Tuesday, January 06, 2015

"The MacGyver Project" My Favorite New Place On The Web

For years now, I have semiregularly done random Internet searches for anything "MacGyver"-related.  Even 22 years since the series went off the air, I maintain my Mama Grizzly connection to that series just as I did as a teenager, beaming with pride when the series gets a positive plug and scratching and hissing like a cornered cat when the series gets dissed.  I'm not sure why I have such a personal attachment to this series but I certainly do, and at some point early last fall I had a "why didn't I think of that?" moment upon stumbling into a fellow Blogspot website called "The MacGyver Project", where the blogrunner counts down "MacGyver" episodes from his least favorite to his favorite with in-depth reviews and color commentary.

I didn't think there was anyone else alive who ranked the series' episodes in such a methodical pecking order, which I have been doing with substantial revisions dating back to 1993 when I completed recording all of the early episodes on VHS.  Usually every time I view the episodes again, which in recent years has been once every three or four years, I reconfigure my lists as the passage of time has improved my thoughts on some episodes and diminished my thoughts on others.  The author of "The MacGyver Project" has apparently not viewed these episodes in quite some time before making his reviews and has acknowledged he's walked away with different impressions of some episodes than he went in with, which will hopefully lead him to reconfigure his list at the project's end.  Either way, it's a fun and ambitious project, and I've learned a few bits of trivia from his reviews, and some plot holes and other assorted goofs have been brought to my attention as well.

So do his list and mine overlap smoothly?  Somewhat.  When I first got into comparing favorite and least favorite episodes with "MacGyver" fans back in college in the now-defunct MacGyver Homepage Chatroom, I was shocked to discover that--gasp!--not every MacGyver fan had the same impressions about various episodes as I did.  Many episodes I held up in the highest esteem were not necessarily fan favorites and episodes I didn't care for had legions of devoted followers.  One regular on the MacGyver Homepage Chatroom who generally had great contributions and insights about the show proudly proclaimed to the board that her favorite episode was "MacGyver's Women", my least favorite episode.  Wow!  Since then, having compared notes with dozens of fans, I've found that there's no general consensus about too many episodes and the best you can hope for is that your thoughts are generally compatible with other fans on two-thirds of the episodes.  That's roughly been the case with me and the "MacGyver Project" blogrunner, and I guess a series with the range of stories that "MacGyver" took on can expect to have a diverse audience with varied thoughts on favorite episodes.

Disagreements aside, "The MacGyver Project" is well worth a visit for any true "MacGyver" fan, and there's a comments section to sound off if you agree or disagree with the author's review.  I highly recommend you give it a look. 
http://themacgyverproject.blogspot.com/

3 Comments:

Blogger Nicholas Sweedo said...

Wow, that's high praise - thank you! The fact that a fan as knowledgeable and passionate as yourself enjoys the blog makes me feel proud of it. That's a good idea to re-rank them at the end - I'll probably do that, though by that point I may have to rewatch some of them again!

8:14 AM  
Blogger Nicholas Sweedo said...

Also I was curious how you did find the site - was it through a random google search? I've found that if I google "MacGyver blog," it's the first thing that comes up, but if I google just "MacGyver", it may come up on the 7th page or the 25th page depending on the day. Sometimes googling certain episodes (like if I google "MacGyver Flame's End") will yield a good result.

8:17 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Not a problem. It's a great site and deserves a shoutout. I found your site on a random Google search about MacGyver. It was basically just dumb luck. I believe you were about 25 episodes in when I found you and glad I didn't get in on it any later during the progression than I did. Keep up the good work.

8:43 PM  

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