Would you like to spy on your neighbors? Use a remote laser microphone. Sounds hard? It’s not like that, just watch a few episodes of the MacGyver series.
Every kid in the 90s who followed the fortunes of brave secret agent Angus MacGyver was full of admiration for him. Only Mac was able to get out of trouble with a Swiss army knife, duct tape, and other random items lying around. Improvised inventions and home remedies to survive danger are present in every episode. MacGyver was the hero all the kids in my backyard followed, and a pioneer in passing on lifehacks.
He was born on March 23, 1951 in Mission City, Minnesota. At the age of ten, he lost his father and grandmother in a car accident, his mother, who was helped by Mac’s grandfather, Harry Jackson, took care of his upbringing. When he was twelve he suffered a traumatic experience after his friend Jesse died from an accidentally loaded gun. Since then, he has become an opponent, although he was forced to use it several times.
The series character is played by Richard Dean Anderson, who is a year older than MacGyver. Although Mac is undoubtedly a handsome man and women fainted at the sight of him, he didn’t have a girlfriend. There was a potential love interest at one point in the show’s third season, but fans expressed disdain at the show’s change of pace.
An interesting fact is the origin of the hero’s surname. Originally, the show’s creator, Lee David Zlotoff, wanted to give the character a masculine name, so he intended to call him “Guy”. It was suggested that he add “Mac” as a reference to McDonald’s as it was popular at the time. “McGuy” didn’t sound very good, so after the writers toyed with the idea, MacGyver was born.
After a while, the writers had a hard time figuring out new and exciting ways for MacGyver to get out of the way. John Rich (producer) offered fans money to develop scripts that they could use. One successful entry shows how MacGyver could repair a leaking cooling system on a vehicle by hammering an egg into the radiator. When it gets hot and hard, it will seal the hole.
In 2016, a new version of the classic series about the secret agent Mac was released. It is an action adventure drama about a man in his twenties (Lucas Till) who creates the Department of External Services, a secret organization in the US government, and in it uses his extraordinary talent for unconventional problem solving and huge scientific knowledge about saving lives. At that time, five seasons of the remake were produced.
This ingenious, defensive agent has remained a part of pop culture since his TV series ended in 1992. It’s hard now to find such a clever and credible hero as MacGyver. Happy Mac!