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The A-Team
1983 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Frank Lupo, Stephen J. Cannell
A fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel work as soldiers of fortune while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit."
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22 comments on Hacker News
for every episode of the A-Team, for Saturday morning cartoons, for I Love Lucy, and for Miami Vice, I give thanks.
Edit: And Star Trek, and Cosmos
Ah I've been trying to dig up that episode from my faulty memory for years! I was convinced it was an episode of the A-Team fighting a killer tank instead.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Germany, I've been brainwashed by US movies and sitcoms, 90% of the things I've watched was from the US - Magnum P.I, Simon & Simon, The Fall Guy, Kojak, A-Team, Golden Girls, Mary Taylor Moore, Lou Grant, MacGyver, Knight Rider, Night Court, Family Ties, Miami Vice, The Wonder Years, Facts of Life, Love Boat, and on and on and on.
I know the US better than many parts of Germany.
TNG was lit much like other action/adventure shows when it debuted in 1987, e.g. MacGyver, Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, The A-Team (which ended that spring) -- the Bridge and hallways were much brighter than even a sitcom, I'd bet as a specific aesthetic choice of The Future Is Bright.
When DS9 debuted a few years later, it was stepping into a cultural mindset that had embraced Dark And Gritty in broader entertainment. That series is still much brighter than many shows today, but that's because of a technological revolution (including costs) rather than a change of "TV as an art form rivaling movies".
Yes, there is a mindset within Hollywood circle(jerk)s that so-dark-I-cannot-see is "more sophisticated, serious, and artful", but viewers broadly think it is idiotic. (Also, 2-and-a-half or 3 hour movie runtimes.)
Season one, episode eight of Magnum, P.I. was entitled, “The Ugliest Dog in Hawaii.”
There are, of course, episodes of both Knight Rider and The A Team that share that tile, though.
While I am appreciative that you want to demonstrate precisely how useless LLMs are, I wonder if perhaps you could do something more productive than make work for me.
> in essence, morality plays.
A lot of TV series of the time were... A-Team, Knight Rider, MacGeyver.The difference was characters looking back at our generations, shaking heads how stupid and immature we behaved in our times. TNG delivered a utopy in a convincing and exciting way.
> themes from the Bible and Graeco-Roman mythology
That's true for a lot of stories/saga: Star Wars, LOTR, GoT etc.You have a hero with doubts, going on a journey to save something, living through adventures. (Nicely explained in Joseph Campbell's "The hero with a thousand faces")
Until today, I haven't found anything similar, that gave an idea of a better future for mankind that's achievable and explained without lecturing.
Oh, and unconnected short story episodes are gone. I miss that.
This article seems to be written by a religious zealot, and the fact that the article opens mentioning his concern of whether or not his friends at church nod in approval or not about what he does is very telling.
I have 2 young kids, and I select what they can watch. And I'm aware that when I was a kid I watched lots of violent shows like Tom and Jerry like someone else said, or even Dragon Ball which is a million times more violent, but I hesitate to let them watch other much more innocuous shows.
I'm an atheist, so I'm not burdened with religious prejudices, and I'm very open minded, I think everyone has a right to sleep with and love whoever they want, and to identify themselves as whoever they want, I also think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin tone, nationality, beliefs, identity, disabilities or anything else.
But I also understand the outrage against wokism. There is an episode in Ridley Jones which is a show for young kids, where there is a bison saying that it's non-binary and what are their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for the plot and those are subjects that go miles above the heads of the intended audience. Also in many of the latest Disney productions and other shows in Netflix there's been a lot of queer characters and gay/lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily a problem depending how it is treated, specially if the production is for teenagers and adults, but I think it's completely unnecessary and kind of force feeding to include that kind of topics in the shows for the youngest kids. That trend also brings us ludicrous contradictions like an upcoming version of Snow White and the 7 dwarves, which are not actually dwarves, I think there's maybe 1 dwarf only.
Having said that, there's so many examples of religious extremisms taking things to the, erm, well, extremes. And I'm not going to even mention Muslim Theocracies because I think those are ultimate level of autocratic religion fuelled fascist regimes. But for example in Catholic Poland, the children's show Teletubbies was banned because they said the purple teletubbie was gay.
I think there are lots of shows in Netflix that it would be wise to don't allow your kids to watch, depending on their age of course. But the concerns the article raises about Paw Patrol are honestly laughable. There's a lot of illogical things in kid's shows. Just look Spongebob Squarepants and you'll see that they're under the water but most of the time physics and everything else behaves as if they're not. In Paw Patrol I always asked myself how a 10 year old doesn't seem to have adult supervision and seems to have unlimited resources and money to fund his organization. But again, in this show puppies talk and can drive cars, so you can't expect it to be based on reality. Of course in this show there will always be some kind of trouble which the Paw Patrol will happily solve, but there wouldn't be much of a show if that wasn't the case, isn't it? I can think of many series I watched when I was a kid and teenager, that also show a different problem or villain in every episode, actually that's the case for a large number of series. Just think of those oldies Knight Rider, McGuiver, A Team... The same critiques applied to Paw Patrol in the article would applie to all of them.
Also it calls the Mayor in Paw Patrol tyrannical when there's no evidence of repression or autocracy in the show, and I find it funny that he fantasizes with a resistance composed of poets and religious types. As if religious types weren't on the oppressing end of autocracies most of the time along history.
I didnt know what it was called, but the use of screams like this across alot of tv and film did make it a bit laughable in some places. Watching the A-Team and some Westerns is where it springs to mind.
Its like the tyre screeching noise when watching things like knight rider, another sound effect that was perhaps used in excess in inappropriate places, like on dusty dirty tracks! Still as a kid, you dont care so much about that as it just adds to the experience.
It leaves me wondering if some sound engineers where trolling the audience in subtle but laughable ways.
Still if its a genuine thing, and not some Asch conformity experiment being carried out, its good that its been preserved for history.
What a surprise: TV shows are made to reflect the current public perception of the world so they appeal more watchers. News at 11.
Star Trek isn't alone in this shift. Budget and special effects aside, could anyone imagine the remake of Battlestar Galactica (a show I didn't like at all, btw), Breaking Bad, Lost etc. in the 80s along the cheesy shows of that time? Of course not as they could only be conceived after a certain set of events, which very likely are 9/11 and the following absurd Iraq invasion; those events changed everything in what we think of the world and the people around us, including our own governments. Actually, TV shows were already transitioning to a less optimistic view of our society, which, speaking of SciFi, is clearly noticeable in B5 and DS9, but I think those events marked a milestone.
Also, from the 80s to the early 2000s, the biggest change affecting our society has been the ability to be online and engage in public discussion with others, which brought even more stimuli and opportunities -whether for the good or bad it's completely subjective- further accelerating our normal social evolution; the world has changed virtually centuries in 20 years. I couldn't imagine anyone seriously thinking of shooting today a remake of The A-Team series in which they maintain its original thousands bullets shot every episode but nobody dies format.
> combat in general is incredibly boring in modern films. Punch, punch, grunt, grimace - without any consequence
I mean this kind of stuff has been around forever. The A-Team pioneered “punch punch grimace, get up and walk away” to the point where it was comical.
Certainly von Neumann is far from infallible, but his views on the safety of technology were based on reasoning and knowledge, not what would make exciting prime-time TV. We're literally contrasting the inventor of game theory and modern meteorology* with a TV show where sounds travel through outer space and all the extraterrestrials speak English.
This is like discussing whether Stephen Jay Gould or Jimmy Swaggart has a more credible opinion about evolution. I mean, punctuated equilibrium might or might not be correct, but you're being ridiculous.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/10/13/teching-the-tech/ https://archive.is/khTlp
> when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. ... Meta to this is the discussion of why we have to accept that film/tv SF is riding the shortbus — there’s no actual reason it has to be that way — but let’s not get into that right at the moment.
______
* As well as, as you point out, a significant contributor to the development of the fission bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and modern computation. He was also the guy who axiomatized quantum mechanics and the foundations of mathematics, discovered continuous geometry and quantum logic and Hilbert spaces, and solved the compact-groups case of Hilbert's fifth problem. I guess you don't know much about mathematics, so that won't mean much to you; suffice it to say that the "von Neumann machine" was among the least of his achievements. Not bad for a chemical engineer.
> ...cut to ads 15 seconds before the break... HDCP is a PITA...
You know what really grinds my gears? This! It's not that hard to find a suitable splice point, most TV shows even have a natural break as part of the episode! Youtube sometimes does it during Colbert at a point which ruins the comedic rhythm.
> ...A-Team, Knight Rider, and MacGuyver...
I have similar taste; I swore there was a period of time I watched all 3 of these on the same streaming network, but I checked again and see only MacGuyver on Paramount/CBS. Which is an example of another poor user experience -- shows hop between platforms, so you're never actually sure that you have access, until you go to watch, and it's gone.
One of the cool things about having kids is that you get to go through all the movies again from the start.
I got to get all excited about Star Wars again. And Indiana Jones. And Back to the Future. One day soon they’ll be old enough for The Matrix. How cool will that be? I’m gonna get to watch Terminator with these guys for the first time one day.
You also get all the old TV. We’re 4 seasons into The A-Team, and have watched every episode of The original Battlestar Galactica and a bunch of other series from the time when television was suitable for children.
There’s tons of stuff out there. It’s cool too get a fresh start on it all.
Having seen the Iron Curtain from both sides (first from the East, and after 1990 from the West), I sometimes wonder whether the idea of the "American Dream" was ever more than a Cold War propaganda weapon not aimed directly at the US population, but at the people at the other side of the Curtain.
Was life in the US ever as great and shiny as depicted in the US TV series like Magnum P.I., A-Team or the 6-Million Dollar Man that those of us with access to Western TV gobbled up with awe and wonder, or was it always a naive myth but the propaganda weapon worked so well that it still even now affects the US population, when both old and young talk about how much better the 70's have been compared to today?
(I guess the truth is - as always - somewhere in the middle)
Thanks. The pattern isn't perfect but the trend is clear. These are Season 1, excluding pilots.
A-Team (1983): 49m
MacGyver (1985, original): 48m
Quantum Leap (1989): 47-48m
X-Files (1993): 43-44m
Monk (2002): 44m
Eureka (2006): 44m
MacGyver (2016, remake): 42-43m
I have heard this was a problem for Top Gear. They'd include a music clip like The A Team jingle in a clip because the BBC would have a licence to broadcast that. And when they want to show that episode outside the UK, they need to patch the show to use different music instead that they have a licence to.
When I grew up, I was influenced by media like Knight Rider, A-Team, MacGyver and other TV shows. Oh and documentaries about the Great Canyon and other beautiful areas. I loved (american) English. I always had a dream to visit the USA. Not to live the "american dream" and get rich but just to experience the culture and scenery. During the past 10 years though this desire has completely gone away. This is due to the political climate and disrespect for foreigners privacy. I never went there even though I could do so easily. I travelled all over Europe (easy, being a EU citizen) and now traveling a lot in Asia.
I know of several businesses that have chosen not to send their staff to the USA anymore to trade shows or clients. My company used to send someone to a media summit every year. Last time they declined the visa for that person without providing any reason. It makes no sense. The focus is shifting: the US used to be the biggest market that everyone strived to cater to. Not anymore. Banks are more and more reluctant to use USD, Euro is preferred. When I go to a bank anywhere in the world I suddenly have to fill out a questionaire about not being a US citizen, having no phone number there, never having lived there and on and on. I have nothing to do with the US so why are they bothering me with this crap? Imagine if every country requested such a thing, you'd sit there a week answering questions. Oh and banks in Asia are starting to not take on US customers at all from what I heard.
When even people like Adi Shamir (the S in RSA) are having issues obtaining visas (https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2013/10/shamir/), something must be completely wrong with the way immigration is handled.
I hope the USA can turn this ship around, right now it looks like it's heading directly for the iceberg with full throttle.
There was extreme media censorship (GUKPPiW 1946-1990), but directed almost exclusively towards dissident political statements and praise of western prosperity. You were still allowed to show foreign wealth as long as you showed for example how easily Polish creativity fleeced westerners out of it. Labelling everything as a comedy also helped, still for example 'Alternatywy 4'(same director as the clips below) spend 3 years being edited/censored. Those were prime time TV shows broadcast couple of years before fall of the Iron Curtain, maybe even slightly contributing to the growing unrest and eventual Polish exit from the Eastern Bloc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5MXX_n0pfQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThD7AmKQkjg
https://youtu.be/_nmGi757fyo?t=5m1s
TV was not allowed to show anything celebrating western lifestyle. We didnt get Miami Vice, Wonder Years, MacGyver, A Team or Dynasty until ~5 years after kicking Russians out of our country. Instead foreign tv shows we had were 'Escrava Isaura' and some old chestnuts from the fifties like Zorro. Cinema was a lot better, scifi movies had little trouble with censorship, we got 'New Hope' in 1979, 'Empire Strikes Back' in 1982, 'Terminator' in 1985. Toho Kaiju movies came out same year as in the west. Of course you could get censored for something entirely not in the movie. 1984 'NeverEnding Story' was delayed into 1987 because of directors earlier work 'Das Boot'.
> Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language.
It totally does. Especially when you're young. I think you thinking about a lower amount of exposure though. It needs to be quite a lot, not like hanging out at a French-speaking family once a week, but more like watching 30-45 minutes of subtitled cartoons/shows daily.
(maybe it was more, not sure how much TV I watched when I was little, and how much of it was subtitled. I do remember my parents didn't let me watch The A-Team because it was just about guns and violence ... :P :P)
Also, you can keep your position, but so far there are several people from all over Europe and elsewhere, confirming personal anecdotes about the difference subtitled TV shows make.
I want to emphasize the difference it makes whether you are young or not. The effortlessness by which young kids pick up languages, seemingly through osmosis, is just insane. I work with kids a lot, some of them come from crazy places, the younger they are, often after just a year in NL, hardly even an accent (translating for their parents at 8). On the other hand, adults that move here, even in their early twenties, if they don't make an explicit effort, forget it, after 3-5 years they still speak three Dutch sentences (I admit that it doesn't help that any Dutch person will immediately switch to English as soon as they hear you're having a tiny bit of trouble with the language. Not the case for small children, of course. Unless they already speak English).
Any television series in a modern setting in which characters that are portrayed as "good guys" use torture to achieve their goals is despicable propaganda.
Yes. Absolutely.
I must admit, though... when compared to the cartoonish patriotic jingo-fied violence of the 1980s, where Rambo and the A-Team defeated countless enemies in settings that always felt like a walk in the park... perhaps the torture thing is the lesser of the two evils?
The 1980s seemed to want to tell us that war was a melodramatic, often bloodless struggle between the white-hatted good guys and the black-hatted bad guys.
If there's a small silver lining to today's torture-promoting crap, at least it's that war is portrayed a bit closer to being the horrible, bloody, morally-confused hell where the "good guys" often look and act an awful lot like the "bad guys."
Doesn't take away from your point at all. Totally agree that when torture is portrayed as anything less than evil, there is a very serious problem.
Someone should do a mod of that, based on characters from the old A-Team TV show, complete with the original theme music. The "build defenses" interval would be like the build weapons montage.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheATeam?from=Main.TheATeam
The history of the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development is incredible. Their exploits make an episode of the A-Team look plausible.
http://www.uboat.net/books/reviews.html/title/2349