A-Team Episode 3×21
“Waste ’em!”
- Location: near Los Angeles, California
- Tank: Flame Throwin’ Faceman!
- Disguises: Earl the car painting guy
- Scam: No
- Flight: No
- Fixation: Lefty, the Evil Hand
- Flips: 0
- Fee: Estimated $12,050.27
- Quote: “Since when does something have to make sense to be logical?” – Hannibal. Who’s honestly been known to make less sense at times.
- Who is that?? Mitchell Ryan, Ike Hagan; and Richard Herd, Jonathan Durcell. Hint: in a couple hundred years, both of these guys will be Starfleet dads.
In honor of this episode and the spirit of The 80’s, I’m hereby making Toxic Waste an honorary member of the Big Three 80’s Bad Guys. I figure toxic waste, nuclear war, global warming (that’s 80’s for “climate change”–yes, it really was a thing even back then!), and all those less-direct existential threats deserve a spot on the list. This week’s clients are another war veteran, and his sister, who’s sightless (that’s 80’s for… whatever it is we’re supposed say these days).
Speaking of Big Three, our bad guys this week are sort-of real estate developers. More specifically, they’re a chemical company looking for a convenient way to dispose of some toxic waste, which turns out to be the long-forgotten sewer line under our clients’ building. Face Does Accounting, quoting four men, guns, for 7-10 days, putting the bill at $12,050.27. In yet another example of excellent writer consistancy, this math matches the previously established rates, which put 7-10 days work at $10,500 – $15,000. Dr. Faceman breaks Murdock out, once again adding that extra little bit of unecessary threat to our poor VA nurse of the week. Murdock, judging from his latest decor, is running some kind of t-shirt factory out of his room (his “What ever happened to the Baltimore Colts?” shirt is a reference to that team’s move to Indianapolis a year prior to this ep).
As usual, the first confrontation goes our way, and the bad guys are kind enough to donate some nice hand guns to our cause. This seems fair since we donated some bullets and momentum to theirs. Hannibal lets himself be captured to place a transmitter (inside a dart–because of course Hannibal is a crack-shot at darts), then the bad guys take him off in their car to get rid of him. The rest of the team gives chase and recovers him after they crash through a building–Hannibal remains remarkably calm throughout, secure in his knowledge that if he’s in a bad guy car, he’ll always emerge fine after the crash.
We make our way up the ladder to the head bad guy, who happily signs a confession that he’s been illegally dumping toxic waste (where “happily” means “grudingly and at gun-point and with a pool of toxic sludge slowly creeping across his desk toward him”) (oh, and where “toxic sludge” means “maple syrup”). Meanwhile, the henchmen figure out the dart and capture the clients, setting up the final confrontation. We don’t exactly have a tank this ep, but I’m going to give it a pass ’cause they build from scratch a pretty sweet flame thrower for Face (again, they even took the time to paint it because presentation counts).
Bust in, barbecue stuff, blow up other stuff, and that’s a wrap for this one! Quick shout-out to Murdock’s schtick, which I really enjoyed this week: Lefty the Evil Hand (played by Murdock’s right hand, naturally).
Oh, and Face promises to visit the girl again–I don’t know about you, but I totally believe him this time.