Let’s do another one, shall we?<\/p>\n
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<\/i><\/a> are one example of these troubleshooter characters; the world’s ultimate tinkerer MacGyver<\/i><\/a> is another. But the ones I really grooved on — naturally — were the ones that threw some science-fiction hardware into the mix. Knight Rider<\/i><\/a> is probably the best known of these. Personally, I much preferred heavily armed, supersonic-capable, computerized stealth helicopters to silly talking cars:<\/p>\n