MacGyver gets one thing right, the ability to see solutions to problems in shit just lying around. But it’s stops there. Like showing an OODA loop with just the (re)orientation part and montaging away the looping before/after, which is the actual interesting part.
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I’d love to see an engineering version of House. I bet it would be surprisingly popular. Hollywood underestimates the dramatic potential of the material and the intelligence of average audiences for appreciating it. If House could work so can this.
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Props though, at least there’s real vaguely plausible stuff in the show. Most shows reduce tech to one Hacker God who solves all problems by typing really really fast to hack computers. The tech scene always ends with, “ok, I’m in!”
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Maybe it’s because unlike cop or medical shows which have a victim or patient at the center, tech mysteries don’t center a human by default.
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Replying to @DPritchett
Yeah I wonder why nobody has tried portraying engineering that way. I’ve been in live situations that played out that way. They do it for cop and medical dramas but not tech. Tech is always a montage at best, a black box at worst.
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Maybe this will change with robots. Robots can be sympathetic figures. The Asimov robot stories were usually tech troubleshooting though he called it robopsychology. The Susan Calvin character was more mechanic than therapist.
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Also weird that bad tech portrayals always focus on hackers breaking “military grade encryption” which is one of the few things they don’t actually do. At least never directly. At least show some social engineering or man-in-the-middle mechanics.
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The medical equivalent would be a doctor saying “this is stage 4 metastatic cancer, but I’m going in!” And then causing remission by stabbing the patient repeatedly.
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Watching some original MacGyver now. I never did watch it before. I like Richard Dean Anderson better than Lucas Till. Possibly because he’s older so character seems like a better balance of experience and genius.
It’s the same level montaging though. Same meh quality-level show
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Actually one show that I think did MacGyver better than MacGyver itself is Burn Notice. The “when you’re a spy...” voiceovers were great. Jeffery Donovan is more likable than either MacGyver.
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Old MacGyver doesn’t iterate or bug-fix either. But it seems to suit the 80s vibe better.
Also just noticing the extent to which 80s tv/movies had a Vietnam hangover. This 80s MacGyver is basically a geek Rambo.
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Replying to
Old MacGyver: older, decently macho, Bond-like womanizing, mentor to kids, no inner life, no long-arc motivation, geek skills seem kinda handyman++/blue collar energy, solo.
New MacGyver: younger, emo kid, angsty over exes, daddy issues, MITish educated type genius, squad player
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Medical dramas and cop shows totally manage it. It’s a choice to not portray in geek shows.
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