Classic 80's TV: The A-Team and MacGyver

Some people have "Summer reading", pulp-type suspense novels or what have you that they would normally never have the time to get around to. In lieu of that I've got summer TV. Due to the re-releases on DVD and, uh, other technology, I now have access to classic action shows of the 1980's that thrilled me as a 7-year-old child. Now with the enlightenment of semi-adulthood I can see these shows for what they really are, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Some thoughts...

MacGyver-
If you're too young to remember MacGyver first hand, you might remember it as the show Marge's sisters Selma and Thelma worship in old Simpsons re-runs. (Definitely not something that helped it's cool quotient).

Basically, MacGyver was about a secret agent with the touch of a handyman. Using only his Swiss Army knife, some duct-tape, and whatever random tools he could find lying around (cans of paint, rope, trashbags, etc), he would rig up all kinds of ingenious rube-goldberg-style contraptions to get him and whoever he was saving that episode out of sticky situations. Conveniently, many of the binds he found himself in involved the bad guys capturing him and locking him in an unsupervised room full of all kinds of useful junk.

That totally kicks ass...in theory. But in many cases the contraptions were just so corny they weren't very exciting. The inventions were just realistic enough that it seemed like the scriptwriters were trying to convince you they would work in real life, but preposterous enough that you just want to role your eyes and go, "Oh please. Do you really expect us to believe that would work?"

One episode I watched he escaped from captors by blowing a medical syringe full of tranquilizer through a makeshift peashooter made out of paper. The syringe flew, like, 20 feet, hit the armed guard straight in the jugular and took him out. WTF?

Macgyver never just solved problems with guns, that would be too easy. He and some beautiful woman would be trapped in a house as guys armed with UZI submachine guns stormed in to get them. He would manage to quietly take one of them out, and his gun would fall to the floor...and MacGyver would just leave it there, and go back to hunting down the rest armed only with a fire-extinguisher, kitchen bleach, and the remains of an old radio.


The A-Team

The A-Team was a little before my time. If you're not familiar with it, you're at least familiar with one of its stars, Mr.T.

The A-Team involved a crack team of commandos during the then-more-recent Vietnam war, that were "imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit". They escaped, and began lives as soldiers-of-fortune, helping out anyone with a problem that could pay their high fees. All the while, the military and police chase them as fugitives.

Every member had his own specialty they included-

Hannibal- the leader, pictured above. He came up with the teams' zany strategies, and was also a master of disguise, which came in handy. In the picture above he's pulling off his caddy disguise and holding up a corrupt general on a golf course.

Mr T/B.A Baracus- The strongman of the group. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, T was the team's point man. He would throw suckers through walls. He was also the team's driver, and a skilled mechanic, and could whip up armored cars out of scrap parts. Kind of like a poor man's MacGyver, but tougher and much more violent.

Murdoch- Murdoch was an expert airplane and helicopter pilot and considered one of the best in the military. He was also batshit crazy, and the actor that plays him was really annoying. Additionally, Murdoch could also whip together some crazy Macgyver-type inventions. In one of the first episodes, he broke him and his friends out of prison by rigging up hot-air balloons out of trashbags, The team just floated right out of the cell yard.

Dirk Benedict- I might be confusing his real name with the character's name. At any rate, this guy was a lovable conman that attracted women by posing as neurosurgeons, TV executives and fashion designers. This didn't do the team much good, but it helped give some comedy relief at the beginnings and endings of episodes.

The A-Team rocks! The whole thing plays like a live-action comic book. Unlike MacGyver, it doesn't even pretend to have dramatic undertones, or try to convince you that anything going on the screen is even half-way realistic. That opens the show up to all kinds of great stuff. If you're going to cross the lines of believability, you might as well stomp all over it. In one episode, the team warded off a militia attacking the compound they were holed up in by rigging up a makeshift tank out of scrap auto parts that shot dynamite sticks out of a wooden cannon...and they threw it together in under 2 hours. Thats just awesome.

Another advantage the A-Team has over MacGyver is that they use guns. Almost every episode seemed to involve a AK-47 shoot-out in which the teams faces off against about twice as many guys, and bullets fly all over the place. And yet no-one ever seems to get killed, or even really wounded!

Anyway, if you're looking for something new to watch I totally recommend this show. Its unlike anything thats been on the air for about 20 years.