KAREN BLAKE

Karen Blake was a DXS agent, ID number 327718. As a child, she used to love to play "international spy," imagining herself in wonderful and glamorous settings and situations. Perhaps those early games led her to pursue a government career in espionage. Her brother also found his career as a spy, and both worked for the DXS under Pete Thornton.

When MacGyver returned from a mission to East Berlin with a highly sensitive encoded microfilm, Karen was tasked with meeting him as he arrived by helicopter at the Cavitt-Tinglof Tower downtown. She pulled up in a sporty red Porsche convertible, pretending to be a close friend in order to whisk him away from three agents who were awaiting his arrival. She delivered him to the DXS safe house, a large gated mansion, where he was met by Pete Thornton, who would personally handle the debriefing, and Mrs. Chung, a cryptanalyst assigned to decode the microfilm MacGyver carried.

Before their arrival, however, Quayle, a foreign agent working for an organization with ties to East Germany, had learned of the scheduled debriefing and had rigged the safe house with a series of booby-traps which he controlled from a central location in the basement. With a grudge against MacGyver, it was Quayle's intention to recover the microfilm and to humiliate and eliminate MacGyver, and he had used blackmail to recruit Karen Blake as his "perfect collaborator in his delicious charade."

Karen's brother, her only family, had been captured while on assignment in Czechoslovakia, and Karen was told that he would be executed unless she cooperated with Quayle. Her orders had been to retrieve the piece of intelligence from MacGyver without anyone getting hurt, and she reluctantly agreed to save her brother's life, but she was unaware of Quayle's blood feud and his plan to seek revenge against MacGyver. Consequently, she became trapped inside the house with the others.

Quayle took great delight in his scheme, considering it a game. As he triggered various traps, including windows and doors that slammed shut and locked, electronic devices that short circuited and exploded, machine guns activated by motion detectors, and video and audio surveillance in nearly every room, he gleefully challenged MacGyver to come find him, and he forced Karen to act as his spy to keep him informed of MacGyver's whereabouts and activities.

MacGyver became suspicious of Karen's behavior and deduced that she was collaborating with Quayle. However, when he confronted her and learned the whole story, he proposed that she help him to catch Quayle and to then use him as a bargaining chip to trade for her brother. If a trade could not be arranged, MacGyver promised to go to Czechoslovakia personally and to get her brother out. Scared for her brother and terrified of Quayle, Karen put her faith in MacGyver and agreed to cooperate with him.

Together they made their way to the basement of the house where Karen helped MacGyver devise a trap for Quayle. They cut Quayle's power supply and lured him into the main power room where a makeshift water cannon was aimed to force him against the rewired electrical panel. When Karen stepped forward to assure Quayle that she was still on his side, it appeared she would turn against MacGyver once more, but her intention was to position Quayle in front of the electrical panel, and when MacGyver released the water cannon, the electrical shock knocked Quayle unconscious.

Presumably with Quayle in custody and with MacGyver's promise of help, Karen would return to her position at the DXS and her brother would be released.

Portrayed by: Wendy Schaal

Cross Reference: Cavitt-Tinglof Tower, Mrs. Chung, DXS, DXS Safe House, Quayle

Episode Reference: Deathlock