Looking Back
"And the King and the Queen went back to the green, but you can never go back there again" - Billy Joel 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' -
This is so true and is becoming more and more apparent to me by the day. A long time ago (well, only 4-5 years ago, but to some that could be construed as a long time ago) but not in a galaxy far far away, I had mentioned to a good friend of mine that I was jealous because she had just gotten a new cable package that had Deja View on and she could watch the A-Team every single day at a certain time. I went into detail on how it was a great show and all. Well, she surprised me 2 months later with about 5 tapes full of A-Team episodes that she had taped just for me. I was thrilled and pretty much ran home with these tapes under my arm like a kid coming out of the post office with his new decoder ring that he had been waiting ages for. Once I got home I popped a tape in and started to watch my first episode of A-Team that I had not watched in, gosh, nearly 20 years. I was shocked at the show. Had it gotten so bad and unbelieveable in just those 20 years? There were so many things in the show that the characters did that, in my youth, I said to myself "yeah, that is so true" and now, as an adult watching the show, I was shaking my head going "you have GOT to be kidding!"
The A-Team had the same AK-47 assault rifles that I remember, and they used them the same way (point, fire a few shots and dont even bother to aim) and they hit their targets and I remember as a kid wishing I was a sharp shooter like they were. Also, the bad guys always put up their hands as soon as they were captured. No fuss, no worries, no fighting just a zen realization that their dastardly plans were foiled and that no matter what they did they were going to get caught so they might as well surrender now instead of hurting everyone. Also, they always seemed to have the most amazing toys and knowledge. I remember hearing Hannibal say to B.A. "the bad guys will be coming over those hills in 3 hours time, we need an assault vehicle" and B.A. would grumble some "I pity the fool" comment, grab Murdoch by the scruff of the neck and walk into a barn or shed. Then, they would walk into a barn/shed where you saw an old rundown vehicle, either a dune buggy or car that was so old looking that you felt the tires were going to fall off and after a couple of welding torch shots with sparks flying, metal hitting the ground, tanks/sheets of metal/spikes and other items being grabbed, they would roll out this monster truck of an assault vehicle, complete with gun turrets and bazooka access ports and start firing like there is no tomorrow that no one could touch.
Now, as the adult, I look at what they did and really ask questions. Like, how did they always manage to fire the rifles, never get hit and always manage to either hit just the vehicles close enough to the bad guys to startle them but never really hitting any of them? or why is it that these bad guys could be part of a multimillion dollar drug/extortion enterprise which would probably get them close to 20-40 years in prison but two shots in the sand 2 feet from them by the A-Team has them putting up their hands and surrendering when you figure that even now the criminals wont throw down their weapons and surrender until they have at least 2 bullets in their legs, or even one in their gut? have our criminals gotten harder and much stronger, or were we that weak in the 80's that this sort of thing happened? As for the vehicles that they managed to throw together how was that possible? I mean, I have seen Pimp My Ride or American Chopper or those heavy metal mechanic shows that are on the Discovery Channel (mainly thanks to the metal head cooks that I work with and not by choice) and they take days, or even months, to take a half decent ride and make it something better. We are talking marginally better, not take a dead vehicle and make it into a fully working death machine. Now, since the A-Team were military trained experts and Colonels, Sargents and all those high ranking military personel, I can sort of believe that they have the knowledge to take a vehicle and turn it into a fully functional assault vehicle, but to put it together in 3 hours with no real items (or at least all they needed just happened to be in the barn) is a little stretch since guys with a fully functional garage equip with tools at their disposal take hours to slightly improve a vehicle.
Then, another TV show came into my possession that brought me back to the 80's. I just bought a whole bunch of DVD tv shows since I have no TV in camp so figure I would start watching shows that I enjoyed but missed the beginnings of. I bought The Greatest American Hero, since I remembered it as being such a great show and all. Now this one I can believe a bit better since it is about a superhero outfit so I can believe that he can do all the things that he does, but there are some things that have happened in the first 4 episodes that have me again shaking my head. For instance, in one episode one of the main characters (Bill Maxwell, FBI agent) takes a bullet in the back of his lower calf which is a through and through (since Hinkley comes up and looks at he wound and says that the bullet when in and exited his leg). Though I didnt see the bullet go in, the blood pour out or anything like that, I can assume it is in the lower back calf because he was running from the shooter when it happened so it had to enter the back and Hinkley had a tourniquet put on him just below the knee, so it either entered the calf or in the foot. The gun that was used was from a hit man that we saw and it was an assault rifle. No little 9mm bullet here. We are talking full fledged automatic assault AK-47 style rifle (what is it with AK-47s and the 80's? was the market flooded with them or what????) that, earlier in the show, put burger sized holes in a regular car door. I have no problem with him getting shot, the thing that had me laughing was that he got hit, rolled down on the ground, sat up with his gun and fired a clip at the shooter before the fire fight stopped. OK, shock and adrenaline could have held the pain away for him to do that. THEN, we fast forward to seeing him with a crutch and a bandage on his forehead from when he fell, so we can assume that a medic took a look at his wound and bandaged it up. 2 hours later we see him walking into a restaurant, after getting a fresh through and through, with only a cane, talking to the bad guys (who he ticks off) and then 1 hour after that he is running from a vehicle with his shot leg and seems to be outrunning it. Figure that Hinlkly has the super powers, not Maxwell.
The other thing that had me giggling was the state of Hinkley's students. They are supposed to be the misfits, the outcasts, the 'special ed class'. They all talk like Bronx New Yorkers or Marlon Brando hopefuls. They are all dressed in a fashion that if the rejects of todays society wore those clothes the parents of them would be happy and thrilled to see them so clean cut. Even the class tramp is wearing and outfit that would be considered too conservative for even the most prissy and prudish girl in my high school class (and that was early 90s!).
Have we all changed that much in the 20 years from the 80's? Has society taken such a down side that the shows are sooo different? is it just me to have changed my ways of looking at the world? or, was TV so strict and censored back then that if they actually showed the truth of the world and what happened people would be offended and all? I guess it is true, that if you go back to the green, you can never really go back again.
This is so true and is becoming more and more apparent to me by the day. A long time ago (well, only 4-5 years ago, but to some that could be construed as a long time ago) but not in a galaxy far far away, I had mentioned to a good friend of mine that I was jealous because she had just gotten a new cable package that had Deja View on and she could watch the A-Team every single day at a certain time. I went into detail on how it was a great show and all. Well, she surprised me 2 months later with about 5 tapes full of A-Team episodes that she had taped just for me. I was thrilled and pretty much ran home with these tapes under my arm like a kid coming out of the post office with his new decoder ring that he had been waiting ages for. Once I got home I popped a tape in and started to watch my first episode of A-Team that I had not watched in, gosh, nearly 20 years. I was shocked at the show. Had it gotten so bad and unbelieveable in just those 20 years? There were so many things in the show that the characters did that, in my youth, I said to myself "yeah, that is so true" and now, as an adult watching the show, I was shaking my head going "you have GOT to be kidding!"
The A-Team had the same AK-47 assault rifles that I remember, and they used them the same way (point, fire a few shots and dont even bother to aim) and they hit their targets and I remember as a kid wishing I was a sharp shooter like they were. Also, the bad guys always put up their hands as soon as they were captured. No fuss, no worries, no fighting just a zen realization that their dastardly plans were foiled and that no matter what they did they were going to get caught so they might as well surrender now instead of hurting everyone. Also, they always seemed to have the most amazing toys and knowledge. I remember hearing Hannibal say to B.A. "the bad guys will be coming over those hills in 3 hours time, we need an assault vehicle" and B.A. would grumble some "I pity the fool" comment, grab Murdoch by the scruff of the neck and walk into a barn or shed. Then, they would walk into a barn/shed where you saw an old rundown vehicle, either a dune buggy or car that was so old looking that you felt the tires were going to fall off and after a couple of welding torch shots with sparks flying, metal hitting the ground, tanks/sheets of metal/spikes and other items being grabbed, they would roll out this monster truck of an assault vehicle, complete with gun turrets and bazooka access ports and start firing like there is no tomorrow that no one could touch.
Now, as the adult, I look at what they did and really ask questions. Like, how did they always manage to fire the rifles, never get hit and always manage to either hit just the vehicles close enough to the bad guys to startle them but never really hitting any of them? or why is it that these bad guys could be part of a multimillion dollar drug/extortion enterprise which would probably get them close to 20-40 years in prison but two shots in the sand 2 feet from them by the A-Team has them putting up their hands and surrendering when you figure that even now the criminals wont throw down their weapons and surrender until they have at least 2 bullets in their legs, or even one in their gut? have our criminals gotten harder and much stronger, or were we that weak in the 80's that this sort of thing happened? As for the vehicles that they managed to throw together how was that possible? I mean, I have seen Pimp My Ride or American Chopper or those heavy metal mechanic shows that are on the Discovery Channel (mainly thanks to the metal head cooks that I work with and not by choice) and they take days, or even months, to take a half decent ride and make it something better. We are talking marginally better, not take a dead vehicle and make it into a fully working death machine. Now, since the A-Team were military trained experts and Colonels, Sargents and all those high ranking military personel, I can sort of believe that they have the knowledge to take a vehicle and turn it into a fully functional assault vehicle, but to put it together in 3 hours with no real items (or at least all they needed just happened to be in the barn) is a little stretch since guys with a fully functional garage equip with tools at their disposal take hours to slightly improve a vehicle.
Then, another TV show came into my possession that brought me back to the 80's. I just bought a whole bunch of DVD tv shows since I have no TV in camp so figure I would start watching shows that I enjoyed but missed the beginnings of. I bought The Greatest American Hero, since I remembered it as being such a great show and all. Now this one I can believe a bit better since it is about a superhero outfit so I can believe that he can do all the things that he does, but there are some things that have happened in the first 4 episodes that have me again shaking my head. For instance, in one episode one of the main characters (Bill Maxwell, FBI agent) takes a bullet in the back of his lower calf which is a through and through (since Hinkley comes up and looks at he wound and says that the bullet when in and exited his leg). Though I didnt see the bullet go in, the blood pour out or anything like that, I can assume it is in the lower back calf because he was running from the shooter when it happened so it had to enter the back and Hinkley had a tourniquet put on him just below the knee, so it either entered the calf or in the foot. The gun that was used was from a hit man that we saw and it was an assault rifle. No little 9mm bullet here. We are talking full fledged automatic assault AK-47 style rifle (what is it with AK-47s and the 80's? was the market flooded with them or what????) that, earlier in the show, put burger sized holes in a regular car door. I have no problem with him getting shot, the thing that had me laughing was that he got hit, rolled down on the ground, sat up with his gun and fired a clip at the shooter before the fire fight stopped. OK, shock and adrenaline could have held the pain away for him to do that. THEN, we fast forward to seeing him with a crutch and a bandage on his forehead from when he fell, so we can assume that a medic took a look at his wound and bandaged it up. 2 hours later we see him walking into a restaurant, after getting a fresh through and through, with only a cane, talking to the bad guys (who he ticks off) and then 1 hour after that he is running from a vehicle with his shot leg and seems to be outrunning it. Figure that Hinlkly has the super powers, not Maxwell.
The other thing that had me giggling was the state of Hinkley's students. They are supposed to be the misfits, the outcasts, the 'special ed class'. They all talk like Bronx New Yorkers or Marlon Brando hopefuls. They are all dressed in a fashion that if the rejects of todays society wore those clothes the parents of them would be happy and thrilled to see them so clean cut. Even the class tramp is wearing and outfit that would be considered too conservative for even the most prissy and prudish girl in my high school class (and that was early 90s!).
Have we all changed that much in the 20 years from the 80's? Has society taken such a down side that the shows are sooo different? is it just me to have changed my ways of looking at the world? or, was TV so strict and censored back then that if they actually showed the truth of the world and what happened people would be offended and all? I guess it is true, that if you go back to the green, you can never really go back again.
posted by Capt_Canuck at 7:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home