Tear Jerker / MacGyver (2016)

Season 1

Chisel

• Mac blames himself for unnecessarily risking the lives of American Embassy staff members in Riga when it comes under attack.
  Mac: (Monologue) Jack's right. They didn't sign up for this. This was all my doing. My choices brought us here. Just like my choices brought an assassin to my home. Bozer's home. It's not a great feeling, knowing your decisions have endangered people on both sides of the globe. I don't know how to stop a government agency from ruining Bozer's life.

Scissors

• Mac needs Riley and Jack, who are masquerading as a father and daughter as part of the scheme, to cause a scene as a distraction. It gets too real too quick, with Riley slapping him and shouting, "You're not my real Dad!" Watching Tough Girl Riley actually burst into tears is gut-wrenching.

Season 2

CD-ROM + Haogie Foil

• It's revealed that Bozer's little brother accidentally shot himself. Bozer cries as he tells Leanna this, which is a sharp contrast from his usual upbeat personality.

War Room + Ship

• Mac does everything possible to save the people trapped on a crippled ship, showing a cute teacher who's trapped with her class how to improvise up several repairs, all the while she's shown to be a whole lot like MacGyver and possibly a perfect Love Interest for him. Then the ship springs a leak and they're unable to seal it without her locking herself in the flooding room to seal it from the inside, sacrificing herself to save her students, with Mac there watching until the end.

Season 3

Bravo Team + Loyalty + Friendship

• The team react to how tech aid Jill was murdered by Murdoc as a message to Mac.
  • Jack blames himself for his PTSD, which caused his ex-girlfriend to walk out on him.

Matty + Ethan + Fidelity

• Matty goes through the wringer in this one. Her husband Ethan, a CIA operative undercover with a human trafficking ring, has been compromised and the CIA aren't interested because they think he's turned after he stopped checking in two years earlier. The team recover Ethan safely, but then he reveals why he stopped checking in: he has a daughter now, with a woman he met undercover, and decided it was too dangerous. Matty is clearly heartbroken as she tells him to stay with his family.

Father + Bride + Betrayal

• The bride learning that her father, the boss of a criminal empire, has been killed at her wedding. It Gets Worse: the killer was her grandmother, who killed her own son because he was going to hand over the empire to Matty in exchange for getting to attend his daughter's wedding.

Treason + Heartbreak + Gum

• Riley goes on a mission to Paris with Billy, only to find texts on his phone from his other girlfriend. She's perfectly calm as she breaks up with him, but reveals to Mac that she's devastated.

Mason + Cable + Choices

• An unknown adversary sets up one Sadistic Choice after another, the final one forcing the team to choose between Mac's friend Charlie Robinson and the people who'd be killed by a bomb going off. Tragically, Take a Third Option is averted hard, with Charlie sacrificing himself to save others and leaving Mac devastated that he couldn't save him.
• The Reveal of the villain's motive; it's all revenge for his son, a soldier who died after Oversight essentially sacrificed him to rescue an asset endangered in the field. The asset's name? Angus MacGyver. The revelation successfully drives a wedge between Mac and his father.

Season 4

Right + Wrong + Both + Neither

• The moral greyness of the season is distilled in one episode as some of Russ' Dark and Troubled Past comes to light; he was hired to protect an oil pumping operation in Moldova some years back, and ended up just paying the head terrorist off. Now the guy is back, having taken over a textile factory and secretly converted it to an IUD factory. Russ tells people he's got rid of the guy properly this time, with evidence of his crimes being sent to the UN, but Mac realises the truth; he paid the guy off again, and he'll probably come back again. Worse, Mac isn't even sure this is the wrong solution; get rid of the guy and someone else will move in to occupy the vacuum. At least this way, it's the devil they know. Russ isn't sure he did the right thing either.
  Russ: There's nothing more dangerous who people who do the wrong things for the right reasons.

Mac + Desi + Aubrey + Riley

• Riley is forced by the events of the episode to reveal her real job to her boyfriend. The episode ends with her at Mac's door after the boyfriend dumped her.

Father + Son + Father + Matriarch

• Mason seems to have reappeared, so Mac and Oversight go on a mission together to stop him. As they try to make awkward chitchat, it becomes increasingly clear that they simply have nothing to say to each other.
  • Oversight tells Mac his cancer has returned, and is terminal this time.
• Mac comes face to face with Titan, head of Codex, who is revealed to be his maternal aunt, Gwen Hayes. It Gets Worse: Codex's actions are based on File 47, a thought experiment spearheaded by Mac's mother. Oversight tells him she only ever viewed it as a thought experiment, but Mac's trust in his father is basically nonexistent and it's clear he doesn't really believe him.
• Worse again: Mac's father pulls a Heroic Sacrifice, staying behind to set off a Dead Man's Switch to blow up Codex's base. Between this and the previous revelations he hasn't had chance to process, it's no wonder Mac is traumatised for the rest of the season and vulnerable to manipulation.

Code + Artemis + Nuclear + N3mesis

• Mac is clearly devastated after his father's Heroic Sacrifice, showing clear signs of trauma and burnout throughout the episode but refusing to take time off because he clearly doesn't know how to deal with it.
• To prevent a nuclear meltdown that will kill millions, Mac is forced to seal a room while technician Lawsky is still in there and will suffocate. To make it so much worse, the guy had a family, including kids who will now grow up with no dad... like Mac did.

Tesla + Bell + Edison + Mac

• A concussed Mac has to take experimental drugs to induce a dream-like state so he can remember what he saw in Tesla's secret lab before it blew up. This basically drops him into his subconscious, which is not the happiest or safest place to be.
  • Lawsky appears to give Mac a What the Hell, Hero? for sealing him in a room to die.
  • Edison and Bell prevent Mac from accessing his subconscious recreation of the lab, claiming he's not worthy of seeing it because of some of the choices he's made lately.
    Mac: When faced with obstacles in the dystopian nightmare that is your subconscious, sometimes you need a distraction so you don't careen down a shame spiral to oblivion.
  • A woman who keeps appearing to guide Mac through the dream turns out to be the mother he barely remembers. His conversation with her shows that he didn't believe his father when he said that File 47 was only a thought experiment to her.
  • Mac is finally confronted by the shadowy figure various people have been warning him about, and it's Mac himself, dressed like someone from a gangster movie. He won't let Mac access the lab because he thinks Codex are right. This is part of Mac talking, and it's clear he has a frightening amount of power...