There was a time when Television was fun, and that time had its peak during the awesome 70's & crazy 80's. After reality television hit the home screens with racist craps like "Cops" everything started to get so screwed up. Today's entry is about my favorite television series of all times. A series to which I hold a lot of fond memories and respect. The name is The Greatest American Hero, the decade, the first half of the 80's. However, if you aren't familiar with "The Greatest American Hero" chances are, you will have to get the DVDs to watch it, or maybe you could look for the series through the internet at your own risk, if you know what I mean. Anyways, The Greatest American Hero is a classic TV series that has aged well enough as to entertain newcomers. I used to watch
the show as a kid and I loved it... they used to play it on Saturday
mornings after the cartoons had ended and I never missed an episode.
Flash forward twenty some years and I'm amazed at not only how well the show
has held up but at all I missed the first time around. Thankfully I got the chance of buying the deluxe limited edition DVD box set released some years ago. And I'm more than happy, cause it comes with a cape replica, plus an amazing working instructions manual book, just like the one Ralph lost in the first episode...
From Teacher to Superhero.
They've aged like wine, specially Connie Sellecca.
so, the story has it school teacher Ralph Hinkley is given (by chance) a supersuit by space
aliens... when wearing the suit he has all the powers of a superhero.
The trouble is he lost the suit's instruction book in episode one and
has to figure out how it works as he goes along. He's partnered with
crusty, by-the-book FBI agent Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) and gets lots
of help from his gorgeous girlfriend Pam (Connie Selleca who happened to be my very first TV crush). If you think
this is a broad, goofy comedy or kid's show you couldn't be farther
off... if you think it's kitschy nostalgia you'd be wrong as well. The
Greatest American Hero is nothing short of one of the greatest TV shows
of all time.
The collector's edition deluxe box set.
Are you selling this piece? if so, I want it!
The concept of the regular guy becoming the ultimate urban superhero allowed the show's
creators (created & written on almost its entirety by the 80's Midas Stephen J. Cannell) and writers to examine different aspects of human nature...
there's so much going on in every episode that getting the bad guy is
almost secondary. In one of the best episodes "My Heroes Have Always
Been Cowboys,"Ralph is forced to examine what it means to be a hero
while Bill wrestles with having to arrest his OWN hero, a veteran
police officer who has turned to a life of crime. The show was
unbelievably human, and the three leads are a perfect triangle...
Robert Culp grounds the show by not pulling any punches as the
skeptical, impatient fed; his disbelief at the premise only serves to
make the premise more real, besides he took the "worst case scenario" phrase to the masses.
Nice threesome.
Heroes.
William Katt as Ralph Hinkley is excellent, completely believable as a man
trying to balance his roles as boyfriend, father, teacher and
superhero, perhaps he is the one to be held responsible for making me want to be a teacher, who knows. Connie Selleca is not just beautiful... she's a confident,
funny actor, putting more into Pam than was on the page, besides she is smoking hot! This show is
also wonderful as a time-capsule piece, a reminder of when TV could
appeal to everyone and still be intelligent, dramatic, and FUN. (Today
so many dramas open every episode with a corpse it's all but become the
rule.) "GAH" is also one of the BIGGEST TV shows ever made... by that I
mean its visual look and style of direction is grand, cinematic. If you
get the DVD's you'll see that every episode is a mini-movie. You'll
also see that it's one of the best transfers EVER done. The show, after so many years, is more bright, clean and vivid than anything on TV
today. And you also get the memorable theme song, which still gives
old-time fans like myself instant nostalgia whenever we hear it.
Connie Sellecca.
If I was next to her, I would also feel hot.
I'd say about 70-80% of the story lines were good to excellent, and even
the mediocre or few bad episodes were carried by the strength of the
charming lead actors. However, right from
the start this series was plagued with problems such as a silly lawsuit
from DC comics, who asserted that Stephen J. Cannell stole their
Superman character. Cannell won the landmark case, but many potential
merchandising companies were scared off by DC and Warner Bros. studios
who still held a grudge against The Greatest American Hero. Then mere weeks into the show's
1981 debut, President Ronald Reagan was shot by a would be killer named
John Hinckley...it just so happened that the main character's name on the show was Ralph Hinkley. The ABC network even went so far as to dub over
"Hinkley" with "Hanley" in a couple of early episodes. Speaking of ABC,
they were probably Cannell/GAH's worst enemies. The network gave the
show late starts in all 3 seasons, while other shows began their season
rightfully in September, GAH would be forced to debut as late as
October or November. ABC also consistently pre-empted GAH with other
events (like major league baseball) during the 2nd season.
Not your average America hero.
imagine if they had Marvel Legends in the 80's!
There was a greatest American heroine pilot but...
ABC then put GAH in a hole that could never be dug out of, the network
drilled into the publics mind that GAH was nothing but a campy
children's series that wasn't worth bothering with. The network nearly
always promoted the series with shots of series star William Katt being
silly and crashing into walls. GAH did have moments of camp and
silliness, but it was written on an adult level and played straight so
it was by no means an Adam West type camp series. There was more to
this series then Ralph simply being an inept Superman. Sometimes ABC
wasn't even close in it's promo ads to the plot of an episode, billing
it all as Saturday morning kiddie fare. The series never recovered from
this type of grossly unfair advertisement. It seemed like a lot of
people just never understood the concept behind GAH, and no matter how
many times you valiantly explained the premise of this show to people,
it simply didn't matter. The damage was done. This was seen as simply
an idiot children's series by way too many folks out there.
Unfortunately that was the nail in the coffin. No TV show was going to
survive being up against such odds. After 3 very short seasons and 44
episodes, The Greatest American Hero was cancelled by ABC in the spring
of 1983...only to be replaced with two flimsy sitcoms that received
even lower ratings and ultimately bombed. GAH has earned a "cult
classic TV" status over the years, which is quite an accomplishment for
a show that has barely been rerun in the continental United States
since the 80s. Yet GAH could have been even more then that had the
playing field been not so ridiculously lopsided against the show. Also, there was an attempt to make a new show based on the pilot The Greatest American Heroine, were we see a Ralph Hinkley screwed by fame losing his supersuit and being replaced by an 80's blonde. It didn't work out.
Here's the classic opening sequence:
And the world famous Joey Scarbury's Believe it or Not hit:
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