The A-Team meets Leverage

The A-Team is gone...

The A-Team loomed large in my childhood. They were larger than life characters, living these impossible lives and somehow juggling an impossible number of projects, personal and charitable. And given the Boomer mania for remaking old properties, it seemed inevitable that at least some production company would think if they could find them, maybe they could hire... the A-Team.

It was hard to imagine anybody making that work since those characters are so firmly bound in a particular time and place, and a much broader, comic-book kind of storytelling than you would get away with today. Silliness certainly still abounds on television (rolling my eyes at NCIS Los Angeles is a guilty pleasure) but these shows all take themselves deathly seriously, try to ground every detail and populate themselves entirely with world-weary veterans and doe-eyed trainees with harsh lessons ahead of them. There are certainly echoes out there of George Peppard's cigar-chomping grin and his enigmatic confidence, but Dirk Benedict wrote a scathing commentary on the timidity of producers and certain flavors of feminism meaning his signature characters were gone forever (Katee Sackhoff says he was less of a dick about it in person), and it seems clear: Mr. T is the only actor alive who could wear 50 lbs of gold jewelry and still be so intimidating as to frighten away even the barest trace of a smirk.

The A-Team did return for last year's film, proving somebody out there besides me still loved those characters. Interestingly Liam Neeson was the weakest of that core cast with his deathly earnest portrayal of Hannibal, while the other characters were born out of a spirit of fun. And it was fun, if not particularly memorable. The film and the re-runs of the series that came up around it were a nice bit of nostalgia, but I really didn't need to see a whole lot more.

...but Leverage continues

I don't know what made me first watch an episode of Leverage, but I'm sure boredom and the whim of my tivo both had to be involved somehow. There's a crooks-gone-good formula that seems to keep showing up recently (at least this is what I've gleaned from promos) and Leverage seemed like late to the game, more of the same. And I was sort of right, because I had seen all this before: it turns out somebody out there shared my childhood affection for all four members of the A-Team (the chick reporters and the sleazy FX guy don't really count). And I eventually found Leverage to be as much fun as I found The A-Team to be back in grade school.

What really got me thinking about the A-Team again was Christian Kane's character, Eliot. I always liked Christian Kane from his days on Angel, and he's probably why I gave this show a chance. Everybody has a defined role, and Eliot's, The Hitter, is the most clearly defined and has the best analogue to the A-Team: B.A Baracus. Both men are primal forces of nature who can be counted on to destroy anybody in their path, to an absolutely ridiculous extreme. Nameless guards always go down in one punch, and occasionally a henchman with a line lasts a few minutes, but every week there's a con that depends on the inevitability of Eliot winning every confrontation. Nobody has made me suspend my disbelief in such a character since Mr. T (notably, the only guy to ever beat Rocky Balboa by knock-out). Both are also surprisingly good with children, showing a tender but firm side. And notably, they both enforced ethical discipline within the group... with a giant fist.

So that got me noticing a few things, like the constant bickering and sniping between Eliot (The Hitter) and Hardison (The Hacker). There wasn't a hacker on The A-Team (it was 1983) so the closest analogue is Murdock, the crazy man who had an essential skill nobody else could duplicate: piloting aircraft. Coincidentally, both are always winding up the team's muscle. The missing essential element of Howling Mad Murdock was his synonymous insanity, but it is reflected in the quirky behavior of the other Leverage team member with unique skills: Parker (The Thief). It seems unlikely we'll see Parker talking to sock puppets and making herself a cape and cowl out of a table cloth, although anthropomorphizing objects and considering them friends does sound just about right.

Seeing Face, the con man, in Sophie (The Grifter) isn't a huge stretch. They both fill the same role, using sex and charm and adopting a host of personae at will. They both have the most independent outside life, and are constantly running into people who know them under other identities or using elements of another long con. That just leaves the leader with a smug smile who conveys a strong sense of authority: on Leverage this is Nate, the only one who isn't a crook, with whiskey and coffee replacing Hannibal's cigar. And then of course there's the van. On both shows, the black guy is ridiculously attached to his black van, which garners most of their love and affection. To me that clinches it.

Obviously stories have been recycled for millennia so finding something that didn't share material with something else would be harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese, but it's still funny to me when I see the 80's revisited like this. (The last time was when I realized how much inspiration Alias owed to Miami Vice.) So every once in a while in this remake happy era, I'm gratified to see somebody actually do it right and carry forward the spirit of an old property rather than just the names, even though obviously the modern version has a long more angst and serialized, interpersonal drama. Plus more women, less poofy 80's hair, and a lot more sex. So yeah, I'm a fan.