If you’ve seen at least 3 episodes of The A-Team, you’ve likely encountered a situation where they need to fly somewhere as a part of their mission. The problem for them was that B.A. Baracus (played by the unreplaceably cool Mr. T) had an insane fear of flying where he’d come close to attacking anyone who made him do it. So what was The A-Team’s workaround? They’d surprise inject him with a sedative, knocking him out for the duration of the flight. As you could understand, B.A. was never too pleased to learn about this when he woke up.

Had this been a one time incident, I could see him letting it roll off his back, but with all the helicopters and planes they needed to use in the show, this happened no less than 40 times during the course of the series.

In once case, the aircraft their were in had a survivable crash and B.A. was the only person injured because while in an unconscious state, he was loose and didn’t tense up before the impact. He laughed at his fellow team members who were wearing various casts and slings. I often wonder about how realistic that tactic is.

In light of Michael Jackson’s overdose death, you have to wonder what kind of risks they were taking by continually sedating him via injections. An accidental overdose was clearly a possibility. And did you really think The A-Team had THAT many extra needles lying around. I think chances are very good that B.A. had Hepatitis C.

Was B.A.’s ability to forgive and forget really that huge? Did he have some sort of Alzheimer’s Disease that made him forget this trick? Or was he just secretly OK with it, and liked to be drugged on flights, merely putting on a violent resistance act as a show? Or maybe Mr. T insisted on a certain percent of each script to be unconscious to minimize the amount of lines he had to remember?

What do you think?