MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[TREK_GOD_1]

Season two.

"Married"--

Cure related episode, and then some.

Banner (as "David Benton") travels to Hawaii, seeking Dr. Caroline Feilds, because of her use of hypnosis in therapy. He explains:

I have an highly unusual neuro-synaptic condition which renders me subject to violent outbursts of anger. Now I've tried uh, radical radiological and chemo-therapeutic treatments, but nothing seems to help, and I came to you because--not only your reputation as a psychiatrist, but also from what I've been reading...about your new use of hypnosis in therapy, I really think you could be the answer to my problem

Maintaining continuity from season one, Banner refers to every "cure" he's attempted, dating back to the epilogue of "Death in the Family" all the way to "Earthquakes Happen" which means that no one--no treatment, no matter the research or application--had the key to even address Banner's Hulk problem.

Establishing Fields' one-of-a-kind ability, Banner counters her recommendation for other doctors with the compliment:

Really, please doctor, that would be like going to Michelangelo and then ending up with one of his apprentices.

Refusing to take no for an answer, Banner tracks down Fields to her home, where he saves her life, after her hypnotic experiment leads to a grand mal seizure. Fields reveals she's suffering from a condition similar to Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and only has 6 to 8 weeks left to live...

Kenneth Johnson on teasing the episode and Fields' "white" eyes:

"Part of what I had in mind here, was I wanted to get a moment where Bixby would look in and see a woman with white eyes, which of course, is our trigger mechanism for the Incredible Hulk...Joe's music stings it a little bit, so in the teaser for the show, people would see that and go, 'ohmigosh, are we getting into a female Hulk, here?'"

...on Dr. Fields' use of hypnotherapy to treat disease:

"What's actually happening is based on research that a friend of mine--a psychologist friend had been doing in treating disease by using hypnotherapy. He actually had quite a bit of success in bringing people with very serious cancers into a certain amount of remission and indeed even almost curing them entirely, by putting them under deep hypnosis and using their inner resources to sort of visualize the cancer cells and
then go in and chip away at them until they were gone."

"And I thought that was a very intriguing way for me to get into using hypnosis in the piece, which was something I was anxious to do. I had been looking for a way to have Bix and Lou Ferrigno in the same scene, and the only way I could do that of course, was in their mind, because they couldn't be in reality there, because they're the same guy, but in a dream, or a hypnotic state, or course, the possibility existed."

Guest cast:

As everyone knows, Mariette Hartley's stand out performance earned her an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (31st Emmy Awards for 1979). Hartley's building of the tragic, sensitive Dr. Caroline Fields is usually cited as the greatest guest star role in TIH series history, some comparing her to Susan Sullivan's Elaina Marks from the pilot in terms of being both a memorable character & having a pivotal, dramatic effect on Banner's life.

No Trekker will forget Hartley as the doomed Zarabeth from Star Trek's penultimate episode, "All Our Yesterdays," where she shared all all too brief romance with another green guy...although Spock was not nearly as destructive around the home.

Kenneth Johnson on Mariette Hartley's performance:

"Mariette's performance here is particularly lovely, it was part of, I think, the reason throughout this as you watch her, all the color that she hits constantly, and effortlessly, realistically and believably, that brought her to be nominated for an Emmy for best actress in a drama series this year of 1978, and in fact, she won the Emmy for best actress for this performance, and I was there, very proud of her, and proud to have been able to give her a script."

"I know that when she was handed the script, she said, 'I don't know...Incredible Hulk?' and her agent said, 'Mariette, you should read this. This is your Emmy,' and it proved to be prophetic.

And she and Bix hit it off immediately, and we read the script together a number of times before we started shooting, so that we were really into it and had all the moments "

Rosalind Chao (Receptionist) was yet another guest who appeared in both CBS / Marvel TV series. In addition to TIH's "Married," Chao would have a prominent role as Emily Chan--a love interest for Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man's "The Chinese Web," a two-parter which aired in July of 1979.

By the way, Chao's Emily Chan character was the first live action character to learn Peter's secret.

Sort of a bridge between Star Trek past and then-future with Hartley being a guest in "All Our Yesterdays," while Chao would go to star as Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Meeno Peluce (The Boy), was a busy child actor at the time, going on to co-star in The Amityville Horror, and the sci-fi adventure TV series Voyagers! created by The Incredible Hulk writer & supervising producer James D. Parriott.

Peluce is the older brother of Punky Brewster star Soleil Moon-Frye.

Locations--
The episode title is over a stock shot of Diamonhead, Honolulu.

Speaking of stock, the first scene of cells visualized by Caroline were in part footage borrowed from Fantastic Voyage (Fox, 1966) as well as recycled footage from TIH pilot.

The exterior of the University of Hawaii was substituted with Ambassador College located in Pasadena, California, due to the episode's budget, which--according to Kenneth Johnson--was a bit above 1.4 million dollars.

Pasadena's Convention Center stands in for the interior of the university, for Bixby's scenes with Chao & Hartley.

Malibu (California) stood in for many of the Hawaii coastline / driving shots.

Caroline Fields' home--actually located in Malibu--was originally discovered as a result of TIH's Director of Photography John McPherson looking for a home to purchase. The home was rented for the production, however, some scenes (ex. the Hulk-out in the bedroom) were shot on the Universal backlot.

Similar to the pilot (and numerous TV series before it), "Married" was packaged as a two-hour movie and distributed theatrically in Europe by Filmways throughout 1980. Below are the English, French and Italian one-sheets for the movie--

Check out the lobby cards--

Cards #2 and #4 are clearly from the episode, but a bit of studio false advertising was at work in using a still from "Terror in Times Square" (#1) and the blue laser scene (picture #3--with Sherry Jackson clearly in the background) from "Earthquakes Happen." With endless, equally dynamic shots of Ferrigno as the Hulk available, one wonders why any shots from "Married" were not used--unless this was (likely) in preparation while the episode was in production. Regarding the still from "Earthquakes Happen," I'm guessing to excite potential audiences / passersby, the laser image was used to spice things (mislead, to be honest) at a time when the fantasy media world was very influenced by Star Wars.[/quote]

 

[The Old Mixer]

The Incredible Hulk
"Married" (Part 1)*
Originally aired September 22, 1978

*For clarity, I treated -48:20 on the Netflix timer (David passing The Swinger without seeing Carolyn's car) as the episode break, based on memory of seeing it as a two-parter back in the day.

Season two.

It's been a long Summer rerun season, hasn't it?

Cure related episode, and then some.

Definitely, and keeping cure-related episodes strong in the overall tally.

Banner (as "David Benton")

His first re-use of an alias!

Rosalind Chao (Receptionist)

Who dreams of playing a married character herself someday, so she can make her fictional husband the happiest man alive....

Refusing to take no for an answer, Banner tracks down Fields to her home

...and peeps in her windows. Perfectly innocent behavior in the '70s!

I believe this is the first use of the New York photo in-story. It says something about the credibility of the creature's existence in this setting that David can say that he's a dead scientist, show somebody a grainy photo that was probably clipped out of the National Register, say "I'm also that guy," and people will believe him.

Speaking of stock, the first scene of cells visualized by Caroline were in part footage borrowed from Fantastic Voyage (Fox, 1966) as well as recycled footage from TIH pilot.

Plus the use of some black & white Western or another...but this episode puts it all to good use. In particular, David's explanation of his condition, backed by reuse of pilot footage, strikes me as a good way for the second season opener to refresh the established audience and get new viewers up to speed.

"Let me hypnotize you, David. It's close to the bottom of the first hour, what could possibly go wrong?"

This one's going to be a bit too much of a formula-breaker to average in its Hulk-Out times...but the first and last Hulk-Outs in the outer quarters of the greater two-hour episode actually stick close to formula if you take out the middle half. The numbers are going to be off for lack of little things like end credits for the first half on Netflix, but if my math comes out right, the first Hulk-Out times in at roughly -23:10 for the first half. [ETA: -1:11:30 for the full episode time; perhaps more relevantly in this case, over 25 minutes into the episode.]

It's noteworthy that under hypnosis, David can relive the details of his original transformation, even adding buried memories of what he'd done as the Hulk, and remain objective...but reliving the Laura nightmare that triggered his second transformation takes him right back to that point emotionally.

The exterior of the University of Hawaii was substituted with Ambassador College located in Pasadena, California, due to the episode's budget, which--according to Kenneth Johnson--was a bit above 1.4 million dollars.

Pasadena's Convention Center stands in for the interior of the university, for Bixby's scenes with Chao & Hartley.

Malibu (California) stood in for many of the Hawaii coastline / driving shots.

The show couldn't afford to take production out to Hawaii, but the Register can fly Jack out there to chase down a Hulk sighting. His career situation doesn't seem to be that bad....

The second half of the first hour gives us an early substitute for a second Hulk-Out with the striking desert footage...reused, sometimes out of context, in later episodes as I recall, as it's the only footage of David and the Hulk together in the series.

It must have been a lot of trouble for David's inner self to haul that crane out into his imaginary desert just to drop an ineffectual net on the Hulk and give up a few seconds later. I'd rationalize that the progression of attempted traps for the Hulk was Caroline trying to build David's confidence in his ability to assert his will on the creature. The Hulk's feats of strength serve double duty both as things that he might actually be capable of, and as an expression of David's view of the creature as an uncontrollable force in his life.

I realize that Caroline's arrangement with her doctor colleague must be informal, but David, whom he obviously doesn't know, can just call him up and get details about her condition? So much for doctor/patient confidentiality!

The music at "The Swinger" (That's a little on-the-nose, isn't it?) is definitely riffing on this contemporary classic:

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As everyone knows, Mariette Hartley's stand out performance earned her an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (31st Emmy Awards for 1979).

Pretty impressive for a genre show!

No Trekker will forget Hartley as the doomed Zarabeth from Star Trek's penultimate episode, "All Our Yesterdays,"

Though TV audiences of the late '70s would have more readily identified her with this series of popular commercials:

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She reportedly took to wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed that she wasn't James Garner's wife!

Below are the English, French and Italian one-sheets for the movie

Way to sensationalize it, France!

 

[Christopher]

"Married":

Ooh, cameo by young, supercute Rosalind Chao!

Whoa, Caroline's theme is strikingly similar to Oliver Nelson's Jaime Sommers theme (aka the melody for Lee Majors's "Sweet Jaime" song) from the Bionic Woman episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man. I remember, when I listened to that motif in those episodes, I kept expecting it to go a different way, and now I realize it was this melody that I had in mind.

Stock footage from Fantastic Voyage shows up for Caroline's visualization scenes. That's the first time the show has drawn stock film from a non-Universal production (it was 20th Century Fox).

Oh, I'm very distracted by the way David's hand position changes radically between opposite angles in his first in-depth conversation with Caroline. Gets in the way of the impact of David revealing his true identity to someone for the first time. Why this time and not before? Perhaps because he knew she was terminal. The cynical take is that he figured she'd die before she could tell anyone; the kinder one is that he felt he owed her the truth under the circumstances.

Oof... Caroline used "physiognomy" (facial or outward appearance) when she meant "physiology." I hate it when people do that.

A lot of stock footage reuse, but it's fascinating to hear David's verbal description of what the Startling Metamorphosis feels like. "Like a thousand voices shouting" -- a sly nod to the choral motif accompanying the change?

When the Hulk kicked that object offscreen in the luau scene, there was a bit of the whistling sound effect the bionic shows used for objects flung bionically through the air.

I think I remember being impressed seeing Bixby and Ferrigno finally sharing scenes together. But how does David have such a clear mental image of what the Hulk looks like when he's only ever seen blurry news photos?

Poor Jack Colvin... He's barely in this one! Although it is the closest he's come to finding Dr. Banner alive. If he'd been looking up at that moment...

I never realized it, but this episode is kinda racist. Indians as the enemy to be wiped out, David doing a mock Chinese and/or Japanese accent as a joke... Startling how casual and harmless these things were assumed (by white people) to be just a few decades ago.

Terrible bald cap on Brad. Why not hire a genuinely bald actor and put him in a toupee?

Hey, David signed his real name on the marriage certificate, David Bruce Banner! Isn't that a bit risky? (And is this the only time we see his full name other than on the grave marker?) And the reverend's name on the certificate is George Ohanion, who's one of the show's editors. I think he'll also be name-dropped as a baseball player in "The Phenom," along with other members of the show's crew.

Kenneth Johnson likes to have love interests die in the rain, here and in the original "The Bionic Woman" 2-parter. He actually commented on it in the DVD commentary for that one. And this is the second time David has missed his own love interest's death. I said a while back that I wonder if the Hulk thinks, "Why do I keep waking up in torn shirts?" Now I wonder if he thinks "Why do strange women keep dying in my arms?"

I wonder if Kenneth Johnson got the "They're not really dead so long as you remember them" line from Harve Bennett, or vice-versa, seeing as how it would later show up in The Wrath of Khan.

I'm glad we've gotten to "Married," because it gives me a chance to express a thought I've had about this episode for decades. Namely, Caroline's methodology for controlling the Hulk was fatally flawed. She encouraged David to imagine the Hulk as an external threat, and he'd never be able to control it that way. As I learned from my own experience with therapy, and from what little psychology I studied in college, people can't really begin to overcome their psychological or behavioral problems until they stop blaming them on outside factors (my victim was to blame, society is to blame, drink/the Devil made me do it) and internalize the responsibility. Only when you accept that the problem is part of yourself can you recognize that you have the power to control it. So David couldn't control the Hulk as long as he saw it as something apart from himself, as an adversary he was fighting. He should've tried to accept the Hulk as a facet of himself. Only then could he begin to master it.

Overall, though, this is a pretty good one. Bixby and Hartley have fantastic chemistry, and it's a nice, thoughtful, character-driven story with some unusual, surrealistic elements to the storytelling. (I think it's also the one with the most Hulk screen time so far, including the imaginary sequences.) And it has one of Joe Harnell's richest scores, given a ton of room to breathe what with all the dialogue-free scenes. (Including a bunch of different diegetic pop-song cues in the "Swingers" sequence. The one playing when David showed up, appropriately, was a dance-music arrangement of the "Lonely Man" theme.)

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Definitely, and keeping cure-related episodes strong in the overall tally.

Kenneth Johnson was detail oriented--mindful of continuity in the logical progression of David's cure journey--exhausting all traditional methods before exploring Fields' research. Unlike so many producers of superhero TV past and present, Johnson's deliberately intelligent handling (and research) made this Hulk seem more aligned with the real world than some of the silly things seen on other TV series (I can think of one recent season finale...ohhhhh).

His first re-use of an alias!

Its about time; he never hangs around in any one location long enough for the alias to be remembered, so he could use all of the names over and over again.

I believe this is the first use of the New York photo in-story. It says something about the credibility of the creature's existence in this setting that David can say that he's a dead scientist, show somebody a grainy photo that was probably clipped out of the National Register, say "I'm also that guy," and people will believe him.

Well, I've said there were enough people with first hand experience with the Hulk to know its no fake footprint, weather balloon, or a guy in a bear/monkey suit. More on that last part later....

Plus the use of some black & white Western or another...but this episode puts it all to good use. In particular, David's explanation of his condition, backed by reuse of pilot footage, strikes me as a good way for the second season opener to refresh the established audience and get new viewers up to speed.

Yes, at this point, the series was strong on the most important continuity points.

It's noteworthy that under hypnosis, David can relive the details of his original transformation, even adding buried memories of what he'd done as the Hulk, and remain objective...but reliving the Laura nightmare that triggered his second transformation takes him right back to that point emotionally.

It made perfect sense; he's experienced tragedy after Laura, but she is the center..the genesis of his entire emotional and research journey. She is also his first, greatest failure--the recurring nightmare, so her death is beyond his emotional control.

The second half of the first hour gives us an early substitute for a second Hulk-Out with the striking desert footage...reused, sometimes out of context, in later episodes as I recall, as it's the only footage of David and the Hulk together used in the series.

Striking is right, and creatively and intellectually effective, with the two series icons in that bizarre, netherworld struggle for control the conscious David claws to gain is unlike any examination of a hero's naked thoughts ever put before a camera on TV or film. Again, Kenneth Johnson's intelligent, deliberate exploration of fact-based psychological research of this attempt at inner control sent this scene--this episode to a special level.

It must have been a lot of trouble for David's inner self to haul that crane out into his imaginary desert just to drop an ineffectual net on the Hulk and give up a few seconds later. I'd rationalize that the progression of attempted traps for the Hulk was Carolyn trying to build David's confidence in his ability to assert his will on the creature. The Hulk's feats of strength serve double duty both as things that he might actually be capable of, and as an expression of David's view of the creature as an uncontrollable force in his life.

Spot on analysis. Heart of the matter.

Though TV audiences of the late '70s would have more readily identified her with this series of popular commercials

Oh, I remember the Hartley/Garner commercials, and the natural chemistry of the actors was as apparent as that between Hartley and Bixby seen in this episode..

Way to sensationalize it, France!

Typically, the foreign versions of one-sheets always took the more explosive, wild road to sell the subject. That Hulk looks like a shaggy, raging thing, making his version of Hartley look like a child in his arms!

 

[The Old Mixer]

First off, is it "Carolyn" or "Caroline"? I find it both ways in online sources. Do we see her name onscreen at some point?

Gets in the way of the impact of David revealing his true identity to someone for the first time. Why this time and not before?

Having ignored her refusal, followed her home, peeped in her windows, and broken in, he had to gain her confidence somehow. (I know what you're going to say, lucky for him that she chose that moment to have a seizure.) It's always a good scene when David reveals his true identity to somebody who can appreciate it, though.

"Like a thousand voices shouting" -- a sly nod to the choral motif accompanying the change?

I always made that connection, too.

I think I remember being impressed seeing Bixby and Ferrigno finally sharing scenes together. But how does David have such a clear mental image of what the Hulk looks like when he's only ever seen blurry news photos?

Dramatic license! But also, this is David's subconscious, who can recall things that he did as the Hulk if pressed to. The Hulk has seen his own reflection.

Poor Jack Colvin... He's barely in this one!

Don't feel sorry for McGee, though...he got a trip to Hawaii out of the deal.

Terrible bald cap on Brad.

Well, that's further than I went this week, so next time for the rest! I do vividly remember that bald cap from my last viewing of the episode, though...!

Caroline's methodology for controlling the Hulk was fatally flawed.

Possibly, but for dramatic purposes, it was more interesting to see Banner trying to trap the Hulk. And as touched upon somewhere above (or was that in another thread?), it was surprisingly in-line with the comics' view at the time of the Hulk as a separate personality.

In fact, the timing of the comic and the episode, exploring similar subject matter in different ways, is a bit uncanny...the issue in which Doc Samson psychoanalyzes the Hulk is cover dated September 1978! Which means that the comic would have gone there first by just two or three months, given how comics distribution worked at the time.

 

[Christopher]

First off, is it "Carolyn" or "Caroline"? I find it both ways in online sources. Do we see her name onscreen at some point?

Yes, the fateful lab report clearly said "Dr. Caroline Fields" on the cover. I was spelling it "Carolyn" in my running comments until I saw that bit.

It's always a good scene when David reveals his true identity to somebody who can appreciate it, though.

This is the first time that's happened, though. The last character who was familiar with Dr. Banner was the vet in the zoo episode, and David never revealed his identity to her even though it was a similar situation (though she had to be pretty dense not to piece it together). And I'm not sure how often it will happen going forward. I know a number of people will discover he's the Hulk, but how many will discover that he's Dr. David Banner, physician, scientist? And in how many cases will he volunteer that information vs. having them figure it out for themselves? (Although I can't think of any instances of that -- actually I thought this would be one.) Maybe you should add another running tally.

Dramatic license! But also, this is David's subconscious, who can recall things that he did as the Hulk if pressed to. The Hulk has seen his own reflection.

There did seem to be a bit in the pilot where the Hulk changed back while looking at his reflection in a brook, and David seemed to be aware of himself for at least part of the change, although probably just for the "Bill Bixby in green pancake and heavy brows" part. Although ever since, he doesn't seem to come back to awareness until he's fully changed back.

Possibly, but for dramatic purposes, it was more interesting to see Banner trying to trap the Hulk. And as touched upon somewhere above (or was that in another thread?), it was surprisingly in-line with the comics' view at the time of the Hulk as a separate personality.

But as I've said, "split personality" is nothing of the sort. It's not actual different minds somehow occupying the same brain like demonic possession -- it's a single mind dissociating from parts of its own memory and emotion, convincing itself of a fantasy that unbearable memories or feelings belong to a different person. The treatment for dissociative identity disorder is essentially along the lines I mentioned: guiding the patient to reintegrate the personalities, to accept them all as parts of oneself. The only way to master them is to accept responsibility for them. So encouraging a DID patient to embrace the delusion that his other personality is actually a separate being is counterproductive. Caroline may have been aces with hypnotherapy, but she was out of her depth on DID and taking entirely the wrong approach. (Although it wouldn't have been called DID at the time -- I think it was then known as Multiple Personality Disorder, since the real mechanism wasn't fully understood. So maybe I can't blame her for not knowing better.)

Indeed, as I recall from the comics, the way Doc Sampson treated Banner's MPD/DID was, in fact, to get him to integrate his personalities, leading to the intelligent Hulk featured in Peter David's later run and in his novel What Savage Beast.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Yes, the fateful lab report clearly said "Dr. Caroline Fields" on the cover.

Ah crap, I'll have to go back and edit my posts....

This is the first time that's happened, though. The last character who was familiar with Dr. Banner was the vet in the zoo episode, and David never revealed his identity to her even though it was a similar situation (though she had to be pretty dense not to piece it together). And I'm not sure how often it will happen going forward. I know a number of people will discover he's the Hulk, but how many will discover that he's Dr. David Banner, physician, scientist? And in how many cases will he volunteer that information vs. having them figure it out for themselves? (Although I can't think of any instances of that -- actually I thought this would be one.) Maybe you should add another running tally.

Out-of-universe, it's a matter of the needs of the story, of course. In-universe...I guess you're touching on the right angle, that the situation with Caroline was more desperate...time was running out for her, so he figured he had more to gain than to lose by taking her into his confidence. At the zoo, there was no pressing need...it wouldn't have served his goals. Possibly, had things gone further with that angle, he might have taken her into his full confidence.

As for tallies...there is the one for people who found out about David being the Hulk and lived to tell about it. Don't want to get too bogged down with tallies as there will be variations of discovery of David's identity...I can think offhand of at least one example later in the series in which a couple of people will find out that he's David Banner but not that he's the Hulk, for example.

There did seem to be a bit in the pilot where the Hulk changed back while looking at his reflection in a brook, and David seemed to be aware of himself for at least part of the change, although probably just for the "Bill Bixby in green pancake and heavy brows" part. Although ever since, he doesn't seem to come back to awareness until he's fully changed back.

But this episode also established that he can subconsciously remember what he did as the Hulk...so on some level, David knows what the Hulk looks like from the times when the Hulk saw his own reflection while fully the Hulk. I distinctly remember at least one such instance in Season 1 when he looked at himself in a mirror...think it may have been the Vegas episode.

Indeed, as I recall from the comics, the way Doc Sampson treated Banner's MPD/DID was, in fact, to get him to integrate his personalities, leading to the intelligent Hulk featured in Peter David's later run and in his novel What Savage Beast.

But again, I'm referencing an earlier storyline that's contemporaneous with this episode. That particular story climaxes with Bruce and the Hulk literally coming to blows in the Hulk's mindscape, declaring total war with one another.

 

[Christopher]

But this episode also established that he can subconsciously remember what he did as the Hulk...so on some level, David knows what the Hulk looks like from the times when the Hulk saw his own reflection while fully the Hulk. I distinctly remember at least one such instance in Season 1 when he looked at himself in a mirror...think it may have been the Vegas episode.

I did consider that, but I wasn't sure if the Hulk had ever seen his reflection clearly.

But again, I'm referencing an earlier storyline that's contemporaneous with this episode. That particular story climaxes with Bruce and the Hulk literally coming to blows in the Hulk's mindscape, declaring total war with one another.

Yes, of course it's possible for Banner to visualize himself and the Hulk as separate entities. I never said it wasn't possible. I said it's the wrong approach to gaining control of the Hulk. I feel strongly about this because I've been in therapy (though it was ages ago, but a lot of it was for anger issues not unlike this -- I remember once telling a psychiatrist that I identified with David and the Hulk), and I understand how fundamental it is to embrace responsibility for your own actions instead of hiding behind the pretense that some outside force was to blame. Because if you believe the cause is outside yourself, then you believe you can do nothing to change it. As long as David saw the Hulk as an external force of rage, he had no hope of calming that rage. All he could do was resist it, and resistance just makes the Hulk madder and stronger.

What he needed to do, in order to contain his rage, was to visualize himself as the Hulk. To put himself inside the Hulk's body and calm the Hulk from within. The Hulk is power, so if he accepted that he was the Hulk, then he would have the power to control the Hulk as nothing else could. At the very least, he should've tried talking the Hulk down, mollifying him, trying to make him an ally instead of an enemy. Caroline herself saw that she could calm the Hulk by talking gently to him, assuring him there was no threat. She should've encouraged David to pursue that imagery instead of the adversarial imagery. (Hulk whispering!) Accepting the Hulk as an ally would've been the first step toward accepting the Hulk as himself. And that could've been the key to gaining real control.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment with how the Hulk's personality issues could/should have been handled...but it's not where either the comics of the time or the TV show were going with it. FWIW, Bruce in the comics of the day was often portrayed as unhelpfully high-strung when it came to dealing with his issues...far from the saintly demeanor of David on the TV show.

For the episode's purposes, it makes a great deal of sense to show David's attempts to trap the Hulk. Not only is it a more dramatic approach in and of itself, but it also strikes me that it particularly necessary for this episode--New season premiere, trying to re-hook the existing audience and draw in new viewers...and it's a very cerebral episode in which the actual Hulk has very little to do. The hypnosis scenes give them a chance to really show the Hulk's stuff.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment with how the Hulk's personality issues could/should have been handled...but it's not where either the comics of the time or the TV show were going with it.

Sure, that's a given. Obviously the show couldn't actually have David cure his condition, so whatever therapy he tried was doomed to fail. But I'm offering an analysis, in real-world terms, of why this specific therapy couldn't have worked. Analyzing fiction isn't just about discussing the fiction. It's about exploring its ideas in a real-world context and considering what a work of fiction can teach us about real issues. That's the value of fiction -- the insight it gives us into real life, the questions it inspires us to think about beyond the mere technicalities of the fiction itself. So I'm looking beyond "what the show did" and "what the comics did" (which is irrelevant to the show, since Kenneth Johnson had zero interest in the comics and tried to be as separate from them as possible) and talking about the deeper question of how the ideas in this episode relate to real-world therapy and self-control techniques. Dramatically, the value of doing it this way is self-evident, yes. But in psychological terms, it was a bad plan.

FWIW, Bruce in the comics of the day was often portrayed as unhelpfully high-strung when it came to dealing with his issues...far from the saintly demeanor of David on the TV show.

I remember Neal McDonough's performance as Bruce Banner on the '90s animated series. "High-strung" was an understatement. All the acting on that show was over-the-top and melodramatic, but McDonough's took the prize.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I don't think that the show's approach was meant to be taken as "doomed to fail", though...they were just taking a differently informed approach. For the show's purposes, we're led to believe that it might have worked, had there been more time.

And it was novel at this point in the character's existence to be looking into Banner/the Hulk's psyche like this at all...all the more interesting that both media were exploring it in their own ways at the same time.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

As for tallies...there is the one for people who found out about David being the Hulk and lived to tell about it. Don't want to get too bogged down with tallies as there will be variations of discovery of David's identity.I can think offhand of at least one example later in the series in which a couple of people will find out that he's David Banner but not that he's the Hulk, for example.

I'm not sure, but the running series direction is anyone learning that Banner is alive (assmuing they know who Banner was) also finds out he's the Hulk.

We can check the accuracy as it goes along, but offhand, I would say there are a good number who discovered both sides of the identity coin, or learned that "David _____" transforms into the Hulk:

• Li Sung ("Another Path").
• Emerson Fletcher ("Interview with the Hulk").
• Michael Sutton ("The Snare").
• Dell Frye ("The First" Part 1 & 2).
• Elizabeth Collins ("The First" Part 1 & 2).
• D.W. Banner ("Homecoming").
• Helen Banner ("Homecoming").

But this episode also established that he can subconsciously remember what he did as the Hulk...so on some level, David knows what the Hulk looks like from the times when the Hulk saw his own reflection while fully the Hulk. I distinctly remember at least one such instance in Season 1 when he looked at himself in a mirror...think it may have been the Vegas episode.

Correct, and in fact, this is bolstered by the forthcoming "Mystery Man" two-parter, when David's memory returns, he remembers:

1. His first transformation into the Hulk during the stormy tire change.
2. Carrying the dying Elaina Marks through the forest.
3. Holding the dying Caroline Fields.
4. Plus, other scenes of the Hulk crashing through walls, etc.

All Hulk events, yet David's memory clearly includes Hulk experiences.

But again, I'm referencing an earlier storyline that's contemporaneous with this episode. That particular story climaxes with Bruce and the Hulk literally coming to blows in the Hulk's mindscape, declaring total war with one another.

A strong parallel to the "Married" scene--exactly what Kenneth Johnson wanted: to illustrate the battle between the two beings living in one body--a true Jekyll & Hyde situation.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm not sure, but the running series direction is anyone learning that Banner is alive (assmuing they know who Banner was) also finds out he's the Hulk.

The one example I'm thinking of is an episode in which David gets taken into a police station and a couple of police detectives identify him as David Banner. They make a deal with him that if he helps them with the case that they're working on, they'll destroy his file and forget that he's alive.

Could be the only such example in the series, but we'll see.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think that the show's approach was meant to be taken as "doomed to fail", though...they were just taking a differently informed approach. For the show's purposes, we're led to believe that it might have worked, had there been more time.

Yes, of course that's what the script intended, but that is what I am criticizing. I am saying that Kenneth Johnson was wrong to propose that this was a good approach, because in real-life therapeutic terms, the fundamental approach was flawed. I'm not just talking about what is the case in the story, I'm critiquing the ideas behind the story. In the same way that I could critique the physics of the Hulk's transformation by pointing out that it's impossible to create mass out of nowhere, or in the same way I critiqued the pilot episode's scientific errors in its treatment of gamma rays (i.e. that the atmosphere would block them from reaching the surface). I'm talking about the flaws in the writer's intention as revealed by real-world knowledge.

And I'm not disputing your point that it was a nice idea to explore the psychology behind the Hulk. But exploring the psychology is exactly what I am trying to do here. I'm using my own real-life experience as a therapy patient dealing with similar issues to comment on the psychology as presented in the episode and the key psychological principle that I feel the episode missed.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Well, I'm not arguing with any of that, but a new question just occurred to me. Is the creature, as manifested in the hypnosis scenes, actually the creature's personality coming out to play? Or is it just David's manifestation of his condition? For the episode's purposes, I think it's the latter...paralleling Caroline's situation, where she has to envision her disease as an enemy invader to be fought off. David's situation is also being approached as a physical condition...his attempts to cage the creature in his mindscape are just manifestations of his attempts to take control of what his body is doing, rather than the creature's side of his mind. Notice how easily Caroline is able to shoo the creature away after he breaks out of a trap. The creature is only there as a visualization...his side of Banner's psyche isn't necessarily an active participant in this situation.

(In which case, not quite the same thing that the comic was doing at the time after all.)

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I don't think that the show's approach was meant to be taken as "doomed to fail", though...they were just taking a differently informed approach. For the show's purposes, we're led to believe that it might have worked, had there been more time.

True. I think there's some serious misunderstanding of that, when the episode strongly suggested Caroline (and David) could be cured if they had enough time--hence the overall tragedy of the conclusion.

Moreover, it is never a good idea to use one experience as some universal judgement for how this episode approached the matter when Johnson said:

"What's actually happening is based on research that a friend of mine--a psychologist friend had been doing in treating disease by using hypnotherapy. He actually had quite a bit of success in bringing people with very serious cancers into a certain amount of remission and indeed even almost curing them entirely, by putting them under deep hypnosis and using their inner resources to sort of visualize the cancer cells and then go in and chip away at them until they were gone."

Which was not just applied to its first subject in the story--Fields--but Banner as well. Johnson's friend--a professional--simply offered several cases of people who were almost cured entirely or some remission, so taking that true medical history, Johnson's episode suggests that with time, this real-world based approach had the possibility to work.

The only thing getting in the way was not approach, but external circumstances interference--a necessary "evil" for a continuing TV series.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The more I think of it...I don't think there's any evidence in the TV series that the Hulk was supposed to be seen as a separate personality in the psychological sense at all--quite the contrary to what the comics were just then establishing. In the TV version, the creature is David in an altered physical state that involves him losing some of his faculties. There's no psychological war between the Hulk and "puny Banner" to be fought...or reconciliation to be sought. In this version it's not a psychological issue at all...it's a physiological one.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Well, I'm not arguing with any of that, but a new question just occurred to me. Is the creature, as manifested in the hypnosis scenes, actually the creature's personality coming out to play? Or is it just David's manifestation of his condition? For the episode's purposes, I think it's the latter...paralleling Caroline's situation, where she has to envision her disease as an enemy invader to be fought off. David's situation is also being approached as a physical condition...his attempts to cage the creature in his mindscape are just manifestations of his attempts to take control of what his body is doing, rather than the creature's side of his mind. Notice how easily Caroline is able to shoo the creature away after he breaks out of a trap. The creature is only there as a visualization...his side of Banner's psyche isn't necessarily an active participant in this situation.

While you are correct in how Caroline wanted David to frame his session (Hulk as an enemy invader), I ask this: you say the Hulk was not an active participant, but after an in-series year of his altered condition, was it at all possible for David to "create" his own Hulk within the corridors of his mind, without that very real side of his self playing his own role in the session?

The TV version was meant to be a version of Jekyll and Hyde, with one side acting as a separate identity, but connected beyond the control--or desire--of either side, so would David be able to just whip up a Hulk in his session, or did the session simply allow the other half of Banner's altered form to open a door to allow the real Hulk of the mind in at the same time?

 

[The Old Mixer]

I don't think that's what the TV show was going for, no. In the sessions, the Hulk was just a visualization of his condition, like the Indians were to Caroline. Neither was meant to be another personality, but a mindless force at work in their bodies being given a form that could be grappled with.

 

[mos6507]

Yes, of course it's possible for Banner to visualize himself and the Hulk as separate entities. I never said it wasn't possible. I said it's the wrong approach to gaining control of the Hulk.

The plot was a contrivance in order to allow Bixby to share scenes with Ferrigno, you know, for its novelty and entertainment value. That was more important than portraying accurate psychological therapy techniques.