We've all seen the MasterCard MacGyver commercial from a couple of years back, which starts off with MacGyver sitting tied up on a chair in an empty room, but has anyone ever thought about the story which got him there? How he got there, what he was doing, where he goes afterwards. It seems like it might not be a bad fan-fic setup.

Any thoughts or ideas?

He could of got a tip of stolen treasure, found it in the place, was knocked out cold and woke up being tied up.

I would like to imagine that the plot would stay in tune with credit cards.

Perhaps like Mac's (or a friend's) card is stolen, and eventually Macgyver uncovers a massive identity theft ring in LA. While attempting to hack the computer where all the personal information is stored, he gets captured, which leads to the commercial, and he ends up destroying the facility before the mafia gets a hold of 100's of peoples identities.

To me, that sounds like a decent episode. Perhaps subconsciously I stole this idea from somewhere else...

Not bad, Agent MacGyver.

I actually never thought about it. If it was his credit card, I can see him going on a personal quest to find it back no matter what. If it was someone else's he'd probably say to call the police.

When has MacGyver ever told someone to call the cops and left it at that? He can't help but get involved.

Following on from Agents idea, I can see him working for the phoenix foundation again and beingo n the tail of some big identity thief ring or something like that.

Actually... you know what.... the set up almost seems like something Murdoc would do. Lure mac into an abandoned warehouse (again), bash him over the head and when he comes too he's tied to a chair watching the timer count down on the bomb which will kill him.

any writers getting twitchy yet?

I still have unfinished business yet with my present story. Not only I don't have much time, I also lost my file that included notes on the story due to a virus my laptop caught.

He might start off by saying, "Have you called the police?" but then the person (who is most likely an annoying woman, since MacGyver seems to constantly run into those), would reply, "You don't understand... I CAN'T call the police because..." and she would proceed to explain how she's involved in something that would look really bad if the police found out about it, even though it's actually totally innocent. Mac would get that exasperated look on his face, but reluctantly agree to help. Towards the end of the show, though, the annoying woman would reveal that she had lied to him, and that her suspcious activities were actually bad. Then she'd say something predictable like, "And now that you know about it, I'm afraid I can't let you live." BUT, rather than doing the smart thing and simply shooting him right there, she'd tie him to a chair in the warehouse and set a timer to blow it up. She would then flee the scene with the assumption that he'd soon be dead. Meanwhile, of course, he manages to escape the warehouse, catches up to her, and devises some kind of unlikely trap to tie her up until the police arrive.

I would love to contribute, but sadly, the part of my brain responsible for coming up with ideas for MacFics had been shortcircuited for months and rewired along with the rest of my brain for "Project: BABY".

Well.......what the heck. Maybe I'll take a whack at it anyway:

I think Mac saw something he shouldn't have (as usual) and had just escaped by the seat of his pants from one gang of bad guys, who's hideout just so happened to be in a neighboring abandoned factory. While running and dodging bullets, he heads for the other abandoned factory we see in the comercial, loses them and starts looking for something useful to use to trap them once they figure out where he went.
There, he accidentally comes across another underground crime ring (huh, more bad guys. Imagine that!). After some snooping, he shortly discovers they're in the business of smuggling fake "official" SuperBowl merchandise out of the country and into Canada in exchange for explosives (don't ask me why...).
After both gangs come face-to-face and corner Mac in that room from the comercial, the head bad dudes have an arugument over who should get to kill him, thus instigating a massive brawl resulting in multiple nosebleeds, fractured knuckles, and a knockout or two. The conflict is only resolved once one of the head bad dudes realizes the other is his long lost cousin from Milwaukee and decides he "ain't so bad after all".
Meanwhile, during the fray, Mac has of course of been busy devising a plan to escape using some of the very explosives as a diversion of some kind (involving a fair amount of duct tape, a couple magnets, a ballpoint pen, a potato and also the bottle of moderately spicy salsa the second set of bad guys were planning to eat as they watched the SuperBowl), but they catch him just before he can set his plan into action. It's then that they finally decide to use Mac's own contraption, plus another stash of explosives Mac didn't even know about, to blow the whole building with him still in it.
So they tie Mac to the chair, take back their salsa, rig the explosives and get the heck outta Dodge.

There you have it. Outlandishly insane, improbable, and impractical and it makes no sense whatsoever. But hey, that's me