100 days of enemy recs: 7. MacGyver

[melannen]

MacGyver was a 1980s TV show in which a young Richard Dean Anderson was very competent and solved problems. I think he was sort of a consulting secret agent, the way Holmes was a consulting detective? He worked for a place called the Phoenix Foundation and was sent around the world to, like, help people who were being menaced. But don't worry even on his days off he still ended up in situation where he had to be very competent and solve problems.

I actually did watch a considerable amount of this show in reruns in the late aughties! I never did get more than a very vague idea of the setup or, indeed, anything except a very young RDA being ludicrously competent at everything and making the world better. It was one of those shows from back when every episode had to stand alone and they didn't have to make everything part of a giant mytharc where you have to have just binged the previous six seasons to know what's going on - instead, nobody expected you to ever know what was going on, and that was fine, just watch RDA be competent and pretty. (Am I the only one who misses those days?) You had to catch certain very specific episodes if you wanted any kind of backstory or character arc, and I think I missed most of them. The theme music was very good, it was my ringtone for awhile, and RDA was very competent and determined and ethical and pretty.

(There was also a reboot? That ran six seasons and only just ended? I know zilch about it. It does not seem to have made much of a splash.)

There isn't a ton of fanfic for it and I have read even less, but a lot of what exists is MacGyver/Murdoc. Don't ask me to remember anything about Murdoc either - he's some kind of recurring antagonist? An assassin? Works for the bad guys?

Anyway there is one M/M fic that's on my "never lose track of" list. I don't know that it's "good" by today's standards but sometimes you just want a really good oldfashioned h/c amnesiafic enemyslash extreme whump wallow, right? And this one is the best at being what it is. So only one link today. It's on insanejournal!

• Oh My Enemy by janecarnall
  21 chapters, MacGyver/Murdoc, explicit, needs Archive warnings for probably violence and torture and dubcon? Suicidal ideation. etc.
  
  Murdoc is released from the hospital, still partially disabled by his injuries, with no memory at all and his only link to his past and his identity the person who paid his hospitals bills: one Angus MacGyver, who must care a lot about him to do that for him. But when Murdoc shows up on MacGyver's doorstop, almost out of money and barely able to walk, MacGyver isn't acting like somebody who cares about him...
  
  (Note: if you follow the links on the chapters, they sometimes go back to a deleted LJ; keep clicking back to the memories linked in the rec and you can read it all.)

...hey, the first fandom on this list where I didn't have a tag!

Comments

[melannen]

There probably is but I've never gone looking! MacGyver fandom doesn't really seem to have moved to AO3 - it's old enough that I think a significant amount of the fic predates the concept of web archives, and that makes it tougher to move even if the people are still around. The largest pairing in the small amount of fic on AO3 is Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill, if that tells you anything...

Murdoc was definitely a villain but I have no memory of how or why he was a villain or who or what he was working for.

One thing I really liked about Mac is that it was central to his character that he was principled. And the show wasn't all that interested in testing his principles or making him wrestle with them (unlike, say, a show about a certain other Mac) - 90% of the time, he made sticking to his principles look as easy as defeating the bad guys with nothing but a paperclip and a stick of gum.

[ratcreature]

Well, iirc the first time we meet Murdoc in the series is not their first encounter but him coming back for revenge beause MacGyver foiled something or other at some point in the past, and then thought Murdoc was dead. And that's pretty much the pattern set up. It doesn't make much of a difference if you only catch the fourth appearance or whatever, because he's still back for revenge. Or I guess sometimes MacGyver foiled yet another assassination plot, but it's very much a supervillain kind of setup where you can tune in at any point to their relationship.

[melannen]

Ah, so the question of why they were enemies in the first place never really came up, they just were? I can see why it was prime for slash!

[ratcreature]

I have to admit I don't remember whether we got flashbacks to that first meeting at some later point or not, but the Murdoc introduction was just that he's an assassin who is trying to kill Mac in revenge, because he foiled him, and is now his nemesis (rather than moving on). Iirc the main motivation was injured pride? Like he was always successful in the past and then Mac ruined his unbroken streak, so he has to die. It's all very much like a comic book.

[highlander_ii]

the first appearance of Murdoc (in s2 ep "Partners") has flashbacks to the first time Mac meets Murdoc, Pete already knows him. This is also supposed to be the time Pete and Mac meet the first time (despite the s1 ep "Deathlock" saying Mac and Pete met in some situation with a camel - fans sometimes explain this away as being them lying but whatever).

first meeting flashbacks:
Mac is driving Jack's cab, filling in for whatever boneheaded reason Jack gave him. i think Pete hops into the cab and has Mac chase 'that woman' (Murdoc in disguise). Or whatever - something happens and they end up following Murdoc together and Mac foils Murdoc's plans.

episode main plot:
each of the 3 guys gets an invitation to meet at the junkyard and bring specific items with them. Peter and Mac think Jack set it up until they start going through the stuff in Jack's old cab that is still sitting in the junkyard (apparently 7 yrs later). Jack is late showing, but apparently Murdoc doesn't care - b/c he hauls the cab w/ Mac and Pete inside off to the middle of nowhere where he plans to blow them up.

obviously Murdoc's had a brainfart and has forgotten that MacGyver could get out of being sealed in concrete with a piece of fishing line and a bottle of bubbles, b/c Mac gets them out and then Murdoc blows his own self up when he drops his bundle o' dynamite.

then Jack bebops in all late with some flowers like 'hey guys!' and Mac and Pete make this face :/

[highlander_ii]

Murdoc was definitely a villain but I have no memory of how or why he was a villain or who or what he was working for.

Murdoc is an assassin working for an organization known as H.I.T. - Homicide International Trust. his bosses get a little grumpy that he can't seem to complete his 'contract' to take out MacGyver - no idea when this was initially put out, that's not mentioned.


whenever they wanted to 'test' Mac's principles, they would bonk him on the head and give him amnesia. as a result, his 'basic' instincts would always come up and make him just do v MacGyver-y things. the poor man, in the real world, would have some serious traumatic brain injury going on.