The A-Team - Season Two
If ridiculous banter, goofball plots, and many, many, many explosions sounds like the recipe for a perfect TV show to you--you must already be a fan ofThe A-Team. Each of these Vietnam vets on the lam had his specialty: Hannibal (cigar-chomping George Peppard, a long way fromBreakfast at Tiffany's) is the cocksure master planner; Faceman (Dirk Benedict of the originalBattlestar Galactica) is the smooth-talking con artist; the pilot with a screw loose is Murdock (Dwight Schultz, later to appear onStar Trek: Voyager); and B.A. Baracus (the charismatic and gold-encrusted Mr. T,Rocky III) is both mechanic and muscle. During the series' five year run, each of these eccentrics cultivated their own rabid fan-base as they threw punches, fired thousand of bullets, tossed hand grenades to and fro, and flipped speeding cars--all without killing or even really hurting anyone, which only adds to the show's willful silliness. (A warning for fans of reporter/sidekick Amy Allen, played by Melinda Culea: After being given nothing to do for a dozen or so testosterone-heavy episodes of the second season, Culea either quit or was fired.)Only during the 1980s could this peculiar blend of lefty politics and military fetishism have thrived. Though supposedly mercenaries-for-hire, the A-Team usually finds itself defending the downtrodden and helpless out of sheer cussedness. In the second season they helped abused migrant workers form a union--which, naturally, required transmogrifying farm equipment into a cabbage-shooting cannon. Other underdogs included the disenfranchised heir to an African diamond mine; an independent cab company being squeezed by big business; and a pacifist commune harassed by bigots. The last of these prompted Hannibal to muse ponderously on the unappreciated role of the soldier, who fights so others don't have to--after which Murdock and B.A. began punching each other over a bag of pecans. Self-aware and self-mocking,The A-Teampushed the TV action/adventure genre to laughable extremes.--Bret FetzerThe A-Team--Season TwoTrivia• In this season, Amy is no longer part of the A-Team. There's no explanation as to why.• One episode this season sees the title sequence featuring the Cylon fromBattlestar Galatica(as well being in this episode) for the first time. This is an in-joke, as Dirk Benedict played Starbuck in that series.