How is everyone doing?

Because our campaign is doing great.

Our petition has now over 20,4k signatures and people from all over the world have joined the fight to #SaveMacGyver.
Fans from at least 75 countries are using their voices to stand up for the show, the cast and the crew.

We've already sent almost 338k paperclips (that we know of) and we're planning on sending a large shipment of one million paperclips all together. CBS won't ever need to buy paperclips for their offices for the rest of their lives.

We've been active on twitter all day, every day, keeping our hashtag alive. We have over 260k tweets so far.

We've raised 3550$ for our Billboards. Two of them are already up in LA and one in Times Square in NY, while we are waiting for approval for one more in Chigaco. 

The 2 LA Billboards, North & Southbound on the Freeway, are in Carson. At the 405/110 Interchange.

These Are called Blip Billboards. Meaning we run our #SaveMacGyver Graphic Ad along with other companies. It’s a 10-12 Sec Commercial on a huge Billboard. Each Location we have picked, ON AVERAGE, are 900,000 - 1.2 Million Views, by the Public, every day!

So, if you live near that location keep an eye out for them. Maybe take a picture and share it on your social media.

We've raised 1,095$ so far, for our charity gofundme.
This money will go to the Cancer Research Institute.
Cancer touches millions of people everyday and it's very important to finally find a way to cure it.

We're all doing our best to save our favourite show. A show that represents so much. A show that screams diversity.

Let's talk about that.

Diversity and Representation on MacGyver.

When we decided to include something so important in this update, I immediately thought of a fan that goes by the alias Blindluck92.
He has a way with words and I'm sure you will love everything he has to say.

"Oh, the places you'll go and the people you'll see!"
While I doubt Dr. Seuss was referring to a twenty-something blonde genius who saves the world every week with his found family of secret government agents and an endless arsenal of DIY life hacks, the quote still rings true for the 2016 reboot of MacGyver.

This is a show that goes everywhere, and sees everyone. Most shows with a setting like this would be content to add a token minority race or two and leave it at that.

Here on MacGyver? Not even close.

They went to the ends of the earth, sometimes quite literally, to make sure that everyone watching was seen and heard. From the usual representation of race and ethnicity, to other less obvious subjects that, even today, most series will shy away from, such as gender identity, not to mention the sheer number of diverse locations around the world that our heroes visit, there's always a sense of warmth and acceptance on this show that borders on unprecedented in its rarity and sincerity.

What? You want specifics? Okay, how about a list, then:

Lucas Till plays Angus MacGyver. He's our main protagonist. He's also a total nerd, and he saves the world because of this fact, not in spite of it.

Tristin Mays plays Riley Davis, the main female lead. Both the actress and the character are multiracial, with Tristin further specifying for herself, "I'm African American-French-Indian. Creole." Oh, and she's a hacker, and just like how Mac breaks the action hero stereotype, Riley shatters the hacker stereotype to pieces while maintaining the same sense of plausibility as Mac's DIY improvisations.

Both Mac and Riley are also characters with a veritable truckload of childhood trauma, ranging from abuse to abandonment, and plenty more in between. These aren't pleasant subjects, but they resonate with those in the audience who potentially suffered similar experiences, representing them just as openly as any race, culture, or identity.

Moving on, Justin Hires plays Mac's childhood friend and adoptive brother, Wilt Bozer. Heck, last week, we saw Mac get adopted by Bozer's aunt, and in a flashback scene, we witness Bozer excitedly saying, "Now we can be brothers for real!"

It reminded me of the series Lucifer, where the Devil himself is played by Tom Ellis and his elder brother Amenadiel is played by D. B. Woodside, but whenever one introduces the other as a sibling, nobody even blinks. The characters don't question it, and we in the audience don't question it either. It just is. Bozer plays a similar role here, and he has had spectacular character development over the series without losing that goofy charm that endeared us to him ever since his debut in the first episode.

Next we have the delightful Meredith Eaton playing Matilda "Matty" Webber, or "Matty the Hun" when she's being extra intimidating. Standing at exactly four feet tall on account of her dwarfism, Meredith chooses to identify as a "short-stature actress" instead of allowing her condition to define her or her career. This, along with her role as the boss who can waltz into Langley and verbally eviscerate the Assistant Director of the CIA before lunch on an average Tuesday, serves as a wonderful inspiration for anyone in the audience that has a similar condition. The lesson she teaches is that one cannot be measured in feet or inches when their presence is all they need to fill a room.

Next, joining us halfway through Season 3 is Desiree "Desi" Nguyen, played by Levy Tran. Born in California to Vietnamese parents, Levy, and by extension Desi, has many intricate tattoos that have transformed a decent portion of her visible skin into an expressive canvas of ink, with meaning behind every design. Like her actress, Desi is also born to Vietnamese parents on the show, something incredibly uncommon in the core cast of mainstream TV shows, even today. Whether Levy Tran is serving as the exception or the trendsetter remains to be seen, but simply representing a diversity that extends beyond America and Western Europe in the top billing is wonderful in and of itself.

Joining us in Season 4, we have the very British Russ Taylor, played by Henry Ian Cusick... who is actually Scottish-Peruvian by birth. To his credit, Cusick sold his role quite well. The humor even made sense. British stereotypes were managed tastefully and accurately for the most part, and he even managed to give us the most spectacular live-action remake of one of the oldest memes in gaming: the Leeeeeeeroooooy Jennnkiins!!!

And on top of all that, he gives a (mostly) accurate portrayal of Pareidolia, which can be painfully oversimplified as thinking in patterns. They even avoided the typical Hollywood "disability as a superpower" trap by specifically calling him out for thinking that his condition was a superpower when it was really just keeping him awake for days at a time without rest.

And last to join our merry band during Season 5, Alexandra Grey plays the transgender female, Parker, an engineer for the Phoenix. Absolutely no mention of her gender is made at any time during her interactions with the other members of the Phoenix Foundation, and that, in itself, speaks volumes for this series and its ability to encourage and embrace anyone and everyone.

If gender identity had to be discussed in the first place, then the show would have already been doing it wrong and it would have felt forced and unrealistic. Parker did comment, however, in the most recent episode that she understood what it felt like to be uncomfortable in one's own skin. This is true for many people for reasons that range from gender identity to sensory processing disorder and countless other reasons, allowing the statement to resonate with transgender viewers directly, but also with many others who simply look at the TV screen and say, "this show gets it!"

Also last week, Riley corrected Mac on calling her collective of hackers "girls" by simply saying one was non-binary. It wasn't an attack, nor a demand for an apology, but a simple correction. In turn, Mac offered a silent apology for making the heteronormative assumption, and life went on without fuss.

This is the world we live in, full of countless forms of diversity. MacGyver accepts this, both as the character and the show, and would genuinely like to see the rest of the world do the same.

When you see "representation" on other shows, it's too often reduced to a series of politically correct checkboxes. They go down the list making sure the audience knows they covered them all, and that's it.

Checkboxes aren't people, though. MacGyver is a show full of people of all kinds. And they all matter. Even our hero makes it quite clear that he didn't save the world just for his own government to support institutionalized racism. He has zero tolerance for the notion that he has some inherent superiority to Riley and Bozer just because he is white and they're black (a sentiment that his actor, Lucas Till, most certainly shared if his tweets on Black Lives matter were anything to go off of). And when Riley expressed her shock that he noticed her skin color, Mac said something to her that can be seen as a message from the show to everyone watching:

"I see you."

They see us. And they prove it repeatedly with their diverse cast, in all the places they go and all the people they see.
#SaveMacGyver

- Blindluck92

Thank you for this beautiful piece!

This show means the world to us, simply because it accepts the world and everything that comes with it.

The fans will keep fighting until they're heard.

Visit our website to learn more about our campaign: https://www.savemacgyver.com/