A-Team Episode 2×08
“Labor Pains”
- Location:
- Tank: The (and I do mean The) Cabbage Cannon!
- Disguises: Chef
- Scam: A Barn, and a Truck
- Flight: No
- Fixation: Ouija Board
- Flips: 0
- Fee: $0
- Quote: “You’re nuts!” – bad guy; “No I’m not, I’m condiments, I’ve been promoted!” – Murdock
- Who is that?? Charles Napier, Burt Cross. Hint: not just a Good ol’ Boy
- Bonus Who is that?? John Vernon, Ted Jarrett. Hint: “Doctor, can you give me an impression?” “I’m sorry, I don’t do impressions, my training is in psychiatry.”
This is a story based on true events from history–loosely, anyway. There were Company Towns where everyone who lived there worked for a single company (often mines in remote locations, for instance). The company owned the housing and often the only store in town, and sometimes payed their workers in scrip (a company currency, which was only useful at the company store) instead of real currency. In this manner, pay and expenses were managed in such a way that the workers were essentially trapped. Payment in scrip was outlawed by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. (Once again, my blog fulfills its 80’s TV mandate of being both fun and educational.)
The episode opens right up with the MPs chasing down the van. The team escapes after a Dukes of Hazard-style jump across a bridge that’s out, then we get a replay of a scene Hannibal pulled with Lynch early in the 1st season, taunting him before making his final exit. Decker doesn’t appear to have taken defeat as well as Lynch did…
They make contact with some field laborers who are virtual slaves in their own town and volunteer to help them form a union against the bad guy grower. This is another freebie, but presumably the team is living well enough off their steady income from a diamond mine and a taxicab company.
Some other stuff happens, including a rather chilling moment with bad guys threatening a child of one of the workers, but let’s get to what’s really important in this episode. The team, knowing the “secret meeting” will not be secret for long, prepares and ambush for the bad guys. A very special tank. Now this is one I never forgot from the last time I watched the show and it’s always been one of my favorites–it’s also the first time we see the team use duct tape during the creation of a tank (why did that take so long?). The tank, of course, is the famous Cabbage Cannon, used to great (and ridiculous) effect against our squad of bad guys coming to break up the union vote.
The vote comes in, the Union is a go, and our bad guys go home to pick vegetables out of their clothing. Now this ending I had an issue with–I get that the union is official, but I’m not sure why Jarret was afraid of it. If he’s got goons with guns, a piece of paper, however official, I wouldn’t think would make much difference to him. I’m forced to assume that Amy will perhaps also bring their plight to the world via her paper, or that maybe some higher-up Union will take notice of this local chapter and bring them under their protection.