a fowl that his contact shot earlier. His colleague Craig Bannister shows up in another East German police car and whisks him to safety. Back in the LA, a newly promoted Peter Thornton asks his assistance in rooting out an agency mole that has led to the deaths of four top operatives. Mac is reluctant but agrees to help. He is to attend a large conference where Peter will escort Viktoria Tomanova, a defector who might be able to spot communist agents. The keynote speaker, a clergyman, suddenly seems to have trouble giving his speech, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. When he misses Mac and Viktoria, he suddenly has a heart attack and dies. Mac is suspicious, so he attends the autopsy and discovers that the heart is full of fiber-like material plus adipic acid. This tells him that someone could use a magnetic field to cause a heart attack. He talks Viktoria into revisiting the conference venue hoping to draw out the mole. It works. Craig Bannister approaches threatening to kill the pair, he's been conditioned by his wife to follow her directives. She's actually a Soviet operative that Viktoria finally recognizes.
Episode 16
Every Time She Smiles
Wed, Feb 19, 198660 mins
While working a job in Bulgaria, collecting a very important microfilm, MacGyver meets an extraordinary American girl, one who is a bit more than she seems. Meanwhile Mac must deal with the overzealous secret police...
Episode 17
To Be a Man
Wed, Feb 26, 198648 mins
While on a rescue mission in Soviet Afghanistan, MacGyver is shot and wounded. An Afghan woman and her son risk their lives to give refuge to MacGyver. A wounded MacGyver must now outwit the Russian Army to complete his mission.
Episode 18
Ugly Duckling
Wed, Mar 12, 198649 mins
A bunch of criminals has managed to buy a truck load of U.S. Air Force Snake-eye Missiles (I.D. No. 37820446, for example). When they are moving them from the truck into a warehouse, a bunch of black-clad men rappel down the side of the building and get into a firefight where nobody gets hit. They do manage to steal the truck, though. Meanwhile, MacGyver is in a party to meet a professor friend of his. But some guys for someone named Hank are watching the professor. And now they might have "another one to deal with". Mac just wants to know about the glitch the professor found in the Snake Eye missile's guiding system - and how to fix it. The way it happened was that one of the professor's student, Kate, hacked into the DoD's computer, discovered the designs of the missile and detected the glitch. She knows how to fix it and the professor is willing to talk about the subject when MacGyver can guarantee that "no nastiness" falls onto Kate. Hank's men try to grab the professor outside the club but accidentally shoot him dead and it's now up to MacGyver to sort everything out.
Episode 19
Slow Death
Wed, Apr 2, 198647 mins
Mac dashes out of a taxi to run and jump onto the train to Rashmir with proof about illegal arms trade in the Indian subcontinent. Alas the train is hijacked in tribal 'bandit country' by local men who consider it a matter of justice to find and execute two criminals. Mac gets the train out, but they catch up at the bridge Hassan's other band of villagers blows up. In order to prevent fellow Western passenger-hostages starving, Mac and the others must identify the two Anglo-Saxon businessmen who sold the village dispensary poison instead of medicines; an escape attempt and a luggage search fail, but Mac improvises a lie-detector. Meanwhile some of them deal with their halted lives and reconsider their past and future.
Episode 20
The Escape
Wed, Apr 16, 198649 mins
Just when Mac has finished soccer-coaching the boys of a North African Catholic orphanage, Brian Ashford's sisters Sara convinces him to break her innocently framed brother Brian, a medical missionary, from prison. So Mac lightly assaults two cops who beat up an old peddler, and is told by the warden ('commandant') Western privilege is no longer his share, nothing for nothing. Mac befriends old Frenchman Francois Villars, who helps him find out trustee Khan is the key man in luxury who runs a PCP drugs lab, with whom he ingratiates himself thanks to his technical fixing skills, and that Brian is in the political ward. The warden has every room wired, including where Mac's visiting 'wife' Ashley comes arrange transport to wait outside for the boys' escape, but Mac knew about the wiring, so his escape plan is double-bottomed. However there are more two-faced hidden agendas, in- and outside...
Episode 21
A Prisoner of Conscience
Wed, Apr 30, 198660 mins
When Pete goes to Russia, Mac follows him. Pete reveals he is close a Russian reformist and because Pete was helping him correspond with other people, he was arrested and executed. Pete is there to help the man's daughter who could be arrested also. But when they find her, she reveals that her father is not dead but being held in an insane asylum. So they have to come up with a plan to rescue him.
Episode 22
The Assassin
Wed, May 7, 198660 mins
Mac and Pete are tying to apprehend an assassin who has a penchant for killing anyone who sees him. Mac poses as a man who sells timepieces which includes timers used for explosives. When the man shows up he tries to kill Mac, after he shows him the timers. Pete saves him and they go to the assassin's hotel and the man who hired him calls with instructions on how to pick up his latest assignment. Mac goes in his place and the man tells him he has arranged for the girl he needs. It seems the assassin uses call girls to get his assignments then kills them after. What Mac doesn't know is that the girl is the sister of the one he previously killed and asked to be placed with the man her sister was with so she can kill him. And some men are following them.
