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| MacGyver Online Forums > Episodes > 013 - Flames end |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 2 November 2006 - 02:22 PM |
 013 - Flames end Airdate: 29 January 1986 Teleplay: Stephen Kandel Story: Hannah Louise Shearer Director: Bruce Seth Green Guest Cast: Tannis Montgomery as Any Austin, Conlan Carter as Ed Train, Robert Englund as Tim Wexler. The theft of uranium from a nuclear power plant reunites MacGyver with an old girlfriend… and the hunt for the thief threatens to set off a nuclear reaction. enemy. |
| Posted by: Amy 8 November 2006 - 09:20 AM | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Votes from September 5, 2006 How do you rate this episode? Poor [ 0 ] [0.00%] Average [ 1 ] [5.88%] OK [ 4 ] [23.53%] Good [ 9 ] [52.94%] Excellent [ 3 ] [17.65%] Total Votes: 17 Archived Comments: MacGyver Posted on Nov 15 2004, 03:23 PM
sonyab Posted on Nov 15 2004, 03:38 PM
MacGyver Gal Posted on Nov 15 2004, 03:48 PM
Macsrose Posted on Nov 15 2004, 08:00 PM
Rockatteer Posted on Nov 15 2004, 09:48 PM
MacGyverGod Posted on Nov 16 2004, 03:28 AM
Rockatteer Posted on Nov 16 2004, 07:40 AM
MacGyverGod Posted on Nov 16 2004, 10:00 AM
Shiloh Posted on Sep 4 2006, 03:49 PM
Stupid Little Genius Posted on Sep 4 2006, 09:33 PM
Old Fan Posted on Sep 5 2006, 09:09 AM
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| Posted by: Macs Lab Rat 18 November 2006 - 09:13 AM |
I didn’t see this episode when it was aired on tv but saw it on DVD and got such a fright when the car exploded! I didn’t expect that at all! I was thinking why on earth is she parking so far away from Mac and how rude she is just sitting there and honking the horn at him instead of getting out to meet him and then kabooom!!  |
| Posted by: MacGirl 1 April 2007 - 06:30 PM |
| I spent three years working in security at a nuclear power plant, so this one gave me chills! I loved the opening scene with Mac's landlady, and his Canadian accent. So funny! Amy was a little whiny and helpless for my taste, but the suspense of this eppy made up for it. I was on the edge of my seat when she and Mac got locked in the disposal chamber with the seconds counting down to when they'd be cooked alive by radioactive slop. I also thought Tim was just a little too good to be true, and I had the feeling that he was the one who was pulling these dangerous stunts. After all, it had to be someone familiar with the plant, and besides Mac and Amy, Tim and the security guard were the only ones who fit that description. Also goes to show you that what you remember about people isn't necessarily still true. People do change... sometimes for the worse. The scene on the roof is one of my favorites, with Mac saying, (in voiceover), "Now, I hate heights, and I despise guns. So how the hell did I get myself up here?!"  Poor Mac! I don't know why, but that scene always makes me laugh.Also, I think I have an explanation for why Susan (Amy's roommate... is that her name?) didn't get out of her car. She probably pulled up and honked to get Mac's attention, and was just about to get out when the car exploded. |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 30 September 2007 - 02:46 PM |
| Shouldn't that car have been a seal off crime scene after it exploded? They didn't know MacGyver from Jack and here they are allowing just anyone to poke around and contaminate their crime scene  |
| Posted by: MacGyverGrrl 30 September 2007 - 02:58 PM |
| If they were following proper police procedure, the entire area would have been sealed off, Mac would be in an interrogation room giving his statement and having his story checked out, and the crime scene would be crawling with technicians picking up evry little bit of wreckage. That is the one thing that I found consist with this series, realistic police procedures are not followed consistently. Its really not a big deal, but it is a distraction, knowing that these little details are being overlooked. |
| Posted by: MacGyver 30 September 2007 - 05:31 PM | ||
Well- for the sake of good entertainment, I'm generally willing to overlook such things...  I mean, hey- it's MacGyver!  |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 2 October 2007 - 12:25 AM |
| This episode feels to me like it was written in a hurry... has some important historical/background information about MacGyver's past and the episode itself is ok, but I find there are some really obvious errors and nit-picks which I just can't get past to enjoy this episode... things like... Since when do the police bury people before the coroners inquiry is complete and/or without having a formal ID on the body? their radioactive badges where black as they climbed up the reactor (Amy said black badge equals body bag) yet it didn't seem to affect them. I wonder how Mac was unable to open the valve with the proper wrench, yet the much shorter gun did the job  The flashback scene on the beach is really bad quality and theres a distracting line running from about 2/3 down the screen... like a hair on the lens or something. Why would a chamber designed to hold radioactive "hot" material have a door which had an access panel on the inside of it where radiation could leak through? Amy said before the goo got to the chamber, the air would be too hot to breath... yet they breathed it right up until a few seconds before the goo arrived. Couple of other observations... I got the impression that Amy Mac and Tim where the 3 amigos at high school.. yet Mac didn't seem very excited to see him when he first showed up. Did I mis-interrupt that? Robert Englund plays a really good spineless weasel, but I prefer him with a mask. I did enjoy the whole hockey game with the land lady scene.. very entertaining. and the "Mac it'll kill you." "no way. I haven't paid my taxes yet." was great. |
| Posted by: MacGyver 2 October 2007 - 10:24 AM |
| Like I said, ignorance is bliss... (sometimes) |
| Posted by: trtlsoup 3 October 2007 - 06:14 PM |
| I'm going to have to watch that one again... it's been a while. I remember very little of that episode, except the ex-girlfriend, Robert Englund and a power plant. *dragging out the DVDs* See ya' in the am...  |
| Posted by: MacNymph 8 October 2007 - 06:40 PM | ||||||||
| This is one of those episodes that would rate higher if it didn’t have such glaring nitpicks but because it didn’t totally suck, it still rates pretty high. The beginning scene reminds me of my brother and my cousin when they were teenagers hanging out acting like total goofs, reciting Cheech and Chong and the MacKenzie Brothers.  Goobers! Okay… Amy runs from someone chasing her. And she runs into a nuclear waste disposal chamber??  I won’t get into the fact that she should probably be wearing some kind of protective gear but COME ON!! That’s worse than running into the woods in a horror film. Then, when she takes Mac there to retrieve the folder, they stand around and discuss the gruesome fate they would face if trapped inside instead of just getting the thing and getting the hell out! OH! OPPS! Look at that! You're trapped and here comes the killer goo! When Amy calls MacGyver, someone she hasn’t seen in who knows how long, she just dials.  From memory. Someone who moves around and she maybe exchanges an occasional xmas card with, his number she has memorized?Then she tells him to meet her at “our beach” (the one where I dumped you without a second thought. Wench!) I agree with what was already said about the actress that played Amy. She was terrible. In Mac’s flashback. first of all… she was signing along to a song she didn’t know the words to. Just nod your head or something. Ya twit! And MacGyver describes their relationship as... "back in the day it was Amy and me, one word". But they had the chemistry of two cold fish. I would have jumped on that ship too Mac.
That’s what she gets for being so rude!
I thought that too but several of my nitpicks where dispelled by the end of the episode and we found out the police where in on it. At the very beginning I was thinking, okay, who calls random coworkers in the middle of the night on the weekend to tell them other coworkers are dead? That’s something you don’t find out about until next Monday morning and only after you’ve made a crack or two about how that person must have had a wild weekend or they wouldn’t be late. Also the crime scene not being sealed off and MacGyver wandering around it. Yes, some time had lapsed between the time of the explosion and the time the coroner rolled off. But what I really couldn’t wrap my head around was a funeral being arranged and held the next day?  The cop being in on it and not wanting any incriminating evidence pointing toward him goes a long way to explaining all those things. The rest of your nitpicks are still valid points I couldn’t explain away in my own head. 
Even if they weren’t best buds, who could forget that face?
What’s the point of wearing that badge on the outside of the protective gear. Shouldn’t the indicator be inside with you? If Mac's romantic lead had been a better actress, and if they hadn't been running around a nuclear power plant without proper protection this episode probably would have gotten an excellent rating from me. |
| Posted by: MacGyverGrrl 8 October 2007 - 07:32 PM |
| I liked this episode for the one liners and the opening scenes of Mac playing table hockey with the landlady. His over the top Canadian accent was a crack up. I agree with Nymphy about the nitpicks, boy there were a few. For me, the biggest is walking around a supposedly high security nuclear power plant as if they are strolling through the park. The radiation disposal chamber might be empty, but it would still be contaminated with highly radioactive material. This kind of stuff just doesn't disappear and it would seep into the porous concrete like water seeps into a sponge. The level of protective clothing Mac and Amy were wearing was nowhere near enough to protect them from radioactive material. It would barely be adequate for handling industrial chemical waste. As far as Amy goes, she's pathetic. She's so whiney. I know that Mac is the strong one riding to the rescue, but come on, do the damsels in distress have to be so lame? It makes me wonder, what did MacGyver see in her in the first place. I would picture him with a woman more like Nikki Carpenter or the journalist from the Gauntlet than with Amy. I enjoyed this episode enough to look past most of these things, but stop short of giving this an excellent rating. |
| Posted by: MacGirl 9 October 2007 - 02:59 PM |
| The only reason I can think of for there not being more security at the plant was that this eppy was filmed years before 9/11. But still, that bugged me, too. I worked security at a nuclear plant from 2000 to 2003, and even before 9/11, our people were crawling all over the place. You'd think the writers would have done a little more research (not that it would have been easy...) |
| Posted by: AC3DG 24 February 2008 - 08:00 PM |
| This was one of my favorite episodes as a kid since the idea of nuclear power plants and such always fascinated me. But when I watched it for the first time in a long time a few years ago, many years older & wiser into the inner workings of reactors and such, it wasn't as neat anymore. The vast majority of MacGyver related things are mostly accurate, however this episode was not. Granted it was in the early run before they may have concentrated more on being accurate. First off, the power plant is really a water treatment plant near LAX in Manhattan Beach, or maybe Venice. Somewhere around there. But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't seen it for myself. It's supposed to have 4 reactors with a control room the size of my bedroom. A real power plant control room is very, very large, and there's 1 per reactor. There's also no such thing as a waste disposal chamber in a power plant, nor is there any hot yellow slush produced in any part of the power making process. An out of control increase in reactor pressure could not be solved by opening a valve at the top of the reactor building itself, as there are no valves on the tops of real reactors- they are solid concrete, several feet thick. If any kind of pressure were released into the atmosphere, it would be radioactive & very dangerous. MacGyver wasn't just neat, it was very educational. The vast majority of what he did was accurate. A producer from the show gave a talk when I was in college and he said that they always tried to make everything as real as possible. Except for instances when something could be dangerous, then 1 key ingredient or step was left out so if someone did try to recreate it, it wouldn't work. But this episode was considerably more inaccurate than it was accurate. But that doesn't make it any less fun to watch. The guy in the dark gas mask scared the crap out of me as a kid. |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 24 February 2008 - 08:28 PM |
| Welcome to the mad house! Interesting observations there. I guess this episode was made back in the days when no-one really understood anything about nuclear power plants other than what the environmentalists where feeding us about how much radio active waste they produce and everyone would have deformed children because of it. |
| Posted by: jknnej 21 April 2008 - 04:37 PM |
| I've noticed that pre-CSI TV has many glaring errors in respect to police procedure and policy. Once that show came out, TV seemed to step it up a notch, and all shows (even soaps) started making it a little more realistic. But, this ep was made when? 19897? So it doesn't surprise me about the complete and total lack of security. We are analyzing it 20 years later!!!! |
| Posted by: androgyny 13 June 2008 - 08:51 PM |
| i love this episode because of the hockey scene. mac is such a kid. |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 13 June 2008 - 08:53 PM |
| Yeah. There is a certain Peter Pan quality to him. As my wife would say. He's such a 12 year old! |
| Posted by: MacsChick 13 June 2008 - 09:39 PM |
It's one of his endearing qualities.  |
| Posted by: Liz1976 14 June 2008 - 02:02 AM |
| My favorite part of Flame's End (and there are many cause it's great) is when Mac and Amy are suited up and Mac is using the wrench to try to pry the top off this contraption and Amy's hosing Mac down to prevent him from being exposed to radiation (correct me if I'm wrong--I'm not watching it--and it's early in the morning here---favorite time of the day) anyway the wrench goes flying. Mac asks for the bad guy's gun which is in Amy's possession. He uses it as a wrench. And he says soemthing like "Now, I hate heights, and I despise guns, so how the ---- did I end up up here?" Funny. I hate heights and guns so I find that funny. I also admit that RDA's big kid quality, plus his being down to earth is a big part of the appeal that draws men and women and kids alike to the show. |
| Posted by: Beachbead 26 April 2009 - 08:31 AM |
| I loved learning about MacGyver's past in this one. |
| Posted by: MacGirl 14 December 2009 - 10:57 AM |
| As to Mac's not being able to open the valve with the proper wrench, it was because it was wet and he couldn't get a grip on it. On the other hand, he was able to get both hands on the gun (one on each end) and hang on. |
| Posted by: Jack Thornton 8 March 2010 - 03:56 PM |
| Despite the errors, this is very enjoyable episode. One of the best from season 1. |
| Posted by: Azalea77 17 March 2010 - 02:17 PM |
I remember it was THE FIRST MAC GYVER EPISODE I WATCHED!! I was 12 or 13  |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 4 June 2011 - 09:30 PM |
Not a bad episode to start your Mac-addiction off on.  I watched this episode last night and laughed out loud at his voice over "I hate hates, and loath guns, so how the hell did I end up here??" The tone in his voice sounded so funny, like he was really peeved and bewildered. was very  |
| Posted by: NightTinkerer 5 August 2012 - 06:01 PM |
| This is the first MacGyver episode I ever saw! And I remember it vividly! It was probably around 1987-88, at a friend's birthday party. My mum was there at the time too, and she was always over anxious that I should be exposed to violence on TV. I still remember my friend's dad's voice when he reassured her "Oh, you definitely shouldn't worry, MacGyver is a good guy, and he doesn't even use guns!" I remember I really liked it, but since I had two horses at the time, I didn't have much time for TV series, and to be honest I don't think I saw too many episodes of MacGyver before 2004. Anyway, with the Chernobyl accident still fresh in my memory when I watched this episode, I remember the thought of a nuclear disaster freaked me out, and I was cringing in my seat all through their escape from the chamber to the prevention of the reactor blowup. Today, "Flames' End" is definitely one of the cheesier episodes because of its many flaws, but back then, I think nobody knew too much about radiation, save that it was very, very lethal. Too much kissing in this episode as well, if you ask me. I'm really glad that changed in the later seasons. Anyway, despite its many inconsistencies, this episode has so much nostalgic value for me, I still had to give it a "Good" rating. |
| Posted by: MacGyverisms 6 March 2013 - 03:40 PM |
| This is the first MacGyver episode of the First Season One ever saw! I also saw the second half of Season One after watching the entire Second Season. I remember when I first watched this episode I really liked it. The hokey scene the beginning of the episode is so hilarious. I really liked Mac's reaction to Amy's car getting blown up. And his reaction was even better when Amy was hiding in the back seat of Mac's car after the funeral. I was on the edge of my seat all through Mac and Amy's escape from the waste disposal chamber and of Mac's the prevention of the reactor blowup. The guy in the dark gas mask really scared me when I was a kid. Way too much kissing in the episode as well. And with this episodes many inconsistencies, it is still a "Good" episode, in my opinion. Overall Rating: 7/10   |
| Posted by: Daisy8577 7 March 2013 - 12:01 PM |
| I just rewatched this episode the other day. I like Mac's reaction to Amy's car exploding, but the reaction was even better when she pops up from the back seat of his car after her funeral. I gave this episode a good rating  |
| Posted by: MDBfan 16 March 2013 - 02:49 AM |
Did Tim die?  |
| Posted by: Daisy8577 16 March 2013 - 03:06 AM |
| I believe he did at the control panel. The only thing you see is his hand drop. |
| Posted by: Jediferret 16 March 2013 - 09:00 AM |
| Personally, I like the look on his face when he waves at Amy before her car blows up. XD I took a screencap and made an icon that says "Oh hai!" I'd be more then happy to post it somewhere if anyone wants it. I'm not even using it. |
| Posted by: Scwilson 4 August 2013 - 09:36 PM |
 OK episode. We learn something about Mac's past. The Macgyverisms were good. |
| Posted by: RadiantRose 14 November 2016 - 02:24 PM |
| I'm going to be extra nit-picky and say that I think it would have been better had his hair been longer in the flashback. We know his hair was longer than in the flashback during some of his time studying physics because of the photo in "Hell Week", and the ex who became a nun said that his hair was shorter than when she had last seen him. I'm not saying that it counts as an error. People can change their hair a lot over the course of a partly-finished physics degree. Anyway, yes, the really obvious thing is how quick they were to organise the funeral. That's even worse than the "why is Mac handling evidence with no gloves and what about the chain of custody?" thing. I liked the choice of flashback songs - one ridiculously upbeat and one melancholy. Another nitpick. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy was she so eager to let go of her relationship with poor ? I get that it would be annoying to have someone sign you up for a job abroad without even telling you, but (a) she liked the thought of travelling and (b) the least she could have said was that she didn't want to go, but perhaps he could go for 3 months and then come back to her.I would have waited 3 months for him. |
| Posted by: MacGyverOnline 25 November 2018 - 03:22 AM |
| So now finally we have a clear view of MacGyver's science club. |
| Posted by: Rocket 25 November 2018 - 04:36 AM |
| 'Already has it!' |
| Posted by: sylvain1888 15 November 2020 - 03:46 PM |
| That I don't like this one, it was, obviously was written "go quickly" and it is clear, too bad because it has a certain potential, but it is the "weak link" of this season ... |
| Posted by: sylvain1888 15 November 2020 - 03:49 PM | ||
it is indeed hallucinating, it is a fault, which for even the novice televiewer is obvious. |
| Posted by: sylvain1888 15 November 2020 - 03:51 PM | ||
that's all well summarized. |
| Posted by: sylvain1888 15 November 2020 - 03:52 PM | ||
I must have been the same age as you ... |
| Posted by: sylvain1888 15 November 2020 - 04:01 PM |
