During its first three seasons on NBC, Stephen J. Cannell's "The A-Team" was one of the most popular shows on television. Critics dismissed it as mindless trash, but its 1983 premiere perfectly captured the gung-ho Reagan-era zeitgeist. The idea of a crack commando unit on the run from a government that did them dirty in the Vietnam War played to the country's bitterness over the mistreatment of veterans. Many Americans wanted to see the American military kick butt again, and what better way to scratch that itch than to build a series around a group of wrongly disgraced heroes?

The challenge for Cannell was satisfying his audience's bloodlust while observing the network's mandate that, due to its family-friendly 8 Pm timeslot, the good guys couldn't kill anybody. Could they fire off loads of cool-looking firearms or turn a bamboo into a bazooka? Absolutely! They just had to make sure their...