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22 Episodes 1986 - 1987
Episode 1
Mon, Sep 22, 198648 mins
Pete's former Vietnam army mate Colonel Woodward hires the Phoenix Foundation think-tank to test security before his top-secret strategic research lab STRADA in Arizona is activated. Dr. Jill Melissa Ludlum programmed it, including four laser-armed robots, and planned a bug to get extra budget, but finds herself and Mac locked in as the central computer system decides to defends the center against all humans. Mac keeps improvising to stay alive and sabotage the threats, while Pete and the military are locked out and debate grimly how to help, facing a time dilemma.

Episode 2
Mon, Sep 29, 198649 mins
Michael 'Mikey' Simmons dupes mob boss Charles 'Papa Chuck' Banning by selling him sauerkraut for the top-secret navigation device Navcon-27 he stole from his employer Vectrocom. Banning hires hit-man Jimmy 'The Eraser' Kendall, just released after 10 years in prison, for revenge. Pete begs Mac to cut short his week off and opportunity to practice his Midwest youth passion ice hockey with the Squirels to search for Simmons and the device, with one lead: a bar to look for him. There Jimmy passes himself for Mikey's dad (in fact dead), supposedly eager to start helping his estranged son, so Mac will lead him to Simmons after tracing the girlfriend he found out about by breaking in at Vectrocom's HQ. Now the Eraser is ready to fulfill his contract by erasing the only witness- macgyverisms save their lives, until Jimmy gets them at gunpoint, and yet...

Episode 3
Mon, Oct 6, 198660 mins
MacGyver is shocked to find Kelly Sutton, a Phoenix Foundation worker bee, trying to commit suicide, saying it's to put his three kids through college after losing his life savings in a land swindle pulled by never convicted con artist James Crowe. Mac convinces Pete, who couldn't possibly involve the Foundation in such a murky business, to set up a scam to outsmart the crook and win $400,000 back; greenhorn analyst Joanne Remmings, who researches such plots, is grudgingly admitted to take part. First they hook Crowe by pretending Pete is a dirty cop, and lure him into putting up the cash for a cocaine transaction, which they deliberately make go wrong, and ultimately promise to go steal a fortune in cash from police evidence custody. However, everything is complicated by Joanne...

Episode 4
Mon, Oct 20, 198649 mins
In Santa Monica, a sunny paradise for the Minnesota boy, Mac accepts to get his martial arts sparring partner Lisa's 14 year-old brother Paul Chan. Only a Macgyverism gets him access to the Chinatown establishment where scientist Dr. Shen Wei is authenticating the teenager as the legendary Wish Child, so Shen can advise the Hong Kong magnate Lee Wenying that Paul is the real one; Lee pays crime baron Ston's finder's fee. Mac is knocked down and can barely escape from Lee's cargo freighter, before learning from petty crook Sam and Dr. Shen enough to go after the boy, whose presence would allow the aging Lee to survive his life-span, reason to keep the kid captured, but Mac is determined to rescue him...

Episode 5
Mon, Oct 27, 198660 mins
Mac is not amused when Peter fixes the Phoenix Foundation flight simulator to crash just before he actually takes a bunch of troubled youths camping by airplane, without any budget. Their regular counselor takes reinforcements as an insult and splits; Mac wins some respect by his ingenious bush cooking skills. The pilot who is returning the party a few days later gets a heart attack, so they crash in the wilderness. The rebellious ruffians (3 guys and one girl) prove quite a handful to get out of trouble - most of which they keep creating - even with macgyverisms, but a serious grudge between gang leaders and a medical emergency really push Mac's resourcefulness to the limit, but at least now they all pull together...

Episode 6
Mon, Nov 3, 198648 mins
When Mac gets home, it's been emptied, not by burglars, but far worse: Jack Dalton, his college mate - musketeers with a girl called Mike - now an independent pilot, who incorrigibly pulls pranks and practical jokes in bad taste, but swears this time he's medically terminal, and wants to do one last good deed: save a U.S. botanists involved in his firm Fly-By-Night's orchid trade, in the fictitious Central American country of Dinoto. Only when they have landed is Mac told that Mike is the botanist, the police of Colonel Antunnez and his U.S. cahoot Sonny and their heavily armed adversaries, because even Jack refused to be a heroin smuggler...

Episode 7
Mon, Nov 10, 198649 mins
The new dictatorial regime in a neighbor country of Thailand is eliminating adversaries. Mac and Pete fly and rappel to the rescue of an orphanage run there by Pete's platonic friend, Catholic nun Margareth. To Mac's surprise, her assistant is his own former girlfriend Debra Easton, now a religious novice, who helps him keep ahead with the orphans of the surprisingly resourceful captain Chanthara, who was barely outsmarted by Macgyverisms but shot both their rescue helicopter and its pilot Jimmy; Debra fall out, Mac dives after her, so Pete shouts the code Bulgaria: pick-up there in eight hours. While Mac and his mate run for the captain's men, escape after capture and face their own doubts, Pete and sister Margareth face theirs, repairs to the helicopter and a traitor in the refugee camp run by French MD Gilbert Arnaud.

Episode 8
Mon, Nov 17, 198648 mins
Mac happily volunteers for a Phoenix foundation mission: helping protect the golden eagle. The pair he is sent to check on lives on a steep mountain; during his first attempt to approach it by para-glider, they get attacked in flight by a rich poacher and his criminal accomplices in a helicopter, who shoot the male by gun, far out of reach, and wound the female by crossbow before taking off; Mac descends to get the female, nearby, and teams up there with bright ten year-old Darin Cooper, who learned a lot about eagles from his late granddad. They bring the wounded eagle to the cabin where Darin's over-protective single mother Susan brought him in an attempt to mend her bond with the growing boy, who needs more space to become a man and instantly takes to understanding father figure Mac, nurse it and realize the male and probable chicks must be found, raising them is not a single parent job with eagles. With improvised extra climbing gear Mac risks his life dangling on and up the mountain, but ultimately gets the male down, only to find the fiends, who fear a witness, have taken hold of the Coopers. Macgiverisms win the battle one to two. Last task is to follow the healed male to the nest and get the chicks, who need human nursing after the female sadly dies, and they're in an even less accessible spot...

Episode 9
Mon, Nov 24, 198648 mins
Mac and Pete present a Phoenix Foundation invention to a school for the deaf/mute: it converts sounds into waves to feel. The teacher Carrie Linden has strange, scary, symbolic dreams involving lightning, a Moorish warrior on a horse, a steel skeleton, an antique car that can operate on water, and Mac's death. A U.S. Army truck is robbed of secret Moloch missile warheads by a fake sheriff and his deputies in South Carolina; they travel far to steal another part of the rocket from an exhibition. After a lightening bolts-marked van nearly runs them over, Mac convinces Pete to bring Carrie to dream researchers. They decide to take her along to a military test of the device, where she recognizes the fake sheriff, whose team escapes after a fire-fight, killing one of their own, and Mac realizes they are stealing Moloch missiles part by part. Mac helps Carrie identify the Braden Lake from her dream by its shape, and takes her there do 'decipher' the rest of the dream, successfully, but they're attacked by the missile thieves (one of whom is driving a hovercraft, which Carrie's dream of a "water-cruising car" had also foreseen) who kidnap her. It's high time for major Macgyverisms and brave, clever fighting.

Episode 10
Mon, Dec 15, 198660 mins
Mac's old friend Tony, who infiltrated the mafia, was to hand him unspecified evidence in sleepy Mesa, but gets killed by two mobsters before they can talk. Tony tossed the satchel in the '59 Cadillac of has-been Hollywood star Guy Roberts, who told his wife June they were returning to Hollywood for a new movie. When his rental car proves impossible to repair even with Macgyverisms, Mac takes a ride from the couple, and puts his skills to defensive use of various parts of the old car to fight off three mobsters who are after the bag, full of counterfeit money Guy used some from to pay the motel when his credit cards were refused, but after a valiant duel on wheels they have to make a stand in a ghost town...

Episode 11
Mon, Jan 5, 198749 mins
To Mac's surprise, for the first time in 20 years his grandpa Harry, who raised the genius after his parents' untimely deaths in a car accident, accepted on that anniversary to join him for a hockey game. However, Mac forgot the tickets, so they look for them in Pete's office, just when the Phoenix Foundation building is penetrated by the attractive, sarcastic, but ruthless killer-for-hire, Victoria James (alias Susan Murphy), who was hired by the terrorist Liberation Front to plant a bomb which Mac disarmed in Kuwait and now wants to destroy it with its record before it's traced to her. After noticing Mac, she negotiates the front to pay her $100,000 extra to kill him and uses the two Front stooges whom she planned to kill anyhow, but a few Macgyverisms overcome their clumsy attempts to imprison and kill Mac, while she deletes the bomb's inventory file and holds Harry hostage. The duel to the death is on.

Episode 12
Mon, Jan 12, 198749 mins
While Pete's wife Connie, an archaeologist, and their adolescent son Michael, who resents his absentee father, are on a dig in Louisiana, they are kidnapped by the men of mercenary Frank Bonner, a former agency colleague of Pete's, whom he wrongfully blames for the death of the Bonner family in a Yemeni tribal pacification mission which went wrong after Frank embezzled agency funds. Though his accusations against Pete are false, Bonner is planning a gruesome revenge: make Pete watch his own loved-ones die. MacGyver flies ahead so that he can bug the gang's car at the meeting point. Even as they change vehicles, Mac works out where they are going, and sees through the lies of confederate-merc Obadiah Moss, whom they had planted as a redneck fisherman to point Mac into the bayou. Mac uses diversions and trickery so that he can make a surprising entry, frees Michael, and together with him, returns for Mike's parents, pulling Macgyverisms all the time.

Episode 13
Mon, Jan 19, 198760 mins
Mac goes to a nuclear plant in Siberia to spring Yuri Demetri, a Soviet Russian political prisoner on account of his father's defection. Back in the States, Mac is not amused to find penniless Penny Parker invited herself to stay in his Californian home, but allows her to house-sit a few days. At her new job, as singing telegram, airhead Penny accidentally bursts into the wrong house, where Columbian drugs cartel-employed killers are decibel-torturing federal agent Robert Julian, a potential witness to their next hit by voice recognition-triggered bomb in Jack Larson's wheelchair to kill politician Javier Estevez in Phoenix Foundation-secured city-hall; she escapes and tells Mac. Later Penny recognizes on TV Derek Thompson, Estevez's corrupt aid who she saw at the torture, but the goons kidnap her and Yuri, planning to eliminate all embarrassing witnesses. Mac tails them to a warehouse, where he starts pulling his tricks to save his two friends who were left in a cooling cell (walk-in freezer) to die from frost, next he must handle the bomb last-minute.

Episode 14
Mon, Feb 2, 198748 mins
Elaine was a social worker at Soledad State Prison who fell in love with and married one of the inmates. She arranged for him to get early parole so that they could set up a half-way house to help other inmates re-engage with normal life outside of prison. Elaine is nine months pregnant when she finds that her husband has used her to get other friends released early. He has sprung them so that he can have his own little army trained thieves and strong men. When she confronts him with her discoveries, he tells her that she needs to be eliminated. She crowns him with a heavy object before he can shoot her and flees. At her car, she realizes she has left her keys inside. So, she heads down the street trying to evade pursuit. Mac has just finished fixed a flat tire at a gas station when she runs up desperate for help. He has her climb in. They pull out of the station just as two goons sent by her husband arrive in their car. A chase ensues that eventually leads MacGyver and Elaine to a dead-end wall behind a big waterfront warehouse. They quickly open a bay door and try to drive through. But a ramp over a depressed floor bay collapses and traps Mac's Jeep. Mac uses a couple of tricks to temporarily take out the two pursuers. It gives him enough time to winch and ramp his way out of the bay. Just as they are about to escape out another door, Elaine's husband arrives to join in the pursuit. It takes a crane ride and some camouflage to hide Elaine until Mac can raise some signal flags in s helium-filled sail bag.

Episode 15
Mon, Feb 9, 198749 mins
The U.S. Navy enlists the Phoenix Foundation's help to find out who used its SEAL's diving techniques to commit three pirate hijackings in two weeks. The next victim is archaeologist Barbara Ortega's crew, which just found the ship's log and some coins of a 17th century Spanish treasure fleet. The 'pirate captain' Gar Manning planned to sell the gold back to Ortega, but overhears her explaining about the valuable log to Mac, so his team eliminates the sole witness, kidnaps Barbara and leaves Mac in a sinking boat; yet he escapes and works out with Pete and the Navy that the ideal hiding place for the once rejected SEAL-applicant Gar is Navy exercise site Goat Island, so Mac approaches it in SEAL style, only to find it dangerous in several ways..

Episode 16
Mon, Feb 16, 198748 mins
A certain Phil is followed by the gang men of mob boss Sam Leland, who have orders to get hold of an incriminating microfilm and kill him, so he hides it in a ski stick which he exchanges after deliberately bumping into Mac, who took reluctant and wining boss Pete to spend their 'bonus' vacation on the ski piste. First Max and the the stick get buried in an avalanche, but he cleverly finds a way to indicate where he is trapped. After the rescue, Pete stupidly breaks his foot, so Mac has to nurse the demanding, grumpy boss 'without fussing' over him and his cask. Then the criminals try kidnapping first Mac, who gets away, and then Pete, so Mac comes to the rescue, and discovers the stick is the key...

Episode 17
Mon, Feb 23, 198748 mins
When Mac -alone- attends eternal prankster Jack Dalton's church funeral, he finds the scoundrel staged it to escape enemy spies whose packages his new messenger service Jack-be-Quick was to deliver but betrayed to the CIA. They escape by sidecar, but are blamed by CIA and police for the murder on Jack's CIA contact Light and betrayed by absent Pete's substitute's CIA friend, so they turn to Light's female partner Shadow, still chased by double agents, she's focused on the CIA rotten apples and a top-secret encryption device. Mac sneaks the others in at the auction the enemy uses as contraband cover, but...

Episode 18
Mon, Mar 2, 198760 mins
It's the seventh anniversary of the friendship between Mac and Pete. Mac received an invitation to celebrate this special day by meeting him at an auto wrecking yard. When Mac arrives, Pete is deep inside a wrecked yellow cab searching for something under the dashboard. Mac climbs in to assist. The conversation leads to the discovery that each was invited by the other. Suddenly, a gigantic forklift arrives and crushes the roof of the passenger's compartment to the point where neither can escape. Then, the forklift spears the car's chassis, lifts it, and sets it in the back of a semi's trailer. The truck's doors are locked before the truck heads out down the highway. Using their legs to advantage, Pete and then Mac are able to climb out through the front windshield opening. There is a speaker on the wall that comes to life. It seems an old nemesis, Murdoc, is exacting revenge for pain and difficulties that they brought him seven years ago when they met. It seems that Mac was helping his friend Jack Dalton by driving customers in his taxi. A woman asks to be taken to a warehouse district. She climbs out, crosses the street and enters a large building through a door. Soon after that, Mac sees a gunman follow her in. Thinking she is a damsel in distress, Mac goes into the building after the gunman. The gunman is Pete, and he is chasing the master assassin Murdoc who has just fooled Mac with his woman's disguise. They eventually chase him to a point where he shoots a bazooka at them. Later they chase continues to a building that is ready to be explosively demolished. Murdoc runs in just as the blasting charges are detonated. Pete and Mac presume that Murdoc was killed in the building collapse. Not so. Murdoc tells them that they have seven minutes before he is going to blow up the trailer with them inside. Mac scrambles to improvise an escape by taking battery acid, a rusty exhaust pipe, and an aluminum oil can. With a pair of oil-soaked pantyhose for a fuse, he manages to detonate the hydrogen gas generated by the chemical reaction. The blast opens the doors to let Mac and Pete out in a nick of time. When Murdoc tries to come after them with a cluster of dynamite sticks, Mac throws a rock through the truck window and knocks the dynamite out of his hands.

Episode 19
Mon, Mar 23, 198749 mins
After Kelly Henderson competes against Mac and Pete for the Phoenix Foundation's field exercise trophy, they are sent by boss Jeff Moore, who pilots the dropping plane personally, as a rescue team when her dad Joe Henderson is arrested and expected to be sentenced to death as an alleged spy after his plane crashed on its way to Panama. Kelly stowed away so that she can jump with them in the banana republic San Perez, which just had colonel Salazar's military coup. Their contact is Lt. Paul Parra, Joe's army-appointed defense counsel. As Kelly packed a small arsenal but no passport, they are arrested at the first check-point, but Mac starts working his magic with a mere handful of dust. . .

Episode 20
Mon, Apr 6, 198760 mins
Mac is home after surviving three murder attempts while he found proof in Central America about dealer Fernando Marin's part in the U.S. cocaine market, only to be forced at machete-point to bring another accomplice to the Phoenix Foundation- oops, that's just Jack Dalton 'inviting' him to a surprise birthday party, the rare guests like Grandpa and Penny are his presents. They and some objects remind Mac of foreign adventures he had the last seven years around the world. Now Mac tells Pete at fifty he's too old to rely on luck and announces his resignation, so he can start having a private life rather then run away from every potential love. Is his mind really set?

Episode 21
Mon, Apr 27, 198748 mins
Tony Braddock once saved MacGyver's life in Morocco. He calls in the favor by asking Mac to meet him in a warehouse. Once there, he reveals to Mac that an explosive material he developed can be made into thread and woven into a fabric. This material will be the basis of a multiple assassination of high-ranking military officials who will be attending a funeral service. Before all the details can be divulged, hit men from the assassin organization penetrate the warehouse. They shoot Tony but MacGyver is able to elude them by making a chemical fog from muriatic acid and aqueous ammonia. The fog clears just enough for the pursuers to take a shot at MacGyver as he dives out a window into the ocean. He is grazed by the bullet which dazes him and causes temporary amnesia to set in. He is able to latch onto the side of a passing boat and pull himself aboard. The woman skipper is quite accommodating and takes him to her eventual destination, a small harbor about a half-hour up the coast. Gradually, Mac's memories start to return. He realizes he is part of the secret government agency, The Phoenix Foundation. He tries to call Pete, but the assassins arrive about that time, having tracked to boat to find its home port. Lancer, the lead hit man, knows that Mac's mind has not recalled all the details. He convinces Mac that Pete is the enemy and gives him a gun to shoot Pete should he show up. They approach the funeral in progress. Lancer plants the explosive jacket. Luckily, Pete is able to restore Mac's memories in reminding him of the avalanche rescue incident. Mac quickly puts the pieces together, grabs the coat, places it in a flower basket, and rolls it under neath their RV as it tries to flee.

Episode 22
Mon, May 4, 198748 mins
Anton Dubcek, a human rights activist for a group called Humanity, has been arrested and imprisoned in a Czechoslovakian psychiatric prison. Pete asks Mac to help spring him and bring him to the US. This sounds fine until Mac learns that he will be conducting the mission using a cover as a honeymooning groom. His bride is Diana Rogers, an operative that he dislikes intensely. She is interested in the project because the two of them will split a $500K reward. In Czechoslovakia, Diana has arranged for a ride with a local who has planted a car in the bushes for them. At the hospital, Mac rigs a latex glove filled with pressurized gas and carbon black to look like a fire. He also concocts a bit of explosive using nitroglycerin heart pills. He sets the smoke bomb in a food tray that hospital staff deploy. This allows him to get into Anton's room, blow out the window, and climb into an ambulance that Diana has appropriated. They flee being chased by a couple of Czech agents. Anton tells Mac he can't go to America, or his wife Viera will be killed. So, Mac and Diana manage to find where she is being held and grab her, too. They crash the border and safely fly back to LA. Mac Takes Anton downtown to get him immigration clearance. While they are gone, Viera disappears. A phone call instructs Anton to turn himself over to Czech authorities at the zoo. At the zoo, Anton eventually finds Viera expecting her to be released with his surrender. Instead, he finds that she is wielding a gun pointed at him. All along she has been his wife as an assignment from the Communist regime so that they could keep Anton under observation. Phoenix agents help overpower the three Czech agents. MacGyver donates his $250K to the Humanity organization. This prompts the mercenary Diana to donate $20K of her share of the reward.
