MacGyver: #138 The Kill Zone (S3E11)

Episode Title: The Kill Zone
Episode Number: S3E11

Ranking: 138 of 138

CBS.com

Summary: MacGyver and Pete face off against a stubborn scientist who refuses to allow her deadly, mutated superbug to be destroyed.

Quotable Moment: 

Pete: What a loss.

Best Part: I really enjoyed the faith and loyalty Pete and Mac had in one another this episode.  Their friendship is really well represented here.

Worst Part: Dr. Millhouse’s and Ace’s last moments.

Thoughts:

• This opening scene could be part of an episode of SG1  - it’s almost as if I’m watching a mulleted Jack O’Neill on a mission for the Air Force.  Except, you know, it’s the eighties and he’s in a helicopter, not a Goa’uld glider, but still!!! 

• First look at the devastation is a field full of dead sheep.  It’s not even two minutes into the episode and I’m already monumentally depressed.  The next 45 minutes are going to be an absolute pleasure, I’m sure…

• I do love Pete coming to Mac’s defense there at the beginning.

• Seriously, though… cranky Richard Dean Anderson working with the military, shouting orders and expecting them to be obeyed?  Are you sure we’re not watching SG1?  And I’ll stop making comparisons to Stargate now – I’m only attempting to escape my current turmoil by distracting myself…  It’s a coping mechanism. 

• Okay, just keeping count here – 7 minutes in and we have a dead bunny, a dead bear, a dead deer, oh, and 900 dead sheep!  This is most definitely why this episode is at the bottom of my list!
• I had forgotten how well this episode portrays the strong friendship between Mac and Pete.  I love that aspect of it!

• 14:25: Awwww, Ace…. I don’t even know if I can handle this! 

• I really don’t like Dr. Millhouse.  Her presumptuousness and arrogance is offensive, and that she is so ready and willing to play with people’s lives is astounding to me.  She’s the kind of person you don’t want to think about actually existing, but they do.  It really is chilling, isn’t it, how one person’s lapse of judgment can so quickly destroy countless lives?  This episode, horrible as it is to me, does pack a punch in the ethical department, and makes a good point.

• My husband is sitting with me while I watch this, and he says that the lab technician who instructs Mac on the decontamination process sounds like Spongebob.  I just had to pause the episode and try not to asphyxiate from the giggles as Husband Dearest started saying, in a too-perfect Spongebob voice, “Mr. MacGyver?  Would you like a Krabby Pattie, Mr. MacGyver?”  If there’s one thing I can count on when I’m watching a show with him, it’s that he’ll find something to laugh about, even in an episode dealing so much with death.  Maybe I can do this, after all.

• 20:00: Thank goodness MacGyver intervened before Dragon Lady could test her demonic Miracle Gro on that poor rat!  If nothing else, this episode increases the respect that I have for Mac.  A guy who will stand up for a little white lab rat is definitely a hero in my book!

• Millhouse’s argument doesn’t track… yes, it would be great to end world hunger, but in this case, the ends won’t necessarily justify the means.  Mac was right – what if it had fallen in a city?  Thousands, even millions, of innocent human lives could have been lost, and that can’t be justified so easily.

• 30:00: Okay, she’s back to testing Stuart Little again.  This woman… she just plays with lives – animals, human – like they’re nothing, using altruistic jargon to try to justify her experiments.  I’m not saying that her heart isn’t in the right place, but she goes way too far without regard for consequences.

• She used her dog to smuggle a bug out in the past?  Has she no morals?

• 35:00: This episode is absolutely heartbreaking.  I couldn’t remain so angry at her when I saw how devastated she was at what her pride did to her poor puppy.  This episode is a tragedy on so many levels.  Such a waste – Millhouse could have done so much had she gone about it the right way.

• At 40 minutes, when she thanks them for saving her work, I was actually close to tears.  I’d been so fixated on hating her for what she was willing to risk and what she did to Ace that I’d forgotten that everyone has a fatal flaw of some kind.  Hers happened to be hubris.  But I think we get a glimpse, right at the end, of the part of her who genuinely cared.  Again, I will hand it to this episode for dealing with some big issues here.

• MacGyver sure cuts it close this time… those last few minutes were crazy suspenseful.

• Pete’s comment at the end sums up everything that happened in this episode perfectly: “What a loss.”  It’s such a shame that the doctor refused to listen to reason.  If you think about it, she might have very well gone on to end world hunger, but because of her senseless death, that discovery was put further from humanity’s grasp. 

Nitpicks:    

• This is really a question more than a nitpick.  In reality, would the military actually agree to have a civilian doing something like this for them, or would he be too much of a liability?
• I don't understand why it was necessary for Mac to have to tell Pete not to touch the deadly superbug.  Shouldn't he have known better than to try to touch it?!

 My Conclusion?

I literally had to force myself to rewatch this episode.  Out of all 139 episodes of MacGyver, there is not one episode that I can say that I truly hate – except this one.  Even “The Mountain of Youth,” which I consider to be fundamentally broken, is leagues better than this one.  And don’t get me wrong – it’s not because it’s not well written, or that the plot’s not interesting.  At its heart, there’s much less wrong with it than quite a few other episodes.  It’s got a pretty clever plot that dabbles in science fiction – a story that wouldn’t feel at all out of place in an episode of Stargate: SG1 or even Doctor Who (though, probably an earlier episode of Doctor Who with a lower budget).  The acting is great, the moral questions run deep, and I absolutely loathe it.  Why?  It’s horrific, absolutely depressing, terrifying, and chilling – not in a good way, either.  This story positively drips with carnage, and while it does propose a powerful message about the  dangers of pursuing knowledge and even the greater good at all cost, it’s much too heavy, far too painful, and oddly out of place to make it an episode worth returning to.  There’s no real resolution, at least not one that’s satisfying.  And I am well aware that real life never guarantees any sort of a “happy ending,” but this isn’t real life!  We need something to offset the despair.

Of course, I’m a huge animal lover – as I know MacGyver is, and the people who made the show are, don’t get me wrong – but seeing such pain and devastation, all those poor creatures, and that poor, sweet border collie’s heart-wrenching, painful death… I can’t handle it, even if the deaths are in no way portrayed as anything but horrible, even if it’s supposed to make us think.  Just the thought of poor Ace’s death makes my stomach twist.  There’s a such thing as too much angst and death, especially in a show like MacGyver, which certainly has its dark moments, but is, at its heart, centered around optimism.  In the same vein, this episode also plays upon a fear that I think lurks in many of us – and has definitely been a thorn in my side for years – that of growing old, losing control of our lives and bodies, of expiring before our time…

On a less emotionally-charged level, another reason this episode never set right with me is the same reason episodes like “Deathlock” and “The Human Factor” are relatively low on my list.  Although I am a huge sci-fi fan – I adore shows like SG1 and Doctor Who – I don’t think it’s a genre that really suits MacGyver.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in the eighties, but I find it frustrating when a show that is not science fiction tries to reach so far past its limitations technologically.  It just seems a little too out of place for a show like MacGyver, which, while I appreciate its ambition, I feel is better suited within its own time and technology.  I think I could see this same episode on SG1 and still hate it the same, but at the same time feel like it is at least at home where it is – if that makes a bit of sense.

I realize I had some pretty strong and mostly negative things to say about this episode, so just remember that this is just my opinion.  Also, this was, as I said earlier, the only episode that really bothered me this badly.  Negative Nellie won’t be a recurring voice in this blog, I assure you!  “Kill Zone” just hit some very raw nerves from the moment Mac walked into the devastated animal graveyard to the moment the episode ended.

*Note: I made the above observations before I re-watched the episode.  After watching it again, I realize that it’s not quite so horrible as I’d made it out to be.  I still don’t like it, and I will never watch it again, but it makes some very poignant points.  And again, it’s not at the bottom of my list because it’s a poorly done episode or it’s a bad episode… It’s just too difficult for me to process completely.

Next time, we’ll be leaving this ranking category (“Nope.”) and will be moving on to the next level up (“Fatally Flawed”) with an episode from season 7 that, in all honesty, should have probably stayed ‘lost!’  

What are your thoughts on this episode?  Where would you rank it on your own scale?  I’d love to discuss it with you in more depth!