A-Team Episode 2×03
“The Only Church in Town”
- Location: Ecuador
- Tank: Trojan Delivery Truck
- Bonus Tank: Chair Turret (hey, it’s got guns and wheels, it counts)
- Disguises: Nuns (but played by Face and Murdock)
- Scam: Military Transport to Ecuador (executed by Hannibal)
- Flight: Yes
- Fixation: No
- Flips: 0
- Fee: Face is the client, so… self-employed?
- Quote: “Mornin’ fellas–GRENADE!” – Hannibal, making the opening play of the game
- Who is that?? Elizabeth Hoffman, Mother Superior. Hint: Wormholes. Whether it’s Star Trek: TNG or Stargate SG-1, she seems to be drawn to them.
It didn’t take long for Face to scam himself up a new fancy apartment (the last one, the boys messed up by putting their feet on the coffee table–and the bullets didn’t help, either). This episode, we’re going to learn quite a bit about Face’s back story, which is nice.
Some bad guys have taken up residence in an orphanage in Ecuador, so the girl who left Face suddenly and without a word (he was ready to propose) contacts him desperate for help. The team is difficult to convince–so Face hires them. Next follows what’s got to be the best scam of the whole show (we have many more eps to do, but this one will be hard to top…). Hannibal, impersonating a fake Colonel, calls in a tip for an A-Team sighting and tells the MPs exactly where they are. Then he simply waits for them to show up. The execution on this was awesome and I was laughing at the audacity of it the whole time. The MPs walk right into the ambush, and the team promptly steals their plane, making an easy get-away. File this one under “why didn’t they think of that earlier?”
The team arrives, and Murdock has a terrific moment speaking Spanish (that is, English with a Spanish accent) after Hannibal’s broken Spanish fails them. And as it turns out, he wasn’t far off when he suggested Face’s mysterious woman had run off with another Man. Face catches up with the only girl he truly loved, who it turns out has become a nun. They both get a degree of closure and Face feels more genuine than he ever has before.
Then it’s action time, and the team builds a Trojan Horse/Whiskey Truck. They quickly dispatch the bad guys (thanks mainly to the whiskey), and fortify the orphanage against the oncoming bad guy reinforcements. I lost track of how many bad guys went flying off that pneumatic catapult B.A. rigged behind the wall, but I do know it go funnier every time, especially with B.A.’s adorable little chuckle every time he used it. It’s a perfect victory for the team, the only breach an anticipated one, landing the bad guy Jeep in a tar pit.
Incidentally, I think we can now assume the team simply keeps a stock of dynamite on them as a mission essential–it’s either that, or the orphanage does.