Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 77

"And Mr. T Drives The Car":
Reflections
On "The A-Team"
Ten years ago, a crack commando unit was sent to
prison by a military court for a crime they didn't
commit. These men promptly escaped from a
maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles
underground. Today, still wanted by the government,
they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a
problem, if no one else can help, maybe you can hire
the A-Team (Quoted in Thompson, 1990:112).^
Action-packed, farcical and apparently unreflected, "The ATeam" has come to symbolize the ultimate vacuity of American
f)opular culture.^ Spumed by television critics and cultural pundits
alike, "The A-Team" was successfully pitched at a mass audience
that proved largely indifferent to the unfavorable pronouncements of
reviewers. While American prime time has subsequently moved on to
other concerns, subjects and formulas, "The A-'Team" continues to
thrive in syndication and international media markets. No longer a
major cultural spectacle, perhaps, the show’s narrative conventions
and theatrical explosions seem likely to enjoy a kind of subterranean
life well into the twenty-first century, if not beyond.
The critical consensus seems to be that "The A-Team" is
unadulterated garbage of a particularly pernicious kind. One
historian of broadcasting links it to "a new surge of cold-war rhetoric"
under the first Reagan administration, describing it as a crass, rightwing program featuring the exploits of a gang of "tough mercenaries"
(Barnouw, 1990:514).
Another scholar decries the show's
simplemindedness, emphasizing the way in which "patriotism rang
loud and clear in this series . . ." (Bogle, 1988:253). At one time, the
National Coalition on Television Violence dubbed "The A-Team" the
most violent program on television, with an average of 34 offensive
acts per hour—the prime time average being seven (Cited in Bogle,
1988:254).^ Mark Crispin Miller complains about the show’s "brutal
opening," which he says "is usually related to the ensuing story . . ."