I Pity the Fool

At the risk of dating myself, I loved The A-Team as a kid. For several years after the show was gone, visits to Universal Studios guaranteed a look at The Van, which was a must for the trip to feel complete. The idea of watching the show on DVD as an adult was pretty exciting, which is part of the reason Transformers did so well at the box office.

I watched two episodes of season 2 last night. (Is it me, or was the show only half hour episodes in season 1, and are suddenly hour-long eps?) This is clearly a show made for 8-10 year old boys and their tomboy counterparts. Lots of implied violence--everyone shoots at each other, but no one gets shot, even at close-range--things blow-up randomly, lots of vehicular stunts (my personal favorite), Hannibal's mastery of disguise, and elaborate plans that always come together. And of course, Mr. T (though Murdoch is the one that really cracks me up). So there's still a lot of great stuff, but my gift-with-purchase comes in the form of noticing things like the seriously poor production quality. Is that because I'm now used to sophisticated CG and the benefits of astronomical budgets or because I'm an adult and have seen a lot since I was 8? Probably both.

Episode 2 of season 2 has all the good, the bad, and the ugly to which I refer. The guest stars are typically, consistently, terrible actors (which I love), all scenes are shot somewhere in LA (dig that crazy smogline; and to borrow from Austin Powers, South Africa "looks nothing at all like Southern California"), and wow, what is Amy wearing??? But specific to this episode, some highlights: Murdoch invoking Peter O'Toole; BA taking apart a luxury apartment's elevator to armor a bakery van; and the invention of bread guns. The beauty of a low budget is that you have nothing to lose, so you get creative. (See Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 for Sam Raimi's effing awesome homemade camera rigs in action.) I heard some talk of re-making The A-Team. Why, why, why? The budget would be huge, and I seriously doubt there would be anything as cool as a bread gun.