Known for his phobia for firearms due to a childhood trauma, does MacGyver tend resort to not-so-environmentally-friendly ways of escape when faced with a sticky situation?
By: Ringo Bones
It did happen – or at least the shows writers and directors allowed it to happen – on a particular episode titled “Bushmaster” where MacGyver’s pathological fear of firearms resorted him to use a less-than-environmentally-friendly means of escape. While being unjustly imprisoned in a nondescript Banana Republic jail, Mac and company resorted to using a canister of Freon gas – probably the older highly ozone depleting variety – to bust a prison door lock by super-cooling the metal to make it brittle.
As I’ve wondered how much ozone molecules in our planet’s ozone layer Mac managed to deplete. It seems unlikely that the Mythbusters will be testing this particular MacGyver stunt in order to check out if it works in real life – as opposed to the film-physics of Hollywood – due to environmental concerns. More contentious still, this particular MacGyver episode was originally aired during the year when the leading industrialized nations of the world were busy finalizing the still groundbreaking global environmental treaty called the Montreal Accord. That called for a legally binding phase-out of the use of ozone-depleting chemicals in refrigeration and other parts of industry starting in 1987.
Did Angus MacGyver / Richard Dean Anderson used a real Freon cylinder / canister as a prop used to escape in the prison set of this particular episode? I hope not, given Mac’s environmental stance on subsequent episodes. I just hope that they used something more environmentally friendly in replicating the effect of breaking a prison lock via super-cooling than an ozone-depleting canister full of Freon. For those not so lazy MacGyver fans, please check out if this is so.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
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