I voted OK for this one.

Bit of a confused storyline, one or two plot holes as described above, but enjoyable enough to watch.

Season 5 is confusing me a bit in general - there's less consistency to the quality of episodes than in previous seasons and it jumps between the raising-awareness-ones and the telling-a-story-ones seemingly at random.
I haven't been checking the credits that carefully but did this season have a lot of different writers or something?

Every subject in a MacGyver passes by once or twice or even three times throughout a season. Mac on assignment overseas, environmental issues, political matters, endangered species, troubled kids...

Starting from season 4 the show kept the same team of writers for the rest of the show with sometimes a one time writer here and there. This episode was written by Robert Sherman. He joined the writers team in the fifth season and wrote Second Chance, Deep Cover, Rush To Judgment, The Gun, Jerico Games and The Prometheus Syndrome. Rush To Judgment, Jerico Games and The Prometheus Syndrome are amongst my favorite episodes.

In the episodes he wrote it was like he at least tried to give his characters a little character and depth. Rush To Judgment is a great example of that. He cared about dialogue so there's mostly a hotheaded side character that clashes with MacGyver. And in most of his episodes MacGyver usually gets a little ticked and one time even downright angry.

Anyway Robert Sherman seemed to care a little more about the episode's content. Storyline, character depth, traps and fights. Sounds like everything a good episode needs. Not that others don't have that but I appreciate his writing style.

Maybe an interesting fact: I think Robert Sherman liked redheads because in almost his episodes there's a redhead in. With exception of Second Chance and Deep Cover.

This is true, but for some reason season 5 feels a bit disjointed; the episodes don't seem to follow each other as smoothly as previous seasons.
Then again, I haven't seen all of season 5 yet, so perhaps I'm being a bit previous.

I enjoyed the twist in this episode. It was quite a clever idea for a story.

Anyone else notice the guy in the music video was wearing Snake's red leather jacket from Runners?

Maybe it was Snake. From pimp to musician.

The first time I watched this episode I tried to figure out the solution, Mac said something, that said I had it wrong, I was already really confused. Then when Mac revealed the truth, that's what I'd already figured out...
Oh well.
Good episode, confusing, but good.

Just read this interesting news article about how common it is for twins to experience the kind of delusion we see in this episode when a twin dies.

So apparently this episode is based on a known phenomenon.

Here's the article, have a read: What it's like when your twin sister dies

Note: This article is about identical twins. Not sure if it applies to normal twins, but the episode was about identical twins also, so it fits well.

Wow, that's... that's something. Sorrow can run very deep within peoples, maybe even deeper with twins because a reflection dies. If the other twin is someone you share all with and than dies, no wonder it has that effect on you.

I always figured twins were cool. You can switch places, pretending your the other one, fooling everyone.

Actually this makes the episode even all the more interesting. A message to stay away from drugs and to show how deep twin grief goes.

So Carla wasn't just suffering from depression and grief like any other person does. If a twin dies a part of you die too because you see the exact same person in two human beings.

That must be utterly shocking - looking in the mirror and seeing the other twin looking back at you instead of yourself there...

No wonder the twin in this episode lost her way so badly

I was listening the Higherlife song which (was in this episode) from MacGyverOnline misc page and then I found one song called Heart - What about love from youtube which sounded like same with Roxette - Listen to your heart, after that I found page which showed different another songs which sounded like same with other 80s songs.
Accidentally after I was listened Roxettes song from Spotify then the next playlist song was Roxette's, called The Look, Which melody sounded exact same with that Higherlife

The climbing painting from Carla's collection.

During the elevator climbing scene was trying to figure out how they might have filmed it:

When we see their faces: AL and RDA on a greenscreen
When we don't: Stuntpeople about 3 feet up on a stage
Shots down the shaft: Mockup on a stage, camera is on the floor, and looking upwards
Down the shaft with actors in the picture: Stage mockup, looking down. Everything two floors or more below, beyond a certain shadow, is painted on the ground

This episode annoyed me. Why kill the manager? He hadn't worked out their secret. Unless the writer just thought, "Yeah, she's mentally ill, she may as well kill someone off". Which is offensive.

Also, Mac should have known better than to assume that psychiatrists can just tell all to someone who turns up saying, "Yeah, one of my friends was one of your patients, tell me all about that".

Also, I think the "just say no to drugs" approach is too simplistic.

I know many consider this episode too preachy today, but I still like the song

ha ha ha, another great episode, the acting is excellent, plus there's no shortage of action. To recommend.

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️