Let’s do another one, shall we?

As the decade of the ’80s progressed, TV action heroes began to evolve from detectives into characters we can call, for lack of a better word, “troubleshooters.” These guys were less concerned with figuring out whodunnit mysteries than with helping the downtrodden find justice. Like the private dicks they descended from, these characters were mavericks and renegades who operated outside the law, occasionally working for shadowy organizations whose exact nature was never disclosed, but just as often functioning as “indepedent contractors.” The good-hearted mercenaries who composed The A-Team are one example of these troubleshooter characters; the world’s ultimate tinkerer MacGyver is another. But the ones I really grooved on — naturally — were the ones that threw some science-fiction hardware into the mix. Knight Rider is probably the best known of these. Personally, I much preferred heavily armed, supersonic-capable, computerized stealth helicopters to silly talking cars:

I hear this theme music in my head everytime I see a helicopter, especially if it’s just in the process of powering up and lifting off. Of course, the fact that our local AirMed choppers are the same Bell 222 model used to protray the Airwolf probably has something to do with that…