A-Team Episode 3×20
“Knights of the Road”
- Location: Arriba, New Mexico. 3 Miles from the Mexican Border
- Tank: Armored Tow Truck, Monster Armored Tow Truck, Super Monster Armored Fortress Battle-truck (which is also my favorite Anime)
- Disguises: No
- Scam: No
- Flight: No
- Fixation: The Knights of the Road: Epic Tow Truck Drivers
- Flips: 1
- Fee: Unknown, non-free (“a small deposit, and the balance is paid on completion of the job” according to Face does accounting)
- Quote: “It is a little disturbing to the front-line troops to see their top love-pilot hit the dirt and then cry ‘medic'” – Murdock, doubting Face’s abilities
- Bonus Quote: “I think I’m either in Mexico, or at a swap meet” – Murdock. I’m sorry, but having grown up in southern California, I can vouch for this.
- Double-Bonus Quote: Musical cue from The A-Team, the Bad Guys, and the Ugly as Murdock rescues our captives; and a cue from A-Team Sprach Zarathustra as Murdock emerges from his hiding place inside the smuggling car.
- Who is that?? Eh, I got no one. But hey, we made up for it in quotes and tanks, no?
If this one feels familiar, that’s probably because it’s a twist on The Taxicab Wars only with tow trucks. Our bad guys this week are Drug Lords (yay big three!), but that’s not all–they’re also, it turns out, Corrupt Cops (yay also big three!) and they’re trying to buy out a smaller tow truck company. I wonder if they’re in any real estate ventures…
Our tank of the ep comes very early, when we repair and beef up the clients’ tow truck in order to confront the bad guys. Pretty soon, they’re back on the road and both sides are taking advantage of a total lack of encrypted communications to coopt eachother’s tows. Now that the A-Team in in play, I’ll let you guess who wins that little cyber-war.
Speaking of war, let’s get the main plot of this episode–Face is losing the greatest war of them all–that fought on the battlefield of love (hey, in the 80’s that would have been a super rad turn of phrase). In yet another instance of breaking the “don’t mess around with the clients” rule, our Face is getting the cold shoulder from the girl. As if being spurned wan’t reason enough to try harder, Murdock begins to question whether he’s losing his touch.
Murdock is smuggled into the bad guy mansion south of the border, and eventually we find out the bad guys are hoping to take over the towing contract our clients have into Mexico and use it to smuggle drugs. Hannibal squeezes the truth out of’em and it’s off to Mexico to rescue Murdock–in our second tank of the ep (an industrial-strength monster tow truck–also armored, naturally).
Unfortunately, the local cops are in head bad guy’s pocket, the team is jailed for 90 seconds, escape, and return stateside, bad guys not far behind them. With little time to spare, our heroes set to building a third tank (that’s a record, folks!), a regular fortress on wheels, built atop our previous tank. The tank itself isn’t the most memorable, but they really knocked the presentation out of the park. For some reason, they gave it a full paint job–I can only assume this is solely because it looks cooler. And I’m perfectly fine with that. The first time they tanked this thing up, they also paid attention to presentation, giving it a good cleaning, making the hubcaps shine. This second time around, they painted the whole thing a fitting battleship grey. As the bad guys approach, B.A. fires her up and the engine growls ominously to life, eager to charge out of the garage and devour whoever dares to cross its path.
This ep really could have been just a recycling of last season’s The Taxicab Wars, but the beauty of it (like its tank) is in the details. The ep is full of fun little moments, even down to the musical cues. Even with almost 3 seasons down, I don’t think I’ve yet to hear a single musical piece re-used other than the opening credits theme. It’s really amazing how much original music is composed for this show, and I especially love when they have a little fun as they did with this one. Oh, and if you were worried, Face did end up getting a single kiss. Our boy’s still got it.