The majority of fans are absent from sites like these. Many are also prone to staying on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. And general opinions are made of a like or unlike as opposed to a comment nowadays.

End of the day, it all boils down to numbers. Also the pilot is VERY important. Its your first impression on an audience inundated with multiple TV shows. You either get their attention or you're out the door.

The Hawaii 5-0 reboot is going into it's 7th season, so I remain hopeful. The younger generation needs it's own MacGyver... not our 20th century model. I truly hope it gets a chance to prove itself beyond the pilot, or just a few episodes. They were given more time back on the 80's to let a show develop and grow an audience... fingers are crossed... I'm afraid with Friday night time slot... it could be a tough road.

It certainly is. 30 years ago Friday night was a prime time slot. Nowadays it is classed down as the "Death slot". Simply because nobody watches TV on Fridays. They all go out. More shows are becoming limited series because they are facing tough times in competing in today's market. A small few make it through the cracks.

It's amazing how things change.

Ok I am doing everything I can telling family friends coworkers random people in the street all to watch Macgyver lol

Yeah, if they give the show half a chance, they can rework it to drop the things that aren't working, keep up with the aspects that do work, improve other elements that are salvageable, introduce new ideas, etc. On Supergirl, they changed one character into another character because of a fan theory. Sometimes things happen that weren't planned far in advance and all the pieces fall into the right place and you end up with something that works better than the original idea.

LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la...snap-story.html

This one contains spoilers for the plot, so I won't post it completely in here!

(....)

The problem with icons is that, by definition, they cannot be reproduced.

When Lee David Zlotoff created the original “MacGyver,” with its admirable reliance on Swiss Army knives and an endless array of creative “real-life” hacks (Fact: It is more difficult to pick most locks with a bobby pin or a paper clip than the show made it seem), he invented a whole new type of action hero.

(...Spoilers...)

Ironically, this “MacGyver’s” biggest problem is that it ignores the significance of the original. Zlotoff started a revolution that has affected every spy thriller from “Jason Bourne” to “Scorpion.” The reboot adds nothing to the archetype, which makes it less nostalgic than archaic.

According to Rottentomatoes.com, only 31% of reviews for MacGyver are positive. Yikes.

USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2016...-lifetopstories

(....)

If, however, you’re looking for something approaching the original’s simple DIY charms — or, for that matter, something even marginally original — look elsewhere. What you're getting here is a factory-made retread that is less MacGyver than MacGyver: Impossible, with the title character now just one member of an impossible mission team.

(...)

In what’s most damaging to that old MacGyver ethos, he also gets a torrent of bit-driven info from the team’s requisite computer whiz: formerly imprisoned hacker Riley Davis (Tristin Mays). Never mind that the character is one of TV's most tired clichés: What no one seems to have noticed is that if she can use her computer to tell him where a suspect has fled, she could also use it to tell him how to fake a handprint or make a magnet. Which pretty much eliminates the need for an agent with MacGyver’s particular skill set.

(...)

Like most every other CBS drama, it makes its characters banter through even their darkest moments, a constant mindless chatter that has become the network's aural signature.

(...)

But never mind. Logic doesn’t come into play much in MacGyver’s pretty, shiny and completely weightless world, where little makes sense and even less matters. (You don’t really think the bad guy is going to wipe out an entire city, do you?)

The show does, however, have two saving graces beyond the easygoing charm of its stars. For one, the original was hardly holy writ, and tampering with it doesn't count as a sin. And for another, weightless may be just what you want on a Friday night. MacGyver may not fully engage you, but at least it won't actively annoy you.

It might be nice if CBS' ambitions aimed higher than that, but whatever.

USA Today review:

MacWhatever.

If, out of some uncontrollable nostalgic yearning, you’ve been longing for a remake of the 1980s series that inspired a handyman verb, you'll find the bare-bones outline in CBS' MacGyver (Friday, 8 ET/PT, ** out of four). Once again, you have an ever-resourceful hero, saving the world with chewing gum, bleach and tinfoil — but no gun.

If, however, you’re looking for something approaching the original’s simple DIY charms — or, for that matter, something even marginally original — look elsewhere. What you're getting here is a factory-made retread that is less MacGyver than MacGyver: Impossible, with the title character now just one member of an impossible mission team.

Lucas Till (nine years younger than Richard Dean Anderson was when his version made its debut) plays Angus MacGyver, an agent for the Department of External Service who gets his missions straight from the boss (Sandrine Holt). His muscle — and in this version, firepower — comes from his fellow agent, constant shadow, and sharpshooter buddy Jack Dalton (CSI’s George Eads).

In what’s most damaging to that old MacGyver ethos, he also gets a torrent of bit-driven info from the team’s requisite computer whiz: formerly imprisoned hacker Riley Davis (Tristin Mays). Never mind that the character is one of TV's most tired clichés: What no one seems to have noticed is that if she can use her computer to tell him where a suspect has fled, she could also use it to tell him how to fake a handprint or make a magnet. Which pretty much eliminates the need for an agent with MacGyver’s particular skill set.

Like Alias, MacGyver gives its agent an African-American roommate (Justin Hires, from CBS' far more inept remake of Rush Hour) who has no idea what's going on around him. Like most every other CBS drama, it makes its characters banter through even their darkest moments, a constant mindless chatter that has become the network's aural signature. And like the recent Bond films, it offers the illogical leap of an origin story set in the present with a hero who is younger than he was in the past. If MacGyver can really make himself younger with a pen knife and some plaster dust, please show us all how.

But never mind. Logic doesn’t come into play much in MacGyver’s pretty, shiny and completely weightless world, where little makes sense and even less matters. (You don’t really think the bad guy is going to wipe out an entire city, do you?)

The show does, however, have two saving graces beyond the easygoing charm of its stars. For one, the original was hardly holy writ, and tampering with it doesn't count as a sin. And for another, weightless may be just what you want on a Friday night. MacGyver may not fully engage you, but at least it won't actively annoy you.

It might be nice if CBS' ambitions aimed higher than that, but whatever.

Mediapost: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/arti...-adventure.html

This one also contains plot-spoilers!

(...)

Not that these flaws will present an obstacle to many who will welcome the return of “MacGyver,” but Episode One suffers from execution and storytelling issues.

(...Spoilers...)

Diversity-conscious readers please note: There is an African-American character in this show, but incredibly, he comes across like he’s MacGyver’s Man Friday. Talk about a throwback: This jive-talking black character -- played by Justin Hires -- is positioned as MacGyver’s roommate and “oldest friend.” (...) So while everyone else in this show is portrayed as the world’s greatest genius at something, this guy is making breakfast for our hero while wearing an outfit resembling a cook’s uniform. (...) I tend to discount people’s complaints about racism in Hollywood, where to my eyes diversity is flourishing a lot more than many give the movie and TV industries credit for. However, even I was taken aback by this guy.

Yeah, I knew Bozer would be a source of controversy after the Ghostbusters reactions to Leslie Jones portraying a subway worker while the rest of the team are scientist(which itself was probably inspired by the original Ghostbusters were Winston was the only non-scientist on the team). Justin Hires probably should have been Jack Dalton, since his role is as MacGyver's best friend and a civilian. Instead of a cook or whatever he is on the show, he's a pilot like in the original and an entrepreneur.

Haha, we posted the same review at the EXACT same time *lol*

I have to admit that I didn't give much thought about that problem until a few years ago.

I grew up in a part of Switzerland with lots of foreigners - but they were mostly Italians or people from Ex-Yugoslawia, Greece and so on. As a kid, I never had friends who didn't have pasty-white skin like me. It wasn't until I moved to a big city near the french-language-border (Switzerland has 4 national languages) to realize how many people who don't have pasty-white skin still suffer from racism and stereotyping today.

When CBS started promoting the Team with "The Brains", "The Muscles", "The Boss", "The Hacker" and "The Best Friend" I was like WHUT? Wilt Bozer is the only character that doesn't have a talent or a job; he's just labeled as the best friend for some comedic levity.

I'm kinda surprised that this is the only review so far that has commented on it...

The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/a..._medium=twitter

The original review contains plot Spoilers!

(...)

No, Mac no longer has a mullet.

That’s not the only disappointing aspect of CBS’s reboot of the long-running ‘80s action-adventure show, though. The new MacGyer is, on the one hand, a perfectly serviceable answer to the old one, often slick and occasionally exciting and certainly at home in a sea of mediocre procedurals; it is very rarely, however, anything more than that.

(...)

Nearly everything here feels familiar.

(...Spoilers...)

Do you think he does all this breezily, peppering it with witty banter? Yes, yes, he does.

There’s something soothingly predictable about all this: We’ve seen it all before. Only here, there’s a strain of camp. Here, the writing varies from the uninspired to the actively groan-worthy.

(...)

These lines are … fine. And, to be fair, the old MacGyver was only fine. The show may have been beloved (and also, relatedly, widely mocked); it may have given rise to weird spinoffs and loving satires (MacGruber!) and a brand-new verb and, later on, so many memes. But it did all that—it had all that cultural impact—not because it was great, but because it was greatly unusual. Mac may have been an action hero; mostly, though, he was an unapologetic nerd. He loved chemistry. He couldn’t help but talk, excitedly, about the way chemicals can interact to make an improvised explosive device. He couldn’t help but be impressed with himself. He had a habit of saying things like, “Oh, what a life I lead: riding the rapids in the Pyrenees Mountains one day, and the next crossing half the world to help out a friend with a very weird problem in a very strange part of the Amazon. I think I should get an unlisted phone number!”

So the old MacGyver was not, by today’s standards, great TV. It was barely even good TV. What it was, though, was unique, and singular, and winsomely weird. It was, like MacGyver himself, unapologetic. The new version is the opposite: It is trying very, very hard to fit in. It has the right elements; what it hasn’t yet quite figured out yet, though, is how to combine them into something that will be truly explosive.

So, this is probably exactly what RDA meant when he said Mac wouldn't work now. I think they could make it work, but sounds like they need better MacGyverisms to me, and that's just a start!

These reviews are mostly making me feel just how I did when we first heard about the remake - rather flat and no personality compared to the original. Still, we shall see, well eventually when I can actually get to see here in the UK!

Ok, so maybe MacGyverisms need to be more inventive nowadays, but that doesn't mean the concept is passé and irrelevant. Having Google or apps or a smartphone doesn't make every internet-browsing average Joe a genius or a scientist. MacGyver's abilities should be treated almost like a superpower, doing things no layman should be able to pull off just by searching "life hacks" on their phone. However, don't flush the "ho-hum" MacGyverisms just because they seem simplistic, because if there is a simpler solution to a problem, there's absolutely no reason to go for an over-complicated one.

Exactly!!

All of these reviews based on the pilot are absurd. The pilot for the original MacGyver would have NEVER encouraged me to watch another episode...I found the show somewhere around episode 5...of course that was back when they gave a show a chance to hang around long enough to find it's audience..... my fingers are crossed for this new incarnation of a great concept

Absolutely! Looing back at the original, I think it's a disadvantage that they pushed to premiere the show this fall. Now that the reviews are coming in, they're already up to shooting Episode 6. If they had more time until the premiere, they could have taken critical comments from peple attending early screenings to look them over and decide if they need to do some changes again.

It dropped to 25% before I went to bed yesterday...

But to be honest, I didn't expect that much else (well; I hoped for maybe something between 30 and 40%).

Another one by AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/review/macgyver-retu..._campaign=feeds

The full review has some major plot spoilers!

(...)

For several years, and seven seasons, Richard Dean Anderson ruled TV as the guy who could make a bomb out of chewing gum and found the paper clip to be the most important tool in his arsenal. Who could top that?

Unfortunately, not Lucas Till, a.k.a. nü-MacGyver. He certainly tries hard, but he’s about a decade younger than Anderson was when his MacGyver debuted, and the shift is jarring. Anderson’s MacGyver was certainly someone you would follow through an acid-drenched tunnel after a building exploded (the trek from the original pilot). Till looks like someone who might be able to hook you up with some out-of-state fake IDs. He gamely inherits all his predecessor’s mannerisms (hokey voice-over, fear of heights, unwillingness to use guns) as he disarms bombs with dental floss and manufactures makeshift parasails. But he lacks the gravity necessary to make this character more believable, that he would be someone who could conjure up a random historical name from 1906 without even so much as a Google search.

That voice-over is also vital to the series, but it’s a bit problematic here. This MacGyver can’t decide whether he’s light-hearted or dark-hearted, a James Bond wannabe or a rugged adventurer.

(... Plot Spoiler...)

But then a foot chase ensues, and the perspective shifts to… shaky hand-held camera? Almost as shaky are the shifts in tones from the pilot, from jokey wisecracks between MacGyver and his team to a tragic loss to the possible mass murder of millions to about the corniest ending imaginable (see below). The camera’s not the only thing making the viewer queasy.

Sure, the stunts are impressive, showing how to stop a plane with your bare hands (helpful screen caps identify “hydraulics” versus “electronics”) or that frickin’ parasail.

(...)

The problem with a MacGyver reboot is that, three decades after the show’s original premiere, CBS must have reasoned that the new version would have to be bigger and flashier. This reboot accomplishes that, but in doing so, loses the whole point of MacGyver in the first place. MacGyver was always about making more out of less, picking up whatever he found in his knapsack or on the goddamn ground to make his latest adventure assignment work. In 2016, it’s hard to make a paper clip flashy, even with CGI. Still, the show might have had a chance, but unlike Anderson, this lead just isn’t strong enough to carry us through. It’s like casting a new Columbo with a Jonas brother.

(...)

Ouch! That sounds quite harsh. Well, i guess its only a matter of hours before we share our own opinions.

Well, I might share my opinions, but it's going to be a bit difficult since I'm probably not able to see it for a while

Regardless, Forbes says that out of all the Fall TV premieres, MacGyver and "This is us" get the most buzz online. And that's a good thing; the reboot got people talking about the original again!

Forbes Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/201...s/#131290fb25b6

To be in the know with the hottest new shows this season, tune into This Is Us and MacGyver, the two series getting more buzz online than any other premieres heading into the 2016 fall TV season.

(...)

ListenFirst, a digital data and analytics company, did just that, calculating the social engagement (fan growth, responses and conversation volume) across Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Google+. In terms of new shows, NBC’s This Is Us generated almost three times more engagement between May 1 and August 30 than CBS’ MacGyver, the runner-up, with 1,560,911 and 558,073 instances of engagement, respectively.

TV Insider: http://www.tvinsider.com/article/98499/rou...rcist-macgyver/

(...)

As adept, though not as charming about it, as Richard Dean Anderson was back in the day at fashioning makeshift weapons and gizmos, this MacGyver is more like a baby Bond. He’s assigned to perform dangerous missions with the help of a team that includes CSI’s George Eads as his muscle, chirping witless banter like “You go kaboom, I go kaboom” to show that he’s got the kid’s back. There’s also a female hacker (Tristin Mays) on board, because everyone’s got to have one these days, even if she kind of makes MacGyver’s skills seem redundant.

Maybe it’s a function of a terribly written pilot, saddled with endless voice-over expositions, but every time MacGyver underscores a twist by saying to the home viewer, “I know what you’re thinking,” I kept thinking I hope he doesn’t. Because this is meant to be a family show.

HitFix: http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/...macgyver-at-all

(...)

Unfortunately, CBS' new MacGyver (it debuts tonight at 8) isn't an example of how to build on the original idea for a remake, but a bumbling piece of intellectual property management that frequently misses the point of what people loved about the show in the first place. It's less MacGyver with better production values than a bad 24 retread (with a hint of imitation Shondaland DNA) that occasionally pauses for duct tape.

Our MacGyver this time is Lucas Till from the recent X-Men movies, sporting more fashionable hair, and more apt to make a smarmy quip. In the opening scene, he praises a female colleague by noting that "no one's better on a keyboard," followed by a cut to a flashback of them having sex on top of her computer. This MacGyver still narrates his adventures some of the time, and still cobbles things together out of what he has on-hand, but instead the enthusiastic mini science lectures Anderson offered (or that Jeffrey Donovan did on Burn Notice), the new MacGyver tries to dispense with the geeky stuff as quickly as possible by using on-screen chyrons to identify the materials MacGyver is using. And though the Till version shares the original's disdain for using guns, he's much more of a traditional action hero overall, looking confident and at ease whenever a fight breaks out.

The rest of the show has been similarly glammed up. In the original, MacGyver's frequent sidekick Jack Dalton was a lumpy comic relief character who tended to get our hero into at least as much trouble as he got him out of; here, Jack's a buff special forces type played by CSI alum George Eads. (MacGyver's boss Pete, an older man who eventually suffered from glaucoma, has gotten a gender flip to Patricia, played by willowy model type Sandrine Holt.)

Again, the original show isn't some sacred text that can't or shouldn't be changed in any way, but nearly every tweak made here in this rushed production feels cynical and almost irritated by the science component. There's a mysterious rival agency causing trouble for MacGyver and Jack as a quasi-serialized element, plus a terrorist plot that adds a ticking clock element to the story that allows Jack to torture a suspect with a staple gun while MacGyver looks on approvingly. CBS has defended picking up this show — even though the original pilot was scrapped, and everyone but Till and Eads fired, including the original showrunner — because of their faith in those two remaining actors, new producer Peter Lenkov (Hawaii Five-0), and, as CBS entertainment president Glenn Geller bluntly put it at press tour, "that IP." But that torture scene so fundamentally gets wrong everything that people liked about MacGyver that it's almost counter-productive to apply that title to this show.

The time is absolutely right for a new MacGyver. Thanks to shows like CSI and MythBusters, the TV audience is way more science-nerdy than back in the '80s, and a show that embraced what was fun in the original show while tweaking the structure a bit for modern times could be a treat. This one thinks borrowing the names and rushing through the wizardry is enough to bring back the warm fuzzies of that time Richard Dean Anderson's MacGyver made a defibrillator using nothing but candlesticks, a microphone cord, and a rubber mat. It's not that easy.

Does he really say "I know what you're thinking" in his narration? Because that was one of Magnum's trademark lines in his narration so I'm not going to be impressed if they've "borrowed" it.

Sadly, Connelly, the target audience for the new show wasn't even born when Magnum was on the air!

Very true! Talking of Magnum, there's now rumours of a Magnum sequel about his daughter Lily. I don't know if it's actually going to happen, or how I'll feel about it, but at least they're not doing the same as they did with MacGyver and re-imagining/recasting the original.

I do wonder who the target audience is.

If they're trying to get fans of the original series, why cast such a young actor as MacGyver? Those of us who grew up watching MacGyver are now significantly older than Lucas Till, so when we see him trying to save the world, it's going to be a bit like watching Spy Kids. It might have been better to cast somebody closer to 40 years old, like they did with the Hawaii 5-0 reboot.

So maybe they're trying to attract kids, but do most kids today really care about a remake of a 1980s show? I don't know.

Anyway, tonight's the night. My expectations have gone full circle. When this was first announced, I was merely curious about it. Gradually, I became more excited about it. Now, after seeing all the negative reviews, I'm back to just being curious. I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions on here tomorrow, when we can give our own opinions on it.

I'm also on the same page, I'm curious but not exited - and after reading all the reviews posted in this treat I'm more skeptical, but I'd like to comment my own review and read the opinion from the fans tomorrow, after all only few hours left!

I think he does because I've read it in another review as well (which complained about the scene he says it).

But it might just be a one time thing and therefore a coincidence...