Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

MacGyver: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 13, 2018

Think MacGyver and automatically think of the man who exploded onto the scene in the 1980s, who can apparently put together a bomb from chewed bubble gum and a rubber band or break out of a prison cell with a shoelace and saliva. The character's ability to take a few ordinary items and construct something useful or life-saving has become legendary and synonymous with the name. Certainly the show has a little more to offer beyond any given episode's doodad and its utility to escaping any given predicament, but MacGyver is definitely more a product of its cleverness than its characters. A mainstay of the ABC primetime lineup and notably as the lead-in to Monday Night Football, MacGyver debuted on September 29, 1985, ran for seven full seasons, and concluded with a pair of television specials in 1994, the first airing two years after season seven wrapped.

Introducing: MacGyver.

Official synopsis: Relive the adventures of Angus MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson), a secret agent who outwits his deadly enemies with quick thinking and a few everyday objects he finds along the way. Armed with duct tape, a pocketknife, and scientific training, his expert problem solver's missions are more intense than ever before. Get a closer look at the hero who proves brains beat brawn every time.

MacGyver carries a Swiss Army knife on him at all times, which is the very definition of a utilitarian tool. It can do the job of many, though not as well as a more dedicated, precision instrument. What makes the character MacGyver so memorable and so cool isn't that he is a Jack of All Trades, like his trusty Swiss Army Knife, but rather a Master of Most Every Trade. His ability to improvise stems from a deep understanding of the world in which he lives, both the natural world and the manmade world. He understands how things respond to certain stimulus -- objects, environments, and humans alike -- and how to create the response he needs from them out of whatever might be on hand at the time. He's almost like a modern day wizard who doesn't wield a magic wand but rather wields his brain and expertise in all subjects of scientific interest. He unscrambles the jumbled worlds of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics and blends them together and bends them to his will. Good thing, too, because the guy sure does find himself in one sticky situation after another. Never has knowledge proven so handy, so often.

Season one isn't necessarily a primer but rather a jump-right-in sort of season. There's obviously character introductions and development but this isn't a long-form episodic show. Every episode stands on its own as an isolated MacGyver adventure, each one perfectly consumable in most any order. The show obviously takes its time to construct the character, but he is more about what he does than who he is, and the show doesn't necessarily suffer for that. The show offers high entertainment through its story-of-the-week formula. The title character and a few supporting cast and most of the essential episode-specific players earn enough shape to keep the audience caring, but the show's unquestionable draw is the applied sciences MacGyver uses to his advantage. It doesn't hurt that Richard Dean Anderson seems more than capable of pulling off the impossible in every episode, looks and sounds good in the process, and brings enough heart and charm to the character to keep the audience rooting for his success.

The following episodes comprise season one. Summaries are courtesy of the Blu-ray packaging.

Disc One:

• Pilot: A mysterious explosion demolishes an underground lab. Can MacGyver single-handedly rescue the trapped scientists, and stop a deadly chemical leak?
• The Golden Triangle: While retrieving a poison-filled canister from a crash site in Burma, MacGyver is forced to take on a powerful drug lord when he is mistaken for a narcotics agent.
• Thief of Budapest: In Budapest, MacGyver obtains vital microfilmed information hidden inside a watch. But when the watch is stolen, MacGyver has to find the thief: a young Gypsy girl.
• The Gauntlet: MacGyver goes up against an entire army when he helps an American journalist escape across the border of a South American dictatorship.
• The Heist: A Virgin Islands casino owner steals $60 million in diamonds. MacGyver and an American senator's daugher plot to steal them back from the casino's impregnable vault.

Disc Two:

• Trumbo's World: Deep in the primitive Amazon jungle, MacGyver teams with an entomologist friend and a local plantation owner to battle an invading horde of killer ants.
• Last Stand: Armed robbers make the mistake of accidentally taking MacGyver hostage. Now, their inadvertent captive uses his extraordinary skills to thwart the gang and free the other hostages.
• Hellfire: MacGyver's friends strike oil, but an out-of control fire threatens to destroy all they own. They turn to MacGyver as the only one who can extinguish the inferno and save the oil.
• The Prodigal: A protected Federal witness wants to come out of hiding to visit his dying mother. Can MacGyver protect him from the Mob and the Feds?
• Target MacGyver: A team of assassins target MacGyver, who is on a fishing trip with his long-estranged grandfather. Can the two defend themselves against this gang of highly trained killers?

Disc Three:

• Nightmares: Enemy agents capture MacGyver and poison him with a hallucinogenic drug that will kill him in six hours - unless he can somehow escape and steal the antidote.
• Deathlock: A safehouse turns out to be anything but, when MacGyver discovers it is jam-packed with deadly booby traps set by a vengeful enemy.
• Flame's End: The theft of uranium from a nuclear power plant reunites MacGyver with an old girlfriend...and the hunt for the thief threatens to set off a nuclear reaction.
• Countdown: It's MacGyver against the clock and certain death when he's sent on a mission to save a cruise ship that's been rigged with sophisticated explosive devices.

Disc Four:

• The Enemy Within: A mole inside the Agency has betrayed four agents to their deaths. Will MacGyver be next? The traitor is closer than he ever imagined...
• Every Time She Smiles: Top secret mircofilm. A beautiful American girl with a secret. The Bulgarian Secret Police. All these secrets mean big trouble for MacGyver.
• To Be A Man: Shot and wounded while on a rescue mission in Soviet Afghanistan, MacGyver is given refuge by an Afghan woman and her son. But are MacGyver's wits any match for the might of the Russian Army?
• Ugly Duckling: It's MacGyver to the rescue when a genius teenage computer hacker is kidnapped by weapons dealers to help them arm a stolen missile system.

Disc Five:

• Slow Death: In India, angry tribesmen hijack a train to find the Westerners that sold tainted medicine to their village doctor. Now, they have more than justice on their side...they have MacGyver.
• The Escape: MacGyver's elaborate plot to spring a missionary from a North African jail works perfectly...until MacGyver discovers that nothing is what is seems to be.
• A Prisoner Of Conscience: MacGyver feigns madness to infiltrate a mental institution that holds a political prisoner. But getting out isn't as easy as getting in.
• The Assassin: In order to capture a brilliant assassin and master of disguises, MacGyver risks death by posing as the killer.

MacGyver: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

MacGyver looks terrific on Blu-ray. The presentation is, largely, near best-case scenario for a vintage TV show, shot on film, making the transition to Blu-ray and high definition more than three decades after its ABC debut. The show is presented in its original 4x3 aspect ratio, preserving the original broadcast parameters, which places vertical "black bars" on either side of the 1.78:1 HD display. The show was shot on film, of course, and the Blu-ray presentation suffers from no evidence of deteriorating noise reduction. Grain is present but very light and filmic. Textural accuracy and clarity are stellar. MacGyver's trademark leather jacket reveals its textural finesse, signs of wear and aging remarkably well; viewers can practically feel the material. Character faces are organically complex, revealing pores, lines, wrinkles, and hair with striking ease and complexity. Overall image clarity is wonderful. Exteriors shine with textural stability and fine-point detailing evident from buildings to landscaping and everything else in-frame. A few obviously upscaled standard definition/video shots are interspersed throughout the season but, while distracting, don't usually detract from the image's otherwise impressive, yea pristine, credentials. Colors are bold and attractive. MacGyver's earthy leather jacket enjoys tonal balance while any number of additional shades in any episode, which include variations of natural greens, brightly colored period clothes, flags, cars, building façades, anything and everything one can see, reveal precise colors and no shortage of boldness and punch without appearing gaudy or the contrast tuned to an extreme. Black levels are deep, perhaps though bordering on crush in some nighttime shots. Flesh tones appear accurate.

The presentation does run into some problems in a couple of episodes, namely a pair form disc one, "Thief of Budapest" and "The Gauntlet." "Budapest" features random speckling visible across blue skies, around character hairlines, and the like. They're intermittent but obvious. "The Gauntlet" sees the problem taken to another level. I feared that there was a problem with my television, like the video processor was beginning to go bad, and checked the episode on another TV/player combo and the same artifacts produced there as well. The entire episodes are not affected, but various shots are, which make them borderline unwatchable at any given moment. See the screenshot above for an example. The season otherwise looks great; there are some isolated issues, like shimmering on a metal building seen in the episode "Last Stand" and a sudden appearance of blue/purple squiggly lines all over the frame in the season's last episode around the 35-minute mark which last for about two minutes (see screenshot below, particularly the bottom half of MacGyver's jacket). Overall, though, the show looks amazing, practically brand new, and obviously vastly superior to whatever the audience might remember from the original 1980s airing.

MacGyver: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included two-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack produces acceptable results, though the program is of course lacking not only the additional channels necessary to more fully immerse the listener in the show but also the sound design and elements that could really take advantage of them. The opening title music doesn't stretch the stage to its limits, instead seeming to emanate from somewhere between the front left and right channels and the center area. Clarity is lacking the precision that a lossless track would afford, but core instrumental clarity is fine. The absence of a low end support channel might be the most problematic omission; music and effects both lack weight, including various explosions and gunfire. Ambient effects of course cannot fully immerse the listener. However, basic elemental clarity and decent front-side spacing allow for a fair sense of place. Dialogue clarity and prioritization are fine, but the front left and right channels do not always image words exactly to the center; they sometimes seem to come from that same in-between middle ground as the music.

MacGyver: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

MacGyver: The Complete First Season contains no supplemental content on any of the five Blu-ray discs. No DVD or digital copies are included, either.

MacGyver: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

CBS/Paramount has a history of beginning, but not completing, vintage television shows on Blu-ray like I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show and even newer shows like Hawaii Five-0, CSI, and NCIS. Of course, there are many that the studio has seen on through to completion: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Enterprise, Penny Dreadful, and Dexter. MacGyver (and Charmed, which released alongside MacGyver), at seven seasons long (eight for Charmed), has a long way to go to see the entire collection make it to Blu-ray. Hopefully the studio can see it through because MacGyver was one of the best shows of the 80s (which of course folded into the early 90s) and there's definitely a demand for the entire thing in high definition on physical media. The season is a bit pricey, but the quality is, generally, very good. The release raises an interesting question, though: would fans trade quality for an assurance of a complete series release? Would fans take a high quality season one release without knowing the show's Blu-ray future or a lesser quality Mill Creek-style one shot full series dump? If prices remain and the entire series releases to Blu-ray one season at a time, one is looking northward of $300 for the whole thing. Regardless of the answer, season one's Blu-ray, which is without supplemental content, does feature very good video (with a few caveats) and adequate two-channel lossy audio. Recommended, and keep those fingers crossed. There's no crafting seasons two through seven Blu-rays with newspaper, spark plugs, and duct tape.