(i haven't thought of a good title yet)

magen, she/her, 27 rewatched the ateam for the first time in years and am now obsessed

[zappho]

murdock: *is hold* (by himself)

[zappho]

he always does it

[christinakratt]

HES SO CUTE!

[agentbluefox]

S03.E13, Breakout 

He’s so distraught 😂 

[agentbluefox]

Headcanon that Face (after much pleading) tries to teach Murdock how to play the piano. This ends disastrously, with Murdock claiming the piano has sentience and all the different notes have personalities. Which simply leads to much confusion and mayhem. 

Before the ‘funeral,’ he assures Face he’s got this. He’s been practicing and it’s gonna be great. 

He then whips out this funeral-dirge version of ‘take me out to the ballgame.’ 

Look at their expressions. You cannot tell me there isn’t a history there. 

Bonus: this look he’s giving Face afterwards. 

I can’t decide if this is a look of: “that was great. I was fantastic and Face is going to be very proud”  or “I know Faceman hated that and I’m going to give him a look to make sure he knows that I know.” 

(tbh I have Thoughts about Face and the piano. If anybody wants more headcanons I’d be happy to provide 😂)

S03:E15

[facedock]

Absolutely losing it over Face scolding Murdock for sneezing and drawing attention to them, as if the man has any control over the urge to sneeze 😂

[agentbluefox]

The way Murdock honest to goodness giggles as he realizes what Hannibal has in mind.

These two are the same brand of crazy.

S04:E02, Judgement Day

[agentbluefox]

“Do you know what you’re doing?”  “Actually, it’s never worked, but… might as well give it a try.” 

-S04:E7

The recurring theme of Murdock throwing together a plan that has no right to work so he can go save his team when they inevitably get themselves caught.  

It’s also rather endearing that he actually seemed a bit nervous about this one😂 I think he and Hannibal both get to the point occasionally where they’re like “this has no business working and I know that, but I am going to test God, the universe, and all laws of common sense anyway” 

[agentbluefox]

I desperately want to hear your thoughts on Frankie and Face (also can't wait to see that rant about Face and his father)

First, thank you for enabling me to rant about this. Literally rubbed my hands together when I got your ask and was like ‘my time has come I am going to go OFF about this'

^^ actual footage of my last three braincells upon receiving this ask. (this got so long. it’s below the cut to spare everyone)

(I’ll preface this by saying I’m mostly looking at this from an in-universe perspective, not really criticizing the writing choices or why the writers/directors did certain things)

I’m going to briefly talk about season 5 as a whole because I think it’s linked to the thoughts I have on Frankie. I actually didn’t dislike season 5. It’s far from my favorite, but I feel like it is misunderstood to some extent (especially in fanfics). Or maybe I just like my interpretation of it. Either way, it wasn’t a bad season, and it provided a lot of interesting character moments by putting them all in situations we hadn’t really seen before.

However, the entire tone changed, the dynamics changed, and the overall story and interactions just felt a little... off.

Frankie is... fine as a character. If he were the protagonist/sidekick of some other show, he would be fine, he’d probably even be an interesting character. But he just doesn’t work in the A-Team. At least not in the way that the writers seemingly intended. The team, for four seasons, has operated as a single cohesive unit. You can TELL that these men have worked together for years, you can tell they’ve been though war and hardship together. This also means that it’s very clear that each of them has a purpose within the unit.

Hannibal is the leader and everyman in a sense, Murdock is the pilot and backup, B.A. is the muscle, Face is the con-man. That doesn’t mean the roles aren’t occasionally interchangeable or they don’t have other jobs or abilities, because they absolutely do, but at a very basic level, they all have a job and a place and it works well within the dynamic.

Then we get to season 5 and several things happen. First, the tone is different from the outset, the stakes are higher, there’s not so many fun missions or lightheartedness. The team isn’t just helping out the little guy anymore, they’re following orders from a man none of them seem to really respect, and doing jobs that none of them really seem to want to be doing.

At the beginning, through the trial, we really get to see the team’s loyalty to each other on display. This is great. But while the stakes remain high through the season, the dynamics go through a shift. Starting, I think, with Frankie. First, we see Hannibal taking Frankie under his wing, almost as a mentor (a dynamic that we’ve most often seen between Face and Hannibal in the past). We’ve never heard of this guy, suddenly Hannibal trusts him so we’re supposed to trust him. This MIGHT have worked if it was handled a little differently. As it is, it feels cheap and contrived. (especially since Frankie is just really full of himself from the first introduction) Murdock was right when he pulled Frankie aside and told him “It’s my team, not our team.”

So Frankie is taken into the team as a fifth member. The problem is, there’s no place for him within the cohesive unit that we’ve been presented with for the past four years.

And since there’s no real place for him, it became necessary to create one. The issue is that his place tends to overlap A Lot with Face’s. From his skillset to his relationship with the other characters - particularly Hannibal. The other additions to the team in the past (Amy for example) have added their own skillset/perspective/etc. They added something that the others couldn’t. Which I just felt wasn’t the case for Frankie.

We have scenes where Face is teaching him to pick a lock or to scam people, which at first is a little endearing. Like, okay, Face gets to teach someone else the ‘tricks of the trade,’ if you will. But very quickly, we start to get scenes where it’s just Frankie doing all these things that Face always handled. Frankie is redundant, and the narrative makes no attempt to give him his own niche. This leaves Face as a redundancy himself.

And to be fair, it’s not even just Frankie, it’s the rest of the team too. ‘The Spy Who Mugged Me’ is a great example of that. And, objectively, I like this episode. It’s a fun story and it’s neat to see Murdock taking on a role that’s so opposed to the one he usually has. But once again, it is Face’s role; one that he’s not being allowed to fill, which leaves him basically as an extra. And here we do see quite a strong reaction from Face, after Murdock leaves him out on the balcony all night (I love Murdock but I just want to shake him for this tbh). He hasn’t been allowed to fulfill his role on the team, and then when he’s completely removed from the equation, nobody even notices. Might just be my interpretation but he feels sort of reserved this whole season. Like he’s drifting a little bit, with no reassurance that he really is vital to the operation of the team. Something that I think he needs more than any of the others.

He tries to leave in season 5. Something he’s done once before, though the circumstances were different. This is an interesting decision, because it means he’s giving up the pardon, despite being the one constantly looking for the normal life it would provide. That being said, I personally don’t think he ever intended to actually leave. I think we were seeing him at the end of his rope, realizing that this isn’t quite what he wanted, and this was, in a way, an act of desperation. To see if his team would try and stop him, or to see if they would follow him. What he was proposing was basically to go back to the way things were. Being on the run, helping people THEY wanted to help, instead of performing glorified chores for Stockwell, and watching his place on the team be given over to an outsider.

B.A. said early in the series that Face would be in jail if it wasn’t for Hannibal, and I think this is absolutely true. Face is the most vocal about wanting a normal life, but I think he’s the one least suited to it in many ways. He’s never had a normal life. I don’t think he would know how to stop. He enjoys it, just like the rest of them do. With Frankie there, I think he probably recognized that he was potentially replaceable and that, if they get the pardons, he might lose his team for good.

I got the sense that they were all in a sort of survival mode in the last season. They cut it really close with the trial and their ‘executions’ and then they’re offered a chance at the pardons. I got the sense of “none of us are happy about it, but we’re going to suck it up and make the best of it because what other choice do we have?” Maybe Hannibal realized he could have got them all killed and that’s still a very real possibility, so the focus now HAS to be on getting the pardons, and he’ll deal with the fallout later (Face, Murdock’s mental state, etc.). Unfortunately, that means we have the team at a low point in many ways.

Now, I have my own headcanons about what happened after the finale (which I will either make a post about at some point or write a fanfic about), but I think at some point, the balance these characters has is pushed completely off kilter, forcing them (Hannibal mainly) to take a step back and evaluate where they are and what needs to change. Recognizing that their operation worked because their dynamic worked, not just as a team but really as a family, and that maybe the pardons aren’t really worth all the trouble they’ve caused.

[zappho]

I really like little moments like this where you get to see murdock’s hypervigilance

[purplescarfedspencerreid]

That time Murdock sussed BA out

[db-gifs]

[agentbluefox]

“Do you know what you’re doing?”  “Actually, it’s never worked, but… might as well give it a try.” 

-S04:E7

The recurring theme of Murdock throwing together a plan that has no right to work so he can go save his team when they inevitably get themselves caught.  

It’s also rather endearing that he actually seemed a bit nervous about this one😂 I think he and Hannibal both get to the point occasionally where they’re like “this has no business working and I know that, but I am going to test God, the universe, and all laws of common sense anyway” 

[db-gifs]

Face and Murdock Part 4

[zappho]

Murdock + stimming

( pressure | movement | auditory )

[hannibalsboys]

hannibal keeps this photo in his wallet but shh dont tell anyone

[zappho]

Follow-up cause I struggled against that character limit in the other ask: B.A. being the youngest member of the team aggravates Face to no end tho he might not always show it. Hannibal is obviously the oldest tho if you'd ask him what his age is he'd just kinda laugh and avoid the question. Everyone assumes Murdock is somewhere between Face and Hannibal at least but honestly none of the team members could tell you how old he is. If you ask him he'll just give an absurd answer like -4

[zappho]

one day murdock shows up with a lil seal keychain going “Happy bday........Hunty” and stockwell just leaves the country, absolutley horrified over murdock finding out both his birthday and fav animal

[ateampiceveryday]

[introvertpanda]

The A-Team + textposts