A-Team Episode 4×08
“Blood, Sweat, and Cheers”
- Location: Near Trenton, CA (There is a Trenton CA, but it’s up in wine country, not improvised stock car racing country)
- Tank: None
- Disguises: This week, playing the role of Hannibal in disguise as Italian Racing Guy will be Murdock in disguise as Italian Racing Guy!
- Scam: $50,0000 (nice!)
- Flight: No
- Fixation: Giancarlo Figarotti, non-English speaking F-1 Racing Guy
- Flips: 2
- Fee: Free
- Quote: [in Italian] “Would you like to have my baby?” – Murdock
- Who is that?? Ken Olandt, Kid Harmon. Hint: Most know Kirk had a son, but did you know Picard did, too? Well neither did he…
“Oh wow, they wouldn’t flip a pregnant girl, would they???”
That’s how this episode opened. And of course they wouldn’t, but still. So our client… is kind of an idiot. After they run his pregnant wife off the road, he mouths off to the bad guys, who outnumber him three to one, fails to be B.A., and winds up in the hospital. For good measure, the bad guys also go Gordon Freeman on his race car.
Our heroes show up at the hospital, the client’s Uncle John being none other than Hannibal. The only way it makes sense is to assume Hannibal is one of those honorary uncles, probably close friend to dad–former close friend, that is. Dad is not happy about having our heroes in on things, and he’s also a drunk. But don’t worry, I’m sure both his bad humor and his alcoholism will be solved 40 minutes from now.
Next, the bad guys try to take out dad–his truck blows up real good, but they had me for a moment. It rolled down the embankment and came to a quiet stop, almost not blowing up! Thankfully, then it did. Anyway, we’ll just continue this fairly by-the-numbers ep play-by-play style: Face scams up a cool $50,000 from the head bad guy (I haven’t been keeping track, but in terms of sheer monetary value, that has to rank pretty high up there); there’s a car repair montage; the bad guys are duped into blowing up their own car; then there’s another race (we win); then Face and “Giancarlo” swipe bad guy’s floosies (watching Murdock completely fail at a kiss was pretty hilarious); and finally, there’s some character drama where we learn why dad is how he is. Hint: love triangle. In a nice bit of character depth, Hannibal points out that he was eventually on the losing vertex of that triangle, having not been chosen because he was never the stable, present type.
But anyway, it’s too late for any of that. It’s race time, the bad guys have seeded the pack with ringers, and Decker is on the way–and he’s got his humongous phone with him, so he means business. Our heroes are captured, Murdock busts them out (if this sounds familiar, it’s because you read it last week… and many other weeks past), and B.A. enters the race to provide cover for our client. I love how natural a fit B.A. is for this task, having long been established as the primary driving talent of the team. B.A. sends one of the ringers flipping, the other exploding, and our client takes the checkered flag.
Dad ditches the drink and decks the delinquent, and the boys make an unusual Dukes of Hazard style exit as Hannibal delivers the line. A pretty standard ep, not great, not bad, not really memorable either.
Fine!