"Seeds + Permafrost + Feather" – MacGyver S03E17 Review

After a two-week delay, the second week for a "special" CBS interview, we get the long-awaited "Seeds + Permafrost + Feather" episode of MacGyver. Well, as long-awaited as MacGyver ever is.

The odd thing is "Seeds" is a lot like "Specimen 234 + PAPR + Outbreak" nine episodes ago. In both episodes, a "good man" goes to war, turning from a nice normal person beset by personal tragedy into an avenger going after the no-goodnik responsible. In neither case, do the avengers-of-the-week don bat costumes and fight costumed villains. Although that would liven things up a lot.

We begin with an even more pointless DIY than usual. In Paris two gunmen bust into a hotel room where Mac and Desi are sleeping naked in a bed. They're apparently satisfied, leave, the agents get dressed, Desi loudly complains she had to get naked to throw the gunmen off their trail. The gunmen listen at the door, hear her practically yelling, realize it's a set-up, and come back in. And... that's it. There's no MacGyverism, there's no other display of how Mac is the smartest guy in the room. The DIY seems to exist primarily to let us see Levy Tran's shoulder tats.

When we come back from the opening credits, Oversight (Tate Donovan) is playing things close to the vest. This makes Mac suspicious, so he asks Wilt, that master of spying and comedy relief, to spy on their boss. I kid: Wilt is not a master of either. Leanna (Reign Edwards) decides to tag along as a ninth wheel, Oversight catches onto them, and he advises them on surveillance protocol. And rather blatantly tells Wilt to talk to his waitress at his diner if Wilt wants info on him. Wilt does so, which would seem like some great deductive feat except Oversight told him to do it.

Onto the main plot. Matty sends Mac, Desi, and Riley to Greenland where a guard has disappeared from a high-security seed storage vault. The security teams don't seem to have any sonar type equipment, so it's up to Mac and a feather to find the tunnel the thief used to get into the vault, kill the guard, and steal some seeds. We then get a Very. Long. Sequence where Mac and Desi have to fake-fight so Riley can track the dead guard's phone and figure out where he found the thief. The fight goes on and on and on, and seems to serve the sole purpose of playing up the romantic tension/rivalry between Mac and Desi. Can't they just hold the cell phone and move it the way Riley says? Instead, they have to simulate fight moves based on Riley's directions. Mac and Riley slam each other into shelves, beat each other over the head, and five minutes later they figure out which box of seeds was opened.

Meanwhile, the tunnel leads to a cabin. Mac does his first and only "big" MacGyverism by building a satellite dish out of an old bucket. This lets him tap into the thief's wireless connection, and Riley discovers the thief was sending money to buy flowers to have them delivered to a cemetery in Brussels.

The trio get there and have a conversation with the thief's brother, Oliver Stevens (Matthew Bellows). Oliver reveals his brother is Jules (Carlos Leal). Jules, along with his wife and daughter, were the targets of a carjacking that ended up with the wife and daughter dead. As we'll find out, Jules had earlier testified against a thief working for a crime boss, Passer. After his family's death, Jules trained himself to become a criminal and committed a series of bank robberies. The stolen seeds can be weaponized to form a toxin, but nobody seems too concerned about them. Jules stole them so he could sell them to Passer but Passer is a recluse and doesn't meet with anyone.

So Jules goes after Passer in the park where Passer is with his wife and two children. If Jules could find Passer so easily, why did he have to spend over a year arranging a meeting? The trio arrives, Riley and Desi take down Passer's backup, and Mac gives a patented Mac Speech to Jules to convince him he's a good man, killing Passer would make him as much a monster as Passer is, yada yada. The usual "look into the abyss and the abyss looks back" stuff. Jules surrenders, apologizes for accidentally killing the guard earlier, and some goon they interrogated earlier is going to testify against Passer, sending him away for a long time. Why an infamous recluse lets what seems to be a minor-league guy in his organization know enough to put him away, I have no idea.

Wilt eventually finds out what's going on with Oversight and passes the info onto Mac. Mac goes to the hospital Oversight has been going to, to get anti-cancer treatments. Oversight is all "I didn't want to tell you and have you forgive me because I have cancer" and Mac is all "I can fix this" and Oversight is all "This is one thing you can't fix."

Oh, there's also a brief bit where Riley is trying to track down who released their personal info on the Darknet. And That Goddamned Robot (tm) plays a recording of Riley snoring in the lab and everyone laughs at her. And then they put the robot in a trash compactor and laugh even harder. No, they don't, but hope springs eternal.

I'm sure the original MacGyver recycled plots, but within nine episodes of each other? I've seen every episode at least twice, and don't remember that. That's the main thing I came away with. The pointless DIY and the five-minute endless fight scene are the others.

Minor bad parts? Meredith Eaton and Reign Edwards have almost nothing to do. Carsten Norgaard gives a "picking up a paycheck" performance as the chief of police in charge of the seed vault. I don't think CoPs run seed vaults, but what do I know? And Riley demonstrates some wicked martial arts moves, even though there's been no indication she's on Desi levels of hand-to-hand fighting.

Good parts? Donovan is mildly funny lecturing Wilt and Leanna on proper surveillance techniques. There are a few other funny bits, like Riley spilling the news about Oversight's suspicious behavior to Desi, and Mac complaining. The bucket thing is a relatively clever MacGyverism. Levy Tran seems to be having fun, even if what she's doing isn't funny or relevant. And... that's about it.

Overall I'd consider "Seeds" a minor failure. MacGyver is never completely unwatchable, because everyone gives average or better performances. It just seems awfully familiar to those of us who saw "Specimen 254" nine episodes ago. It was an okay plot, then, repetition doesn't make it better.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.