I can't remember a single plot of this show, but I can remember that my siblings and I watched it and loved it. I think we just loved seeing The Hulk get angry, turn green, hulk up and smash things. It wasn't an intellectual exercise for us.
But here I am watching the pilot episode on my pirate stick, nearly 50 years later, and it is surprisingly mature. Bill Bixby was an excellent actor. It's really a shame he died relatively early in life.
But I gotta laugh. In the pilot, Dr. David Banner is puzzled why so many of his test subjects were able to perform super-human feats of strength like lifting up a car to save a kid from a burning wreck. Whereas Banner himself lost his wife in just such an accident. One day one of his fellow researchers walks into the lab babbling something about gamma rays messing with the lab's internet connection (or something). Banner goes back to his office and plots out the days his test subjects performed their super-human feats of strength against the chart of high-dose gamma ray days. Then he notices that the day he failed to save his wife was a super-low gamma ray day. Based on that flimsy evidence, Banner goes to the nuclear lab and blasts himself with gamma radiation. The CDC and NIH were so impressed they mandated gamma radiation for the entire population. Just in case. To save gramma. Cough.
There's a nice homage to Frankenstein in the first appearance of the Hulk. And then, naturally, a h2llb2illy dipstick who overreacts to a crisis and tries to solve it with his rifle. Ah, America, never change.
Anyway, Banner had some serious anger-management issues so he has trouble staying in one place for very long. Which is too bad because it meant the talented, gorgeous Susan Sullivan didn't last past the pilot.
Also, what's with Jack Colvin's dialogue? It looks like he was speaking in Italian and they overdubbed the English, like he's in a spaghetti western.
But here I am watching the pilot episode on my pirate stick, nearly 50 years later, and it is surprisingly mature. Bill Bixby was an excellent actor. It's really a shame he died relatively early in life.
But I gotta laugh. In the pilot, Dr. David Banner is puzzled why so many of his test subjects were able to perform super-human feats of strength like lifting up a car to save a kid from a burning wreck. Whereas Banner himself lost his wife in just such an accident. One day one of his fellow researchers walks into the lab babbling something about gamma rays messing with the lab's internet connection (or something). Banner goes back to his office and plots out the days his test subjects performed their super-human feats of strength against the chart of high-dose gamma ray days. Then he notices that the day he failed to save his wife was a super-low gamma ray day. Based on that flimsy evidence, Banner goes to the nuclear lab and blasts himself with gamma radiation. The CDC and NIH were so impressed they mandated gamma radiation for the entire population. Just in case. To save gramma. Cough.
There's a nice homage to Frankenstein in the first appearance of the Hulk. And then, naturally, a h2llb2illy dipstick who overreacts to a crisis and tries to solve it with his rifle. Ah, America, never change.
Anyway, Banner had some serious anger-management issues so he has trouble staying in one place for very long. Which is too bad because it meant the talented, gorgeous Susan Sullivan didn't last past the pilot.
Also, what's with Jack Colvin's dialogue? It looks like he was speaking in Italian and they overdubbed the English, like he's in a spaghetti western.