The Escape

Episode:  020

Production No.: 40191-020

Airdate: 16 April 1986

Writers: Fred McKnight & Stephen Kandel

Director: Don Chaffey

Nielsen Ratings:  15.7 rating / 25 share / 1st (21st overall)

EPISODE

MacGyver’s elaborate plot to spring a missionary from a North African jail works perfectly… until MacGyver discovers that nothing is as it seems.

CAST

MACGYVERISMS

Used olive oil, news paper, cotton wool and soccer ball to make a paper-mâché hot air balloon.	Used a small knife as a screwdriver.
Attached a spatula to a ceiling fan and used a tape recorder to record the “helicopter” sound.	Used electrical wires from refrigerator, metal tub with PCP mixture in it and a large ice block to create a time delayed explosion.
Put a packet of PCP in jacket pocket and poured more PCP on the outside flap so it could be lit to make a wearable bomb.	Used gun powder from some hand-grenades to make a “fuse” leading to the rest of the grenades under a truck full of weapons.

TRIVIA

• This episode was the first time Richard Dean Anderson and John De Lancie had met. They went on to be good friends and worked together on ‘Legend’ and ‘Stargate: SG-1’ TV series.
• Kristina Wayborn was the ‘Bond Girl’ beside Roger Moore’s James Bond in Octopussy. She shares this distinction with Teri Hatcher, who was a bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan.
• The prison MacGyver breaks out of is called ‘Harosh Prison’.
• This episode is the first time MacGyver specifically tells someone to call him “Mac”.

MEMORABLE QUOTES

• Let me tell you something comrade I’ve never hit a woman before, but you came darn close. ~MacGyver
• Brother Brian wasn’t giving away any bargains. Some of this stuff probably dates from the Boer War. ~MacGyver
• Fuad, you are one miserable son of a diseased camel. ~MacGyver
• He gives that same speech to every foreigner that comes in here. It’s only 80% true. ~Francois Villars
• Only three sorts of American end up here. Drug dealers, soldiers of fortune or madmen. I want to know which. So I can use him or get ride of him.  ~Khan
• The can only lock me up, not my mind.  ~MacGyver
• You can look, but you can’t touch. The little hint of blue which prisoners call – the sky.  ~Francois Villars
• Listen, I hope your taking this personally.  ~MacGyver
• You’re a sweetheart Brian. Thanks.  ~MacGyver

NIT-PICKS

• The Montgolfier brothers MacGyver refers to as the first men to fly over Paris actually only made the balloon. The pilots of said balloon were in fact Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent.
• When Mac fixes Khan’s stereo, he opens up the chassis and starts adjusting capacitors. But to fix the phase on a stereo, all you need to do is swap the wires between positive and negative on one of the speaker.
• When MacGyver finds Brian’s car he reaches in the window to take the keys. When Sara comes back for the car the windows are up.

FILMING LOCATIONS

Harosh Prison Battery Barlow-Saxton Barlow Saxton Rd, San Pedro CA	Prison Gate Battery Barlow-Saxton Barlow Saxton Rd, San Pedro CA
Alley Back Alleyway, Between S Mesa St  &  S Centre St San Pedro, CA	Boat Yard Al Larson Boats 1046 S Seaside Ave, San Pedro, CA