I know this is not in the right place, but there is no place in "the right place" for a general discussion of the series.

My nit pick is that no matter who gets punched in the face or gut or whatever (at least in some places) they fall down and stay down long enough for the person that hit them to get away or cause some other kind of trouble. I don't think that's very realistic, but I suppose they had to do that to help the stories along. I find my self yelling at Mac or whoever the "good guy" person is that gets knocked down to get up and fight back. lol! (I seem to do a lot of talking to the characters for some reason.)

Anybody heard of an internet service called "Twitter"? you can send messages on the internet, your IM or your cell phone to people all over the world and they can answer you back or ignore you as the case may be. It's kinda like a party line and every person on there can talk to each other as long as they are following you and you are following them. I do running commentaries of Mac and SG-1 on there most nights.

My twitter

It happens on all TV shows, not just MacGyver.

I don't think it's actually that unrealistic... you even been punched hard in the face, or stomach? it hurts.

In fact the stomach is one of the main punching points in boxing becasue it can stop your opponent, or at least slow him down considerably

If you get hit in the face, turns 360 degrees before going down, you're attacker has plenty of time to get away. A good swinging fist in the face can cause a moment of desorientation. Even though it's just for a merely five seconds.

If there's something nitpicky about fighting (and not in only in MacGyver) is that the good guys knocks a bad guy out in only one punch. It's hardly ever the other way around. I think you need massive fists to really punch a guy's lights out. And than I do mean, knocking someone unconscious with your fists.

The beatings MacGyver took exceptionally got him unconscious. Well, rarely in one punch like The Golden Triangle and Cease Fire. The Wish Child in two. Those are just a few examples, maybe there are more but rarely. Like I'd say it's pretty realistic in The Ten Percent Solution, that a decent knock on the head with a gun can get you hoovering between consciousness and unconsciousness.

I've wondered about that, too. In real life, it would seem like it would be difficult to knock a guy out completely with one punch--not impossible, just hard to achieve.

Mike Tyson made his career from one punch knock outs.

It's really not that hard to do as long as you know how to do it. Any good boxer can drop a person in his tracks.

my fathers done it (more than once too from what I understand)

But he was a boxer so he knew how to punch with intent. and in his younger days took great pleasure in sorting out bullies from the stories I've heard.

I have had the wind knocked out of me a few times. It usually started with me being rocket launched off a horse and a spectacular crash landing twenty feet later. Trust me on this one, the last thing you are capable of doing is getting up and fighting back. When I got thrown off the horse, it was several minutes before I could breathe deep enough to swear at the horse, let alone get back to my feet.

We won't even talk about the time my room mate hit me in the nose with a door by accident. Lets just say, those stars and Tweety birds that fly around.........that really does happen.

I always enjoyed watching how Mac's punch improved over the years. In the first season, he almost always fell down when he swung at anyone, putting all of his bodyweight behind it. But in the later years, he gradually learned how to keep his footing. I just thought it was a nice little bit of detail added to the series, whether it was done on purpose or not.

I think part of it has to do with the series' position as being minimally violent, even though -- or especially since -- it was an action-adventure series. A fight scene with only one of two punches being thrown comes across as far less violent than the typical movie fight scene, especially nowadays, where it takes ten minutes of slugging for anyone to win.

I personally get awfully tired of the endless slugfests; they don't seem any more realistic than the one-punch-you're-out approach, although at least the good guys and bad guys generally take the same amount of whacking, instead of it being really out of balance.

In the end, it's the director and the fight choreographer who decide how much pummeling a fight scene will require before the winner emerges; and the winner is determined by the script. The choreography works backwards from there. The degree of realism is also going to be affected by how much screen time they've decided to spend on the fight. In some of the episodes, I got the feeling they were pressed for time.

Mac's tendency to overbalance and fall down also sent a couple of different messages: it indicated that he wasn't that much of a fighter, and it also had a humourous element. I didn't always think the humour fit, though.

Nowadays? There haven't been much action films lately like they were halfway the 80's or early 90's. Back than everybody was waiting for the fight scene in the end.

Too fair, actually. But in MacGyver I noticed that nearly every fight takes about four (or more depends on the time) moves for each character. Besides you gotta give the boys a little knock around playtime.

So a three minute fight is unrealistic for you? A boxing round takes three minutes.

I think it was more to show that he puts all his strength in that fist. POW, it hits the face, bad guy goes down, the fist goes on, Mac goes out of balance.

I would think a more blatant nit pick (with any show) is how can someone take a punch to the face or chair across the back and have the ablity to go on like nothing's happened.

From the interviews where RDA has talked about the fighting scenes, it sounds like he was very much into what he called "Tongue firmly placed in cheek" style of fighting.. in other words it was light hearted entertainment, not intended to be realistic. He did the "hurt hand" thing becasue in his own words "bone on bone is going to hurt" (even though normally it actually doesn't hurt to punch someone. " )

Anyway, the point is that fight scenes are there to entertain by adding a bit of excitement, not to be realistic or educational (which is just as well)

Thanks Rocky! That was what I kind of thought in the first place. Just needed somebody to confirm it for me.

I always thought most of Macgyver's fight scenes were a little commical. One that comes to mind is the one where Macgyver feigns madness to get into an asylum where is he to break out the prisoner. It happens right after the chess board over the head hillarious scene when a guard comes to the door and opens it. Mac sorta back hands the guard doing a full 360 before falling on the ground. It think they wanted to potray him as someone who could stand up to the baddies but wasn't the best at it.

They did that a little with Indiana Jones, too. Both he and Mac get that "Do I have to fight this huge guy?" wince on their faces.