It's about the gorilla war which was a very popular theme in the 1980s cinema. Just remember: Uncommon Valor (1983), Let's Get Harry (1986), Rambo III (1988), Delta Force 2 (1990),.. etc. The action is plenty and well-made. The fun is here; I loved the mysterious girl who has multifarious characters; that was the episode's best. I thought that the 2 lines: "Go to hell! / You first!" were firstly said in Tombstone (1993), then I discovered that they were firstly said in Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), till I discovered that they were firstly said in this epsiode (unless there is even older source that I didn't discover yet!). And I always had a thing for the 1980s music; something was mega entertaining about it through the TV shows. The mix of what remained from the 70's disco funkiness, with the fast-paced orchestral tunes of the 1980s, bewitches me utterly. It's like the best soundtrack for the 1980s TV, and my childhood.
However, the plot is breakable; why the crazy general kidnaps his psychiatrist, along with the report that the last wrote, while he can easily kill him? From where the A-Team have all of this money to finance the traveling to some South America banana republic, especially when they collect no money for many operations like this?! And finally, what was the point of the psychiatrist as not MD one?? Accordingly, the more pressing question must be why Murdock's T-shirt was having "Excellent" written all over it this time?!
Still, there is highly interesting point. It remains at the wonderful and crazy hypothesis which the episode, consciously or unconsciously, propounds. The first line of it was Murdock saying to his doctor: "It's all about running, running, and running". Murdock used to escape from reality till he reached to a level where he didn't know what was reality and what wasn't? (or so he claimed). So what if all what he lives, and we do live with him, is only daydreams where he gets out of this hospital, just about everyday (!), gets together with his old war buddies, to fight all the evil of the world, and beat it every time, with devises that range between military improvisations and child toys, without having any injuries at all, killing anyone, or collecting real money, then, strangely enough, comes back to the hospital. Hence the whole infantile and nutty world of the A-Team could be just a creative figment of Murdock's infantile and nutty imagination. That could explain a lot. Especially when he's someone in deep love with watching numerous movies and TV shows. Otherwise, the writers of the show are bunch of Murdocks themselves!
Psychologically speaking, the supposed daydreams / the A-Team's winning war for supporting the goodness could represent perfectly the opposite of what Murdock was forced to live in Vietnam (a compensation's issue). And dramatically speaking, what a marvelous twist that could have been. Nevertheless, no one could have ever exploited it, since it ruins completely the kind of credibility that the show has. But let me think of it from time to time. Even if it wasn't intended, unlike other intended enigmas in other shows at the moment like: could Higgins be Robin Masters in "Magnum. P. I" or not? So when Murdock says, in the start of (The Doctor is Out), that: "Everything I dream comes true". I might replay: "Yeah, as an A-Team episode!".
Despite the shortcomings, it's above average A-Team's fun. It's not manufactured for thinking in the first place, but for running from reality. And Murdock's or not, it's nice running anyway.
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