MacGyver

CBS is offering the entire first season of my teenage favorite--MacGyver, the small screen Indiana Jones--via online streaming. I think I'm in heaven...

Richard Dean Anderson's picture never made it to my bedroom wall (nobody's did). But a couple pictures of him and Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele did get collected and stored way. Because... well... they were just so dashing and fun to look at!

So far I've watched the first six of the streamed MacGyver episodes. It's amazing to see them through adult instead of teenage eyes. The show was quite liberal, even for its time, but still... a show with such fundamental optimism, a hero of such purity, and an underlying theme of the cold-war driven belief that people dreamed of going to America would never make it to the screen these days. It was a reflection of its time--the sunny patriotism of the Reagan years, when it seemed we all believed in the power of American ingenuity and spirit.

And yes, my adult eyes also saw that the writing was uneven (depending on who had the script that week), and the dialogue could be groan-inducing at times. But the thing is, today I still like MacGyver the character for the same reasons I always did: he's blazingly smart, confident but understated, resourceful, witty, both appreciative and respectful/protective of women, and possessed of an essential elegance whether he's up to his elbows in grease or wearing nothing but a towel.

Hmm... funny to look back and realize that almost every man in "real life" that I've been strongly attracted to as an adult has had most of those same characteristics.

And here I'd thought I was all grown up, now... What an embarrassing discovery! ;)