Prepared for the worst, so I wasn't directly disappointed but definitely confirmed my assumptions.
The opening is teasing you with the iconic soundtrack just to change it entirely shortly after and the opening ends with the evenly well-known explosion with the name MacGyver over it. Appears so half-assed. Really.
However, why have they recasted most of the characters and reshooted the pilot but of all the issues we saw early on, they kept the biggest one: Lucas Till? That makes no sense.
He comes off as a snarky, arrogant and condescending ass. He's this way too young superman type of a guy, who can do basically anything. He's too much of everything, he's seriously unrelatable and unlikable to the core. I hope, they turn that assholeness down a lot in the upcoming episodes. This episode - for a MacGyver and this show is just that: a modern attempt at a MacGyver by taking what's cool these days - appears simply too violent for what it is or tries to be. Hopefully that was just an attempt at drawing people in.
CGI effects are atrocius (except the "useful" hints that that object is an unfolded paperclip and such). I hate cheap CGI gunfire, seriously hate it. If the explosion is cheap CGI and defies any laws of physics (bomb explosion), okay, you usually don't have that many of those, you laugh it off and move on. But gunfire was pretty common here and was Blindspot S1 atrocius or even worse. This, for me, is one of the biggest immersion killers in any action packed movie/series.
Having the ex-Rush Hour (TV Series) actor, who played Carter, be in this as "Wilt" seems unnecessary. Any scenes with him are a waste of time as they take away from the MacGyver-ness of the show. He's supposed to be the cover for Mac and has no clue what Mac does for a living. But why?! Why is it so often necessary, to have a main protagonist live with a "cover" friend? Can a spy, super-agent, can-do-everything adventurer, or whatever never live alone without raising suspicion? It never makes sense and always imposes on the actual show at some point. It makes even less sense for a MacGyver show.
It's pretty action packed so it might catch on a younger audience, though.
But what I really wonder is, why should one watch this?
It's a copy of a copy of a copy. Scorpion, Blindspot, The Last Ship, Containment (in a smaller scale), Supernatural, Orphan Black...
All shows with a group of people solving ("world") problems. This has literally nothing setting it apart.
The little things he does with tinfoil and stuff was way too shallow and, well, lame. Opening handcuffs with a bobbypin? Never seen before! Putting tinfoil in some ammonia+corrosive to create smoke to start the firealarm? So exciting!! So much easier than using a lighter and I always have my bottle full with ammonia on me, anyway! A parachute from the planes of that truck? Mindblowing. All these things felt like they were a stupid joke reference to the old MacGyver that is thrown in between all the gun and explosion action. There's (mostly) no relevance to it whatsoever. I wouldn't have anything against a (good) modern MacGyver reboot but not how this episode tries to sell it: as a joke.
