MACGYVER Review: “Fish Scaler”

MACGYVER and the gang are preparing for their evaluations with their new director, Matty (Meredith Eaton), It’s also their first operation with her so they’ve got a lot to prove. Their mission is to capture Douglas Bishop (Frank Whaley), #6 on FBI’s most wanted list. The Phoenix team has to get to Bishop first because he seems to be in cahoots with a crooked FBI agent.

They track Bishop down using Riley’s new facial recognition program via a viral YouTube video captured in a liquor store. MacGyver and Jack investigate the liquor store while Riley and Bozer stay back for support and evaluations with Matty. MacGyver and Jack pose as Hollywood agents in order to question the star of the video, Ilene. Ilene (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), admits to not only knowing Bishop, but that he comes in to flirt with her and give her drawings he’s made. The drawings lead MacGyver and Jack to his apartment. He’s already gone when they arrive but the FBI is on the same trail and run right into Jack and MacGyver. MacGyver and Jack are detained by the FBI and suspect these agents could be the crooked agents. They escape in the best MacGyver way, he hot wire’s the agent’s car while it’s moving! They catch Bishop at the bus station trying to make a run for it. But there’s a twist, Bishop says he’s being blackmailed by the FBI.

Meanwhile, back at Phoenix, Matty is grilling Bozer and Riley.  Matty admits to knowing Riley’s past hacking crimes which involve hacking the Pentagon! But Matty isn’t firing her because she wants to use that talent for good. Matty gets a phone call from the Regional Director of the FBI, Martin Dryer, who tells Matty that one of the agents that detained MacGyver and Jack is the crooked agent.

This episode kept me on my toes. Most action/crime shows don’t keep you guessing. They usually tell you who the bad guy is right away. But with Bishop I couldn’t tell. He did a great job of playing the victim but there was something about his face I couldn’t trust, great job casting him. And technically, he was the bad guy considering he was on the run for so many years. I did like the ‘love story’ they gave Bishop and Ilene. But I felt like they could have done without the scene at the end when Bishop is about to be taken into custody and he apparently tells Ilene ‘everything’. I don’t know how I would have taken a guy who flirts with me on occasion telling me he was going to jail for being blackmailed by the FBI. Not something you want to talk about before a first date. It seemed like they tried too hard to close that storyline.

I also had a hard time getting a sense of who Matty was, she seems to enjoy patronizing the agents. Her character is a trope, the angry boss. But her delivery of this character is lackluster there were times when I found it hard to watch her monologues. But hopefully she will find her stride and make the character her own.

There was one hole in the story that stood out to me. The regional director of the FBI, Martin Dryer, picks up Bishop from MacGyver and Jack when he could have just had the agent who was scheduled to pick him up do it and then get rid of Bishop. Why did he expose himself? MacGyver and Jack make the point that he can’t get away now. It seems like this was a rookie mistake on his part or on the part of the writers.

This episode does set the stage for how the team will operate under their new leadership. And gives us something to look forward to, finding out what happened between Jack and Matty. And it seems like Bozer is shaping up to be one of Matty’s favorites. We’ll see if this pattern continues in the next episode.

Season 1, Episode 14 (S01E14)
MacGyver airs Fridays at 8PM on CBS

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Kiana is a self-proclaimed pop culture connoisseur that loves live music, breakfast in bed, and hiking. If she were a TV character she’d be a hybrid of Tina Belcher and Liz Lemon.
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Kiana G. | Contributor