I'm with you, Rocky--I loved the first half. It had a lot of potential and could have been one of the darker Murdoc episodes, even darker than Strictly Business, nearly driving MacGyver mad. Then the second half became cartoonish, over the top even for Murdoc. Also, this idea that he wants to work for a corrupt government is out of character for him. As MacGyver points out, he always works alone. The explanation that he now somehow wants power and position doesn't work for me. Of course he wants validation and wants to be recognized for his work, but he also operates in the shadows, not in a group. Overall, what started as a promising episode became a very weak episode. Such a disappointment for the final Murdoc/Mac confrontation. Strictly Business should have been the last one as it was the best. Oh well. That's why we have fan fiction, right? To further explore their relationship.

I guess it does fit with season 7 though.

That whole season was screwed up one way or another.

Yep. Everything and everyone was out of character, wacky, and silly, one way or another. It was slapdash, so haphazardly put together, as if they were in a hurry and couldn't wait to finish with the series instead of giving the viewers/fans something of quality ot appreciate. Such a shame.

I am sorry, I have to respectfully disagree with some of the recent comments about Obsessed, because to me while it is not perfect, it's the best of season 7.

Yeah, I liked this episode it was a good one, it had Murdoc (evil laugh in background).

One of the best Murdoc episodes.

This is how I like murdoc best: evil emotionless killer with a hint of supernatural. (Of course he shouldn't be supernatural character, I mean only that how he has survived from death many times and how a character like him should be somewhat mysterious.)

I didn't like more humane Murdoc in 4th and 5th season, but Halloween Knights is still excellent episode.

Loved the cat and mouse game Murdoc plays so well.

Finally got to see this one online. I never saw it on TV, like the other MacGyver and Murdoc shows. I really liked it! Both MacGyver and Murdoc looked nice in millitary uniform. I really like how they don't get along with each other.

Here's what I don't quite get about this episode-- Is Murdoc supposed to be psychic? Mac has a dream about Murdoc (I assume it was just a dream since the pillow isn't damaged and Murdoc isn't there), and then Murdoc calls him a split second later and laughs at him. How did Murdoc know Mac was having a dream about him? That seemed to be a bit of a stretch, as if they were trying to make Murdoc almost like Freddy Krueger (notice, too, that the music played while Mac inspects Murdoc's hideout is quite similar to the NOES theme song.)

And what about the dart at the press conference? Was there actually a dart that Murdoc somehow hid after shooting it, or was Mac really losing his mind and imagining things? If there really was a dart, why didn't anyone else see either the dart or at least Murdoc? And how did Murdoc have time to hide it without anyone noticing him? If Mac was just imaging the whole thing, then how did Murdoc get the photos of everyone at the conference?

I think the dream and phone call were just a coincidence, but were aimed at showing that MacGyver was so obsessed with Murdoc that he was even thinking about it in his sleep - hence the dream.

As for the other stuff, I'm not sure we're really suppose to know. I would guess that since Murdoc is a master of disguise and (apparently) escape he probably was really been there with the dart. I would expect he had it all well planned on how to get the dart and escape while all the chaos happened.

Regarding the dart...
It just occurred to me that Stryke (or whatever his name was) probably helped Murdoc escape. Remember Stryke was at the press conference when Murdoc fired the dart, and he was the same one who told Mac that there was no sign of a dart anywhere. Later we find out that Stryke is working with Murdoc, so my guess is he hid the evidence to "prove" that Mac really was losing his mind.

A Song For Murdoc:

* to be sung to the Freakazoid theme tune *

He drives MacGyver crazy 'cause he's a lunatic assassin

Sorry, couldn't resist that one

I saw the courthouse from this ep on Parks and Rec last night. They use it as th outside of their office. I couldn't hear what was said during the scene because I kept pointing out the details to my wife, Cindy:)

Actually, with regards to the liquid nitrogen - I wonder if it should have been liquid oxygen (LOX), which is used in rocketry as the source of oxygen for the fuel to burn, but someone on the writing team got their elements mixed up?

Works for me

Yeah could have been a mistake on the writers part, or maybe a mistake by the props department.

In any case isn't it very unlikely that you would leave any kind of pressured cylinder or bottle beside a missile that was about to be fired?

It seemed very much like one of those horrible situations where the surroundings were set up specifically to make the MacGyverism work rather than the other way around.

I finally saw this one after years of anticipating it's greatness. I was not let down.

Bad episode. Very unrealistic...General Murdoc! My God! Excellent the dialog between Murdoc and Mac about military costumes, but bad final, Murdoc driving the jeep to the cliff and......MacGyyyyveeeeeer!!
Murdoc is not tha kind of lunatic.

Probably the best episode of the seventh season!
Disturbing in the first part ( Mac is going crazy or not?), all action and "Macgyverisms" in the second.
Mac Gyver are always lucky?
In my contry we say:
" la fortuna aiuta gli audaci"

Fortune favors the brave!!!!

After a couple of really lame episodes, I think this is about as close to a return to form as one can expect for the seventh season. (To be fair, there are still a few S7 episodes I haven't seen.) Murdoc is as delightfully evil as ever, but what really saves it in my opinion is seeing Pete and his office at the Phoenix Foundation again. Up to that point, it's hard to pretend we don't know they moved the production for this season, and the discontinuity is pretty jarring. That scene was the first time all season that I was able to say, okay, it's still the MacGyver universe I know and love. I also loved the interplay between Mac and Pete, and how they fooled the antagonistic do-gooder (her name escapes me at the moment...) That sort of thing is what really made the show great, and however fleetingly, we've got it back.

The liquid nitro was the episode's one unforgiveable mistake. As others have pointed out, there's no good reason why it would be there and a couple of excellent reasons why it wouldn't be. If I had to guess, I'd say that was a Macgyverism they'd been waiting to use, and threw it in because they knew there were only a few episodes left. Surely Mac could have found some other way to free himself.

I'll go against the prevailing opinion a bit here on the "boot trick": since it's worked for him before, why not use it again? Also, it was indeed pretty unlikely that he'd hit it on the first try, but if he missed and had to use his other boot, then it would have been an exact copy of what we saw in "Legend of the Holy Rose".

On why Murdoc didn't seem concerned about going over the cliff: would that concern you if you had cheated death that many times before? What is less clear to me is why, after failing to kill MacGyver so many times before, it didn't occur to him that Mac would just jump out of the way as he did.

I voted good. By S7 standards, that's excellent.

Here's a question.. regardless of whether Murdoc hit MacGyver with the jeep or not... wouldn't it still go over the edge of the cliff? And if so then isn't Murdoc going over the cliff regardless?

That whole thing seems like a really stupid idea.. drive a jeep towards a cliff trying to hit someone with no abort plan?

...yeah that'll work.

Good point. It's as stupid as the assassin woman jumping right through the window in Phoenix Under Siege. :-\ Lame. And a crappy way for Murdoc to go out.

It was a dumb move in the sense that Murdoc should have foreseen that Mac would be able to jump out of the way, but no doubt Murdoc knew he would survive the crash in the same unexplained and completely implausible way he always survived.

I always assumed that Murdoc simply didn't know there was a cliff there. He was so fixated on hitting Mac, he wasn't looking at what was beyond Mac. It's still pretty stupid, but it makes a bit more sense than just mindlessly driving off a cliff that he knew was there.

But then again, Murdoc always has been the human incarnation of Wyle E. Coyote. He's not the sort of villain you can take seriously because he constantly does moronic things. I think if MacGyver came back for an 8th season, we'd see Murdoc buying an anvil from the ACME supply company, and trying to tie it up over the exit to the Phoenix Foundation. Then, as he's waiting to drop it on Mac's head, he'd somehow drop it on his own head instead.

The other explanation, which I think is probably true for a lot of shows, is that scenes, shots, information was edited out of the final cut of the episode resulting in things not making 100% sense.

For example there may have been some reason Murdoc couldn't' see the cliff in the original script, but it got changed due to time and budget, or that scene may have simply been cut out in order to keep the show to it's required length.

This is a pretty common occurrence in both TV and movies. They have to make sacrifices for the sake of time, budget and story telling.

I really enjoyed this episode. The human side of MacGyver losing his temper, the re-occurring nightmares, etc., adds to the reality of the early part of the episode for me. Yes, the latter half was a little more hokey, but it still had parts I enjoyed. MacGyver egging on Murdoc was great, and the interaction between Pete and MacGyver in the loft was really good.

I had no problem with it. The episode explained that HIT was through with him, which is the logical result of what happened in "Strictly Business." I don't think it was about validation and recognition so much as the security of having an entire military government looking after you - especially if HIT was still gunning for him, and even if they weren't, there've got to be plenty of others who are. Basically, it was his retirement.

And that's a story arc that had been going on for years. If you think about it, Murdoc was already "over the hill" the first time we met him in Season 2 - no longer a cool professional assassin, he was a has-been back from the dead on an obsessive personal revenge crusade. Which fails, again and again, convincing him that it's time to retire... only he's in a line of work where you can't do that.

The rest of the series (or his part in it) is all about him trying to find a way out. First, he tries just quitting. That doesn't work - they put a contract out on him, then kidnap his sister, forcing him to go to MacGyver for help (boy, imagine how excruciating THAT must've been for him). Second, he tries following MacGyver's advice - give up everything he knows about HIT (which would mean the authorities could take them down and he'd no longer have to worry about them). That doesn't work either - a year later, they're still operating, even if they've been taken down a peg. Third (and after his sister's death), he tries getting them to take him back. That doesn't work either - he fails his entrance exam. At that point, if I were him, I'd be getting desperate. Compared to some of the other options out there, getting a senior job in Noriega's government (sorry, "Delasora") was a godsend.

Clearly, it wasn't the first time. By the time of the episode he'd probably done it enough times already to start giving him nightmares, and that one just happened to coincide with his next phone call.

(I've had night terrors - waking up in the middle of the night, seeing something that's not there and flipping out for a couple seconds - before. It's usually brought on by a combination of stress and too many nights of not-sleeping-enough in a row. In this case, that would be Murdoc's repeated 3AM phone calls plus the stress of knowing he's out there and has something planned for you).

I liked the episode overall despite its flaws. My main objection actually isn't with the cliff scene at the end - it's with the way he allowed MacGyver to goad him into doing exactly what he wanted. Come on, Murdoc. You KNOW what he's trying to do. But overall, loved the episode anyway. Murdoc makes such a wonderful bad guy I can forgive the flaws.

I agree! Murdoc should have known MacGyver better than that after their previous encounters. Also, I find it strange that Murdoc trusted Delasora. I was hoping for a better end to the last Murdoc episode. Maybe it's like Rockatteer mentioned, that they cut something out from the "jeep heading for cliff" scene.

I think that the first half of the episode is excellent!

I'm with you Hannibal Smith, on your thoughts on why Murdoc all of a sudden felt like supporting a dictator. It is a little more believable now.
One would think that scenario is more likely than making a musical to get to MacGyver. However, I had no problems with that!

That's what you get for deciding to 'be all that I can be'. Honestly I think Murdoc was really on fire in The Widowmaker. (And actually he was ) I mean the burnt face, the hair, the military outfit. He was a real sicko. But also in Strictly Business, but there he was the decent sicko. Determined, decent clothes and he really owned Mac in that one. In Obsessed, they had something, but didn't work out good enough. It's indeed a little weird to have a hitman becoming a general in a Noriega-ish army. Maybe they could've kept that part out because when I think of it Murdoc stalking Mac sounds like a great idea. Mac's stressed out, can't sleep, if he sleeps, he has nightmares, the phone calls... Obsessed could've been a great psychological thriller plot.