Children of Jamestown

In my review of the Hawaii Five-O episode "Draw Me a Killer," I mentioned that I couldn't figure out why that episode was so popular among fans of the show. In this case, there's no question why people like this episode of "The A-Team." We like it because we wish that former President Jimmy Carter would've taken similar action against the blatantly obvious basis for this cult, the Reverend Jim Jones and his "People's Temple," down in Guyana.

On the first job since Amy Allen got to do her news report on the A*Team, Colonel Hannibal Smith, Templeton 'Faceman' Peck (now played by Dirk Benedict, fresh from "Battlestar Galatica"), Sergeant B. A. Barracus, and 'Howling Mad' Murdock were hired by a rich man to rescue his daughter (Carol Jones) from a standard California religious cult. No, they didn't move out of the country, and they don't force their followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid or Flavor-Aide, or any other instant flavored drink, but who's to say they wouldn't in the future? Face and Amy stage a domestic dispute at some general store, while Hannibal escalates it to a fake fight as part of an attempt to swipe Sheila while she and the rest of the kids are taken into town for supplies. I almost thought I saw Ike Eisenmann playing one of the cult kids. Anyway, the team succeed, but most of the them get caught, with the exception of Murdock who flies her to safety. And soon the mad Reverend will sentence them to death by making them trade in their shoes for cheap pairs of sneakers and force them to run through the desert, while his goons shoot at them from Jeeps, and one Ford M-151. Luckily, they managed to survive, although Face is injured, so they seek help from some random farmer and his daughter (Yeah, yeah. Cue the old dirty jokes).

At least the farmer and his daughter know that the Jamestown cult are a bunch of fanatics you don't want to rub the wrong way. But this farmer has a side business of making industrial art, which B. A. takes advantage of by turning into makeshift weapons. So while Face recouperates from his injury and gets kind of friendly with the farmer's daughter, and Murdock returns for air support, the rest of the crew goes back to take Martin James and his goons down, and rescues all the kids.

Another commenter doubted this episode would've been written if Jimmy Carter had been reelected in 1980. I think it still would've not only been written, but aired. There were plenty of people who thought Carter was too weak and unwilling to use military force when needed, especially after being unjustly shamed for it in Vietnam. Save your phony allegations of "American imperialism" and your lectures about killing innocent people, because the Red Armies of Indochina were doing that before we got involved, and they did so on a much larger scale after we gave up. Carter would't even send a platoon or two against Jones' Red Guard, or even team up with the Guyanese government to take them down. One thing I do agree with when it comes to that reviewer was that we needed shows like this after the Malaise era, which was still spilling over into the early-1980's. Besides rejecting the idea that violence wasn't the way to deal with thugs, George Peppard's taunting of the villains of the week were always fun, especially in this episode. Even the additional trivial reason of him reclaiming his boots as an excuse to go after the cult was amusing.

Regarding the idea about all those machine guns blazing and nobody getting killed, an issue that has detractors as well as fans (surprisingly); In reality, there have been instances where characters get both injured and killed. Just not in this episode.

Finally, Carter claimed that he didn't want to send troops to places like Guyana because he was concerned that about them getting killed, not to mention the deaths of innocent people. Realistically, you would've had some people getting killed, but it wouldn't have been a whopping 918 people.

The second A-team episode, right after the pilot, this one gives us a look into the A-team rescuing a young woman from a religious cult, headed by a man claiming to be the incarnation of god, leading his followers into a new age.

This is one of my two personal favorite episodes of the series (The other being Beast from the Belly of a Boeing) because it's the A-team running over a religious cult, and having fun doing it. The writers probably were thinking about the Jonestown incident (Which had occurred just over 3 years previous to the episode's initial airing) in which a man named Jim Jones manipulated and terrorized several young followers into suicide.

Personally, I hate religious cults (Probably because all of them are about ruining people's lives) because they ruin people's lives and corrupt Christianity.

Besides, This cult stole Hannibal's boots. No one steals his boots.

I'm really torn about this episode. It's not at all what I expected. Usually you see Saxon's name in a 70s/80s TV show and you know it's gonna fun. He delivers. However, this script was crap! There is absolutely nothing of substance here, nothing at all entertaining except a bunch of car chases, jeeps passing over the camera, back & forth, and helicopter views.

Literally, John Saxon doesn't remove his glasses till ONE MINUTE FROM THE END! WTF?? His eyes are everything, they convey his moods. He doesn't appear until a dozen mins in. And all the stupid writing has him do is spew bad poetry and fake scriptures. WTF?? So here is an evil guy (which John played to perfection) believing his own tripe? It is established he's doing this for the money, and yet he's alone and spewing his scriptures when no one is around to hear him go unhinged?

So what are we to believe? That his character was brainwashed into believing his lies? I can understand why Saxon would want his face not seen and play him under sunglasses: he's 1 dimensional, a cookie-cutter bad guy that makes no sense!

To make matters worse, the "Children of" aren't brainwashed at all. They're all happy to be released. In a sect, this wouldn't be the case. So there's 0 character development, heck ZERO cohesion between these characters and what real life cult leaders are cult victims are. I expected a lot more: I expected bad guy Saxon to have scenes showing how he's exploiting the kids for money and how he doesn't buy what he makes them believe. And I expected brainwashed "children".

Also, the daugther is rescued within the first scene/first attempt at rescue. BORING! The rest is just, again, fast paced chases. I'll give the show this: the episode was over in like 3-5 min and yet I watched the whole 45 some minutes. Saxon, again, didn't remove his sunglasses until minute 43 point something (3? 5?) and he has one line, and that's it! A huge waste. It's like he didn't understand what his character was supposed to be, beyond a bad guy. Not his fault: I guess they didn't have the sharpest script writers here.

Is it entertaining? Mildly so. Fast paced? Hell, yeah! So it's not a complete waste of time but at the end, I feel cheated of what it was supposed to be. Too many people, nothing much to do for any one, the star of the show was pretty much the jeeps, the explosions and the chopper. Not my kind of show. 4/10 for what it didn't deliver but there's a lot worse tripe out there. I don't think this is a show I'll care to watch much. The time was wasted with too many camera angles for all those damned jeeps running around across my screen, nearly nonstop.

John Saxon does well as the cult leader, though he can be a bit hammy at times, but with a character he's playing it's hard not to. Overall, this is a good episode, there's some humour but it's minimal due to the subject matter, and there's a sense of menace and fear. Good episode. At least Hannibal got his boots back!!

The A-Team is popcorn and soda pop TV and it makes no apologies for being that. This episode was written by the series creator Stephen J. Cannell (Frank Lupo was co-creator). And he clearly understands what he wants. Brashness, badness, and balderdash.

So we have a wacko preacher brainwashing people. He wears sunglasses all the time and talks in riddles. The A-Team gets captured by them. Oops. Now they try to escape. Yay!

Lots of action, lots of punchy lines, etc. Vehicles racing around, helicopters racing around. Guns shooting and shooting. Your basic fun action type of entertainment. Popcorn and soda pop without the toothache.