I like Flame's End. One of my favorites from the first season, in fact, though I'm not quite sure if I can pinpoint why. It was simple and sweet, but with suspense and backstory. Amy was the first of the (many) former girlfriends we will come across, and I liked her, and her relationship with Mac. They had started as friends, and their friendship remained, even though they were so different in personality and had separated so long ago. She suited him, somehow.
The backstory was interesting, but over the seasons we get so many glimpses of various pieces of his college education that it is hard to fit them all together. In this story we get the sense that whatever college Mac and Amy and Tim went to together, it is in/near Westport Beach, which is also Amy's hometown (her Dad's house is there), and which is a plane flight away from Los Angeles. As I mentioned in the "Notes of Interest," the (as yet) unnamed college could have been near San Francisco, and his degree could have been in physics (he "studied physics"), and the background music could place his senior year at around 1973 or 1974, but consistency gets difficult later on. Right now I am working on Ugly Duckling, in which Mac points out the seat he used to sit in when he was in Professor Willis's class, and they are clearly still in LA, since he also keeps popping into the Federal Building to chat with Pete. So... two different colleges? Post-grad degree perhaps? I haven't quite figured out how to put them together yet, but we're going to have to deal with more references (like Hell Week) in the future. Mac took a lot of college classes.
But continuity aside, I like the little peeks into Mac's past. And the peeks into his personality. I love the opening scenes where he's playing table hockey with Susan. I think this was one of the earliest moments where a bit of RDA's own personality was beginning to peek through into MacGyver.
There weren't a lot of MacGyverisms in this one, but the story moved smoothly and had a few twists and turns (Poor Bonnie!) (Bad Tim!). I do wonder about some of the editing - for example when they were trapped in the disposal chamber and Amy's line about how many minutes they have left before the nuclear waste comes pouring in was, "With 59 minutes to go. Mac, we've got nine." But if you read her lips, it was originally scripted as "We've got two." I wonder if they changed something in the story, or if they just figured out after the fact that two minutes wasn't enough time to get the clock to count down.
Overall, I felt it was a good example of classic early MacGyver - a fun ride, and still a favorite.
Slightly off topic, and speaking of Ugly Duckling... Does anyone here have the script for that episode? Over the years I have picked up a number of the original scripts from various places, but I don't have Ugly Duckling. As I said, I'm working on that episode now, and I notice that the "buyer" (of the missile) in the episode is never addressed by name and is not listed in the credits. I was just curious if the original script ever gave him a name (the way Zia was named in the script for To Be a Man but was never addressed by name in the episode.) Anybody know?
Carry on...
Kate