A week without Jack is like a week without snow.
So, does George Eads have some kind of project in the pipeline? He was in last week's episode, but he wasn't in the episode two weeks ago, and he's not in the episode tonight. Airing order versus production order could account for that. Granted, there wasn't really much need for him tonight. But then, you could say that about most of two seasons and running about Wilt the Stilted and he still manages to show up each week. And even Riley didn't have much to do tonight.
In fact, tonight's episode was mostly about Mac. Which is nice, since he's the person the show is named after and all. Even Emerson Brooks as Mac's sometimes-partner Charlie Robinson doesn't have much to do. When Charlie gets conveniently wounded by a bomb blast, Riley steps right in when Mac needs some advice not to get emotional. Even though advice on not getting emotionally involved was the reason Mac brought Charlie in originally.
We also got the culmination of the Ghost plot. For those who haven't been along since season one or haven't paid attention, the Ghost, is an expert bomb maker who Mac first ran into back when he was working in the Army on an anti-IED squad. Mac's old mentor got killed by a bomb meant for Mac, and the Ghost has gone freelance planting bombs once a season when they need an impressive villain who isn't named Murdoc.
If this sounds vaguely familiar to old-MacGyver fans, it's because back in the first season when new-MacGyver was still knocking off remakes of original episodes, "Wrench" was a loose remake of the original series episode"Countdown". That had a master bomber named Viking, not the Ghost, but Mac still had a partner named Charlie Robinson. Fortunately for Emerson Brooks' steady paychecks, Charlie didn't die during "Wrench" the way that he did in "Countdown".
But what about this episode, with the somewhat unwieldy name of "Revenge + Catacombs + Le Fantome". What, by season six are they going to have six different words per title? May nu-MacGyver run at least that long.
We get a flashback to 2011, which I guess is the ancient past as far as CBS is concerned. Mac and Charlie are tooling around Afghanistan dealing with "The Night of 1,000 IEDs". We cut to the modern day where Mac is attending a get-together for wounded veterans. Since he's not a wounded veteran, I'm not sure why. Matty is also apparently there or really close by, as are Wilt and Riley.
A woman claiming to be a British agent, Eileen Brennan (Holland Roden), approaches Mac and says she has information on the Ghost's location. Her superiors don't consider it actionable so she comes to Mac and Phoenix. Matty gives them the go ahead, and Mac calls in Charlie for the aforementioned "I need someone to tell me not to get emotionally involved" pep talk. Not that he ever does that.
Eileen has intel the Ghost has been captured by the show's standard Eastern European baddies. They don't know who they have on their hands, but Eileen can identify the Ghost by a recording of his interrogation. Apparently he warned her to get out of her apartment back when she was a child, before one of his bombs went off and killed Eileen's parents. And yes, if something seems off about Eileen and Ms. Roden's entire performance, welcome to tonight's plot twist.
The team get there (minus Jack, who is on an op in Brazil) and discover the IRA has broken the Ghost out. The Ghost drops some bombs as his rescuers drive by the team, and Riley does her usual computer babble and tracks the Ghost to a warehouse in the nearby city. The team gets there and although the Ghost has set his workshop on fire, he just left his papers on a bench hoping the fire would destroy them. I'm not sure if he did this deliberately, since his goal is apparently to meet Mac face-to-face later.
The papers lead the team to a building in Paris which isn't big enough to hold all the explosives they've confirmed the Ghost and the IRA have. It seems plenty big to me, and the eventual bomb we see fits into a mid-sized room. But the building doesn't have any bomb stuff. It does have a hatch leading down to the catacombs. Mac, Charlie, and Eileen go down and Mac does something involving a can that rolls back to him. Apparently it brings back traces of bomb chemicals, and Mac can identify them just by wiping off the can with a cloth.
This leads them to a workshop and they discover the Ghost has been researching bomb techs via video discs and has a lot of discs on Mac. Maybe he bought the season 1 and 2 DVD sets? Eileen sets off a bomb, Charlie and Eileen get out, and Mac is stunned long enough for the Ghost to show up, punch him unconscious, and drag him away.
Meanwhile there's a whole thing about the upcoming British Prime Minister's visit to Paris for a speech. The Ghost sets off bombs around the city, which will have the PMs' security team take him to a safe house. And the Ghost has all of his explosives underneath the safe house. Because... it's easier to plant bombs there then under a public building? I don't think that's how safe houses work.
But we're into the final stretch, so let's gloss over that. Mac wakes up in the aforementioned mid-sized room with the fuel-air bomb. The Ghost (Sean Cameron Michael, credited as Sean C. Michael) comes in with a dead man's switch and natters on about how he doesn't have a personal life and Mac has made him a better bomber, and his real name is Connor (no mention if his last name is MacLeod), and all that good stuff. Eileen has come back down and shows up, and reveals she's Connor's daughter. Eileen was a child when the bomb blew up her apartment. Her mother came back early and found Connor mixing chemicals in the kitchen, they got into an argument, and the chemicals weren't mixed correctly. So they blew up, but Connor had time to yell a warning to his daughter. And survived the explosion looking pretty good in a Sean Cameron Mitchell kind of way, but his wife died and his daughter got out. Isn't that connvveeeennnient?
Eileen hugs Connor and says she forgives him, but she can't forgive the Ghost and digs the knife in. Literally, killing him. She then runs off for some reason, leaving Mac with a big ole honkin' bomb casing. Wilt and Riley show up, and Mac rig a rope and tarp so that they can lift the casing up enough that he can get under it and deactivate it with five seconds to spare.
In the end, the team goes back to Mac's place in LA and celebrate. Mac is worried since Connor said he left a bomb for Mac and/or his friends. But Matty says it was just the Ghost playing with Mac's head (why, when he thinks Mac is going to die?). Wilt calls Mac over to listen to some of Jack's funny Brazil stories via the phone. And that's it. Eileen is still at large, but she certainly isn't a bomber and doesn't seem to be much of anything. So she could show up, but what would be the point?
"Revenge" is an okay episode, overall. I wish they had done more with the Ghost, who turned out to be a fairly decent character. He was pretty much an anonymous presence in his first two "appearances". Eileen doesn't do much for me or the plot, and it's hard to imagine what she would do if they brought her back for a future episode. Charlie doesn't have anything to do, Wilt doesn't do anything as usual other than pull on a rope and cabbage-head some dialogue (i.e., ask some questions he should already know so the writer can tell the viewers what's going on). Riley and Matty are pretty minimal, and Jack isn't even there.
That leaves Mac, and Lucas Till is okay in the role. The Ghost thing has reared its head so rarely it's hard to feel Mac is that emotionally involved. Yes, as the flashbacks remind us, his mentor got blown up by the Ghost back in the day. But since they only drag that out when a Ghost episode comes up, and this is only the third Ghost episode in three seasons, it just doesn't seem that big a deal to Mac and thus to us the viewer.
But Lucas Till certainly gives it his all: it's not his fault the creative team only bothers to give him something to do about the whole emotional angst subplot when they remember it once a year. Mac is more driven than ever, and it's nice to see Till do something other than laid-back charm. The MacGyverisms are good and vary between the relatively complicated (using CO2 canisters to blast through a fire) and elegant in their simplicity (the rope plus tarp, using two chains to wreck a passing truck).
David Dastmalchian was mentioned in the CBS press release. Although the CBS press releases tend to list actors who don't turn up in the episode. As Mac's second-biggest nemesis, it would have been interesting to have the Ghost go up against Mac's biggest nemesis and have Murdoc making his usual snarky comments along the way. Oh well.
To continue the bomb motif, "Revenge" is a bit of a damp fuse. It's not bad, but the fact the Ghost/bombing thing has been such a minor part of the show, means the efforts here to make it seem like it's such a big part of Mac's emotional make-up and the emotional make-up of guest star Eileen, are a flop. It's also going in several directions at once and ends up almost nowhere. The Ghost is filled with admiration for Mac, but it doesn't go anywhere. Eileen is set up as a future nemesis, but doesn't seem to have any qualifications. She just kills her father and runs off: there's no reason for her to come back but they play it up like she will. The Ghost tells Mac there's a bomb waiting for him somewhere, but then Matty dismisses it as mind games at the end.
So A for effort, B minus for execution. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Nov 17, 2018
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