Seeing Green

Anyone who has been amused/interested/left indifferent/driven to apoplexy by my past moseys through such TV SF and fantasy greats as Babylon 5 and Original Trek will probably have noticed things have been quiet on that front of late. Well, you know, Life: but, if you must know, I have spent the past four or five months slowly making my way through the complete run of The Incredible Hulk on DVD. Truth be told, this was never a show I felt a particular urge to revisit, until seeing a handful of episodes on rerun made me suspect it might be rather better than its reputation.

The Incredible Hulk remains a well-remembered and generally well-liked show, I think: though it seems to be an indulgent sort of liking. You probably won’t get far in any reminiscence about it before encountering a reference to the sheer number of shirts and boots David Banner gets through, a play on ‘you won’t like me when I’m angry’ or a snipe at how formulaic the series was.

Well, I suppose the show is guilty as charged when it comes to all of the above. The format does demand a large degree of indulgence from the discerning viewer, because – for a drifter without a steady income – Banner does seem able to re-equip himself with clothing with startling ease, while many of the scenes where he improbably changes back into his normal self and gets dressed again without anyone noticing are given a free pass simply because they occur off-screen during the original transmission’s commercial break. The ‘you won’t like me when I’m angry’ line has justifiably become iconic, not least because it’s in the title sequence of virtually every episode, while, yes, it is a pretty formulaic series: there are almost always precisely two Hulk-outs per show, usually at the same points in the narrative – you can nearly set your watch by them, to be honest.

And yet once you get past all this, the rest of the series is a much trickier beast to pin down, with a lot more going on than you might expect. The stories take in a range of settings, tones, and genres (you tend to remember The Incredible Hulk as not much more than a string of crime melodramas, but there are many episodes which function as personal drama, comedy thriller, full-on thriller, SF-fantasy and even disaster movies), and draw upon a range of influences. Sometimes these are quite obvious, especially when the episode in question makes heavy use of stock footage from the movie in question (Duel, Airport 1975, and Earthquake are notable donors), but there are also stories drawing heavily upon more surprising sources: the original film version of Frankenstein, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Masque of the Red Death all seem to have inspired episodes – and superior ones at that.

Which is not to say that the show doesn’t appear to struggle for plots a bit, especially towards the end of the run. Some of the later episodes are oddball (the one about dwarf wrestling, or the one where Banner is taken hostage by heavily-pregnant escapees from a womens’ prison), or lacklustre and obviously cheap, or simply peculiar (the one where the Hulk gets a severe electric shock, with the odd side-effect that Banner briefly develops precognitive powers).

However, the truth is that, even when the scripts wobble, the series has the absolutely reliable asset of Bill Bixby’s central performance. Bixby walks the tightrope of making Banner sensitive and humane without actually turning him into a wimp and barely ever puts a foot wrong; even when the scripts are iffy, Bixby keeps the show completely watchable. Given a really strong script, he is breathtakingly good – Banner’s grief and despair in the episodes where he (erroneously) believes the Hulk has killed someone are completely convincing.

Bixby is so good as Banner that you’re not left kicking your heels waiting for him to turn into the Hulk, as I remember was the case with similar shows from the same period (the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man and Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman). In fact, you might almost argue that the show is somewhat skewed in Banner’s favour – he almost always gets more screen time than the Hulk, added to which the Hulk never actually gets any dialogue, and thus has very little depth or character (most of the time). This inevitably makes the TV version of the Hulk the least interesting version of the character – any tension between Banner and the Hulk is left entirely implicit most of the time, apart from in the odd dream sequence and hallucination. Perhaps it’s also a problem that there’s really so little facial resemblance between Bixby and Lou Ferrigno; you never completely believe that Banner and the Hulk are genuinely the same person.

Rounding out the cast, on a semi-regular basis at least, is Jack Colvin as the reporter McGee. I have to confess that while watching this show as a child, McGee never really made much of an impression on me – I suspect I was just tuning in for the ripping shirts and the Hulk trashing stuff – but on reflection he is one of the show’s greatest assets, and the slow development of the complex relationship between Banner and McGee is one of the most satisfying elements of the series. A trashier show would have made McGee an immoral sleaze, a genuinely bad guy – instead, he becomes almost as sympathetic as Banner by the time things conclude, as well as serving as the audience’s point-of-identification in more than one episode (he even gets to carry his own episode at one point, season three’s Proof Positive, in which Bixby only appears in flashback).

Wikipedia suggests that the most popular episodes of the series with its fanbase are the pilot, Married, Mystery Man, Homecoming, The Snare, Prometheus, The First, and Bring Me the Head of the Hulk. I have to say I find myself not entirely in agreement with this list. I don’t have anything like the stamina to write about every episode of this show in detail, but if I were to choose my top ten it would be:

1. The Pilot. In which it all kicks off, obviously.
2. The Hulk Breaks Las Vegas. In which the Hulk doesn’t actually break Las Vegas, but ends up having to save McGee’s life.
3. The Antowuk Horror. In which the Hulk takes on Bigfoot. Or does he…?
4. Stop the Presses. In which Banner finds himself obliged to break into the offices of McGee’s paper. What could possibly go wrong…?
5. The Snare. In which a psychopathic millionaire whose hobby is hunting and killing drifters picks very much the wrong target…
6. The Psychic. In which a woman with paranormal powers uncovers Banner’s secret, just as it seems that the Hulk has committed a murder.
7. Equinox. In which Banner and McGee find themselves attending a decadent costume party on a private island, and a showdown is on the cards.
8. Bring Me the Head of the Hulk. In which a demented French mercenary sets out to bag himself a monster, and McGee may just find himself saving the Hulk, for once.
9. The First. In which Banner discovers the truth about legends of a savage green-skinned creature from the 1940s, and a battle of the Hulks is on the cards.
10. The Harder They Fall. In which Banner is left paraplegic after a car accident. Dare he risk using the power of the Hulk to restore himself?

An honourable mention really should go to the two-parter Prometheus, the first episode of which is up there with the very best of the series: it clearly enjoys a much bigger budget than a regular episode, and is stuffed with interesting ideas – the Hulk is captured by a shadowy agency within the military-industrial complex who suspect he may be an alien, while further exposure to gamma radiation leaves Banner unable to completely de-Hulk-out. Unfortunately, the second half really has nowhere to take these ideas, beyond a lot of running around.

Also, a mention for a couple of episodes which went unmade due to the abrupt cancellation of the series, but one can only speculate as to what the conclusion of the series might have looked like, as it was never properly conceived, let alone scripted and filmed. We know a little bit more about the planned fifth-season episode in which Banner’s sister was supposed to receive an infusion of Hulk blood. One is compelled to speculate – is the non-appearance of this episode responsible for the actress in question (Diana Muldaur, probably best known for playing Pulaski in the second season of Star Trek: TNG) showing up in a different role in season five? The similarity to the origin of the She-Hulk in the comics barely needs pointing out, although the comics character appeared eighteen months before the fifth season started airing (it’s telling that in the debut issue of Savage She-Hulk, Banner’s cousin refers to him as ‘Doc’ throughout, presumably to avoid confusing anyone not aware that the TV and comics versions of the characters have different first names). I can’t honestly believe the show would have gone all in and actually introduced a version of the She-Hulk, but this surely qualifies as a great lost episode.

It would have been a rare example of the TV show following the comic, anyway: perhaps the greatest legacy of the show, and the sign of its success, is that it has permanently influenced mainstream perceptions of the Hulk. I watched part of the Ang Lee Hulk movie the other night, and it’s really not as bad as its reputation: but one gets a strong sense that it’s perceived as a disappointment largely because it’s presenting a take on the Hulk primarily based on the comic, with the TV show not really a consideration. As I’ve said before, one of the notable things about the second Hulk movie is the much greater pains it takes to play to fans of the TV show: Bill Bixby appears on a TV screen, some of the set designs deliberately recall the TV pilot, a character named McGee has a tiny cameo, and the famous theme tune is referenced as well.

Bill Bixby with Kenneth Johnson, creator of the series.

None of the other MCU characters have anything like the Hulk’s pedigree when it comes to live-action storytelling, and yet the Hulk seems to be the one they have the hardest time developing vehicles for. I wonder if these facts are entirely unrelated. Maybe, maybe not. But until Marvel Studios figure out what they’re going to do with him, for many people he will always be hitch-hiking his lonely way from one city to another, with a lone piano playing on the soundtrack, and while he may look like Mark Ruffalo on the outside, within he will always be Bill Bixby.