Co-starring: Richard Romanus as Tommy Tedesco, Valerie Wildman as Sally Vogel, Red West as Brooks, Linden Chiles as Notting, Dennis Fimple as Cates
Written by Bill Nuss
Directed by Craig R Baxley
The team rescue a reporter who has infiltrated a mob outfit.
Although writer Nuss was responsible for some truly dreadful scripts during the show’s run, he makes up for some of those with this highly entertaining episode. The opening is a memorable one with Face having a nightmare in which everywhere he turns he sees Stockwell.
This scene becomes the jumping off point for Face deciding to leave the team and it initially seems like a real possibility. It doesn’t take long to develop into a running joke though and leads to a great exchange with Murdock about the art of scamming (Face: “Maybe I should write a book?”, Murdock: “No, just a pamphlet”).
There is something rather familiar about the story that unfolds here. In the same way that Nuss’ season four episode ‘Wheel of Fortune’ was reminiscent of ‘Bounty’, this one is very similar to season one’s ‘Till Death Us Do Part’. The team once again infiltrate a country estate to rescue a woman being held against her will, albeit disguised as firemen rather than caterers.
Like its predecessor, the rest of the episode is a chase and attempt to expose the truth, though there is an added race-against-time subplot to keep the pace ticking over nicely. Among the highlights are the complete destruction of a home by gunfire (as in “Say It With Bullets’) and a novel way of passing a roadblock set up by Tedesco’s associates.
The action is frequent and well integrated into the story and there’s also a good vein of humour running throughout. BA gets one of the best lines when he remarks to Hannibal, “do you expect me to turn the truck into a tank with spare parts from the kitchen?”
In many ways, this episode wouldn’t have looked out of place in season two and it is this classic A-Team style that makes it one of the highlights of the season. 9/10
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