For Love Or Money

Episode:  044 (S2.E22)

Production  No.: 40192-044

Airdate: 04 May 1987

Writer: Doug Heyes, Jr.

Director: James L. Conway

Nielsen Ratings:   12.3 rating / 20 share / 3rd (39th for the week)

PLOT

MacGyver and a female agent he despises pose as a honeymooning couple to free a human rights activist in Czechoslovakia.

CAST

MACGYVERISMS

•  Made fake blood from red wine and ketchup
• Used carbon, oxygen, & medical glove in a potato dish to make a smoke distraction
• Crushed nitroglycerin tablets into some alcohol to make explosive
• Used bailing wire to connect the car frame to the ignition coil to shock the bad guys when they try to open the door.
• Used tube toy as weapon and to catch bad-guys knife while fighting him.

TRIVIA

• This episode suggests that the hospital in this episode is meant to be the same one from season one’s ‘Prisoner of Conscience’, however, the hospital in Prisoner of Conscience was in Leningrad, Russia, the hospital in this episode was set in Czechoslovakia.
• There’s some speculation that Diana may have been a forerunner or seeding for the Nikki character in season 3.

QUOTES

• Diana: Long time.
  MacGyver: Not long enough.
• Pete: Just listen to the deal, as a favor to me.
  MacGyver: What, one of her deals? That’s not a favor; that’s a human sacrifice.
• MacGyver: You’ve got a professional mercenary here. What do you need me for?
  Pete: Because you know the hospital where he’s being held. You broke a man out of there last year.
• Pete: Which would you rather save, MacGyver? Your pride? Or a man’s life?
• MacGyver: That’s what you ordered?
  Diana: I wanted something that wouldn’t attract attention.
  MacGyver: Even when they see us pushing it down a highway?
• Diana: I’ve worked with Krug before. He’s a thief, he’s a liar, but when you give him money he comes through.
• MacGyver: Where did you learn how to speak Czech?
  Diana: Correspondence school.
  MacGyver: Oh. Like “the Czech is in the mail”?
• MacGyver: It’s kinda interesting how you can put one thing with another and cook up the right formula for stayin’ out of trouble. My old high school physics and chemistry classes come in real handy sometimes. Not to mention the fact that when you’re in a squeeze, necessity always seems to come through as the true mother of invention.
• MacGyver: I had a nitro bomb and a smoke bomb. Anybody bumped into me too hard . . . well, it’d be memorable.
• Diana: Are you nuts, or just simple-minded?
  MacGyver: Well, the expert opinion’s still out on that.

NIT-PICKS

• Nitroglycerin tablets are used to widen the blood vessels during a heart attack. They are not, as Mac states, used to “jumpstart a heart”.
• This episode takes place in communist Czechoslovakia, yet Zorkin drives a 1974 Checker–an American car.

FILMING LOCATIONS

Czech State Hospital Community Living Center #213 213 Bonsall Ave, Los Angeles, CA	Hospital Entrance Gate 80 Bonsall Ave Los Angeles, California
Back of Hospital Building 306 Dewey Ave, Los Angeles, CA	Escape Through Window Building 213 Dewey Ave, Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles Zoo Los Angeles Zoo 5333 Zoo Dr, Los Angeles, CA