The Brunching Shuttlecocks Ratings


The A-Team

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Howling Mad Murdock
Can anyone out there tell me exactly which semester of Abnormal Psychology covers dumb accents and bad celebrity impersonations? If -- as Murdock's case seems to imply -- this is a legitimate syndrome requiring hospitalization, we may have finally tracked down the long-suspected but never-proven link between President Reagan's deregulation of the mental health industry and the rise of stand-up comedy in the 80's. If only we could have helped these people instead of giving them six minutes on "Live at the Improv." C+

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Face
Watch the intro for the first season. Each team member is given a short montage showing him doing what he does best. Hannibal dresses up as different people, Murdock acts weird and pilots some sort of aircraft. Mr. T kicks ass and chews bubble gum. And Face? Face smiles a lot and takes off a pair of glasses. Now if the team was trapped in the arctic and had to vote which person to gut and crawl inside for warmth, who do you think would get the most black marbles? That's right, the one whose main talent is comparison shopping for tooth whitener. The lesson here? If you're going to name yourself after a body part, make it one you can hit people with. D

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B.A. Baracus
The great thing about Mr. T is that he managed to be everywhere without having any discernable impact on fashion outside of vinyl Halloween outfits and that one episode of Diff'rent Strokes. There were a lot of fashion mistakes made in the 80s, most of them involving headbands, but somehow the whole mohawk-and-beard, twenty-pounds-of-gold-chains, athletic-socks-over-pantlegs thing never caught on. Anyhow, Mr. T was and is the cornerstone of the A-Team franchise. Without him, the show might as well have been titled "Three White Guys Get Cancelled." A

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Hannibal
Disguises are a great, time-honored if not entirely believable part of the action-spy genre. My question is, though, why does Hannibal bother wearing these elaborate disguises when nobody else does? What's the point of covering your moles and putting on a fake moustache when you can be reliably spotted by your proximity to Mr. T? You'd think that if you were on the run from the military and needed to remain incognito at all costs, "A selection of wigs" would come lower on the list than "Don't hang out with the one guy who stands out as a massively muscular eccentric even in LA." C

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The Girl
Actually, there were two girls, The Girl From the First Season and The Girl From the Second Season. They were there to fill the incredibly important narrative role of being the girl. Many people blame Hollywood for creating this archestereotype, but actually it goes back to the earliest Greek theater, in such productions as "Promethus Unbound and Tiffany" and "The Frogs and Tiffany." Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! D

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