Throughout its first season, seeds have been strategically placed for an eventual “MacGyver”/”Hawaii Five-0” crossover… And finally, in Friday’s (Mar. 10) episode of “MacGyver” — titled “Flashlight” — the Phoenix Foundation will meet members of the Five-0 team.
Not only is this a cool idea, it’s a move that sets the stage for more universe-building in months to come. Let’s remember, “Hawaii Five-0” crossed over with “NCIS: Los Angeles” back in 2012 — and Hetty (Linda Hunt) took a jaunt from her “NCIS” home for a stint on “Scorpion.” That connective link broadens the horizons regarding what is possible in CBS’s small-screen universe… But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
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Screener spoke with executive producer Peter Lenkov — showrunner for both “MacGyver” and “Hawaii Five-0” — about the crossover episode. Alluding to a possible Jack Dalton (George Eads)/Steve McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) episode down the line, Lenkov gives us a glimpse behind the scenes, and teases what’s to come…
The Phoenix Foundation is finally crossing paths with some of the ‘Hawaii Five-0’ team — what sort of mess do they find themselves in this week?
Peter Lenkov: It really starts off with a humanitarian rescue and relief effort and turns into this big plot — because most of these things end up with something nefarious happening, otherwise I’m not sure why people would be tuning in. The real fun of the show is seeing these characters get to know each other: Kono (Grace Park) and Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) reacting to MacGyver’s unconventional way of doing things is just fun to watch.
Was this crossover always a part of the plan? Could a bigger CBS crossover including shows like ‘Scorpion’ and ‘NCIS’ be a possibility?
When I was writing the pilot, I had a little nod to “Hawaii Five-0” on the barrel of Jack’s gun in this flashback to Iraq. It said “Aloha” on the barrel, and that’s a nod to his relationship with McGarrett on “Five-0.” I had always hoped that — since the shows were very similar, with the tone and the humor — somehow, someday we’d do a crossover. And when we got scheduled back-to-back, it made more sense.
Now, after doing it — and learning how to do it with the logistics, the time difference, the flight time, all that stuff — now that we know how to do this, I’m hoping we get to do it again… And maybe even broaden it to some of the other shows you mentioned.
Not for nothing, but the idea of a Jack Dalton/Steve McGarrett reunion sounds pretty awesome…
Yeah, I am hoping to do it! Hopefully this is the first of many. I think we’re sort of teasing the idea of these two entities working together — not just Friday night, but down the road as well.
What kind of research goes into creating MacGyver’s hacks? Do you reference the original series at all in your writing process?
We’re all fans of the original show, so we’re definitely inspired by it. We all find ourselves as budding engineers, having watched seven years of the show. What we do is, we’ll paint ourselves into a corner to come up with something, and then run it by our consultant, who will tell us whether we’re out of our minds, or if it’ll work. Then he’ll give us some sort of recommendation on how to make it as real as possible.
We don’t want anyone to hurt themselves, so we usually go so far as 90% of what is realistic — leaving just a little bit out, you know, we don’t want people making homemade bombs or anything.
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With most of the stuff, we’re just getting ourselves into a position where we have to get out of it, and we don’t want to get out of it in a conventional way. So we sort of dream up different ways, and then we run it by a tech consultant. That’s really just the way it works, there’s really no other formula other than that.
Do you have any favorite hacks that stand out for you in Season 1?
I feel like in every episode, we come up with something that sort of tops the episode before that. We have one in the episode coming up that is really ingenious, where Mac takes a radar gun and converts it using an iPad and a couple other items. You’ll see this on Friday night, he uses it as a detector to find a heartbeat on the other side of a concrete wall. He’s looking for survivors and they don’t have the equipment, so he basically converts something to find victims of an earthquake.
I just thought that was really cool and inventive. It’s something that I think we dreamt about — but actually talking to our consultant, it was a real thing. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that blows me away! There were police cars everywhere, so the idea was to just get a radar gun, and he’ll be able to find the people on the other side of that wall. Then again, next week there will probably be one I like even more…
It’s nice to have MacGyver back on TV — science always seems cooler with him around.
Yeah, it’s interesting: My kids watch a little bit of “MacGyver” now, and they all have that engineering bug. They all want to build things. In the back of your mind, you’re hoping…
Just like we were inspired as kids, to do these things after watching that show, there’s a generation that will be watching this as something more than just entertainment: It inspires them to do something, and that’s really cool!
“MacGyver” meets “Hawaii Five-0” Friday, March 10, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.