A-Team Episode 2×19
“Chopping Spree”
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Tank: Hearse
- Disguises: Johnny B., whacked-out, vaguely-British, heavy-metal/light-metal/producer-ish–you know what, just look at the picture.
- Scam: I’m going to go ahead and say every car Face sells counts as a scam
- Flight: No
- Fixation: A Plant
- Flips: 1
- Fee: Unknown, not free
- Quote: “I’m selling used cars–do you know what that does to the self-esteem of an artist like myself?” – Face, sinking to a new low
- Who is that?? Dennis Franz, Sam Friendly. Hint: he really should have been on the team dressing like cops.
This week, we’re rescuing The Van! The plan starts off by putting the Facemobile out as bait for the bad guys (who’re running a chop shop) to swipe–and takes brilliant twist as the bad guys instead swipe B.A.’s precious van.
Face, as you might imagine, is a natural at selling used cars. Who could have guessed that a professional scam artist would be such a good used car salesman? Too bad for the industry the work is beneath him. Soon enough, Hannibal shows up in what’s got to be one of his wackiest disguises yet. There’s a clever scheme to sneak a tape recorder into the bad guy safe (I was rather proud of myself for managing to guess this particular move before the reveal). The recording is played back slow-speed and used to crack the safe.
It’s been a while since the show has acknowledged B.A.’s gold. I always think of the gold as being invisible to the show and instead tied directly to the persona of Mr. T (like the mohawk). But Hannibal mentions how well it works on him and we have had it mentioned once or twice before. I recall one scene from another ep where he’d been knocked out and they were forced to carry him and there was mention of the weight of all that gold. Unfortunately, since B.A. is knocked out pretty much every time they fly, I’d have a hard time finding that scene. Maybe my reader can. Either way, it’d be fun to have an in-universe explanation of how the character of B.A. came by all that gold though I don’t think we ever get it.
There’s a fun effect when Face gets punched out and another great reveal when whacky Johnny B. pulls a gun and drops the disguise on Mr. Friendly. The chop shop is shut down and the second phase of this ep plays out as our heroes try to stop a political assassination. We check our remaining boxes (tank, flip) with a particularly memorable scene of Murdock in a pop-up casket firing his trusty Mini-14 off the back of the Hearse-tank.
Not my favorite episode, though I did take a valuable lesson from it: if I ever open a used car lot, I’m going to go by the name Mr. Friendly–nothing says “honest, trustworthy, what-do-I-have-to-do-to-get-you-into-a-car-today?” like “Mr. Friendly.”