"Murdoc + MacGyver + Murdoc" - MacGyver S03E06 Review

Ah, that's more like it.

I've noted several times before that David Dastmalchian is one of the strengths of nu-MacGyver. And... he is. Witty, charming, sociopathic: his Murdoc is the guy you love to hate. Murdoc is about the only character in nu-MacGyver that actually seems to be based on the character on the original show other than Mac himself. Jack Dalton in the nu show isn't a bush pilot. Wilt Bozer isn't... whoever Bozer was in the original series. MacGyver's next-door houseboat neighbor and showed up in an Old West dream sequence, mostly. The Coltons are close, but haven't appeared enough to tell.

It doesn't help that in last year's "Murdoc + Handcuffs" when Michael Des Barres, the original Murdoc, showed up, he was reduced to an almost-dialogue-free cameo. Anyone would look good compared to that.

So why was Dastmalchian-as-Murdoc and "Murdoc + MacGyver + Murdoc" so good? Let's find out. Mac returns home and finds Murdoc waiting for him wearing Wilt's George Washington mask from back when he first showed up in season 1. Murdoc lays out what's going on pretty quickly: his son Cassian has been kidnapped and he needs Mac's help to get him back. Since Murdoc murdered Jill, Mac isn't eager to help him even when a young boy's life is at stake. So Murdoc has lured Mac's girlfriend Nasha (Sibongile Miambo) to the U.S. and taken her prisoner.

The team gets a text from Mac to come to the war room. He calls and tells them not to come after him, and then Murdoc tosses the phone out the car window. His friends start looking for him anyway, but when they realize it's hopeless, they try to find Nasha.

Meanwhile, Mac and Murdoc somehow get to Bogota. The guy who kidnapped Cassian, Benjamin Liu (Allen Theosky Rowe), is holed up at a former Russian consulate. However, when our intrepid duo get there, they discover the guards are dead, Cassian is gone, and someone burned in through a concrete-plugged escape tunnel with acid. As we'll find out later, this doesn't make a lick of sense. But oh well.

Murdoc reveals his wife Amber whom he claimed is dead isn't dead but has just been in a Siberian gulag for the last three years and she abducted Cassian. They track her down via a nearby bank's surveillance camera. They originally go in claiming to be businessmen looking to check out the bank's security for their funds. But then Murdoc draws a gun on the manager. And... is this part of the plan? Because it gets them into trouble with the local cops. Which admittedly doesn't add anything to the episode. But why blow your cover? As we'll see in this episode (see below), Murdoc is quite capable of playing the long game with cover identities. So why ruin the plan just to draw a gun on the manager?

Using the surveillance camera footage and a stolen police car's database, M&M track Amber to a nearby hotel. She and Murdoc have a knockdown-drag out fight, which ends when Mac confirms Cassian is gone. Amber claims she went out to get some food and when she came back, Cassian is gone. If this sounds kinda bogus, that's because, *spoilers*, it is.

During this, Murdoc and Amber do the Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style flirting. Murdoc asks Mac if it's possible he and his wife could get back together.

M&M, now M&M&A, are forced to steal the ransom money of $30 million from a drug lord's armored car. They do, and then hand the money over to Liu. It turns out Liu and Amber are working together. So... earlier Amber acid-burned her way through several feet of concrete and killed a half-dozen of Liu's guards just to make it look convincing? And Liu was okay with his guards getting killed? Granted, he got his share of $30 million out of the deal. But it doesn't bode well for his future recruitment chances. If Liu survived the episode. Which, *spoilers*, he doesn't.

While Mac gets the nearby Cassian, Murdoc rams Liu's SUV and then kills Liu and more guards. However, he can't bring himself to kill his son's mother and lets Amber go. He then turns himself into Mac so Phoenix will put Cassian into witness protection. Later he meets with Mac and Matty and expresses his continuing admiration for Mac, and says he's available if they ever need his help. Which opens the door to bringing him back in the future.

Throughout all of this, the team has been looking for Nasha. Riley doesn't have much to do, but she does pierce Murdoc's fake IDs and discovers he owns a warehouse in the area. Jack and Wilt drive to it, shut off an automatic machinegun Murdoc left for them, set off a vacuum pump in Nasha'a cell, and Jack crashes the concrete cell with his truck to free her.

At the end, Mac and Nasha are reunited. Nasha figures everything will be okay, but Mac has an "uh, no" look on his face as he's realized (with some prodding from Murdoc) that his loved ones will never be safe as long as he's Secret Agent Mac (cue Johnny Rivers song).

"M+M+M" is a pretty good episode overall, primarily due to Dastmalchian. On a show where the creative team often seems to think that "bandinage" is something you wrap a wound with, writer Craig O'Neill (who also did a lot of work on Burn Notice) manages to do a damn good job with the banter between Mac and Murdoc. Dastmalchian's Murdoc is less of a cartoon character than Des Barres'. But it's the 2010s, so I suppose he would have to be. Dastmalchian hits all of the beats, from sociopath to Mac-admirer to proud father to hopeful husband.

It helps the episode focuses primarily on Mac. I've never been a big fan of the Team MacGyver approach, so seeing him be put front and center helps here. Although actually the episode focuses primarily on Murdoc: Mac really only MacGyvers one thing, and he doesn't really contribute much to the plot. He spends more time needling Murdoc about being a parent. And Murdoc spends a lot of time needling Mac about how he'd make a great partner.

Since the episode focuses on Murdoc and MacGyver, Team MacGyver doesn't get much screen-time. As I may have mentioned one or thrice, I'm not a big fan of either Jack or Wilt. However, the episode actually portrays Jack as competent and not an intellectual midget for once. He actually outsmarts one of Murdoc's traps. Granted, Murdoc has a contingency plan Jack didn't anticipate. But then, Murdoc always has contingency plans the other characters don't anticipate. Wilt is pretty much harmless. There's absolutely no reason he has to be with Jack, other than loan him his shoes to set off the auto gun. Which is a mildly amusing takeoff on how Jack always loans Mac his cell phones and never gets them back.

Matty and Riley just provide support. Since the episode focuses mostly on Murdoc's family issues, we don't have to hear about Mac/Oversight's family issues. Or Riley's family and boyfriend issues. Or Jack and Riley's family issues. Or Wilt and Leanna, the latter having conveniently disappeared anyway. In fact the episode seems like a backdoor pilot for a Murdoc series. Which I'd be onboard with, so if CBS wants to go with it and can pull off a show about an anti-hero sociopath with a heart of (very) tarnished gold, it has my blessing.

The downside is with all of the focus on Murdoc and Mac, and Team MacGyver squeezed in, there's no characterization for anybody else. As such, Amber (Sarah Sokolovic) is pretty thin gruel. She doesn't have anything to do, although the choreographed fight scene between her and Dastmalchian (or their stunt doubles) is pretty good. I could see her showing up again down the road, coming after Murdoc or trying to get Cassian or both. Rowe as Liu is pretty two-dimensional, but then again most bad guys on MacGyver are, so no surprise there.

As I predicted, last week's episode that ended with a major drug lord getting shot by a local cop, when Phoenix really really needed the drug lord, went nowhere this week and doesn't get a mention.

Overall, "M+M+M" was a pretty good episode. Lots of focus on Murdoc, a chance for Dastmalchian to show several different sides of the character, and Jack as competent and not a buffoon. If you don't like Dastmalchian, and I could see why some people wouldn't, then you'll probably hate the episode.

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