March 15, 2021
Synopsis: While out mapping a portion of the Alaskan wilderness for the Phoenix Foundation, MacGyver stumbles upon an abandoned ship in which he encounters a Sasquatch-like creature. Nearby, an oil pipeline is being tapped illegally by a criminal operation. Just what is the relation of each to one another?
Star Rating: 5 / 5 (
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Skunk-ape, Yowie, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Harry. There are many names for the cryptid which has ensorcelled many limited-government conspiracy types throughout the centuries. It’s been the debate of primatologists, biologists and cryptozoologists over the centuries, though the last one in that list is definitely not an actual occupation. Episodes like this are why I originally wanted to do MacGyver writeups. This one has been infamous to me for a long time since seeing it when it originally aired, or perhaps during a syndication run. The time MacGyver fought Bigfoot has stood out in my mind as rich fodder for a writeup. I couldn’t remember much else of the plot (really, what more do you need than that?), so I was excited when the editor of our publication slid this one across my desk. “Good job, kid. You’ve earned this one. I know you had it with all them Colton episodes and I’m sorry to put you through that, so here’s your ‘just desserts’” he said as he snapped into a Slim Jim and walked away. Or maybe it was a cigar in his mouth. He’s been known to eat cigars. He’s like a goat. I have only seen him smoke a Slim Jim once but it was memorable enough to make me second-guess each subsequent time I saw him snapping into a Slim Jim. Anyways, this episode does a great job of stacking the legendary nature of what a Sasquatch supposedly is and does against it’s more likely purpose of being an anti-government regulatory saboteur who decries Big Government overreach from the viewpoint of a Scooby-Doo villain. The lore and mystery of the Sasquatch phenomenon and its lack of representation in the wild share a similarly analogous relationship with small-government politicians who are only seen and heard from when their opposition are the ones controlling the purse-strings. If you were to fill in Bigfoot as a write-in candidate, you should be looked at as no less understanding in how to choose representatives than if you were to write in the name of that candidate you really like that wants to go back to the gold standard. This is why most people who report Bigfoot encounters so often end their encounter interview with the summary “tax is theft” and then run screaming into the woods still wearing the oversized hairy feet from their costume. It’s the fun of the illusion that makes it worth it to them. That said, let’s proceed into adventure land (aka the Canadian wilderness) where things are never what they appear to be!
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This one starts off with Pete (God bless that man), MacGyver and a woman from the Department of the Interior in a helicopter flying into the Canadian wilderness to do some surveying. It’s like a less macho version of the opening to Predator where instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger bristling with guns and machismo en route to a mission sure to be filled with insane firepower, you have Richard ‘Democrat’ Anderson flying in to lay down markers for satellite geocaching while wearing what looks to be porcupine quills for hair. Getting the briars out of that mane while galivanting in the thickets must have given him some real grief in this episode. The helicopter lays him down quickly with nothing more than his hiking pack on a remote hillside and he’s ready to go. He takes in the scenery of the untouched wilderness as he talks briefly about growing up in Minnesota and how happy he is just to be out in the woods.
Meanwhile Pete and Interior Department Lady land back at the monitoring base and discuss the work to be done. Pete scoffs at her suggestion that MacGyver chose the most difficult sector to map and she’s like “Ok, I hope you’re right. I’ve spent the last 5 years trying to move this initiative forward to make the area a wildlife sanctuary”. With that bit of foreshadowing, we know MacGyver is about to somehow get his shit wrecked. Pete assures her that in the eight years he’s known Mac, he’s always come through when needed. She expresses some concern that the other members of the team have already started transmissions from beacons they’ve placed and ol’ Angus MacGyver isn’t even on the map with his marker.
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Back out in the wild, MacGyver comes across a Native American Canadian totem pole carved either as a sign or a warning. On cue, he hears the call of a wild thing from far deep in the pines and his mullet prickles like Spider-Man’s spidey-sense. A moss-covered skeleton nearly falls down on top of him from where it was placed long ago to look out over the land. He holds its hand while apologizing to it like a true Canadian which is right in line with our Canadian Superhero. He feels a sense of kinship with the skeleton because he too has a skeleton he hopes will outlive him and terrify others by one day falling from a tree at an opportune time. As he places his first beacon, he is alarmed by the sound of a long caterwauling moan off in the distance. He finishes setting up and proceeds to crest a ridge where he is intrigued at the sight of a large ship moored just off the coast in the water below. Not able to mind his own business, he makes his way down to the water’s edge.
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In another display of Canadian gentility, he quietly screams “Hello!” at whomever may be on board. Getting no answer, he turns his attention to a battered old wooden rowboat nearby upside down in the bushes. It’s got a big, fresh scratch on it as if made by something with multiple long fingers. Ooooh! As I’m wondering why he feels the need to do this and not his real work, he justifies his actions by saying “One of my biggest problems is, I can never leave a puzzle alone…and this ship sure qualifies.” If you’ve ever dealt with an HOA, Mac is that guy on the board who usually commandeers the meetings and wants to impose U.N. sanctions against people who don’t pick up their dog’s poop around the communal flower bed. He’s friendly enough to engage you on the sidewalk and insist you try to come to the monthly meetings to establish a quorom. You come away thinking he’s a nice guy, but talk to anyone in the neighborhood and you realize he’s a totalitarian with a smile and control issues. Anyhow, he goes about repairing the boat with materials from his back pack (MacGyverism #1) and creates a paddle by stretching some tarp between the crook of two branches that have split into a Y-shape. This curious fucker just can’t let a thing be. To the ordinary person, this boat says “Stay the Hell Away, There Might Be Real Danger, Leave It Alone” but to MacGyver it’s a flashing neon sign promoting a mystery that must be solved.
We are next treated to a stylistic view of MacGyver rowing towards the ship from the viewpoint of a gurgling and growling someone or something as it watches him approach. Hilariously he’s rowing towards it yelling out “Hello the ship!” which is a really awkward and funny phrase to be yelling out at any time. He snoops on board to find the lights still on and an ominous atmosphere where heavy portal doors slam shut behind him that are impossible to explain. Oh, just wait until the HOA hears about this. There’s probably some OSHA concerns as well. Entering the ship’s galley, he finds a blood-stained carafe or kettle and the contents of the room strewn about. It should be noted at this point that MacGyver is failing completely on his geocaching expedition but maybe it will be okay if he stumbles upon a murder scene that needs a key witness. Under a Russian newspaper, a giant bloody palm print is found that is way too large to be human. A very large something was evidently angry about the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that day. My wager is it was concerned how big government interference is destroying the tenets of market capitalism by levying hefty fees and environmental regulations to restrict the energy sector and suppress his way of life. Momentarily marveling at the hand print, he hears some kind of scuttlebutt coming from elsewhere in the bowels of the ship and decides to investigate.
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He finds some stinky hair clinging to the corner of a door frame but that’s not a deterrent, no, au contraire. He loves finding puzzle pieces like that. Entering the ship’s navigational room, he spots a cup of coffee. Curiously, he tests the temperature with a finger and before he can even register what’s happening, a hairy forearm bursts through the window and smacks his hand. No touchies! The door explodes inward and a howling Skunk-Ape full of rage and low on caffeine starts going ballistic and smashing anything MacGyver tries to hide or defend himself with. Escaping into the lower hold, he bars the door behind him. He can still hear it plodding about above him as he desperately begins seeking a way out. If he’d minded his own business and hadn’t done any of that “hello the ship” business, he wouldn’t be in this situation. But I digress.
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A sudden sound reaches him in the quietude of the ship’s hold. He holds his breath. What was that? His heart is racing. I know this because mine is too. As he makes his way soundlessly towards the origin of the noise, he spots a heavy pipe resting atop a barrel. I was like, “Yeah, grab that pipe!” and sure enough, he does. It’s thinking like that which leads me to believe we’d make a good team. Figuring out the other’s next move in a silent game of cat and mouse, Mac grabs a loose object which he uses for a diversion. Tossing it in the opposite direction, he hears movement from something unseen as it then shifts towards the source of the noise. MacGyver swings around to bludgeon it with the pipe only to find a terrified woman huddling on the floor. “Beat her with the pipe!” I implore, but thankfully MacGyver and I are not on the same team for that one because he does the right thing by not beating her with the pipe. Wow, that was a bad instinct on my part. I’m thinking, ‘Yo, MacGyver, you don’t know if she’s affiliated with that Yeti or is maybe covering for it, maybe that Yeti is tricking you due to your bias towards humans,’ but he calculates this one right as usual in the end. The woman tries to run and Mac restrains her but before an explanation is offered, the yowling monster has battered down the hatch door above and is rushing down the stairs at them both.
The quickest thing that can be done is to get behind and close the crank-door to the lower hold, which MacGyver figures out miraculously fast. The Yeti thing roars at being denied the chance to meet MacGyver and get his autograph. Perhaps he’s a fan and perhaps he’s not. Maybe that’s not a good read on my part and perhaps the creature knows Mac is from the government and he’s here to ‘help’. Mac and the bewildered woman use the opportunity with the creature temporarily stymied to make it to the top deck. Their path is blocked once again by the monster who attempts a filibuster in order to keep them from leaving but they successfully veto it as they leap from the railing and into the water. That sentence was a reach, I know but hang with me.
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The beast next tries to smash them with steel oil barrels like Donkey Kong which is always the second move the energy lobbyists use and one they always say they won’t resort to but inevitably do. Mac tests the aquatic ape theory here and dives downwards to make a swim for it and his belief certainly pays off when it quickly gives up. The girl tries to make a run for it again when on land but MacGyver rugby tackles her from behind and she learns her lesson or something. She’s all ready for the Yeti Triathlon but MacGyver is the only one who knows where they are, a fact she seems to respect. She follows him and eventually they stop for a breather/character development. He tries to impress his newly acquired date and yes, it’s a date now by all known MacGyver standards. He shows her how to get water from the ground using the hollow shaft of his fishing pole. Water – chicks dig water, MacGyver. Especially in a survival situation. Plus, she’s pretty much at his mercy so she kind of has to watch him attempt to drink dingy water through a makeshift straw on a wooded hillside so that later she can say ‘I told you so’ when he develops spine-crippling seismic diarrhea cramps. MacGyver must fulfill the expectations of his gender in this situation but like a bower bird, she must refuse to be impressed by the first display. You can tell she’s not too into it and still refuses to speak to him, which is probably the best indicator I’ve found for when a woman is not putting up with any of your shit. Strike Two for MacGyver’s wilderness dating tactics. Later, as the two stop for the night to make a lean-to and fire (if that doesn’t impress her, nothing will right Mac?), we find out that Bigfoot can indeed swim as we’re treated to the image of two large hairy legs wading through the shallows to step foot on the same spot Mac and the mysterious young woman came ashore at earlier.
A hokey meet-cute scene around the fire occurs with MacGyver still trying to coax a single word out of his date. This is how most of his dates go and the man loves a puzzle after all. He also doesn’t know when to say no, so he keeps bugging her until he asks her in Russian if she can speak that language. She does, but she also speaks English, which I knew that you would guess she had the ability to do all along because that would make for a pretty unfulfilling premise if they couldn’t communicate thoughts quickly and succinctly for a 45 minute television show, right? She tells a story about stowing away on board the ship from Russia to Alaska with her cousin Alexander and all was well until they stopped in that cove and “it” came aboard and proceeded to kill Alexander and presumably all the others. If you’re thinking “it” is a metaphor for Big Government Interference, congratulations, you win a tinfoil hat but I’m not sure who’s right here. MacGyver doles out whatever amount of sympathy for her plight he thinks will help win his date over after which she says he reminds her of her father, which makes MacGyver smile like a creep. They are interrupted when three Native Canadians come upon their fire while out checking their trap lines together. Night time is apparently the best time to check your trap lines for reasons not clearly given. They stop to warm up and tell ghost stories around the fire about large primates who hate people. They’re probably not talking about the Canadian Labour party but then again, who knows. With the comforting thought of a xenophobic racist primate out stalking them in the woods and is in all likelihood a trickster lobbyist employed by environmentally destructive companies, they conclude the evening and fall asleep shortly after hearing more caterwauling and odd lights off in the distant forest. Flash forward to daybreak and a peaceful, non-eventful sleep gives way to Mac and the girl (her name is revealed as Karin) waking up fresh and ready to get back on the trail. They find the trappers have already moved out without waking them. Good Canadian guests, in other words.
Back at the tracking station, Pete is getting humiliated by the faith he placed in his guy when representing him to the Department of the Interior. She’s like “I don’t know what’s keeping him from making that next beacon placement” where previously, we learned that the beacons are about 20 miles apart. Quite a hike over rugged terrain in any case, but then again that didn’t stop the other people from making progress. Pete probably didn’t share that MacGyver is easily distracted by puzzles, but he makes up some other excuses like weather interference and bureaucratic red tape or whatever.
Back in the wild, MacGyver is leading Karin along when he hears a noise. “Do you know what that is? That’s your ticket to Juno!” he proclaims to the girl. They head towards the noise and find some pipe welders hooking up an illegal tap. Uh-oh Captain Planet, looks like Exxon is cutting corners again. The welding torches explain the lights that they saw the night before. As they approach, Karin suddenly pulls MacGyver to the ground explaining that these are the men from the ship and they are indeed not dead but alive. As they survey the scene from behind cover, they realize that these people are stealing oil and pumping it out to the ship in the cove nearby. I don’t need to tell you that this is enough to make MacGyver’s mullet turn Captain Planet green with righteous indignation. Karin waits behind as Cap’n Canada heads down closer to get a better look. No sooner has he left her sight she gets caught by someone sneaking up on her. She screams in her distinctive way for about the third or fourth time in the episode, which makes me realize she’s got a great scream (something which MacGyver looks for in a woman) and thus, why she was probably cast. Not everyone can pull off a good TV or movie scream and she does it wonderfully. The casting director did well here for that reason. The men drag Karin before the rest of the people and interrogate her before then taking her down the footpath to where the ship is moored. The guy doing the welding says “Aw, do we have to kill her? She’s a little girl,” to which the second man replies with the best line of the show so far: “She’s a little witness.” That’s a good line right there and it’s just too bad that it’s wasted on a MacGyver episode about Soviet Yeti Ship Captains.
Mac runs down through the underbrush to head the pair off and thinking quickly like a Game Warden from the Department of Big Gov, uses the line from his fishing pole to stretch tight across the path. He sets it perfect at a height too low to snag the girl but just high enough to catch her male captor across the face. Better hope that’s 20 lb test line, Mac! Using the fishing pole bent behind backwards along the foot path, as soon as her captor gets snared, Mac lets the fishing pole go and it whips the pursuing man across the face. Then like a ruffian, Mac is on top of him to deliver the knockout punch. That’ll teach ‘em to not have the proper permits! These people don’t fear the Mounties as much as they do the agents from Parks and Rec for good reason.
Back at the tracking station, Pete and the Interior Department rep become puzzled when MacGyver has three of his beacons come online at the same time and all within close proximity to one another. Too close together, Pete realizes as he insists MacGyver is in trouble. Holy shit, Pete is perceptive as hell. That’s why we’d make a good team. Just me, MacGyver and Pete forever solving mysteries. We’d go by a majority rules system where any two could override the other two except when MacGyver’s spidey-sense is firing off shit; you just gotta trust him despite your intuition at that point. Using the coordinates, Pete is on the next flight out in order to come to the rescue.
Back in the wilderness, Karin and MacGyver are attempting to make it to a hilltop so “Perceptive” Pete Thorton will be sure to see them when he gets there. It’s a shot in the dark but the two know each other well enough that it’s basically a sure thing. Pete’s gotta be there, he’s just gotta be. Mac knows it, I know it, Pete knows it, Henry Winkler damn sure knows it. He won’t show up early, or late, but exactly at the time you need him. As they near the top of the hill they hear a roar. Coming down the path at them with the full power of a disinformation campaign backed by the corporate sector is that fucking Sasquatch bounding in pell-mell fashion towards them with the indignant anger of a wealthy politician running against campaign finance reform. There’s no running this time, it’s just Mullet vs. Squatch in a head-on Canadian Clash for the Cache. This thing starts slamming MacGyver around like a doll tossing him here and there before setting its sights on Karin, who screams her iconic scream one last time for the camera.
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Dazed but not out of fight just yet, MacGyver loosens his belt and jumps on the creature’s back as he begins strangling it from behind with regulations and reforms. The creature howls like a pork barrel project being omitted from the final form of a bill before it succeeds in flipping him off its back and with it. As Mac is flung asunder, he manages to pull loose the head of the Squatch who we now see only a man in a suit (duh). He roars with renewed rage and we see he’s got a Tiger Talk Boy looking thing attached to his vocal cords with an amplifier to give him his monstrous low-pitched growl.
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The ruse is up but MacGyver still needs to die of course, so the man in the suit rushes him once more. This time, Mac grabs a veto log to halt the spending measure jut into the man’s chest which propels him pole-vault fashion clear over MacGyver and down the steep path where he is rendered unconscious. How does he become unconscious? Not sure! The show never explained how someone becomes unconscious from this. Maybe he just had the wind knocked out of him? Maybe he wished to play dead and signal he’d had enough of getting tossed down a mountain path. It’s barely important either way. All that matters is he’s conveniently unconscious now.
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With Sasquatch debunked as a Scooby-Doo swindle so criminals can get away with bypassing federal regulations, MacGyver looks astonished at the mask which he still holds in his hands. He tries it on and becomes the new Sasquatch. However, he can’t rest for long. Up on the hill, one of the men from the pipeline welding operations points a rifle in his direction from the crest of the hill above. Unbelievably, or entirely believably actually, Pete arrives on the scene at that critical moment pointing out to the pilot the man with the gun drawn below. “There!” he exclaims as the pilot uses the skid from his helicopter in a swinging maneuver to punt the man down the mountain like a football. "Action" Pete bounds from the co-pilot seat and down the hill where MacGyver and Karin tiredly hold each other upright. Spotting the Sasquatch passed out down the trail, Pete is astonished. “What is THAT?” he exclaims. Handing him the ape mask, MacGyver shrugs and says “It’s a long story”. Pete looks astounded at the mask and tries it on, becoming the new Sasquatch. They head back to the base.
In the epilogue to wrap this caper, MacGyver concludes his date with Karin as she thanks him. He gives her a very Harrison Ford-like thank you as she departs, which is how most dates with MacGyver end. Not even a kiss on the cheek. “Chopper is ready in the next 15 minutes”, the Dept of Interior woman then says. “Think you can get these beacons planted this time?” They share a laugh as she chides him on whether he really believed in Bigfoot and he begrudgingly admits that the guy had him going for a while to which she responds with disbelief. “Why not? Legend has to start some place,” he reminds her. The moment is interrupted by the loud bestial wailing of a Squatch in the distance. Confused, they look about until Pete “Sasquatch” Thorton impishly appears from behind a row of shitters with a boombox broadcasting the wailing sounds of Bigfoot. Fucking trickster. Pete explains that they found it connected to the PA system on the ship and the pirates were using it to scare anyone away from their operation. The tape is ejected and playfully tossed into MacGyver’s hands. As if on cue, a long monstrous wail is heard from the woods across the lake because the legend of Bigfoot is too big and too dumb to let go even for executive producer Henry Winkler.
