The History of MacGyver (1985): The Fonz, Hourglass, Young MacGyver & Beyond!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2023
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Step into the fascinating world of the 1985 series, MacGyver! Journey with us as we explore the origins of the show as a different show called "Hourglass" for Henry Winkler and a bit of the casting process that landed Richard Dean Anderson in the role.
Unique amongst TV shows, MacGyver managed to get itself into the dictionary while also drawing the ire of the NRA and, eventually, being parodied on SNL as MacGruber.
We'll also take a look at the failed spin-off "Young MacGyver" and why fans yearned for more and a brief look at the 2016 reboot. Discover how MacGyver's legacy still sparks creativity today.
Join us for an in-depth exploration of one of TV's most cherished characters. Whether you're a dedicated fan or just curious about MacGyver's impact, this video promises a trip down memory lane you won't want to miss!
SOURCES:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyve...)
www.macgyveronline.com/macgyv...
www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGruber
• How I Created MacGyver...
macgyver.com/the-real-origin-...
themacgyverproject.blogspot.c...
www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
comics.fandom.com/wiki/MacGyver
www.figurerealm.com/actionfig...
/ @macphoenix82
/ @macgyverlab
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I love the scene in Stargate SG1 where Carter said that she can MacGyver the damaged Stargate Dial, followed by Col. O'Neil (Richard Dean Anderson) rolling his eyes.
That's so good, I love in universe winks and nods.
And the blooper with them stuck in the ice was fantastic 😂
Carter: _"Now find the wires leading from the timer to the detonator and cut the red one."_
(O'Neill looks at the wires and sees no red wire, only yellow ones)
O'Neill: _"Carter... they are all yellow!"_
Carter: _"Say again."_
O'Neill: _"There are five wires, and they're all yellow."_
I loved that scene.
Don't remember that particular episode, but, in the pilot, carter looks at the DHD and "It took us 15 years and 3 supercomputers to macgyver a solution."
Anderson/o'neil, does roll his eyes, but it's at carter being giddy.
I wanted to be MacGyver as a kid. Several degrees in chemistry and physics later, it was disappointing to find no jobs like that in the world. The strength of MacGyver was that he was a generalist with broad, cross-disciplinary knowledge. That ethic has been behind so much of the success I have had in my career.
Do you carry a victorinox knife with you, though?
MacGuyver was an awesome show. Loved having a hero who didn't just shoot his way out of problems. The mindless action stuff is fun now and then, but it's nice to have something "more".
Super sad about Dana Elcar losing his sight to glaucoma during the production of the show, but kudos to the showrunners writing his blindness into the storyline and not just writing him off.
Wow, I didn't know that yikes.
Yeah that is pretty clever though and good on them for doing it.
Reminds me of Dame Judi Dench and her severe macular degeneration.
Dana Elcar was just as important to the show as Anderson's Macgyver. And it was great that they were able to work around him.
And the terrible remake did his character dirty. Like everything else they tried. Spirits, that show was abysmal! How did it last 4 years anyway?
@@kali3665
Yeah it's character truly was a main/pivotal part of the show. The remake is just like every other remake that's ever been made for Network TV or cable. I mean look at Magnum PI who needed that?!, what was the point?! I'm sick of them attempting to exploit people's nostalgia for 80s shows.
The new ones are always just a hollow facsimile of what the original was.
No heart, no soul just a cash grab nostalgia bait.
I remember the news that same evening of the episode doing a story about glaucoma too.
Richard Dean Anderson was a true friend fighting to keep Dana on the show, where the writers thought about writing him off being nervous how people were going to respond to Dana / Pete being blind.
This and Quantum Leap are probably my two most favorite feel-good tv theme songs
Loved those two
The quantum leap theme immediately played in my head upon reading this. Thanks!
The McGuyver theme never fails to make me smile 😊. It's both exiting and joyful
Also, can't forget the ones that makes the hairs rise on any middle-aged geek; Knight Rider, Airwolf, and Streethawk 😎
It says a lot for the shows that there were SO many imitators, which all fell in to obscurity.
I met RDA at the Rhode Island ComicCon in 2018, really a great guy. He let my kids try the ginger candy he was fond of....and laughed hysterically at their faces when the extremely powerful flavor hit them. He then gave them some regular candy to help get the taste out.
Fact bomb for Dan: MacGyver was originally supposed to use a Gerber multitool in the series, mainly because the pliers made it a better tool of choice. When Victorinox got wind of the series, however, they had their reps fly to LA and offer a lucrative sponsorship deal more than twice what Gerber offered. If not for info leaking, the Swiss Army knife may have faded into obscurity.
The more you know!
Thanks for that I didn't know that.
Cool
Gerbers are way cooler.
Quite a feat considering Geber never even produced a multitool until 1991....7 years after Mac's premier. Also the Swiss Army used alternated from the very beginning between Victorinox and Wenger, at the time fierce rival companies
@@ahhamartin You are correct. While he specifically said Gerber, I suspect he meant Leatherman, which debuted in '83. Didn't want to contradict him, but those were his words. Since both are now synonymous with multi tools, perhaps his memory was a tad off after 40 years.
Patty and Selma are gonna love this one!!
"Don't thank me, thank the moon's gravitational pull!"
I just say that lol 😂😂😂😂😂
This show was a HUUUUGE prime time hit in my home country, Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 back in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. We even came up with a localized version of the word "MacGuyver" in our Shona language as the slang phrase "Pachi magayivha" when referring to solving a problem by winging or botching it. It's common in Africa anyway, so the phrase was used a lot. 😄
Same here in Barbados. It was great stuff. Used to watch it with my Grandmother.
Damn dude,your English is better than a lot of us who speak it as a first/only language
@@michaelblaine6494 Thank you. English is also an official language in Zimbabwe. Many of us have been speaking both English and our local languages from birth.
💕
In the late 80s to early 90s in Pretoria, South Africa there was a spate of kidnappings by a married couple. A girl managed to escape her kidnappers, escape to safety an alert the police. She later attributed her escape to watching episodes of MacGyver.
Woah really? I know a lot of TH-cam content creators who would go nuts over this
The main kidnapper was Gert van Rooyen. While visiting family in Pretoria I stood outside his house a few months after the couple committed suicide during a failed attempt to evade police. This is a excerpt from an article online, “Van Rooyen's nearby Malherbe Street house is the prison from which teenage victim Joan Booysen fled half-clothed, later thanking MacGyver for her education in escape tactics.”
@@arceyes dude, I'd tried googling and found nothing. If anybody picks this up, I'm going to tell them to credit you!
I haven’t watched it yet, but it looks like a channel called NicoleClaire covered this case 3 years ago. The video is called “Gert van Rooyen - Child Abduction Ring?”
Looks like Bookworm 2 and The Upside Paranormal covered the case 4 years ago and 3 years ago respectively
One of my all-time fave shows. MacGyver was a great 80’s role model.
Between him and Hawkeye Pierce, they formed a lot of my beliefs as a child; to this day I’m not fond of guns, war, and try to find quick fixes when minor crises call for it.
MacGyver was my favourite TV show growing up. I never missed an episode. It was a moment for the whole family to stop, sit together and enjoy. I wrote a letter to him and got a postcard sent back to me. Although this was over 30 years ago I still have it to this day and even though I have not looked at it for years, I still know by heart what was written on it. " think first, think fast, be careful, pursue, be great. Richard Dean Anderson... MacGyver"
wow. i love this!
Amazing that MacGyver would grow up to fight space aliens pretending to be gods
And he'd be replaced by a guy who was stranded in space on a living ship.
You're silly, that never happened... MacGyver built a time machine with toothpicks and prevented it!
Is it Cannon?
Yes
And use a lot of guns in the process.
Dont forget he fought thoes space aliens with GUNS.
This show was huge in Ireland, even my grandfather who was in his 70s back then loved it. It also was more realistic to an Irish audience, using your brain. The cops don't even carry guns here.
It was huge! Mac and Glenroe are my childhood 😂
MacGyver: A Haiku
Duct tape miracles,
Sweet Swiss Army knife escapes,
Murdoch never dies.
(from USA Network)
It seems like MacGyver was the perfect opportunity for educational toys. MacGyver chemistry sets, MacGyver "gadgets" that kids assembled, etc.
Macgyver the Flamethrower, the kids love this one.
Yeah they really missed the boat on moichandizing!
I mean, STEM toys are a major thing these days. Back then--they might have been even bigger
Homemade fusion torch
Ages 8 and up
A MacGyver survival guide would have been totally epic and on brand.
The original man with a particular set of skills.
A fairly broad set of skills.
"I will find you and disassemble your crucial equipment"
You know the show is iconic when you use character's name as a verb in sentence and people understand it, like, "That prisoner Macgyvered his way out of jail."
An amazing show with a killer intro theme. Murdoc is one of my favourite villains of all time.
I never liked Murdoc in the original show. He was a silly cartoon character. The Murduc in the remake was relatively more believable.
My favourite MacGyver villain was the assassin Piedra from the last episode of season 1. It's sad that he dies, otherwise they could have used him in a couple later episodes.
Another better-than-Murdoc villain is Dr. Zito. Appears in two episodes, which was just about reasonable. They could have milked him for maybe one more episode at most.
Never seen a single episode but know exactly who he is which is a testament to the impact the character had on pop culture.
I was in the hospital a lot for a couple of years as a kid, and for some reason a group of nurses would come in and watch MacGyver with me whenever it was on. They all had crushes on Richard Dean Anderson.
Showing some appreciation for MacGyver for being one of the few shows I used to watch religiously with my dad.
This show broke me when Macguyver "magnetized" a metal rod by hitting it against a fire hydrant. I realized at that moment he wasn't a lucky nerd but a wizard.
That episode was 'Nightmares', Mac had been drugged and needed to retrieve the antidote to save his life which had fallen into a storm drain.
Yep, remember it to this day! Nevermind he somehow had an exact countdown to death as if an applied poison could be so precise, especially what we know now with genetic variance in drug metabolism, that's just primetime action TV fodder. @@dannyr2976
He used the Villari Effect, also known as the Inverse Magnetostrictive effect. It’s technically real, but in real life the magnetic force would have been really weak
Oh I'm aware, but also aware of the limits as you've described. To be fair, Mac seals a vat of acid in the pilot with a chocolate bar which is also TECHNICALLY possible based on his description of what he is attempting to achieve just vanishingly unlikely (hence, my description of him as a lucky nerd) so it was there day 1, but it was that specific instance where it just jumped the shark for me. @@joe5462
After seeing that, I have hit metal objects for years thinking to turn them into magnets 😅
Really surprised you got through the whole episode without mentioning how it was the basis for an entire Simpsons episode (Sideshow Bob's attempt to kill Selma)
Here in Costa Rica, CA, we have an expression, "hacerle un MacGyver", to pull a MacGyver is to fix something temporarily with whatever is at hand for enough time for it to get you through. Never thought about the cultural impact of this series but it was a worldwide hit indeed!
Born in '78, I watched MacGyver in the eighties and I always loved the more nature-oriented episodes with forests and such as a backdrop. Also the Murdoc-episodes were cool. Episodes like The Ghost Ship and Secret of the Parker house come to mind as favourites but there were many others too. Teri Hatcher was so sweet in the show :)
Finally Angus!!😊
I have never seen an episode of MacGyver, but I will never miss an episode of Secret Galaxy!
You are missing out 😂
MacGyver was one of my favorite shows of the 80s ...classic and still bangs ..
I freakin' lived for this show - the original that is. Richard Dean Anderson's mullet never even crossed my mind. To be entirely truthful, my hair was too fine for it, but more than half of my mates at school had the same haircut and I was green with envy. Never did get that Swiss Army Knife either, but my grandpa did give me his pocketknife from WWII in lieu of it, which needless to say meant the world to me. I almost died of sadness when I lost it. But hell, I must've been eleven or something. Anyway, awesome episode. Thanks!
Dude the pocket knife got me. It sucks loosing something that meant so much to you.
it was not a mullet actually.
I remember this series being really huge in early 90s here in Brazil. Thats why there were toys. If I remember correctly, it usually went on air every sunday before noon in Rede Globo, so kids would watch.
Also, "Tom Sawyer" - Rush was the opening music. A lot of people also became fans of Rush because of it. People were usually fans because the band is awesome, but Mcgyver made it reach more people here in Brazil.
Modern day warrior, guns set aside, Angus MacGuyver, a real nice guy
This.
Neil Peart would write the liner notes for the tour books, usually a kind of, 'making of & behind the scenes' story of the current tour. For 'Rush in Rio,' he mentions this little fact-
'Though we were told "Tom Sawyer" was used on Brazilian television as the theme song for MacGuyver.
'(That's what we said, "What?")'
Always loved that chuckle.
Back then, it was not uncommon for Globo to do that. I still remember that Anjos da Lei (21 Jump Street), had its intro music changed for Pet Shop Boys' version of "Always on my mind".
My friend Amanda and I had a standing phone conversation for every episode of MacGyver when we were kids. Everyone else in our houses knew that hour was sacred and stayed off the phone (back when you had to stay off the phone). She even kept her hair in the RDA mullet for the entirety of middle school. I love it to this day and have shown it to my son.
It was because of MacGyver that I have carried a Swiss Army Knife in my back pocket and at times a roll of duct tape for nearly 28 years. Richard Dean Anderson is an acting icon that I absolutely consider part of my history with both MacGyver and Stargate SG1.
When RDA attended our pop culture con here in Auckland he had one of the biggest turn outs for people wanting their photo taken with him. Many of whom were old enough to have see the series live. A few even came in costume, like the guy in a leather jacket carrying the white missile on his should, and the two women who dressed as Patty and Selma.
I’m pretty sure that was actually Patty and Selma and I hope somebody checked to make sure MacGyver wasn’t kidnapped again
I loved MacGyyer as a kid! It was the only show that my parents would let me stay til 9:00pm to watch, and Richard Dean Anderson was my first celebrity crush!
Same. In my memory, I watched MacGyver every week, often against the objection of my brother and sisters. In reality, it was probably 10-15 episodes.
I remember nothing about this show except how much I loved it, and it's theme of resourcefulness. I credit this and The A-Team as a huge influence on my abilities to improvise solutions.
I will never forget about that episode where Macguyver's friend (who was a kid) was accidentally shot.
Grew up with MacGyver! Loved it!! The "Killer Ant" episode totally freaked me out as a kid. Uncle Jack Dalton was my favorite re-occurring Co-star. Murdock was an awesome "Bad Guy". MacGyver was a great role model for us 1980's kids. I take pride in being a "MacGyver" everyday - I'm the person everyone comes to when their in a jam! LOL!! It's both a burden and a blessing!
Same here Bro!!! Greetings from Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮🇺🇸🇫🇮🇺🇸
I loved the Killer Ant episode though I haven't seen it since I was 9.
Murdock and Dr. Zito played by Morgan Sheppard were my favourite villains.
When it came to any friend Mac knew that appeared on the show other than Jack, Pete or Penny, I knew there was a 80% chance they weren’t making it to the final scenes, including the killer ant episode.
Macgyver ... literally the only man who could win a gunfight with whatever he happened to have in his cargo jacket pockets that week
This was my main show to watch with my GrandPap we used to video tape it all the time.
Was, am, and always will be obsessed with this show. I still want bubble hockey in my house
McGuyver was my childhood hero ! 😀
Wish a TV-show like this would be made again ! 😊
I remember when MacGyver was aired on RPN 9 in the Philippines back in 1988 until 1995 at around 7 p.m. every Saturday and now it was moved to every Monday at 7 pm. RPN did a great job of airing this series while the ratings getting higher at the time. Leading the way with G.I JOE, Rainbow Brite, and Muppet Babies was also aired every Saturday. When MacGyver was on RPN 9 many current events happened during that time in the Philippines like the 1989 coup attempt, the July 16, 1990 killer quake, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the May Election in 1992 followed by the Black Out in 1992, the nuclear test protest in 1995 and the typhoon hit Metro Manila in November of 1995. Until now MacGyver is still on the air and many Filipino kids and adults are watching it including my grandma she loves it also. Then RPN decided to end MacGyver after many reruns after 8 years since they heard about the cancellation in May of 1992. Like they say the rest is history
This, Knight Rider, A Team and Air Wolf man. Tough guys getting in and out of tough guy situations. The stuff all 80’s boys dreamed of that came to life on tv.
My father has the complete series on DVD and watches it regularly. Such a great show for me to grow up on.
Thanks to the H&I Network, I finally watched every episode of MacGyver. It's pretty dated but still a lot of fun.
Love me some peak 80's Teri Hatcher 😅
OMG Young Terri Hatcher.....I'd have done such dirty things to her....for free.
Didn't remember that.
For me she'll always be Lois Lane.
Me too! 😀As a kid I used to watch McGuyver off and on (for no other reason than the fact that I was a kid), but when H&I got it, I made it a point to watch every single episode. Lots of fun! 👍🏾
I loved watching Macgyver reruns in the late 90’s. Really good stuff 👍
MacGyver came around during my core memory time... Along with Quantum leap and Walker Texas Ranger. It was the only show on television that both my dad and I loved... And it's one of the few things that I can remember that he and I shared as a common interest.
My dad would always be watching Monday night football, then he would call me in when it was over so we can watch MacGyver together. From middle school to Junior high, probably one of my most favorite memories... And it is one of the shows I can still watch in reruns, because it holds up.
I was surprise the 2016 series last that long. Imagined that was only one season.
It is not inherently bad… just view it as what it is: a reimagining of the character. I watched a few episodes and found it to be decent on its own.
@@ParochaI like the remake a lot. The only thing I dislike about it is the theme tune.
I love when you guys do histories of live action shows from the 70s/80s. Please do more.
One of my favorite MacGuyver episodes was "The Treasure of Manco."
It was very eye-opening that corn would be considered such a treasure!
As I kid I loved MacGyver and as a teen I loved Stargate SG1 which is still my favourite tv show to this day. It's so funny to see young Christopher Judge in MacGyver, he really was the heart, soul or conscience of both shows. Maybe one day we'll get a comic of the Daedalus with the alternate reality drive or a stargate malfunction where O'Neil meets MacGyver.
Still one of the greatest intros to a show of all time.
Richard Dean Anderson reprises his role as Macgyver in the short series featuring the new MPV Citan in Europe
Also features Mac’s Daughter (Probably non canon or he got re married after the show) as he face a bunch of crooks during his weekend work
Plus his Super Bowl Mastercard commercial! Both were great!
Richard Dean Anderson... that epic mullet. The man was great for my childhood, and then in Stargate SG1 entertained me through my college years.
This is a classic, a legend. The real deal
The MacGyver theme was the first ringtone i downloaded
I was going to say that was hella popular back in the day.
I was certainly aware of the show, but rarely if ever saw an entire episode. The one exception was the 1991 episode "The Eye of Osiris," which impressed me so much (I had seen the preview clips in commercials and was intrigued) that I turned it into an RPG scenario, almost beat-for-beat (though I added two other sections to the "dungeon," as it were). Luckily, none of my friends that I ran through the adventure had seen that episode, even though they were bigger MacGyver fans than I was!
There was an arc about MacGyver searching for relics that are used to open an ancient tomb, can't remember much but as a kid blew my mind. Very 'indianajonesc'
Edit: Found it, was a two part story called Legend of the Holy Rose
I've always said that MacGyver was just Indiana Jones mixed with James Bond(just without the killing of course).
The suffix "-esc" up there is spelled "-esque". I am really NOT wanting to be "THAT person" -- except it took me three readthroughs to understand what you meant. Thanks, and I apologize if I sounded snooty or pedantic
@@moviemetalheadThat's a really cool description
Was it the Atlantis TV movie? They had to wait for the planets to align IIRC
McGiver is the perfect concept for an animated series,I wonder if they ever thought of that, Richard Dean Anderson returning to voice the character would be the cherry on top.
I watched MacGyver from the first episode to the last.
This video makes a good point about critical writers are to make a good TV show.
My mom loved this show. I definitely remember only watching it in bits and pieces.
You managed to do a whole MacGuyver video without mentioning Patty and Selma from the Simpsons. Impressive.
Thanks, Dan, excellent work as usual. I still love the old show and I'm still an avid fan. The world needs more heroes like Captain Planet and MacGuyver.
That MacGyver commercial jingle to the tune of I Love LA is increcible
Shows how out of the pop culture loop I am that there was an entire reboot of MacGyver with 94 whole-ass episodes on network television and this is the first I’d _ever_ heard of it.
You didn't miss anything. In the early episodes I saw, the "new" MacGyver is just another generic action hero with none of the smarts he claims actually seen on screen. It's up their with the "new" Magnum P.I. which also had a long run, but was practically unwatchable.
See it was a TASTEFULLY done series that moved gun control and environmental issues up in episodes without beating you over the head with it like today. I find it intriguing that RDA went from pacifist MacGyver to McNeill mowing down Jaffa warriors in SG1 with the incident with a gun in his childhood. Obviously his outlook mellowed with age
There´s one more thing, in Brazil someone had the idea to use Tom Sawyer by Rush as the opening theme of the series (we have absolutely no idea what is the original theme of the series) and forever that song makes every brazilian that was alive in the 80s and 90s think of MacGyver. And the series here was called: Profession Danger
Both of those are big improvements.
Richard Dean Anderson was in a superbowl commercial a while back that basically was a MacGuyver reference.
It was a Master Card commercial, where Anderson is tied up, with a bomb ticking, and does his MacGuyver bit to escape.
It lists the price of the random items he's using in the commercial, like an air freshener for a dollar something, paperclip for 5 cents, etc...
And then ends with the "little things that get you through the day... priceless" showing Anderson come up to the counter and dump all the random little bits and pieces in front of a confused cashier. lol
He doesn’t dump the items, he actually re-buys them and stuffs them into his pockets, to which she seems confused about. It was definitely MacGyver, just not mentioned by name.
A turkey baster is a pretty screwy thing to have on hand! 😂
@@neosquirrel Yeah, he starts stuffing them in his pockets... it's that he comes up with his arms full of random crap and plops it all down in front of the cashier, who just looks confused.
That "You'll Love It!" ABC ad gave me such a violent flashback to having never heard the "I Love LA" song and thinking that it was weird a whole song was written based on a network's commercial jingle.
I watching it right now! Love this wholesome show!
I've recently watched some episodes through Pluto TV, all dub like when i was young, and man, what a trip that was. Hearing those voices again, the music, it really is a great series. I specially appreciate having tuning in when Bruce McGill as Jack Dalton was featured, he's such a fun character. Maybe there was something about experiencing that with my newborn baby, but i actually felt like a kid again, which hadn't happened to me before re watching stuff from my youth.
This show was called "Miracle Man" or "Wonder Man" here in Finland... and it was just the best. No kid on the block would _dare_ to miss an episode of this, or Knight Rider. It's also well-known here, that RDA had distant family roots to Finland. And that the guy who came up with the "macgyverisms", John Koivula, is also of finnish descent.
I'm glad you discussed Alan Smithee. I always wondered who wouldn't want to be associated with such a beloved series.
MacGyver was one of my favorite shows growing up. Still like it to this day. The 80's and 90's had a lot of good TV shows produced.
Legend has it that whenever MacGyver was on the television, all local businesses would close and everyone would go and watch the show.
There should've been a cross-over ep between the A-Team and MacGyver...that would've been awesome.
Knight Rider....or at least KITT, shared universe certainly.
Saw every episode. Bought the blu-ray last year as well
Never got into this, but enjoyed the hell out of SNL's "MacGruber" sketches
This was a major show in my childhood, bloody loved it.
With the show starring a non-violent hero who solves problems through his application of science and doesn't ever reveal his real name, I often wondered if there's a smidge of Doctor Who influence in MacGyver. Obviously two completely different shows doing completely different things, but there are some definite similarities in the main characters.
A non-violent hero who uses his brains and doesn't have a first name? You mean...Columbo?
MacGyver was one of those classic series that I had no experience with. I never saw an episode, and no one in my family or my social circle watched it. I have been watching the 2016 series when it comes on during my breaks at work, though, and really enjoy it, to the point where if I have some time in the future I want to track down the full series and go through it.
When I was a child, MacGyver was my favourite live-action series.
I have never managed to do anything impressive with toothpicks, clipboards and rubber bands though.
My dad loved this series that we often watched together. A great series of its time up there with knight rider.
I recall first watching the pilot on Saturday evening BBC 1, 5:45pm back in 1989 (a moment that stuck in my mind was the use of Blue Thunder in a scene), instantly loved the show and its first season, MacGyver had moved channels for season two and the episodes sporadic so only caught a few (would catch moments on German TV from the later seasons with Mac and the crazy blonde mullet!).
It would be 2009 until I would revisit the show again after now associating Richard Dean Anderson with Jack O'Neill, and from 09' to 2013 reignited my interest in the show, so much so I watched all seven seasons five times, it got to a point where I could name an episodes by scene.
MacGyver is truly DA MAN imo, the boy scout nature of Superman with the intellect and ingenuity of Batman!
McGuyver was a show I followed as much as I reasonably could in the early 90's when it aired here in Sweden, what with me being around 4-6 years old or so. I don't remember much beyond the incredible themesong and the lack of violence making it something I could watch with my parents, while still being adventurous and exciting. If anything this experience has made me want to rewatch it somehow, just so I could see what it's actually about this time around. Also glad to hear that, at least going by the stuff written here in the comments, none of the actors went off the deep end or got embroiled in weird scandals. Sometimes it's nice just to have nice news, I guess.
I don't know about bringing a paperclip to a gunfight, but in one episode he brought a regular school ruler to a gunfight and jammed it between the hammer firing and the firing pin when the perp pulled the trigger.
Would love a deeper delve into the two TV movies.. I really loved the Atlantis one..!
Murdoc is one of the best villains from the 80s and 90s.
Macgyver was also canonically a fan of the Calgary Flames hockey team, which as a kid growing up in Calgary in the 80’s added a whole other level of connection to the show.
I fuggin' LOVED the show!!!! I was 11, and had all kinds of bubble gum, paper clips, and matches. Dude was my hero for two solid years. Fuck me, the 80s rocked balls.
Whew, suddenly the theme song is playing in my head now. I remember so clearly since I was little.
While not watching it religiously what amount I did watch was highly enjoyable, my dad instilled in me at a early age a facination in science and technolgy so McGuyvers focus on clever solutions over gung-ho action appealed greatly.
And honestly it feels nice to look back on the show as a adult and see all the good things it stood for (any foe of the NRA is a friend in my book for example)
I've been enjoying your "History of..." series for quite a while now, and while they're always great this one is excellent. I watched the show religiously as a child but haven't seen a single episode since first run, so beyond the basic premise and a few random memories (plugging an acid leak with chocolate; using a revolver as a wrench) I had forgotten practically everything about this show. Thank you for transporting me back to my happy childhood for 19 wonderful minutes.
My grandfather would watch this in the bedroom on a little B&W tv with rabbit ears, so my grandmother could have the good tv in the living room. I ended up watching it, though when I discovered Stargate that was so great. It was like connecting with my grandfather.
The highlight of the video is definitely that ABC ad for the show.
😂😂😂😂
I come from the Dominican Republic, where also every pocket knife or utility multi tool (such as Swiss Army Knifes) are called Macguyvers as a matter of fact for a long time any ingenious person was called Macguyver.
Babies of '76, baby! FTW Love this channel!
Hey Dan, we're the same vintage! True story: I once asked a barber to give me the MacGyver haircut. He was from Italy and didn't know wtf I was talking about. He ended up giving me the Patrick Swayze Dirty Dancing do. I miss hair.
Absolutely one of my favorite shows of all time. Nothing exciting there, who doesn’t love MacGyver?
But a fun anecdote, about 15 years ago I met one of my best friends who lives on the other side of the country. She, a huge fan of Magnum PI. I owned every season of Mac on DVD, she every season of Magnum. We proceeded to mail seasons back and forth (sure we could have just bought them or something, but where’s the fun in that?) until we had both completed every episode of each other’s favorite shows.
Second “fun fact,” my google profile pic is pretty old, back when I had a lot more hair. The same friend took it on one of my first visits after meeting.
Both of these are pretty pointless stories. But very personal connections for me related to MacGyver. =)