"Life and Death", about how David Banner (Bill Bixby) must rescue a pregnant single mother from black market doctors operating an illegal clinic that sells babies born from young women ill-equipped to raise children on their own, has the highlight of Big Green loose in a hospital obstetrics ward! David arrives in a fictional town in Oregon, agreeing to be a guinea pig in the DNA research of a scientist named Dr. Rhodes (a young Andrew Robinson; Dirty Harry & Hellraiser). Rhodes is in league with a clinic called Matrix involving a devious operating team of Ellen (a particularly loathsome Julie Adams of Creature from the Black Lagoon fame) and Dan (the sinister looking John Warner Williams; Hospital Massacre). They will go as far as kill a pregnant mother pleading to keep her baby, Carrie (Diane Cary). David befriended Carrie while both were hitchhiking, and is in the hospital when a young mother (bleeding badly and left in a street to fend for herself by Matrix!) is brought in, requesting Rhodes (he helps deliver the babies for Matrix). Because David was at the front gate of Matrix, while walking Carrie to the place, he was privy to their location. When David proves to be a threat (after trying to talk Carrie out of staying at Matrix, with Ellen, Dan, and Rhodes seeing him doing so), the trio at Matrix orchestrate a plan to inject him with morphine sulphate and leave him to die! But the Hulk will have none of it, as David reacts negatively to Rhodes using morphine in a hypodermic while he's strapped to a chair, putting the needle into his neck. This sets off the Hulk in the hospital while Rhodes (believing he'd die) retreats to Matrix to carry out the delivery and possible execution of Carrie.
Seeing the Hulk bursting through a wall of an elevator (after ripping out the circuit board that operated the buttons!), a brick wall to the hospital, and later a wall at the Matrix (well, at least this wall was wooden board instead of brick), the beast gets plenty of action. There's even a rather unique scene where an angered David tries to climb stairs in the Matrix main building, gradually transitioning into the Hulk, as each hand movement up a step shows him a little more green. There's a nice moment for the Hulk when he smiles as the baby of Carrie's is held in his hands proving that somewhere inside David is there to keep the monster from harming innocents. Seeing the Hulk throw Rhodes down a flight of steps and then hoist up Dan and let him fall from the top of the stairwell to the floor are startling in their violence, but there aren't two better candidates than these guys to be treated so poorly. Again Bixby once more has nice chemistry with another actress (Cary) playing a female he meets in passing while trying to find a procedure or cure to help him kill the Hulk, keeping it from ever surfacing (even if it saves his life over and over again). As often was the case, this trip is a failed one, but perhaps Rhodes' procedure with a particular kind of surgery would have done him more harm than good anyways. The episode plays up the morphine's effects on both David and Big Green, leaving them woozy and physiologically under duress (their sight is blurry, and both walk haphazardly, barely able to walk or function)
it works!
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