The Incredible Hulk

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry"

Despite the success of The Adventures Of Superman(1952-1958), superheroes at the time were thought of being silly and campy, and basically being like a Saturday morning cartoon. Their were a few mild success's with Batman(1966-1968),and Wonder Woman(1976-1979), and their was Spider-Man(1977-1979) Which was luckier then Captain America and Dr. Strange which both didn't even see a season. That is were The Incredible Hulk comes in, but you are asking yourself why did this show succeed, where so many others have failed. Simply the show took itself seriously, David Banner was cursed after an experiment goes awry, now whenever he gets mad, he becomes a 7 foot green monster, with incredible strength, and he is on the run hoping to find cure for his transformation, and not be captured by Jack McGee, the reporter who is obsessed with capturing him. The late Bill Bixby was great as David Banner, no good actor could have pulled it off the way he did. and Lou Ferrigno was also good has the angry but sensitive monster. And Jack Colvin is terrific has the noisy reporter Jack McGee. Just remember this show brought back the superhero genre.

So, where can we begin to describe this magnificent made for  TV gem? I know, let's do a brief review of each of the five seasons the show lasted (boy, I'm so brilliant! NASA take me with you!)

Season 1  (1977, 12 episodes plus the pilot)
The 1st season stand-out is the 1st for obvious reasons, add the 2nd episode and you are all sorted and ready for this monster of a journey. Another is Never Give A Trucker An Even Break which uses a LOT of stock footage from the Steven Spielberg Duel movie, also we have...well...pretty much all of the 1st season is a highlight as its all still new and fresh. Essentially, Doctor David Bruce Banner is introduced to the audience as a sorrowed man made of nothing  but good intentions. His dark side, or green side in this case, is also presented as an innocent creature who clearly distinguishes good from bad and even though Doctor Banner may disagree, the beast is full of good intentions as well.

Excelsior approves!

The Hulk & David Banner.

Season 2 (1978, 22 Episodes)

Season 2 starts with Married a 2 parter and earned Mariette Hartley an Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama series. Another 2 parter i have to mention is Mystery Man part 1 and 2 where David Banner and the ever present Reporter Jack McGee spend most of the time together but with David's face covered in bandages Jack never gets to see him in this one. The Hulk does save Jack in this one and i think it may be the start of the turning point for Jack starting to believe.....just a little...that this green monster isn't so much of a monster after all like he 1st thought. Kindred Spirit is another one worth mentioning where David joins an expedition that found evidence that there may have been another Hulk many many years ago.

Season 3 (1979, 23 Episodes)

The 3rd season doesn't have the cracking start like the 1st 2 had, i think Mystery Man would have been a good one to start season 3 but again we are treated to the mini mysteries with lots of scenes of David always loosing a a fight and then lots of shirt ripping and The Hulk taking care of business just how we love it to be. In this season we have David loose his sight in Blind Rage, we see David be a Magician's assistant in My Favourite Magician and mention that he knows nothing about being a magician (Little amusing as he place a Magician in another good and successful series), we get to meet David's Sister and Father all of which makes season 3 also a must see.

McGee, a pain in the ass.

Season 4 (1980, 18 Episodes)

 
WOW season 4 starts with a cracking opener Prometheus a 2 parter that is more like a movie than a TV series. Here we get to see David stuck half way between David and The Hulk, then getting captured and then...oh you will have to watch to find out. We get the gangster style episode Goodbye Eddie Cain directed by Jack Colvin.The episode we thought we would never see, King Of The Beach where top billing goes to Lou Ferrigno, not just as the hulk but as Lou with a speaking role and doing what he does best, working out. What a treat we get, we get Lou AND The Hulk in the same shot...brilliant...and they still managed to make it look like The Hulk is much taller than Lou.

Still with season 4 we are again given a great 2 parter called The First where we get to see another Hulk and the 2 Hulks go head to head. I have to say the other Hulk is awful and way too camp but very tall...i won't give any more away than that...but this would have been entertaining enough to be a good season opener. This is followed by The Harder They Fall where we see David paralyzed, so what will happened with him in this state and he turns into The Hulk?? watch it and see. Then we have Interview With The Hulk where Emerson Fletcher, a colleague of Jack McGee at the National Register manage to get a lead on The Hulk and convinced David to do an interview which he captures on tape. Now i thought these tapes may surface again in a later episode but we don't know what ever happened to them other than Emerson had them again. A future story could have been made from this one. The rest of the season is OK and nothing special...maybe because we had been spoiled so much with earlier episodes in this season but still remains the best season.

Why did they cancel the series?!

Season 5 (1981-1982, 7 Episodes)

Season 5 starts as OK like season 4 ended which led me to believe that these episodes were just left over from season 4 and i read somewhere that they were apart from the final 2. This season's last 2 episodes Slaves and A Minor Problem felt like they may have been the real season 5 episodes. A Minor Problem was the final episode of The Incredible Hulk, it was a good one but certainly not a series ender. I understand that everyone was keen to carry on with the series but no one really said why it ended, maybe it was costing too much?

It's Sad that both Bill and Jack are no longer with us. There was talk of other episodes that had been thought about, i think Bill or Lou may have mentioned one about The Hulk talking and director Kenneth Johnson had an idea about bringing David's Sister back into it and needing a blood transfusion from David. Love to see those two...

A primary complaint about this TV show is that it wasn't like the comic book. Whether or not the TV show was like the comic book is irrelevant. The Hulk performed physical feats in the comic that would have been impossible to duplicate when this series was running. Then, the producers decided to give the series a more realistic feel that would appeal both adult & young viewers, hence that is why The Hulk is seen performing a limited amount of damage, close to a real life thing rather than the gigantic force he displays in the original Comic Books (The Avengers Hulk is perhaps the closest to Comic Book there's been to date. Nope, the crappy CGI movies made before don't count)

Two sides of a Hero.

Brush your teeth everyday kids!

That said, the Incredible Hulk was a good TV show with strong acting by Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno that was, mostly, harmless fun for the whole family. The Hulk represented a kind of "Elephant Man" character, who certainly looks scary, but is genuinely kind and gentle and wants to help people in trouble (sort of a one man A-Team). I don't remember him ever seriously hurting anyone, and most of the physical parts involved him bending gun barrels so they couldn't be fired or turning cars over on their roofs. With the kind of strength the Hulk had, he could have torn people in half, but he settled for bending steel piping around them and leaving them helpless for the police to take to jail. He was gentle with animals and young people as well as old.

The story is a very sad one: Bixby, playing scientist David Banner, is stuck in a life on the run from an obsessed reporter who wants to become famous by photographing the Hulk. Banner and the Hulk represent the ultimate misunderstood hero/antihero: someone who is a better person than most of us are, yet is persecuted because of other people's misunderstandings.

Harmless fun for the whole family, and some good lessons for youngsters about kindness and not judging others for their appearance. 

Here's the legendary opening:

What does Stan Lee think of this classic series?