Customer Reviews

The A-Team - Season Five, The Final Season

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Season Five of The A-Team often gets bashed, and to some degree it's warranted. The A-Team joining forces with General Stockwell holding them by the leash was awful since it never went anywhere. These guys are suppose to be soldiers of fortune, outlaws for hire who play by their own rules, and now they're being controlled by someone else. Then they added in Frankie Santana and forced him into a more prominent role than some other Team members. I could see Frankie in an Amy or Tonya recurring role, but he got too much attention for my tastes. The Simpsons once spoofed the fact that TV shows tend to add in new characters when they're desparate and that's exactly how Frankie and Stockwell came off.

To top it off, some of the stories were awful and the production quality was horrible. I know the production continuity wasn't perfect by any means during the other seasons, but it just seemed like they started to give up altogether. The final episode, The Grey Team, was down right awful. Come on, you got Frankie and B.A. running scared of a bunch of old folks? B.A.?! Watch the part where the car goes flying through the air then it cuts to a shot of the car dropping straight down. Bad...really bad production.

But for all the negatives, there were positives. While some of the stories were bad, I thought some were excellent, too. The opening threesome of The A-Team's capture, trial, and escape was very well done. The episode where Face learns about his dying father and his sister is another one I liked. It's that kind of character development, learning more about their backgrounds and tying up loose ends that really lacked in the first four seasons, and that was very refreshing to see.

All in all, it was obvious they made a change of direction during Season Five and that they were desparate to make something work. Unfortunately, there were too many issues from stories to production quality that made this season less than memorable. It still had it's moments and it had some good character development as well, but the addition of Stockwell and Frankie definitely made it a different cup of tea that not all A-Team fans appreciated.

With "The A-Team: Season Five - The Final Season" on DVD, you can enjoy the final thirteen episodes of one of television's greatest action shows. However, this was definitely the worst season of the show. This doesn't mean that the final season is horrible, but it's nowhere near as good as it had been in previous seasons. The format of the final season is drastically different. The tone of the show is dark this time around, and even the humor cannot hide this fact. Even the season's best episode, "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair," is very dark, and has one of the few instances of a character actually dying ON camera.
The whole idea of the A-Team working for a top-secret organization within the U.S. government never really works. The Stockwell character is useless for the most part, and Frankie Santana is one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen on a T.V. show. But still, there were some good episodes, such as "Trial by Fire" (which features one of the greatest Murdock moments ever), the aforementioned "Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair," and the exciting, hilarious penultimate episode of the show, "The Grey Team." Overall, this was a decent ending to one of television's greatest shows. Fans of the show will enjoy it.
Program/DVD Grade: B

While not as good as the first couple of years, the A-Team went out with their heads held high. They ended the series on a high with the pardons and the end of the business with the goofy spy. The only complaint is that the episodes are on the DVD as they were aired, with the last two out of the proper order. At least with a DVD they can be viewed in the correct order.

This abbreviated 1986-87 Season of The A-Team was the worst season of them all since this was the season when this show took a major nose-dive since the team makes a big transition from being for hire and on the run from the Army to being assigned to a mission by Gen. Stockwell(Robert Vaughn), which the team seemed to despise leaving kind of love hate relationship with Stockwell, which made the show kind of cheesy and less interesting and less sophisticated with less action than the first 4 seasons along with the fact that this was the season when the ratings went down the toilet since everything on this action-packed show started going stale and ran out of steam with no sufficient new ideas making it obvious by the Winter of 1987 that this show wasn't going in the right direction either.

Therefore, you could say that Stockwell killed the thunder and popularity of this show causing it to go stale, since the team being for hire and on the run from the military is part of what made The A-Team so popular during the first 4 years of that show, but since Stockwell captured the A-Team in the Fifth Season, it was like the team was kissing up to him ever since in order to keep the military from continuing to attempt catching them, but the A-Team would always seem to be so reluctant going on whatever mission Stockwell assigned them, unlike the case in the first 4 seasons, because for instance, whenever the A-Team got hired after Hannibal would do a screening out process interview with each client who wanted to hire the A-Team in the first 4 years of that show.

Therefore, it was like the team was always kissing ass to Stockwell after Stockwell saved the team from being executed after their trial when things didn't work well for the team in court causing the team to be indebted to Stockwell for the rest of their lives, which I'm sure was another thing that led to this shows cancellation on NBC in the Spring of 1987.

This 1986-1987 Season also takes me all the way back to memory lane when NBC's motto was "Come Home to NBC", since that was NBC's slogan from the Fall of 1986 thru the Summer of 1987.

The A-Team was a cartoon of sorts. Few people died, and few were injured from the thousands of rounds of ammo used each show. It morphed many times. Original show had a female member. She was removed to make it more 'macho.' Then, by the end of the fourth season, someone thought it would be a good idea to have the guys work for the government. General Stockwell I understood, but not Dishpan Samtana. The show suffered and died. Only real regret is that that a 'final show,' was not done with the official pardons given. Two shows that Dirk Benedict starred that did not get a final wrap. A-Team and Battlestar Gallactica.

Season 5 is a shadow of the first 4 seasons by far. By Season 5, the presense of Mr. T is barely seen in each episode; one can only guess that his part in the show was cut down significantly by 1986. In truth, the true star of the show in this and in Season 4 was Dwight Shultz, whose character of H.M. Murdock truly took center stage in over half of the episodes. Season 5 seems to have been specificaly written for him. The shows lost most of their comedic appeal by 1986-87, and became more spy/espionage thrillers than "Soldiers of Fortune" chronicles. The initial trilogy of the pilot episode of this season was excellent, finally giving the history of The A-Team in detail, and including Murdock as a part of the Team. A good watch for nostalgia buffs, even if it only lasted 13 episodes; I guess the machine gun/tech craze of the early to mid 80's was dying out by now.... The change to the Main Theme song was at the same time cool but uncool, as the opening trademark dialogue "In 1972..." was missed.
RIP George Peppard.......still one of the coolest men who ever lived.

Not the best season, and certainly not the best retail price for a 13 episode DVD box-set. If you're a fan of the A-Team you're going to want to add the final season to your collection, but I would suggest waiting for a decent sale price.

JM

I personally love this show, but this season first of all is a ripoff because it's only like half a season, but also I can't stand the fact that they never properly ended the series. There is a few good episodes thrown in here, so don't get me wrong, but for one if you watch closely to the last 2 episodes, in the last one Murdock is wearing a T-Shirt that says Almost Fini, or something to that effect, but in the second last episode he's wearing a shirt that says FINI. So the last episode is really THE GREY TEAM, not WITHOUT RESERVATIONS. So if you do buy this set, the only thing I can recommend is to watch the last 2 episodes in that order.

As for the season, I find it's overpriced for the amount of episodes that you get. I think it should be a lower price considering theres only 13 episodes. Storywise though, they should have ended the series with the 3 part season 5 premiere episode, and left it there, and it would have been a proper way to end the show. But I guess I can't get past the fact that the series didn't get a proper sendoff, or final episode.

I did like the fact that they remixed the theme song for this season, and the addition of Frankie was a good idea, cuz it brought some new blood into the series. So to properly review this season of the series, if you're expecting a proper end to the series, go elsewhere, but if you just wanna see some good A-Team episodes, there is a few in here, but Season 3 was really the peak of the series, and was the best season thus far, although Season 4 was pretty good also. I find season 4 was just a tad under what season 3 was quality wise.

So for fans of the A-Team (like myself) I recommend the seasons in the following order (Seasons 3,4,2,1,5). Seasons 1 and 5 have the least amount of episodes. Season 1 has 14, and Season 5 has 13.

So I give this season 3 stars. The picture quality is pretty good, the sound is I think 2.0 Mono, might be stereo, not sure, but it is really good quality. Only beef I have with this season is some of the content of the episodes and the lack of episodes, with no final episode.

Though this years program was not the best of the series, it's nice to complete the whole shows run. The qaulity of the shows on this disk is really good. No complaints and it arrived in really good time as it was a Christmas present.

Not as good as the other seasons. The team is legal now and works for the gov't. It loses some of the fun. Still entertaining for the fans.