Vote for why you think it jumped
Never Jumped
MacGyver: Social Worker
A Very Special...(Pete goes blind)
MacGyver dumps the Jeep for a pickup
Angus!
Shark Bytes
It really started going downhill in season 4. Then as more and more social work / save the planet crap happened it got worse.
The episode "The Gun" angered me enough that I, obsessed with the series, couldn't bear to finish it. His argument with the gun manufacturer (slime though he was) really steamed me with its political correctness and complete butchering of history and the founding fathers.
The episode "The Gun" angered me enough that I, obsessed with the series, couldn't bear to finish it. His argument with the gun manufacturer (slime though he was) really steamed me with its political correctness and complete butchering of history and the founding fathers.
The show clearly "jumped the shark" in the episode "The Thief of Budapest" when the producers decided to rip off most of the car chase scenes out of the original "The Italian Job" film. It's all good and well to save money by using stock footage but to take scenes from one of the most iconic films of all time and try and pass it off as original seems ludicrous. Although perhaps it says more about the film studio that thought that allowing the footage to be used would be a good idea!
This show was always a little cheesy, but usually in a good way. There was a falloff in quality when production moved back from Vancouver to L.A., though. Hollywood sucks the life out of everything that goes near it.
After Season two, it was just horrible. Pete Thornton and Jack Dalton? Gimme a break, but the seasons were never bad with them included...It was just the episodes. Seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5 were alright, but Seasons 6 and 7 bombed. Damn, why couldn't MacGyver just be an independent guy? It would've been much better than way.
I wouldn't have said it jumped the shark, but some of the episodes haven't aged well. (such as an episode where he saves an Afghan family from an evil Soviet army)
I THOUGHT MACGYVER WAS AN AWESOME SHOW! IT JUMPED THE SHARK WHEN RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON QUIT THE SHOW. OTHER THAN THAT, I LOVE MACGYVER AND RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON IS THE MAN!
the 6th season is just terrible. Alien abductions, migrant worker issues, a flashback to goldrush era 1800s, a woman juggling episode, an episode where they "trick" is he pitches a ball to this guy and he hits a scoreboard and it disentegrates onto the car of a bad guy. the list goes on and on. 6th season is terrible.
While it had its moments, this show really had a whole lot of shark jumping moments. Some memorable ones (spoilers, of course):
- MacGyver designs and builds a gyroplane out of an old engine, bamboo, rope, and tarp within a few hours in a heavily guarded prison facility with nobody noticing, then flies the thing through a hail of gunfire and somehow, it works. That was when the improvised gadgets became less plausible and more just script magic.
- Murdock's first appearance was semi-plausible in how he escaped death. One could see him escaping to the basement of a collapsing building or jumping out of an exploding truck in time. But when they had him survive falling off a mountain, swimming through boiling water, and surviving a point blank grenade explosion, it became just a bit of a stretch.
- When half of the episodes started focusing on local neighborhood issues, such as deadbeat dads, extremist racists, and gangs.
- And the other half were based on hot button issues such as pollution, poaching, and corruption.
- The brainwashing episode.
- The amnesia episodes (although to be fair, at least it showed him actually suffering other negative effects, unrealistic as it was).
- The Christmas episode, which was just one long glurge. It was also around this point that the show had mutated to a point where Richard Dean Anderson was really the only recognizable element linking it to early seasons.
- The teen prostitution episode, where they specifically state that it was commissioned by the government and end with a hotline number.
- The rhino poaching episode, which opens with text saying that there will be a very realistic and brutal (but completely fake) killing of a rhino, then ending with Anderson giving a speech about the poaching of endangered species. It was near impossible not to laugh.
- The episode that explains his aversion to guns. It would have worked if there hadn't been a MacGyverism of him making a cart out of bicycle parts as his friend lies there dying.
- Actually, let's just say the show sucked after some point in the second or third season and leave it at that.
- And as if trying to top all of this, it ends with MacGyver finding out he has a long lost son. This is ironically funny because for all MacGyver did to preach about healthy living, it undermines it all by revealing that he had insufficiently protected, premarital sex earlier in his life. Whoops.
- MacGyver designs and builds a gyroplane out of an old engine, bamboo, rope, and tarp within a few hours in a heavily guarded prison facility with nobody noticing, then flies the thing through a hail of gunfire and somehow, it works. That was when the improvised gadgets became less plausible and more just script magic.
- Murdock's first appearance was semi-plausible in how he escaped death. One could see him escaping to the basement of a collapsing building or jumping out of an exploding truck in time. But when they had him survive falling off a mountain, swimming through boiling water, and surviving a point blank grenade explosion, it became just a bit of a stretch.
- When half of the episodes started focusing on local neighborhood issues, such as deadbeat dads, extremist racists, and gangs.
- And the other half were based on hot button issues such as pollution, poaching, and corruption.
- The brainwashing episode.
- The amnesia episodes (although to be fair, at least it showed him actually suffering other negative effects, unrealistic as it was).
- The Christmas episode, which was just one long glurge. It was also around this point that the show had mutated to a point where Richard Dean Anderson was really the only recognizable element linking it to early seasons.
- The teen prostitution episode, where they specifically state that it was commissioned by the government and end with a hotline number.
- The rhino poaching episode, which opens with text saying that there will be a very realistic and brutal (but completely fake) killing of a rhino, then ending with Anderson giving a speech about the poaching of endangered species. It was near impossible not to laugh.
- The episode that explains his aversion to guns. It would have worked if there hadn't been a MacGyverism of him making a cart out of bicycle parts as his friend lies there dying.
- Actually, let's just say the show sucked after some point in the second or third season and leave it at that.
- And as if trying to top all of this, it ends with MacGyver finding out he has a long lost son. This is ironically funny because for all MacGyver did to preach about healthy living, it undermines it all by revealing that he had insufficiently protected, premarital sex earlier in his life. Whoops.
The episode I most remember as having the show jump the shark involved Mac as a juror.
A crime is committed. A senile old woman witnesses it from her apartment window. The defendant is wrongly accused. The woman can describe the wrongdoer.
The Jump the Shark moment came when the woman used the term "African American man" to describe one of the characters she saw.
I find it difficult to believe that an elderly woman in the late 1980s or early 1990s, who insisted that her pet bird was the witness to a crime, would have had the political sensitivity to use the term "African American man."
That moment yanked me out of the episode and into the writer's room. I could almost hear the discussion on the need for political correctness.
The social worker/political correctness became unbearable.
MacGyver went from being the one man who could stop a nuclear power plant from exploding, to being a man thwarting a crooked owner of a baseball card store.
There was a great and entertaining fantasy in the juxtaposition of a man on a larger-than-life mission using commonplace tools.
Viewers were off to the inner chambers of a nuclear power plant on the verge of a meltdown, battling killer ants in a jungle, and escaping a paramilitary organization in hopes of returning to America. This was fantasy. This was adventure. This was big. This was escapism. MacGyver at the Challenger Club was ordinary and anything but escapism.
I don't become enraged when I hear the evils of corporations, or gentrification, or pollution. When MacGyver tried to convince me that I should, I found myself arguing him. I am supposed to root for MacGyver, not debate him.
Needless to say, the show became a heavy handed, politically correct message show. Escapism had -- well, escaped from the show. And the MacGyver character became less like a cool superhero, and more like a whining do-gooder.
I think this show is a great concept. I think it could live again. It just needs to stay true to the concept of extraordinary man in extraordinary situation using very ordinary means. I'll watch to be wowed. I'll not watch to be lectured at.
A crime is committed. A senile old woman witnesses it from her apartment window. The defendant is wrongly accused. The woman can describe the wrongdoer.
The Jump the Shark moment came when the woman used the term "African American man" to describe one of the characters she saw.
I find it difficult to believe that an elderly woman in the late 1980s or early 1990s, who insisted that her pet bird was the witness to a crime, would have had the political sensitivity to use the term "African American man."
That moment yanked me out of the episode and into the writer's room. I could almost hear the discussion on the need for political correctness.
The social worker/political correctness became unbearable.
MacGyver went from being the one man who could stop a nuclear power plant from exploding, to being a man thwarting a crooked owner of a baseball card store.
There was a great and entertaining fantasy in the juxtaposition of a man on a larger-than-life mission using commonplace tools.
Viewers were off to the inner chambers of a nuclear power plant on the verge of a meltdown, battling killer ants in a jungle, and escaping a paramilitary organization in hopes of returning to America. This was fantasy. This was adventure. This was big. This was escapism. MacGyver at the Challenger Club was ordinary and anything but escapism.
I don't become enraged when I hear the evils of corporations, or gentrification, or pollution. When MacGyver tried to convince me that I should, I found myself arguing him. I am supposed to root for MacGyver, not debate him.
Needless to say, the show became a heavy handed, politically correct message show. Escapism had -- well, escaped from the show. And the MacGyver character became less like a cool superhero, and more like a whining do-gooder.
I think this show is a great concept. I think it could live again. It just needs to stay true to the concept of extraordinary man in extraordinary situation using very ordinary means. I'll watch to be wowed. I'll not watch to be lectured at.
It jumped when MacGyver went from fighting world and international missions to...helping Jack Dalton.
MacGyver was a rather high quality show. Yes, some of the inventions he made were fake, usually on purpose, but some were absolutely true. By the way, sulfuric acid can be stopped by chocolate, the Mythbusters proved it, so there.
When this first came on, it was praised in the Reganomics Era because he didn't use a gun, which apparently most people felt there was too much gun violence on TV.
But if you really watch this show closely, some of the ways Mac devises to dispose of the bad guys are in fact pretty damn brutal. One episode he did them in by dropping a cargo container on them, another a guy wound up going out a fourth floor window. Without opening the window first.
Looking back, Mac was an inventive brutal thug. It probably would have been more merciful if he'd just shot the poor sod.
But if you really watch this show closely, some of the ways Mac devises to dispose of the bad guys are in fact pretty damn brutal. One episode he did them in by dropping a cargo container on them, another a guy wound up going out a fourth floor window. Without opening the window first.
Looking back, Mac was an inventive brutal thug. It probably would have been more merciful if he'd just shot the poor sod.
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