He is not, in fact, gettin' on no airplane, Hannibal.

First off, let me say that “The A-Team” that I know, isn’t like the one that you remember. That’s because before today’s screening of the two-part pilot, “The Mexican Slayride”, I’d never seen an episode of the show. That means, to me, Templeton “Faceman” Peck will always be Tim Dunigan who was unceremoniously replaced by Dirk Benedict for the role after the pilot because the producers worried that he looked too young to be a Vietnam War veteran. It’s a move that makes no sense given the fact that EVERYTHING else about the show borders on the ridiculous. I would have loved to be sitting in that meeting with the producers as they discussed replacing a principle actor on an already piloted television series because he looked too young for the role even though they knew that the series was already veering into the absolutely absurd. But before I get caught up in a diatribe about the hilariously awesome, over the top nature of the quintessentially 80’s show that is “The A-Team”, let’s first review the basics. As stated at the beginning of the program, the members of the A-Team were an elite commando unit that, at the end of the Vietnam war, were tried for crimes they didn’t commit. In the pilot, we learn that they were involved in the robbery/liberation of a Hanoi bank. A mission who’s orders were destroyed (along with their commanding officer) in an artillery attack at the end of the war. Since escaping from military prison at Fort Brag (in North Carolina) they’ve joined the seedy underground of Los Angeles (in California) where they apparently help children, run cons, act as movie monsters and live rent free in a Veteran’s Home for the Insane. But! If you’ve got a problem and no one else can help AND you can find them (and pay them, apparently) you may just be able to hire The A-Team.

A Brief Synopsis of “The A-Team”: The pilot begins in a small Mexican town where an LA newspaper reporter named Massey (played Jessica Fletcher’s doctor friend from “Murder She Wrote”) is kidnapped by some local scoundrels. Cut back to LA where one of his fellow reporters, Amy Allen, is trying to convince her editor that Massey’s in trouble even though he’s been disappearing for months because of the depression caused by the death of his wife. Her editor balks and suspends Allen for two weeks with half pay so she can “learn to stop sitting on her brains.” Allen exits to the newsroom where she meets up with Zack (played by Horshack from “Welcome back, Kotter”) who gives her the pilot-worthy run down on the rumored commando force that’s been living in the LA underground for the last ten years. In a scene that can only be described as “blatant exposition”, Horshack lays out the team of John “Hannibal” Smith, B.A. Baracus, Templeton “Faceman” Peck and “Howling Mad” Murdock (their trusty pilot). Amy sets out to contact the A-Team so they can help her recover Massey from his ambiguous Mexican captors. She visits Murdock at the insane asylum and is pointed to a dark alley behind a Hollywood strip club…as you’ll do. She heads for the meeting point at 2 AM and runs into Hannibal (dressed as a hobo) and gives him a $20, sleeps in her car and meets up with Hannibal (dressed as a blatantly racist stereotypical Asian caricature known as “Mr. Lee”) who asks her for $150,000 and a photo of Massey. It’s 48 hours later that Hannibal (dressed as…oh wait…Hannibal) approaches her in a parking garage and let’s her know that she’s successfully hired the A-Team (able to deal with the homeless, racist characters and financial ruin? You can hire the A-Team!). The group converges on LAX where Face has secured a plane that no one’s mentioned up to this point, they drug BA (he’s afraid of flying and oblivious to needles!) and take off for Mexico. And that’s only the first hour of this two hour pilot. In the second half we learn important lessons like:

• No one in the A-Team universe can accurately shoot a firearm: Seriously. The count for the episode was something like 7,000 bullets fired and 0 actually connected. I get that they didn’t want to show blood or actual violence on TV back in the day, but c’mon, a monkey could hit at least one bad guy when they’re surrounded by a firing squad of farmers.
• Marijuana is bad: The A-Team figures out that the warlords that are holding Massey hostage are using fear to force small Mexican towns to work in their make-shift weed fields. The team coats the fields in bleach and then drops leaflets on them…in Spanish…which are never explained.
• Grenades are equal to M-80s: As a kid who spent his fair share of time blowing things up with M-80s, I know what those kinds of explosions looked like. Seeing the “grenade” explosions on “The A-Team” was vaguely reminiscent of those GI-Joe destroying explosions.
• Military justice means nothing: After securing Massey and handing the Mexican warlord and his “guerrilla”  general over to the local towns folk (for some street justice, one can assume) the team runs into General Lynch, who’s been hunting them down for 10 years since their escape from Fort Bragg, at the Mexican airport. Their solution? Punch him in the face and put him in the trunk of their car before taking off for the US of A. Suck it, military tribunals. You have no power here.

At the end of the day, the episode ends with The A-Team adding Amy Allen (Triple A!) as the latest member of their team of misfits. I can only assume that they spent the next 5 years getting into and out of trouble with other mercenaries and the United States military ending with a finale that cleared their name and undoubtedly set them all up for spin-offs…just in case.

Why is it a PCBS? It’s “The A-Team.” Whether you consider it the show that helped solidify Mr. T as the star he is or the launching pad for other 80’s stalwarts like “MacGuyver”, “The A-Team” is considered by many as the ultimate in ridiculous 80’s TV. It’s a show that’s so big it’s been remade into one of this summer’s big blockbusters with stars like Liam Neesom and Bradley Cooper stepping into the major roles. Seriously, for once, I don’t really have to defend why I should have seen an episode of a show other than by repeating it’s name….It’s “The A-Team” for crying out loud.

How does it look in the rear view mirror? Honestly, it’s awesome. “The A-Team” reminds me of a simpler time in television. There’s no call for realism, accurate depiction of situations or intense development of character on a show like this. If “Lost” was all about characters and “the journey” then “The A-Team” was all about explosions and super corny jokes. When we first meet Hannibal, he’s dressed as “The Aquamaniac” (a “Creature for the Black Lagoon”-esque character that doesn’t stop him from smoking insanely long cigars) and a random car chase ensues. No one seems tied to plot, character development or for that matter physics. The only point of the show is to tell an entertaining story and deliver a few zingers along the way. It’s easy to see how the 80’s were fertile ground for movies like “Die Hard” (Yippie Kay Ay, Mother Fucker!) and “Lethal Weapon” (I’m getting too old for this shit) when shows like “The A-Team” were weekly fair on TV. There’s something refreshing about truly escapist TV (that isn’t reality) in a world that begs us to take everything so seriously. While shows like “24” are challenging to our perception of true life political events (or at least started out that way), TV can also be completely and mindlessly fun. That’s what I got from the pilot of “The A-Team”, they were all really enjoying the laughably terrible circumstances that they were involved in, even if they all knew it didn’t much in the long run.

Final Thoughts: At the end of the day a pilot is supposed to make us want to watch more of the series as a whole. So did the pilot of “The A-Team” make me want to watch more of “The A-Team”? Honestly, it did. Growing up, Saturday afternoons were full of re-runs of shows like “The Fall Guy” and as much as I love Lee Majors, I wish I’d seen more of “The A-Team” as a kid. It’s easily the most roller coaster show that I’ve seen in a really long time. I don’t mean that it’s full of ups and downs that challenge the way we see the world. I mean that it’s a fun ride for a very short amount of time that is completely forgettable when it’s over. Sometimes that’s ok. Everything doesn’t have to be “deep” or “meaningful.” Sometimes it’s OK for a show to simply offer an escape from the troubles of the real world…even if the world that it presents is filled with the absolute worst shots ever.