A-Team Episode 3×02-03
“The Bend in the River”
- Location: Fonte Boa, Brazil
- Tank: Armored Boat
- Disguises: None
- Scam: No. (I don’t think busting out Murdock counts at this point)
- Flight: Yes
- Fixation: Movie Director (Jerry Lewis, I think)
- Flips: 2
- Fee: Free
- Quote: “There isn’t anything my men and I haven’t seen in another time. In another jungle.” – Hannibal, a bit of the ol’ PTSD comin’ through.
- Bonus Quote: “My name is H.M. Murdock. Better known… as H. M. M., or… HmmMmmmm”
- Who is that?? Sergio Calderón, El Cajon. Hint: See 1×01
- Bonus Who is that?? The coffin. No, not El Cajon, I mean the actual coffin. Not only do we see enough of it that I consider it a guest star, but you may remember it from such episodes as 2×19.
The episode opens with a pretty good clue toward the mystery, but it’s quite subtle. The only way I recognized it, in fact, was from being a fan of the original Transformers cartoon of 1984 (actually, that show debuted just a week before this episode aired). The gun the bad guy is holding looks to me to be a Walther P38. This is a German-made gun, used during World War II. It also happens to be what Megatron transforms into, which is the only reason I recognized it. This is a rather unusual gun for a bad guy to be carrying…
Meanwhile, stateside, Hannibal gets himself fired from his long-standing job playing the Aquamaniac for trying to bring depth to the character. I hope this isn’t the end for Aquamaniac, but it looks grim. Tawnia asks the team for a favor: to rescue her almost-but-not-quite fiancé from river pirates. Since they apparently like her better than Face, they just agree to do it. Then we have what turns out to be the first of many appearances by the coffin (not to be confused with river pirate, El Cajon).
The coffin is first used to bust Murdock out, then to smuggle the guns into the small town in Brazil where our objective was last seen. Oh, and B.A. gets to take a plane ride in the coffin, too, thanks to a milk commercial ending poorly for him. The coffin basically ends up becoming The Van for this episode. It carries the guns and it goes pretty much everywhere they do. Speaking of guns, Baby’s back, always good to see her.
Our heroes fight the river pirate, Face meets a girl, then they eventually get captured. The show will often subvert its own tropes which is always fun–I could immediately tell Hannibal was going to taunt the big guy into letting him out of the cage. What I didn’t expect was for poor Face to be one let out instead. Face actually wins the fight by outwitting the bad guy (luring him within reach of B.A.’s cage), too. Some other stuff happens, the most important of which is we finally discover what’s going on at the Bend in the River.
So this week, it turns out our bad guys are none other than Nazis (and that explains the gun earlier!). And what are they building? Why, a nuclear reactor, of course! The team uses the recently-improved Ninja Pirate Tank Boat (yeah, I threw in ninja just ’cause it sounds cooler) and final battle commences: A-Team vs. Nazis!
We win, Tawnia gets married and leaves the team, and that’s a wrap! Oh, and Face gets the girl–right up until it’s suggested that he, too, get married. Then, it’s suddenly back to the old Face we know and love, all ready for a fresh ep next week. One final note, I do have to give Murdock a special call-out for pulling the pin out of the grenade with his teeth–classic!