The A-Team

From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.

The A-Team was a TV show from the 1980s underwritten by the Reagan administration, starring George Peppard as Hannibal, Dirk Benedict as Face, Dwight Schultz as Murdock, and Mr. T as himself. The subliminal message, coded into each and every episode, was that if you fired a gun, you would never ever hit a person with the bullets. This cunning ploy was used effectively throughout the show because it was applied to both the good guys and bad guys. True enough, the good guys didn't fire guns very much (at least not at living targets), as they preferred methods involving household objects, or groups of irate retirees, or things lying around deserted cabins or bunkers used by the bad guys to imprison the good guys, to cause massive explosions where, once again, no one was actually killed. On occasion, high-ranking bad guys were injured, but never mortally.

The trademark line of the show, spoken by Hannibal at least once an episode, was directly taken from Reagan's daily meetings with advisors in the Oval Office. After a successful invasion of a smaller country or some such feat, Reagan would pop a few jellybeans in his mouth from the container on his desk, put his feet up and his hands behind his head, and say quietly, "I love it when a plan comes together." The show's writers feared that having Hannibal mimic the Commander in Chief directly would be too obvious to Americans, so they decided on replacing the jellybeans with a cigar, in homage to as-yet unchosen President Bill Clinton.