Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/04/lest-ye-forget-how-awesome-t.html
…
5 Likes
The A-Team was a great show for about half a season. The problem with it was that every single episode followed the same formula. They would get in a fight and lose, then build something such as a machine that fires cabbages, then take on the bad guys and win. Then the army shows up and they run away. Despite firing hundreds of rounds from machine guns, no one every gets really hurt or killed. It got old fast.
10 Likes
My first car I had a bumper sticker that said “Maybe you can hire the A-Team” in the characteristic stencil font. I’m not much for bumper stickers these days, but I’d probably snag that one again if I could find it.
5 Likes
My Dad and I would watch that every week. We knew it was kinda dumb, but it was just so much dang fun!
6 Likes
Maybe for you, but as an 8 year-old boy, it never did for me.
18 Likes
One thing that the article doesn’t mention was that Dirk Benedict wasn’t the original person cast as “Face.” The honor went to Tim Dunigan
2 Likes
Don’t forget a vehicle running onto some kind of ramp/explosive and doing an “A-Team Roll”.
6 Likes
The movie was an excellent homage to the TV show. The actors nailed the roles.
6 Likes
I always loved the concept of “the Los Angeles underground”, a hidden community of charming rogues in the city where I lived. Also, was it ever explained how exactly could one “find them”?
And that Mike Post theme…so good.
The Hannibal tagline “I love it when a plan comes together” is quoted by me all the time.
Same here. The younger people I work sometimes think I came up with the catchphrase for myself and I have to school them.
BA which the series was clear to point out stands for “Bad Attitude”
Riggghhhttt…
8 Likes
The cameo(s) were… amusing as well.
Part of the ‘no deaths’ thing was, IIRC, a censorship thing so that it could be shown in pretty much any time slot on broadcast TV. (I could be remembering it wrong, though…)
7 Likes
Just about every episode featured welding shit to other shit as armor. It was fantastic!
11 Likes
Especially when, as frequently happened, the welding job ended up with an improvised assault vehicle. Because why not?
8 Likes
Plus, in the main cast you got Lieutenants Barclay and Starbuck!
9 Likes
I assumed classified ads, like McCall in The Equalizer
5 Likes
They had Craigslist back then?
[ducks]
5 Likes
Somewhere I imagine that African warlords and Syrian dissidents are using The A-Team as the inspiration for designing “technicals”
1 Like
That is literally the only thing I remember them building. I know they did something like it in most (all?) episodes, but the cabbage cannon is the only one I actually remember.
Possibly in the same episode as the cabbage gun, I remember they shot down the baddies’ helicopter, sending it smack into the side of a hill. Perhaps uniquely in the history of action TV (and film), it failed to explode on impact. Instead, the baddies staggered out, coughing and spluttering.
4 Likes
My favorite episode is the one where they mobilized an entire community of elderly retirees as their personal army corps of engineers.
Sorta like Three Amigos, but with fewer sewing machines and more Golden Girls.
8 Likes
Eh, it was ok, but I was more of a Knight Rider “man” myself. Then again, I live in a country where David Hasselhoff can still draw a crowd.
Also, clearly the superior intro theme.
8 Likes
Riffing off the OP’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s/A-Team theory: I believe it’s fairly well established fanon that Robert McCall is (another) alias of David Callan, too restless to enjoy the retirement finally and begrudgingly allowed by Section. I mean, “McCall”, “Callan” – it’s a bit in your face.
7 Likes
