The other day I was at the gym watching some random episode of The A-Team. It’s on one of the berzillions of TV channels and it was almost background noise for me as I sweated through another attempt to lose some of my wobbly bits.
Watching old shows like these – shows that I grew up with – is certainly very different in 2018. The casual objectification of women, the violence and the happy-go-lucky use of heavy artillery is a little weird to watch in these modern times.
However, as the A-Team were doing their usual repair / build of a vehicle in order to make good their escape, I noticed something. It wasn’t on-screen too long, but it kinda shows how things “went” in the 80’s .. on certain TV shows at least.
So, there they are. BA is draining the oil on a tank. Hannibal is generally walking about with his cigar, Murdoch is loading weaponry and Face is tightening some nuts so that they can get it up and running. The female character, who seems to dislike wearing a bra and I believe called the A-Team in the first place, is.. well, she’s tasked to polish the cannon. Not only polish it, but rub the thing clean whilst… straddling it..
Did I just see that? Did I?
Honestly, I had to watch the repeat just to check I wasn’t going insane.
See!? SEE!?
This is what was drip-fed into our consciousness as kids in the 80s#ATeam pic.twitter.com/zgu99uLlio
— Gears (@gears) February 19, 2018
Can you imagine the director planning this shot out?
OK sweetheart, all the boys are gonna be doing boy stuff, y’know, lifting heavy things and repairing the tank. If you could just pop your sweet behind up there and straddle that large cannon. That’s it sweetheart.
That’s good, now if you could take this cloth and gently rub up and down…
NO NO !
Not side-to-side!
UP AND DOWN…
OK, that’s it.. Let’s go for a take…
ACTION!
So, when you’re wondering why I’m a little bonkers, it’s probably because I grew up watching this :)
