In Review: MacGyver (S5 – E1) Resort + Desi + Riley + Window Cleaner + Witness

Synopsis: MacGyver and the team infiltrate a glamorous hotel used as an international hideout for criminals to find a woman with vital information on Gustavo Salazar. However, their target has a new secret identity, including a completely new face.

The Story

In the wake of the Codex mission. MacGyver and the team are still having trust issues while also dealing with a power vacuum left behind. In order to get the team working together again. This mission sees them having to pose as international criminals in order to infiltrate the Zurich Grand Hotel and Spa, which is a big front and a safe house. The mission is simply to rescue Paula Matos who happens to have incriminating evidence on one Gustavo Salazar.

The mission is complicated by the fact that Miss Matos has recently undergone plastic surgery.

The Acting

Tristin Mays and Levy Tran take much of the focus this week as Riley and Desi have a lot of baggage to unpack. Subsequently, they get the spying part of the story. The two actors do a pretty decent job of portraying the trust issues that both these characters are dealing with. As do Lucas Till and Henry Ian Cusick for their part of the Story. MacGyver and Russ have the additional problem of dealing with Vincent Broulee. It’s fair to say that Russ as always questions MacGyver’s judgment when he slackens their control over Vincent.

Jessie T. Usher puts in a slick and slippery performance as Vincent Broulee. This guy knows the Grand and all of its codewords and procedures.

Overall

This was a fairly good opening episode for the season, which sees the team still dealing with the aftermath of Codex. The Zurich Grand Hotel and Spa is obviously very much inspired by The Continental Hotel featured in the John Wick movies. This trope doesn’t feel out of place in the series. In fact, a series about a hotel that houses international criminals and spies would make for an interesting series in and of its own right.

The fight scenes were fast and well-executed as they always are. Especially the sequence towards the end of the episode when Desi is fighting on the staircase. We get a few fun MacGyverisms in the episode, but no matter how hard Lucas Til and the writer’s trie. They just cannot seem to capture the same magic that the original series had when it comes to executing or explaining them. That criticism aside. This re-imagining continues to do its own thing with the character and the team he has built around him is likable and fun to watch. Though we could maybe have done with a little less of the emotional baggage and he said she said CW soap opera stuff.