Faute de mieux—or, really, faute de anything—I recently “found myself” watching the latest iteration of MacGyver, bailing after the first five minutes, though, back in the day, I bailed on “MacGyver I”, so beloved by Marge Simpson’s chain-smoking spinster sisters, even more quickly, in three minutes, when Big Mac made a bomb out of a chocolate bar.1
The episode that sent me packing this time around was more benign, but more repugnant morally. MacGyver is in Africa, powering a well using an old truck, so that the grateful Africans can drink without hand-pumping! So wonderful! But how about showing the Africans installing a pump, you know, all by themselves—you know, an actual modern, high-tech pump, running on electricity generated by wind or solar power, or even—what could be even more efficient—a modernized version of the old windmill pumps that farmers used to use in the Midwest? Or how about showing the Africans coming over to the U.S. and building a well for us? Instead of running the old colonialist/missionary stereotype of noble white man, simple, happy black kids that’s been both out of date and thoroughly obnoxious since, I don’t know, World War II?
Also not worth watching and fortunately off the air, Fringe, a J.J. Abrams concoction about “fringe” science, aka “total bullshit”, which J.J. passes off as, of course, all 100% true, and all (well, for the one and a half episodes that I suffered through) involving the torture of attractive young women wearing brief, black bikinis. Classy, JJ!
Afterwords
It’s a known fact that when white American males reach a certain age and a certain wealth, they have an irresistible compulsion to travel to Africa and have their picture taken with smiling black kids. Despite extensive medical research, there is still no known cure.
*Swahili for "boss". In all the "darkest Africa" films and TV shows from the ugly and unfortunate past, the white heroes were inevitably addressed as "bwana" by the Africans.
1. When I was a boy, my friends and I used to make gunpowder out of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and sugar, using sugar as a substitute for carbon, which you couldn’t buy from a pharmacy, unlike the first two ingredients, for whatever reason. I suppose chocolate, particularly if it were sweetened, would have enough carbon to do the job.
