The A-Team FAQ is broken into the following sections - Basic Show Info, Cast/Crew, Characters, Equipment, Merchandise/DVDs/Videos/Etc, Mistakes/Errors/Flubs and Fans.

BASIC SHOW INFO

1.1) What is The A-Team?

The A-Team was an action/adventure/comedy that aired on NBC from 1983 to 1987. In total there were 90 one-hour episodes and 4 two-hour episodes produced, for a total of 98 episodes. The show was meant to be a parody of action shows, as people rarely got hurt, injured or killed. The typical episode would feature spectacular car crashes where the victims would crawl out unharmed afterwards. The show took a more serious approach later in its run.

1.2) What was the basic story behind the show? What do we know about the main characters?

The basic story was told in the opening narrative: "Ten years ago/In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team."

The A-Team was accused of robbing the Bank of Hanoi in January 1971, during the Vietnam War, without orders. In reality, they were given orders by their CO Samuel/Steve Morrison, but he was killed, and the orders destroyed in an artillery barrage the night of the bank raid. Later in the series, the A-Team is put on trial for their crimes, and it is revealed that Morrison was killed before the shelling, and they are accused of his murder as well.

The A-Team was made up of Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith (George Peppard), Lieutenant Templeton 'Faceman' Peck (Dirk Benedict), Sergeant Bosco 'Bad Attitude, BA' Baracus (Mr. T), and Captain H.M. 'Howling Mad' Murdock (Dwight Schultz). Murdock was actually not a member of the A-Team in Vietnam, as he was their pilot and not part of the Special Forces team. This is why he is not on trial or wanted like the other three.

In addition, the Team also had help from Amy Amanda 'Triple A' Allen (Melinda Culea) who was a reporter, Tawnia Baker (Marla Heasley) who was another reporter, and in season five, Frankie 'Dishpan' Santana (Eddie Velez), a special effects artist. In season 5 the Team went to work for General Hunt Stockwell (Robert Vaughn), a man who worked 'inside the system'. We don't like him.

1.3) What does the A in the A-Team stand for? Is there a real A-Team?

In the Army, Special Forces teams are designated A-Team, B-Team etc. The A stands for Alpha, B is Bravo, and so on, using the military alphabet.

There are real A-team's in the Special Forces. Each Special Forces company has 6 A Detachments (A-team's). A-team's are comprised of 12 man units, 2 officers (a Captain and either a Lieutenant or Warrant Officer) and 10 Non Commissioned Officer's (Sergeants). Two NCO's are trained in each of the five areas: weapons, engineer, medical, communications, and operations & intelligence. All team members are qualified and cross-trained in different skills, as well as being multi-lingual. In a Special Foces company, one of the six A-teams is trained in combat diving and one is trained in military free-fall parachuting.

Seeing as how our A-Team was quite different, having a Colonel, Lieutenant and Sergeant, one can surmise they were a specially formed team during the war.

1.4) Who were those Military Police (MPs)? Who were the bad guys?

There were various MPs that chased the Team throughout the 5 seasons. In season one, Colonel Lynch (William Lucking) is their primary "chaser", followed by Colonel Decker (Lance LeGault), Colonel Briggs (Charles Napier) for one episode, and then General Fulbright (Jack Ging). There is more information on them in the MPs section.

The Team often went up against mobsters, greedy landowners and other "bad guys", some of which are profiled on the Bad Guys page.

1.5) What are the titles of the episodes, and in what order did they air?

There were 98 episodes in total, counting the 2 hour episodes as 2 episodes. Seasons 1 and 5 were "short" seasons, as the show was a mid-season replacement, and it was cancelled half way through the 5th season. Production numbers refer to the order in which episodes were filmed, the episode names are arranged here in the order they aired:

Episode #	Production #	Original Air Date	Episode Title
Season 1
1.1	1100	Jan 23 83	Mexican Slayride (1)
1.2	1101	Jan 23 83	Mexican Slayride (2)
1.3	1104	Jan 30 83	Children of Jamestown
1.4	1102	Feb 8 83	Pros and Cons
1.5	1105	Feb 15 83	A Small and Deadly War
1.6	1106	Feb 22 83	Black Day at Bad Rock
1.7	1103	Mar 1 83	The Rabbit Who Are Las Vegas
1.8	1108	Mar 15 83	The Out-of-Towners
1.9	1107	Mar 22 83	Holiday in the Hills
1.10	1109	Apr 5 83	West Coast Turnaround
1.11	1110	Apr 12 83	One More Time
1.12	1111	Apr 19 83	Till Death Do Us Part
1.13	1112	May 3 83	The Beast From the Belly of a Boeing
1.14	1113	May 10 83	A Nice Place to Visit
Season 2
2.1	1201	Sep 20 83	Diamonds 'n' Dust
2.2	1206	Sep 27 83	Recipe for Heavy Bread
2.3	1204	Oct 11 83	The Only Church in Town
2.4	1203	Oct 18 83	Bad Time on the Border
2.5	1207	Oct 25 83	When You Comin' Back Range Rider? (1)
2.6	1207	Oct 25 83	When You Comin' Back Range Rider? (2)
2.7	1213	Nov 1 83	The Taxicab Wars
2.8	1208	Nov 8 83	Labor Pains
2.9	1212	Nov 15 83	There's Always a Catch
2.10	1205	Nov 22 83	Water, Water Everywhere
2.11	1214	Nov 29 83	Steel
2.12	1202	Dec 6 83	The White Ballot
2.13	1216	Dec 13 83	The Maltese Cow
2.14	1217	Jan 3 84	In Plane Sight
2.15	1220	Jan 10 84	The Battle of Bel-Air
2.16	1218	Jan 17 84	Say It With Bullets
2.17	1215	Jan 31 84	Pure-Dee Poison
2.18	1219	Feb 7 84	It's a Desert Out There
2.19	1222	Feb 14 84	Chopping Spree
2.20	1224	Feb 21 84	Harder Than It Looks
2.21	1225	Feb 28 84	Deadly Maneuvers
2.22	1211	May 8 84	Semi-Friendly Persuasion
2.23	1226	May 15 84	Curtain Call
Season 3
3.1	1305	Sep 18 84	Bullets and Bikinis
3.2	1309	Sep 25 84	The Bend in the River (1)
3.3	1309	Sep 25 84	The Bend in the River (2)
3.4	1304	Oct 2 84	Fire
3.5	1302	Oct 16 84	Timber!
3.6	1310	Oct 23 84	Double Heat
3.7	1311	Oct 30 84	Trouble on Wheels
3.8	1308	Nov 13 84	The Island
3.9	1307	Nov 20 84	Showdown!
3.10	1314	Nov 27 84	Sheriffs of Rivertown
3.11	1303	Dec 4 84	The Bell's of St. Mary's
3.12	1312	Dec 11 84	Hot Styles
3.13	1315	Dec 18 84	Breakout!
3.14	1301	Jan 8 85	Cup 'A Joe
3.15	1316	Jan 15 85	The Big Squeeze
3.16	1317	Jan 22 85	Champ!
3.17	1318	Jan 29 85	Skins
3.18	1319	Feb 5 85	Road Games
3.19	1320	Feb 12 85	Moving Targets
3.20	1321	Feb 26 85	Knights of the Road
3.21	1323	Mar 5 85	Waste 'Em!
3.22	1322	Apr 2 85	Bounty
3.23	1326	Apr 9 85	Beverly Hills Assault
3.24	1325	May 7 85	Trouble Brewing
3.25	1306	May 14 85	Incident at Crystal Lake
Season 4
4.1	1404	Sep 24 85	Judgement Day (1)
4.2	1404	Sep 24 85	Judgement Day (2)
4.3	1407	Oct 1 85	Where Is The Monster When You Need Him?
4.4	1410	Oct 22 85	Lease With An Option to Die
4.5	1403	Oct 29 85	The Road to Hope
4.6	1412	Nov 5 85	Heart of Rock n Roll
4.7	1414	Nov 12 85	Body Slam
4.8	1408	Nov 19 85	Blood, Sweat and Cheers
4.9	1418	Nov 26 85	Mind Games
4.10	1402	Dec 3 85	There Goes the Neighborhood
4.11	1406	Dec 10 85	The Doctor Is Out
4.12	1415	Dec 17 85	Uncle Buckle-Up
4.13	1419	Jan 14 86	Wheel of Fortune
4.14	1411	Jan 21 86	The A-Team is Coming, The A-Team is Coming
4.15	1420	Jan 28 86	Members Only
4.16	1422	Feb 11 86	Cowboy George
4.17	1421	Feb 18 86	Waiting for Insane Wayne
4.18	1417	Feb 25 86	The Duke of Whispering Pines
4.19	1416	Mar 4 86	Beneath the Surface
4.20	1425	Mar 11 86	Mission of Peace
4.21	1424	Mar 25 86	The Trouble With Harry
4.22	1423	May 6 86	A Little Town With an Accent
4.23	1427	May 13 86	The Sound of Thunder
Season 5
5.1	1506	Sep 26 86	Dishpan Man (1)
5.2	1507	Oct 3 86	Trial By Fire (2)
5.3	1508	Oct 10 86	Firing Line (3)
5.4	1509	Oct 17 86	Quarterback Sneak
5.5	1510	Oct 24 86	The Theory of Revolution
5.6	1512	Oct 31 86	The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair
5.7	1511	Nov 7 86	Alive at Five
5.8	1514	Nov 14 86	Family Reunion
5.9	1515	Nov 18 86	Point of No Return
5.10	1517	Nov 28 86	The Crystal Skull
5.11	1516	Dec 2 86	The Spy Who Mugged Me
5.12	1519	Dec 30 86	The Grey Team
5.13	1521	Mar 8 87	Without Reservations

The production numbers indicate that there were at least 17 unproduced episodes, and 2 of them had titles that I know of. Many of these unproduced episodes were probably just random ideas thrown out there and never thought about beyond that, but some obviously were ready to go, and for some reason were canned.

Another episode, There Goes The Neighborhood, was originally titled The Battle of Canoga Park.

1.6) What can you tell me about the unproduced episodes?

Unproduced episodes are those that may have ideas that were never developed beyond production meetings, episodes that were written and never produced, episodes that got moved to other seasons, or were originally slated to be made, but didn't because of cancellation, special TV programming etc. Just because there were 27 episode numbers doesn't mean that 27 episodes were actually planned to be made, many may have been scrapped very early on.

There were 17 unproduced episodes during the run of the show. Season 2 had production numbers 09, 10, 21 and 23 unproduced, season 3 had production number 13 unproduced, season 4 had production numbers 01, 05, 09, 13 and 26 unproduced, and season 5 had 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 13 and 20 unproduced. Two of the episodes were to be titled New In Town, Sailor? and Play It Again, Murdock.

Play It Again, Murdock, was set in season 5, and the script has a date of Sep 4 1986, and a revision date of Sep 11 1986. It is most likely a later season 5 episode, perhaps 1513 or 1520. In it, Murdock and Face are in Casablanca, and Murdock gets hit in the head and believes he's Rick from the movie. It would have a call-in ending, where viewers could choose whether Murdock would stay with the Team or leave Casablanca with his love interest.

New in Town, Sailor? has a revision date of Jan 23 1986, which makes it a season 4 episode, written by Babs Greyhosky. It is 1426 in production number according to the script. In this episode some former prostitutes hire the Team because their pimp wants to run them out of their new business as hairdressers and back onto the streets.

1.7) When did the A-Team premiere?

The two hour pilot Mexican Slayride aired as an NBC Sunday Night Movie on January 23 1983. The first regular season episode, Children of Jamestown, aired on January 30 1983, after the Superbowl (Washington Redskins vs. Miami Dolphins). It then moved to it's Tuesday night time slot at 8pm ET, and in season five, moved to Friday nights at 8pm ET.

1.8) How popular was the show when it first aired?

Very popular. NBC was rated in third place of all the networks, somewhat lagging behind the others in programming. The A-Team helped revitalize the network.

82-83 season - 10th overall, 1episode reaching number 1 for the week

83-84 season - 4th overall, 8 episodes reaching number 1 for the week

84-85 season - 6th overall, 1 episode reaching number 1 for the week (Bounty).

85-86 season - 30th overall, high of 16th for Body Slam.

86-87 season - 61st overall

1.9) Did the show ever win any awards or nominations?

Yes, a few, but almost all were technical nominations and wins:

1983- Emmy Nomination for "Outstanding Film Sound Mixing for a Series" for "Fast Eddie" Mahler, James R. Cook, John Norman, and Robert Harman (Mexican Slayride)
1984 - People's Choice Awards for "Favorite New Show," "Favorite New Male Star" for Mr. T, and nomination for "Favorite New Drama."
1985 - Stuntman Award for "Best Action Sequence by a Coordinator" for Craig R. Baxley for the episode The Bend in the River.
1985 - MPSE Award for "Best Sound Editing for an Hour" for "Fast Eddie" Mahler and Dick Wahrman for the episode The Doctor is Out.
1986 - Stuntman Award for "TV Highwork" for Michael Leicha for the episode Judgment Day.

1.10) Why did the opening narration change?

When the show began it was January 1983, but the first episode was filmed in 1982, so the "Ten years ago" beginning was used, since 10 years ago was 1972, when the Team had escaped and gone out on their own. But of course time marches on, and they changed it in the following seasons to "In 1972" to preserve the time line. Producer John Ashley is the narrator.

1.11) Why did the show change in the 5th season?

Ratings were going downhill, and in an attempt to woo fans back, the series was revamped. The character of Frankie Santana (played by Eddie Velez) was brought on as a possible sex symbol to attract more viewers, but most fans didn't like Santana's character. The character of Ret. Gen. Hunt Stockwell was also added, as a shadowy figure who bribes the A-Team into working for him on goverment jobs. Most fans hated the fact that the A-Team were working for the government and not themselves, feeling that it didn't ring true to their characters.

Originally producers had toyed with the idea of having Tia Carrere (from the Season 4 finale episode Sound of Thunder, she was Gen. Fulbright's daughter) on the show as an addition to the Team (the ending of the episode leaves this possibility open) if the show was picked up for a 5th season. But she couldn't get out of a contract she had for another project, and the producers went another way.

The revamping effort backfired ultimately, and ratings continued to slide until the show was cancelled.

1.12) Why was the show cancelled?

Low ratings. The show wasn't even going to be renewed for Season 5 (which is why Murdock is wearing the "Everything Must Come to an End" shirt in Sound of Thunder). They decided to pick the show up for half a season to give it a chance, but the revamped show lost a lot of fans and the show was cancelled midseason.

1.13) Did anyone ever get killed on the show?

There was only one on screen death, that of General Fulbright, who was killed in Vietnam in Season 4s The Sound of Thunder.

Some characters died off screen or previous to the episode beginning, such as the Viet-cong General who killed Fulbright in Sound of Thunder, Ray Brenner in A Nice Place To Visit, a mobster in The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas was thrown out a window (whether he was killed before is not known), a game warden in Skins, the Sheriff is killed in Cowboy George, a man blown from a plane in Beast From The Belly of a Boeing (but he had a parachute on...you don't know if he survived or not), a boxer/prisoner was shot in Pros and Cons, Captain Josh Curtis was hit by a car off screen in Trial By Fire, a revolutionist is killed in Theory of Revolution, and AJ Bancroft dies in Family Reunion off screen.

1.14) How did The A-Team end?

The last episode was probably meant to be The Grey Team, considering the ending, and the fact Murdock is wearing a t-shirt that says "Fini". Despite that fact, Without Reservations was aired last, a few months after the show was cancelled. Apparently the episode was "lost". At the end of The Grey Team, the guys are discussing what they'll do once they get their pardons, and they basically decide they'd go on doing what they've been doing, hiring out to help people, and being The A-Team.

Interestingly enough, the character of Frankie Santana is not involved in this final scene, so fans see their 4 favourite guys together in the very end. The last line of the show is BA saying "I'll get the van!"

1.15) Will there ever be an A-Team reunion show or feature movie?

Seeing as George Peppard died in 1994, it would be hard to make a movie with him.

There is a planned A-Team movie in the works, although it seems like it has been in the works for eons. It's rumoured the original cast has been asked to do cameo roles, but no word on whether they will. Some news reports say the movie will recast, while others speculate it'll be a whole different Team. I've heard it will be set during the first Gulf War.

Dirk Benedict has said he's heard Brendan Fraser is up for the role of Face, while Owen Wilson is up for Murdock.

I personally would rather see the 3 surviving members, (and Melinda Culea!) shoot a TV movie...with Hannibal kidnapped or out of commission. That way the original Team would be reunited, trying to find Hannibal, and they could do it without George.

1.16) Where did the Team travel to on the show? What were the settings?

In the early seasons, the Team was based out of Los Angeles, CA, and in season 5 they moved to Langley, VA. I'll have a page of settings posted up soon under the tag "settings".

1.17) Where is The A-Team airing today?

I need more information on this - if you know where the A-Team is currently airing, please reply with the info and I'll add it.

In the past the show has aired on TV Land, TNN/Spike, F/X (US), KVOS and Prime (aka TVTropolis) (Canada), Galaxy (Australia), all airing cut episodes. The cut episodes are trimmed down from 48 mins to 42, often losing some funny or good character moments.

1.18) What scenes are cut from some of the TV airings now?

It depends on which network you watch. Scenes had to be trimmed in order to fit in more commercials. Depending on the network airing the show, some scenes may be cut when it airs on one channel, and other scenes cut when it airs on another, so there's no real way to state which scenes are missing each time.

1.19 Some of the episode titles sound familiar, are they based on something?

Yes, some of them are based on movies, books and other famous works, and some are merely coincidences. Some of the familiar titles are:

The Maltese Cow - The Maltese Falcon
Black Day at Bad Rock - Bad Day at Black Rock
The Spy Who Mugged Me - The Spy Who Loved Me (James Bond)
The Out of Towners - The Out-of-Towners (Jack Lemmon)
When You Comin' Back Range Rider? - When You Coming Back Red Ryder? (late 70s)
The Trouble With Harry - The Trouble With Harry (Hitchcock)
Semi Friendly Persuasion - Friendly Persuasion (Gary Cooper)
Bell's of St. Mary's - The Bell's of St. Mary's (Bing Crosby)
Beast From The Belly of a Boeing - In The Belly of the Beast (Norman Mailer book)
Body Slam - Body Slam (Dirk Benedict movie oddly enough lol, but doubtful that they episode was named after it, it is a wrestling episode lol)
Point of No Return - Point of No Return
The A-Team is Coming, The A-Team is Coming - The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (movie)