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mitchy at 12:00am on 04/02/2005
mitchy at 12:00am on 04/02/2005I bought MacGyver Season One on DVD a while back and it arrived this week. Which is why I've not been posting much. Oh hush, it's a classic of its genre! Ahh, the clothes, the hair, the bright, pastel colours, the cheesy dialogue. Ah loves 80's TV. (Memo to Me: Resist the lure of Miami Vice until you have money and it's dirt cheap)
So, MacGyver: bit of a clever geezer isn't he? I can never figure out if he's a genius, has degrees in everything or just reads a lot of technical stuff. One episode does mention he was studying for a physics degree so that explains one area of expertise. That just leaves chemistry, biology, maths, mechanics and robotics. Not to mention memorising the ingredients of every household cleaning fluid in existence *grins*.
And then there's the whole "I hate guns" thing. Now this is actually explained in a very moving later season episode, one of the better ones, even if the ending was a tad too sappy. But that leaves several things unexplained. He did service in Vietnam, we're told in "Countdown" that he was part of an elite bomb disposal squad while over there. We'll blip over whether there were such things in a jungle war (I suppose they had to protect the cities from counterinsurgent attacks) and move on to how he got there. He must have had some sort of military training, right? How the hell did he overcome his objection to guns then? And, if he hated guns that much, why didn't he become a conscientious objecter, hmm? Other than that wouldn't be terribly heroic, obviously. So yeh, full of holes as a Swiss cheese.
I know, I know, applying logic to an 80's TV show is an exercise in futility but I can't help it. It still bugs me that so few shows, even those today, develop any character background BEFORE they start. Instead they make it up as they go along and so you get hideous continuity problems or you're left wondering how our hero ever found time to sleep, never mind meet all the women he seems to have met over the years. (Or men, if hero is a heroine, obviously). Seriously, how difficult would it be to do at least a basic timeline for the main characters of a show and work from that, rather than the other way around? Not difficult at all! Do they do that? Hell no! Bugs me!
*twitches* OK, I've taken my dried frog's pills, I'll be ok now ;)
Actually, it's at this point I must give props to "Cold Case" and "Rescue Me", two of my favourite US shows at the mo, for actually bothering with the back story for their characters and sticking to it. (I'm reliably informed "I-man" did the same but haven't had a chance to absorb that fully yet.) "Babylon 5" also had a rich back story and it was better for it. But do the networks learn from this? No! Bah!!
OK, had another dried frog's pill, m'ok now...
Actually what I'd love to do is write MacGyver's background one day. So long as I didn't have to come up with a 1001 ingenious uses for a paper clip and how to defuse a bomb using milk and cleaning fluid (he actually does this, btw), I reckon it would be fun. But I'll have to watch ALL the shows first, naturally. Hehehehehe.
So, MacGyver: bit of a clever geezer isn't he? I can never figure out if he's a genius, has degrees in everything or just reads a lot of technical stuff. One episode does mention he was studying for a physics degree so that explains one area of expertise. That just leaves chemistry, biology, maths, mechanics and robotics. Not to mention memorising the ingredients of every household cleaning fluid in existence *grins*.
And then there's the whole "I hate guns" thing. Now this is actually explained in a very moving later season episode, one of the better ones, even if the ending was a tad too sappy. But that leaves several things unexplained. He did service in Vietnam, we're told in "Countdown" that he was part of an elite bomb disposal squad while over there. We'll blip over whether there were such things in a jungle war (I suppose they had to protect the cities from counterinsurgent attacks) and move on to how he got there. He must have had some sort of military training, right? How the hell did he overcome his objection to guns then? And, if he hated guns that much, why didn't he become a conscientious objecter, hmm? Other than that wouldn't be terribly heroic, obviously. So yeh, full of holes as a Swiss cheese.
I know, I know, applying logic to an 80's TV show is an exercise in futility but I can't help it. It still bugs me that so few shows, even those today, develop any character background BEFORE they start. Instead they make it up as they go along and so you get hideous continuity problems or you're left wondering how our hero ever found time to sleep, never mind meet all the women he seems to have met over the years. (Or men, if hero is a heroine, obviously). Seriously, how difficult would it be to do at least a basic timeline for the main characters of a show and work from that, rather than the other way around? Not difficult at all! Do they do that? Hell no! Bugs me!
*twitches* OK, I've taken my dried frog's pills, I'll be ok now ;)
Actually, it's at this point I must give props to "Cold Case" and "Rescue Me", two of my favourite US shows at the mo, for actually bothering with the back story for their characters and sticking to it. (I'm reliably informed "I-man" did the same but haven't had a chance to absorb that fully yet.) "Babylon 5" also had a rich back story and it was better for it. But do the networks learn from this? No! Bah!!
OK, had another dried frog's pill, m'ok now...
Actually what I'd love to do is write MacGyver's background one day. So long as I didn't have to come up with a 1001 ingenious uses for a paper clip and how to defuse a bomb using milk and cleaning fluid (he actually does this, btw), I reckon it would be fun. But I'll have to watch ALL the shows first, naturally. Hehehehehe.
cheerful
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