The A-Team Formula

I can’t remember why I looked up The A-Team on Wikipedia a few months ago. Perhaps it was research for some long-forgotten game idea, or perhaps I was just really bored. Chances are it was a combination of the two. What I found, however, wasn’t just a typical Wikipedia ‘article-by-consensus’ – thorough, but long-winded and lacking critical faculties…

Well, it was mostly that, but it had one real gem in it: someone wrote a long section entitled Formulaic nature of episodes. Rather than being some high school essay, it’s both hilarious and completely spot-on in its almost scientific specificity. After all, all the episodes were essentially identical:

An episode … will start with the A-Team being hired by down-trodden, terrorized clients (often more than one member of the same family). Frequently, one of the clients will be a young woman who Face is immediately attracted to and who will serve as the object of his advances. The clients will have already passed “Mr. Lee”, one of Hannibal’s aliases, used to make sure the clients aren’t set by the military and encounter Hannibal in a second disguise, in which he’ll tell the clients they’ve “just hired the A-Team.” Just as frequently, the A-Team are on the road and stumble across someone who needed their help. The A-Team often return their fee to the most needy clients or find another way to pay their expenses.

By this time, Murdock will escape from the psychiatric hospital where he is interned with the help of Face. The mission is assessed by the team, and Face, sometimes assisted by Murdock, is sent to scam items for the team, often angering the episode’s opponent at the same time. This scene usually precedes or runs alongside to (part of) the team confronting the episode’s main opponent and his henchmen, with Hannibal delivering a warning – typically accompanied by a pithy, insulting remark – to them to give up peacefully. During this fight there is usually be a slow motion camera shot of B.A. throwing one of the bad guys over his head and onto a car hood, pile of cardboard boxes, or other such surface. The henchmen report to their boss, who quickly swears revenge.

The A-Team continue about their mission, often helping the clients in their daily routine, during which they prepare for the counter-attack from the episode’s antagonist. During this time, the clients question either Murdock’s sanity or that of Hannibal. In the latter case, one of the team members will make a reference to Hannibal “being on the jazz”, a term to denote the adrenaline rush that accompanies their adventures. During this segment the aforementioned female character (often sister, daughter or assistant to the client(s)) will give into Face’s advances, but the two are usually interrupted by a member of the team after a short kiss. A short scene showing the interaction between B.A. and Murdock would follow, often with Murdock angering B.A., as a set-up to B.A. taking revenge on Murdock at the end of the episode…

And so on. I ask, who could criticise Wikipedia when it harbours moments of brilliance like this?