"Wilderness + Training + Survival" - MacGyver S03E13 Review

Well, that was a nothing burger.

"Wilderness + Training + Survival" was an okay episode. It just didn't do anything. It was a very by-the-book. It had a main plot, and a subplot, and some disposable villains in the main plot. And a very little bit of foreshadowing to lead us into the 2/14 episode when George Eads leaves the show.

Speaking of Eads and his character, Jack, there's no mention that I can tell of last week when Jack disappeared entirely off of the face of the episode. I've checked the transcript. They never mention that he was off somewhere visiting someone or doing something.

As for this week's episode, Matty tells Mac to take Riley and Wilt (still calling him that for now) on a wilderness survival trek. After a brief reference to the movie Deliverance, we get to see Mac play nature scout. Which is something they did from time to time in the original series. There's a mention of Mac's grandfather taking him out on wilderness treks. They trek around for a bit, eat some cattails, gaslight a reference to not using poison oak for tinder in a campfire.

And then the next day, Wilt and Riley discover Mac is gone. It turns out a group of robbers have snagged him and are forcing him to lead them to a mysterious X spot on the leader Giovanni's (Justin Welbourn) map. One of the robbers sprains his ankle and Giovanni shoots him dead rather than let him slow down the group. Apparently, Giovanni goes to the Darth Vader School of Kill Your Henchmen to Encourage Morale in the Other Henchmen.

They eventually reach the spot, but the crate of money the robbers dropped there from a plane (they were being chased by government agents, and had to drop the money because it was "too hot") has been washed away. Mac rigs a surveyor's scope with a rifle scope and calculates the slope of the land, and finds the crate. Meanwhile, Wilt and Riley find the dead guy and use his radio. They radio the park ranger, but Giovanni already paid the park ranger a visit, poses as the ranger (presumably he's now dead but we never find out), and sends one of his three remaining thugs to capture Riley and Wilt.

When the guy captures them, he has them build a fire. Wilt uses poison oak, which explodes in the guy's face and they subdue him. Or kill him. Or something. It's all kind of vague. They then go running off after Mac.

Meanwhile, Mac has found the crate of money. Giovanni shoots his two remaining henchman (although we never see the second one get shot or go down as far as I can tell: he just disappears) and Mac struggles with him for the gun. He ends up knocking out Giovanni but gets shot in the leg. Wilt and Riley arrive, use a sled he was making to take him to civilization and patch his wound. Mac says they passed the test and that's the end of that.

Meanwhile, Matty goes to take Ethan (Brendan Hines), and his wife and child to a new safehouse because S-Company is closing on them. She hauls Jack along for the ride. Ethan's new wife Deena (Sissi Kal) finds out Ethan and Matty used to be married. When they get to the new house, Matty shows the daughter how to make the color purple from a red and blue crayon. Then Matty tells Deena she and Ethan used to be married, but it was over before Ethan met Deena. This makes Deena feel better, and it somehow makes Matty feel better.

Jack has been getting blurry photos of some guy, and at the end the Phoenix labs deblur the photo and Jack realizes that it's a terrorist he killed ten years ago. So I'm sure that won't come back to bite him in the ass in Eads' final episode.

It's a so-so episode, as I noted early on. Mac gets to show off his nature survival skills, and comes off as a bit of a jerk in the process. The episode reminds me a bit of the original's "Target: MacGyver". But there we had John Anderson as Harry who got to be impressed by his grandson's skills and surprised MacGyver actually remembered all the old Indian tricks Harry taught him as a child. Here, we get Riley and Wilt, who have seen Mac do his MacGyverisms before, and the robbers, who are too busy being mean and threatening to be impressed by Mac's ingenuity.

Also, in the new series Mac is more of a tech guy. He tends to mix cleaning chemicals and make stuff out of cleaning carts. Rather than do old Indian tricks. So while it's not surprising Mac knows a lot of wilderness survival stuff, it doesn't add anything to the character.

There's also the fact Mac's wilderness survival stuff has to share screen time with Matty's "dealing with her ex husband" subplot. Meredith Eaton is good: Eaton is always good. Jack is mostly harmless, and I always like seeing the chemistry between Matty and Jack. It gives Matty a little more to do and lets Eads go a less buffoonish route with Jack.

But I get the impression all the cool reaction shots I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, if they were in the episode at all, got dropped to make room for the Matty subplot. Which is a problem with the new series and the "Team MacGyver" concept in general. It's hard to be impressed with Mac when he's sharing screen time with 3-4 other main characters. Even the worst old-school MacGyver episodes had cool MacGyverisms, and the writers played them up. On nu-MacGyver, there just part of the mix along with Jack's fighting skills and Riley's hacking skills and Matty's boss skills and... whatever the heck Wilt does.

"Team MacGyver" is what we got, and usually it's not too bad. It's a CBS spy and crime-fighting drama, and usually the team concept works well enough on those terms. But get rid of that, and we get an episode like "Wilderness". Mac is kind of a jerk, Wilt and Riley learn a Valuable Lesson (tm) or two, Jack and Matty get a moment, we get a little bit of Matty development. The bad guys are paper thin, the plot runs on more coincidence than usual (in the huge national park, the robbers just happen to stumble on Mac and his pals), and overall it's just an episode that tries to have it's old-MacGyver cake and eat it, too.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?