“If
you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can remember them,
maybe you can hire the A-Team”
It all began back during the
days of the Vietnam War (way before even I was born); some soldiers did something
rather silly and got themselves arrested. You automatically think of Americans
when a statement like that is made, don’t you? Apologies to any and all
Americans who might read that and sue me for defamation of character and what
not.
Lets begin again…
In 1972 a team of crap
crack commandos were sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit. Hold on a
moment, before continuing on I have to ask - how do we know they didn't do said
crime? I mean all we ever really have is their word and they are men who know how to use bloody guns,
if they say they’re innocent most sane and reasonable people will nod and say
they believe them! But anyways, back on track. They were sent down for a crime
they “didn’t” commit. For punishment they got thrown into a maximum security
military prison and, being our heroes they managed to escape. Now see this gets
me wondering again, either our four main guys are more badass than we realised
(and got arrested just for shits and giggles), or their prison was about as
secure as a Wendy house. I think I’m leaning in the direction of explanation
number two here. So they escape and promptly hide out somewhere in Los Angeles,
which isn't a bad choice really as apparently, a herd of dinosaurs could hide
out in L.A. and never be discovered. Deciding that they need money (well
they’re on the run from the law and all criminals on the lam need a steady
supply of cash), they choose to go into the soldier of fortune business (a
rapid growth industry back in the 70’s - 80’s), and advertise their services in
the classified sections of every newspaper on the face of the Earth. Good
decision making there boys, no military police officers are ever going to
suspect who you are when they see your ad in between the landscape gardening
and dog grooming adverts.
Before we go any further let’s
introduce ourselves to the A-Team, soldiers of fortune and supposedly all
around good eggs.
"I love it when a plan comes together."
Here we have the main man
himself, Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith. Master of disguise, cigar chomper
extraordinaire and lover of plans coming together. He favours wearing white
jackets and black leather gloves and is known to grin like a lunatic on meds
(see: Murdoch) when things go his way.
"I lie, I cheat, I steal and I just don't get any respect."
Next up in front of us is
Lieutenant Templeton “The Faceman” Peck, or just Face to his buddies. Face is
the man who can get anything at any time from anywhere, unless it’s something
useful that you actually need then he’s about as useful as a chocolate
fire-guard. Face likes to appear suave and is rarely seen without female
company.
"I'm a bird! I'm a plane! I'm a choo-choo train!"
Grinning at us now (and I
guess making us all nervous) is Captain H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock. The man who
can fly anything, and I mean anything! He has been known to take joy rides on a
paper airplane around the confines of his padded cell. Murdock likes nothing
more than annoying his friends and extolling the virtues of a glass of milk.
"I ain't gettin' on no plane Hannibal!"
And finally we come to
Sergeant First Class Bosco “B.A.” Baracus. This man must be the strongest man
in the world and surely the only sentient being who’s ever harboured suspicions
about an innocent glass of milk. B.A. likes gold, lots and lots and lots of
gold; he probably has more gold around his neck than Fort Knox has in its
vaults.
So now we've met our heroes
and we know how they got to be where they are (well, we know their version). So
what is it they now do? What exactly is soldier of fortuning? Or soldiering of
fortune? Well evidently it’s about helping the weak, oppressed and frankly
naïve population of America in their struggles against crooks, thugs and other
unsavoury types, all the while imparting morality and good old fashioned
working class ethics on the unsuspecting viewing public. And who said
ultra-violent, yet strangely bloodless, trashy action shows couldn't educate
people?
I'm going to describe a basic
episode here, it’s all made up from my imagination, but I'm sure you've all
seen the various A-Team equivalents. At least I hope you've seen it, I'm going
on the assumption here that everyone reading has had almost constant access to
a TV and hasn't been living in a TV-less world were the only form of
entertainment is counting pocket lint.
Anyhow…
Random redneck townsperson A
is being threatened by random redneck thugs A,B and C. D is looking on
menacingly chewing on a toothpick. The threats are probably some form of
extortion; they usually are in your typical A-Team episode.
Random redneck townsperson A
moans and whinges to random redneck townsperson B, and sometimes C if the
producers could afford a lot of extras. Together our group of oppressed random
rednecks scour the classifieds, looking for men with guns to drive in and save
the day. Smart-ass comments and pithy one-liners are a must.
A meeting is arranged and
random redneck(s) get in their rusty old car(s) and drive off to a fairground
(sometimes it’s the beach). There they are met by a giant latex clown (I can’t
remember seeing Hannibal in a giant latex clown outfit, but I'm pretty damn
sure he had one).
The random rednecks pour out
their woes to the giant latex clown and ask it if it knows where to find the
A-Team. Just as an aside here, would you trust anyone who wore a few pounds of
latex on a stupidly hot day? Me neither! Sidetracked again, sorry. After
listening sympathetically the giant latex clown pops open a panel somewhere on
its upper body and the face of Hannibal Smith appears, lights up a cigar,
chomps a bit and informs them he and his boys will help out.
Cue the really cool intro
music:
We have a few quick fire
scenes here. First off is a few random redneck thugs getting all macho and
tough with a group of random redneck townspeople, then we have the first real
A-Team action scene of the day. Murdock, as viewers will remember, lives in a
mental hospital (because he’s a loon obviously), and because our team can’t
function very well as a threesome they have to come up with a cunning plan to
break Murdock free for a few days. This usually involves Face posing as a
doctor and B.A. posing as a taxi driver (he’s driving something, he can do the
taxi driver pose).
With Murdock (un)safely back
among the general population our team head off for the random redneck village,
the four messed up horsemen of the apocalypse.
Within seconds of driving down
random redneck town’s high street, Hannibal and the boys not only know who the
big, aggravating boss is, they know everything he’s ever done wrong, even down
to the aggressive way he used to play kiss-chase at the local primary school.
Hannibal, Face, Murdock and
B.A. meet up with a few of the respectable elder random redneck townspeople,
and they do the verbal equivalent of a group hug, Face makes eyes at some
pretty girl (probably called Daisy or Mary Sue), then they head off to a bar.
You have to understand, it has to be a bar. Nowhere else can show the
confrontational ambience of small-town America other than an all American bar.
In the bar the head redneck
thug is shooting some pool (usually winning, because thugs the world over are
brown nosers and want to suck up). The comic relief bit happens here, when
Hannibal and the head redneck thug trade enough witty one-liners to make a
circuit comedian go green with envy. Suffice to say nothing gets resolved
(these guys really are shit negotiators) and Hannibal is now free to devise one
of his cunning plans (I don’t know about the rest of you, but I'm wondering if
Hannibal can count Baldric among his ancestors?)
Before the gang leave the bar
though, they must have the obligatory fist fight with the redneck thugs. The
fight follows a fairly predictable routine. Hannibal, despite looking a few
centuries older than most of the guys he‘s fighting, manages to beat his
opponents down with a variety of brutal and flashy moves (and never losing his
cigar). Murdock acts all crazy (well, he doesn't need to act) and barring
throwing the odd jab around doesn't accomplish much. Face, being perceived as
the weakest guy alive generally has a few big, hefty thugs surrounding him, and
despite being a highly trained special operations soldier he still manages to
get beaten on by a group of lads who can all probably claim that their sister
is their mother … and they’re all brothers. B.A. meanwhile just stands there,
letting each and every one of his assailants punch the foot thick
armour-plating of gold chains that cover his chest (why they ignore his
unprotected face is anyone’s guess), then when they’re all stood around holding
their hands he throws them contemptuously about the room. He’s so talented he
can even throw them in slow-mo.
The team leave the bar and
climb into the van. Now the A-Team van is surely the coolest motor vehicle ever
to appear on screen (even better than the cars shown in The Dukes of Hazzard
and Starsky and Hutch). It’s an indestructible fighting machine, a
mobile war office and the bearer of the world’s largest personal weapons
armoury. The van is the fifth member of the A-Team.
So they've made their plans.
Hannibal has chomped a few cigars down to brown mulch. Now they are ready to go
to war.
Sometimes, if we’re especially
lucky, we’ll get a scene involving some sort of flying machine. It makes sense
really as Murdock is the best pilot in the world, now and forever. I'm pretty
convinced, though, that the only reason these scenes were included was to
educate young people on the importance of having a regular calcium intake. I
mean we've already seen that B.A. is afraid of precisely nothing (well we have
if we’re actually watching the show rather than reading my unaired episode),
and now we’re expected to believe that B.A. is afraid of flying? I'm sorry but
I can’t accept that. With any other mere mortal I could, but this is B.A.
Baracus the toughest man alive. He ass fucks Chuck Norris twice before breakfast.
Therefore I can only deduce that the powers that be saw he was the perfect role
model and asked him to have this one (unrealistic) weakness in order to show
the watching kids that drinking milk at any time was good for you. The
sedatives were just a convenience.
We are treated now to various
scenes of no real importance to the plot (usually scenes of Face making out
with Daisy or Mary Sue).
But then we are treated to
scenes of real genius. The scenes that every kid was glued to the TV for on a
Saturday afternoon. The scenes of capture and subsequent escape.
You see what happens (in every
bloody episode) is that something has gone wrong with the plan. The head
redneck thug and his band of merry minions have somehow managed to capture
Hannibal and the team. All the random redneck townspeople are depressed by this
turn of events, understandably so given that the team of “professional”
soldiers they've hired have been captured by a group of people who failed
auditions for Deliverance.
But all is not lost. Our
heroes (in true A-Team style) are imprisoned in a really large warehouse, fully
stocked up with; wood, metal, power tools, spare tyres, gas canisters and some
form of root vegetable, not to mention that the redneck thugs have failed to
learn from history and have neglected to cut the power to the “warehouse
prison”.
What follows is the biggest
exercise in ingenuity you are ever likely to see, as the A-Team use all the
materials they find and construct a worthy replication of a Challenger tank.
This is why this show was more educational than anything else on TV at this
point, it proved that if you used your brains and common sense, and if you
just had access to a solitary plug point, you could turn a simple cabbage into
a weapon of mass destruction. Learning with violent entertainment, if only
schools would go that way now!
With the cabbage cannon (or
whichever root vegetable they are using as ammunition), the A-Team are able to
defeat the redneck army and their arsenal of automatic weapons. Miraculously
enough nobody dies, or is even wounded. Either the people on this show are the
worst marksmen in history, or the guns they have just shoot bubbles shaped like
bullets. I’ll let you form your own opinions there.
Anyhow, Hannibal, Face,
Murdock and B.A. have won. The oppressed redneck townspeople are free from
their redneck thuggish oppressors, a victory for morality you may say.
I have to say though, other
than Face having plenty of sex (fortunately not seen on camera), how do
Hannibal and the team get paid for their efforts? Do they get paid cash so they
can avoid taxes? Numbered Swiss bank accounts? Or do they have bank accounts in
false names so they can access them without too much fiddling around? I guess we’ll never know as the economics of
being a soldier of fortune is never really explained.
There we go though, that’s how
a particular episode of the A-Team generally goes. I'm sure you’ll all agree,
once you've taken off the nostalgia glasses, that it’s just complete
unbelievable trash TV. Best off left to the decade in which it emerged.
And we’re all probably right!
*****
What it all boils down to
really is that this programme was pure fun. Sure, it wasn't Oscar or Emmy award
winning brilliance, but it was light-hearted, and more often than not it had a
decent moral message that kids could understand. And it was entertaining, and
what more do we want from a TV show?
Thanks for reading, hope you all enjoyed.
No comments:
Post a Comment