What would you change? MEXICAN SLAYRIDE

[sidney]

If you could change something about the pilot to make it better, what would it be?

This thread might be tooo easy. Everyone is going to say Fake(!)Face.

Yes, it's true: If it was Dirk in the pilot, it would have been soooooo much better.

But what else could have made the pilot better?

I would sooooo get rid of turning the image at the end to pretend Murdock was flying them upside down. But that, too, is a given.

The pilot was pretty awesome in so many ways. I think I'd mainly just want more of everything. More Face scamming. More Murdock flying. More Murdock and Lynch. More Hannibal and BA. More Hannibal and Amy. More BA being inspiring.

[amyk]

I would not have Amy blackmail her way onto the team. And I would not have Hannibal reveal so quickly that he was Mr. Lee.

[sidney]

Seeing more of the whole production - all the steps Amy had to go through to find the team... That *would* be cool. Although one of the great things about ATeam is the way they would just tell you crazy things that happened. You had to listen to the dialogue to find out what happened before... Far-fetched, incredible things!

Amy shouldn't have blackmailed them, no. How would they ever trust her? What would have been great would be them needing her resources time and time again until she naturally assimilated with them.

Do you think Amy's inclusion was always in Cannell's original idea, or was it something the tv producers did to try to make the show accessible to the female audience as well as the men?

[amyk]

Didn't SJC say in an interview that he thought having the female character on the team was a good idea (or something along those lines)? I assumed it was his idea from the start.

[sidney]

It's very like a production team to do that though: Bubby! We need to put a girl on the team to access that portion of the potential audience!!!

What about how Hannibal communicated with the guys, via that talk show. Is that something you wish continued on, or do you think it was unnecessary in the pilot? Could that air time have been focussed on some more action and fun?

[amyk]

I liked the way Hannibal communicated with the team and would not have minded more of that, although it would get old I suppose if they did it too much. But we rarely seemed to see how Hannibal actually gathered the team up when it was time for a mission. Did he just phone them? How did he know where to even phone them, especially as it seemed Face moved around all the time? An idea for another thread!

[sidney]

They had a check in rule.
I don't know if that's canon, or just something from my fan fiction at this moment... I'm pretty tired. But I believe because capture from the MPs was always an issue, and they dealt with bad guys frequently, they had to check in at certain times. Hannibal would tell them when they called to check in.

DEADLY MANEUVERS. I think they had to call and check in and Face missed it. Am I right?

[amyk]

The check-in every 30 minutes is in DEADLY MANEUVERS, or at least I was thinking it was every 30 minutes. But I really can't think this is a constant rule. Is Face really going to stop to check in every 30 minutes when he's in the middle of....well, when he's in the middle of a date?

[sidney]

They were 'hot' at that time. I'm sure they just increased the frequency when they were 'hot'. It's probably once or twice a day otherwise.

[amyk]

That's what I think, too.

[Baracus]

Yeah, the call in radio show has to go. That was a little overly complicated for no reason.

[sidney]

It was overly complicated. But so is Hannibal's weeding out of fake clients. THat's a lot of personas a client has to go through. You'd think Face would do a background check, Hannibal would meet them once, and that would be it.

[sockii]

BA's talk to the children has always actually annoyed me a little. Probably because I didn't see the pilot until after most of the other episodes. It was different. I was much more used to BA not saying much.

[sidney]

It is quite trite. But he's still sweet when he does it.

[amyk]

Oh, I love BA's talk to the children and also his talk to the villagers. I wish they had BA do more of those kind of talks throughout the series.