We’ve stumbled upon the A-Team Stock Footage Salute to the American Worker!

One thing my new Mr. T doll can’t fix, apparently, is the weather. We’re in the heat of late summer, and while central New Hampshire isn’t a tropical sun belt, it’s enough to make it hard to get comfortable as I write an A-Team recap. And that’s something I’m not that good at anyway; I may have mentioned this earlier in the year, but for the life of me I can’t find The Spot for doing this kind of work. In the course of watching one episode I usually sit 23 different ways in at least two or three rooms. Right now they’re all sweaty and humid, and at night the neighborhood skunk comes out, which forces all the windows closed and everything gets sweatier and more humid. I have read that good writers need to create physical space to facilitate their writing, but they never say whether that suggestion applies to jackasses who recap TV shows, so I haven’t pursued it. Instead, I sit, I lay out, I stand, I lean, I contort massively (ok, not that) all hoping to find the appropriate A-Team recapping position. What we need is an occupational therapist with a specialty in 80s action shows, e.g. “The Ergonomics of Hannibal Smith.” Anybody know one?


Trouble on Wheels

Wild Guess Preview: The team, looking to wind down after all the mobster-fighting hubbub in “Double Heat,” buys tickets to the WORLD OF WHEELS WORLD OF WHEELS monster truck rally at the local civic center. But a crooked event planner enters the awesome van in the demolition derby, where rest and relaxation quickly turns into death and dismemberment. A special broadcast only available this Sunday! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!!!!

Hannibal and Rudy Garcia team up
Hannibal and Dennis Becker, what a team!

The Recap: These factory scenes look awfully generic; I think we’ve stumbled upon the A-Team Stock Footage Salute to the American Worker! There’s welding, there’s hoisting, there’s faux John Fogarty music… it’s like a preparation montage without a villain. Good news: this week’s guest star is Joe Santos, who played Dennis on “The Rockford Files”! Less good news: the camera pulls back and we learn these auto workers have been building a beige K-Car. There must be a metaphor about clouds and silver linings here somewhere, but my eyes stopped working during all the welding footage and I can’t find it.

Joe Santos’s character is called Rudy Garcia, and he’s a plant foreman at the National Motor Company in Van Nuys. He’s just finished a hard day of working hard when two dudes in hoods knock him silly with a crowbar and toss him into their getaway car (which is not a K-Car). They take him to a dockside warehouse and shine bright lights at him, even though he’s blindfolded, and they warn him not to speak out against unnamed atrocities at the auto plant. See, if National would just institute a grievance policy, the workers wouldn’t resort to terrorism.

Rudy and his busted face drive away, and go straight through a stop sign, which puts a motorcycle cop on his tail. Rudy’s wondering if the cop has got SCMODS, but it’s actually Hannibal, doing one of his tests of character: he asks Rudy for a bribe but Rudy rejects it, saying he’d rather take the ticket. And so Hannibal hands him a ticket with “YOU HAVE JUST FOUND THE A-TEAM” on it. “I like an honest man, Mr. Garcia,” says Hannibal. And here comes the awesome van, with a mustache-free Face hanging off the side to collect their phony stop sign.

Rudy tells Hannibal the evil worker dudes are running a scheme to steal new car parts off the assembly line. But he can’t figure out which workers are the evil ones. Me, I’d look for guys who keep hoods and bright lights in their desk drawers. B.A. is incensed that honest working men are getting a raw deal. Face is impressed Rudy and his men took up a collection to hire the team, and Murdock is excited that Rudy will give the team jobs in the plant so they can scope out the scammers. Hannibal tells Rudy he’s just hired the A-Team. Cool.

Face is dressed like a pimp

Face, the Avenging Disco Godfather