MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[Christopher]

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.

Yes, of course, I take that as a given. What I've been saying all along is that it's the wrong visualization. It encouraged David to think of the Hulk as something outside himself and adversarial to him, and you can't control something if you think of it that way. The Hulk isn't an outside invader to be fought off like Caroline's disease -- it's an issue that David has with his own emotional control. And controlling behavioral disorders like runaway anger is largely about getting the patient in the mindset to accept their actions as having an internal cause within their power to change, rather than an external cause that gives them an excuse to believe it can't be changed.

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.

Yes. It's more like the way the Hulk was characterized in the early years of his Tales to Astonish run -- an impaired form of Banner's own mind, having his goals and affinities but with less intelligence or self-control. It's just taken to an extreme where his intellect is completely submerged and only raw emotion and instinct remain.

Another way of looking at occurred to me last night, though, after the luau Hulk-out scene, and the way the whole thing just seemed to be a tantrum, the Hulk needing to vent his rage before settling down in a quiet place and sulking. This show's Hulk is basically David reverted to infancy, a small child acting out with superhuman strength.

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.

It was important for the story, sure. But that doesn't mean we're not allowed to evaluate the story critically and assess its ideas in comparison to real-world principles. Like I said, the purpose of fiction is not merely to be passively absorbed as a fixed construct. Its purpose is to get us to think and feel, to engage our imaginations and let us reflect on ideas that have relevance in real life. There have been whole books written about how the ideas explored in works of fiction relate to things in real science, philosophy, law, politics, psychology, etc. There's a website called Law and the Multiverse that uses portrayals of legal matters in comics and SF as a basis for discussing the workings of the law in real life. Analysis of a work of fiction does not have to be limited to "What did the creators intend?" That's just the most basic layer of critical evaluation, the starting point rather than the ultimate limit.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The Hulk isn't an outside invader to be fought off like Caroline's disease -- it's an issue that David has with his own emotional control. And controlling behavioral disorders like runaway anger is largely about getting the patient in the mindset to accept their actions as having an internal cause within their power to change, rather than an external cause that gives them an excuse to believe it can't be changed.

But I don't think that's the situation in the TV series at all. David doesn't have anger management issues, he only changes to the Hulk in times of great duress, often life-threatening situations. That could be a purely physiological thing...once certain physiological cues have been triggered, he changes.

 

[Christopher]

But I don't think that's the situation in the TV series at all. David doesn't have anger management issues, he only changes to the Hulk in times of great duress, often life-threatening situations. That could be a purely physiological thing...once certain physiological cues have been triggered, he changes.

Trigger aside, "the creature is driven by rage." "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." David himself has repeatedly characterized it to doctors as a disorder characterized by excessive aggression. And it was established in the pilot that David has trouble controlling his anger. Yes, pain, fear, or desperation provide an added component, but the fundamental issue is anger. Take it from me, nothing intensifies anger so much as fear and helplessness.

And what triggers it isn't really what matters here. That's another key lesson from therapy. What matters isn't what created the problem -- what matters is what you can do to solve the problem. That's what David and Caroline were trying to do here. Instead of trying to repair his physiological defect and prevent the mutation, David was trying to take control of his mind and find a psychological way to master his rage, even with the physiological condition still existing. Control is the specific thing he was trying to achieve, and the adversarial approach he and Caroline took with the visualizations was counterproductive to that goal. Imagining that the cause of your problems is an outside force just gives you an excuse to believe you can't change them. That believe makes you feel powerless and just exacerbates the problem. But recognizing that the cause of your problems is internal, is part of you, enables you to understand that you can change it after all. Ultimately, the only thing you truly have power over is yourself.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I don't think it was meant to be taken as a psychological method of controlling his rage, but as an attempt to psychosomatically influence an issue in his body, as Caroline was doing with her disease.

If controlling rage issues psychologically had been his goal, then he could have gone to any leading shrink. He sought out Caroline specifically because treating physical ailments through hypnosis was her specialty.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

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.

It was a means to have Banner & Hulk to share scenes, but there should be no misunderstanding (well, for most) that the basis of Caroline's treatment was based on the work of a real psychologist actually using this kind of therapy, thus what you see in the episode was not like Star Trek: the Next Generation technobabble about things unlikely to exist, but, as Kenneth Johnson clearly revealed:

"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."

So, while you are correct about entertainment value, a professional's hypnotherapy treatments were the concrete foundation of the episode's treatment, which cannot be challenged, since no one (not meaning you)--unless exposed to the details of this particular psychologist's work, patient history and reports on outcomes as a comparison/check to what was written for "Married"--would be able to authoritatively attempt to pick it apart.The only true fantasy element involved was the Hulk.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think it was meant to be taken as a psychological method of controlling his rage, but as an attempt to psychosomatically influence an issue in his body, as Caroline was doing with her disease.

And I'm not convinced that's a meaningful distinction. The reason psychosomatic effects work is because there is no Cartesian-dualistic divide between the mind and the body -- a psychological state is a physiological state, a pattern of chemicals and neuroelectrical potentials in the brain that affects and is affected by the rest of the body. David's own metamorphosis is an illustration of that. His psychological state -- rage, terror, desperation, distress -- affects his metabolism and triggers his mutation. He was trying to interrupt that triggering process by approaching it from the psychological side, instead of the genetic or metabolic side as he's done before.

Besides, as I keep trying and somehow failing to explain, I'm not just talking about what's in the episode. I'm discussing the thoughts the episode sparks in me about broader issues. Fiction is usually an allegory or commentary on real-world ideas and problems. I mean, Kenneth Johnson's model for the show -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which his script overtly name-dropped here -- was itself an allegory for Robert Louis Stevenson's beliefs about the dualistic nature of good and evil in human beings. It wasn't just about the literal text of the story, it symbolized something he believed about real life. Johnson said, in the commentary that TREK_GOD_1 quoted, that he used this script to call attention to a real therapeutic practice a friend of his was developing. So this wasn't exclusively a story about David Banner and Caroline Fields. It symbolized ideas about things in the real world. And that's the level I'm trying to engage it on but that nobody else seems to want to join me in doing.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But you've fail to acknowledge that there's a difference between the technique that Johnson based the episode on and psychotherapy. David didn't go to Caroline for anger management therapy, he could have seen a standard shrink if that was his goal.

 

[Christopher]

But you've fail to acknowledge that there's a difference between the technique that Johnson based the episode on and psychotherapy. David didn't go to Caroline for anger management therapy, he could have seen a standard shrink if that was his goal.

No, because, for the fifty gazillionth time, I'm not just talking about the surface text of the episode, I'm talking about the larger, real-world ideas suggested by it. And you obviously couldn't care less about those, so let's just drop the whole damn thing.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Changing topics...can anyone confirm or correct the cutoff point that I used for "Part 1"? Is anyone here actually watching on Me?

 

[Christopher]

Well, I've gotten my DVD of the last remaining Wonder Woman episodes, the 2-part "The Phantom of the Roller Coaster." After a brief glimpse of a shadowy, growly figure wandering near said roller coaster, we see Diana at the Korean Bell of Friendship in San Pedro -- oops, sorry, "Washington, DC" -- running a sting operation to pretend to sell IADC secrets to none other than Jason of Star Command himself, Craig Littler. She doesn't seem to be quite up on the concept of pretending to be a double agent, though, since no sooner does Jason drive off that she spins up her Wonder Cyclist suit, flat-out steals some random passerby's motorbike, and has a gratuitous chase scene ending with her kicking the guy's Jeep off the road and barely avoiding killing him, then using her lasso to get the name of his boss, even though she'd already guessed it. (She also says she's spent 4 years establishing her IADC "cover identity," even though we're only 2 years into the modern-era series. But then, once Bruce Lansbury took over early in season 2, they did pretty immediately seem to rewrite history and imply that Diana had been an agent for several years already.)

Quite a lot of recognizable faces in the cast. The spy mastermind, Fynch, is character actor Joseph Sirola, who's been in all sorts of things and was the voice of Dr. Doom in the original Fantastic Four cartoon. His dimwitted henchman Pierce is none other than DS9's Marc Alaimo. Fynch is trying to buy out an amusement park as his base of spy operations for some reason. But he meets resistance from its owner Leon, whose supposedly lost-in-Vietnam brother David is -- obvious spoiler alert -- the titular Phantom, scarfaced and shuffling around under the park. Both brothers are played by Jared Martin, late of The Fantastic Journey and future star of War of the Worlds: The Series. This is odd, since one brother is explicitly two years older. And there's also a roller-coaster-loving orphan kid played by Ike Eisenmann, who was Martin's co-star in The Fantastic Journey as well as appearing in Disney's Witch Mountain movies and, of course, dying gorily in The Wrath of Khan. He gets lost under the park and ends up bonding with brother David, who turns out to be capable of speech after all, and who, instead of getting reconstructive surgery from the VA for his napalm injuries, just hides out under the park so no one will see him. Oy.

And through a comedy of errors, David somehow ends up taking possession of a bomb that Pierce was going to plant in the park, and for some reason he flees from Wonder Woman rather than giving her the bomb, and for some reason Wonder Woman is too slow to catch him, and really "for some reason" pretty much sums the whole thing up. The bomb has little impact on the story until the end, and then simply as evidence for convicting Fynch.

Decent cliffhanger at the end of part 1, where assassins bracket Diana's car between a car and a truck, run her off the road, and then T-bone her car with the truck. Pretty effective scene, except it's clear they did at least a couple of different takes, because the scene goes from a beautifully clear day to pouring rain within seconds. But they totally cop out with the resolution in part 2, since she suddenly shows up as Wonder Woman with no explanation for how she got out of the car in time. They've been pulling that trick since the matinee serials in the '30s and '40s.

Another plot hole: The assassins tell Wonder Woman (while compelled by the Lasso of Truth) that they were hired by an anonymous voice on the phone, same as always. But when they call him to report afterwards, he answers the phone by saying, "Harrison Fynch here." D'oh!

Decent stunt at the climax where WW's stunt double jumps off the roof of a very high building, but it ends implausibly as WW lands directly on top of Fynch, smashing him through a door, and yet somehow causes him no injury after striking him at terminal velocity.

There's some decent drama and acting from Martin in the split-screen scene between the two brothers and the scene where WW tries to convince David that he doesn't need to hide. And Sirola and Alaimo make good bad guys. But overall it's not a great finale for the series, with Diana and Steve being oddly la-di-dah about letting a bomb disappear on their watch, and with an interminable amount of padding with amusement-park footage that I was fortunately able to fast-forward through.

But now I'm finally done with the whole series, so I don't have to suffer for my completism any further.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Still waiting for the Hammond Amazing Spider-Man to run on some network...or DVD.

A limited, on-demand service--like Warner Archive--could be used, so there's no cost excuse for mass producing something that (in theory) has limited interest.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

"Married" Conclusion--

Caroline--trying to shake off her depression--leaves with sleazy swinger Brad and another sleaze to his home; David arrives at The Swing, where a disco-ized version of Joe Harnell's The Lonely Man accompanies the dancers. David locates the swingers, gets tossed from a second story bedroom, and Hulks out, puling Brad's fluff wig off, as he destroys the place, and rescues Caroline, which draws Banner & Caroline closer than ever.

Kenneth Johnson on shooting the Hulk in motion:

"We shot Lou's stuff at about 48 frames--generally, when were doing the Hulk stuff so that it had just a little edge to it, and also put a little more filtration on the camera."

Some viewers often complain about slow motion for characters who should move faster than the average person--but I've always believed the effect on the Hulk made him seem like his very being--despite the super strength--was one of struggle...that and lifting supposedly weighty objects does not play as real if the props are made of lighter materials.

Kenneth Johnson on the significance of the gazebo:

"At the end of the piece, the house was supposed to have been destroyed in a hurricane, but we couldn't destroy the house, so we needed something to sort of show the destruction of their relationship and how it had been physically manifest in the gazebo."

The people behind this show really left no stone unturned in trying to make their viewer think about the meaning of just about everything, and often it was accomplished in subtle ways.

Kenneth Johnson on David's "tiger" story, and the wedding scene:

"This is a wonderful story--the story about the man being chased by the tiger and finding the other tiger below him, waiting to pounce. Nick Corea, who was one of the producers on the show--Nick Corea and Jim Hirsch produced the series for me, and Nick said, 'you know, I think there's a story that might be interesting for your movie,' and he gave me this book called Zen Flesh and Zen Bones, and its a Zen story, or a modification of it, and I thought it was such a perfect story for this, that I wrote it into the script, and Bix told it when we back to shoot it, and just nailed it. And Mariette goes right with it, and the tears come just naturally. Neither one of these people had to fight for the tears at this point, because when we came back to shoot it, they were really into it."

This (the site of the wedding) was at Ambassador College, where we started. I mentioned to you that this was in the background. We added the flowers here to enrich the sort of lush, Hawaiian experience About 10 years later--almost 15 years later, I shot another marriage on this bridge, for my Alien Nation movie "Dark Horizon," with my wife Suzie as an alien priestess performing a wedding ceremony on this same bridge, 'cause I remembered it from right here. And the wedding vows with grace and humor also came from the wedding vows Suzie and I exchanged, we had that as part of our vows and certainly seemed appropriate for these two people, grace and humor."

As long as romance has been a plot of filmed superhero productions, few times did it ever pull off a sense that the characters were genuinely in love. It usually ends up as the actors being more into performing for themselves, that investing in the character's relationship and feeling. That was not a problem here, since Bixby & Hartley make the script come alive with believability of their growing affection.

So, David signs the marriage certificate...assuming he registered as David Banner, and met all of the requirements, no red flags were raised? Yes, this is long before the instant background check of the internet age, but I wonder if he would feel it was worth the risk? Or maybe, "David" and "Banner" were just common enough for no one to blink an eye.

Kenneth Johnson on the desert vault sequence, part two:

"Bill was trying to guide Frank Orsati, who was inside--hitting the inside with his fists, Frank was, I said 'Why didn't they make something for you to hit with?' Frank said, 'Ah,I can do it!" and Bill's sort of like, 'Ah...ah...ah' as he walks along, telling Frank where he is, and Frank ended up breaking his knuckles doing this shot. That was typical of Frank--he would--I swear to God, we always worried he was gonna kill himself out of his desire to make a stunt even better."

"It was an amazing experience out there in the heat of Brawley doing these shots, but again, the crew had a huge amount of fun in spite of the fact that several of them were sort of passing out right and left, and poor Louie was just roasting in the make-up. It was a challenge for everybody."

Caroline was right--David kept the Hulk locked up for a longer period than the first vault attempt, so it indicates control could be achieved, if he had the time to aplly the hypnotherapy. Of course, David is skeptical, but few could blame him, after so many failed cure attempts.

Banner's next dream sequence is sort of the defining drive of David as a person; he has his anger, but at its worst, it centers on his unflinching, all-in love for a select few, like Laura Banner, and now Caroline. It elevates him as a character in that his caring nature goes beyond (probably) his caring for himself, though he's in a never ending search to end the Hulk curse / bring peace to his life.

Kenneth Johnson on Banner and the Hulk's relationship during David's desert dream sequence:

"The metaphor or course I'm going for here, is that no matter where Bix goes, the creature is not far behind, and we never called him 'The Hulk' as a matter of fact--in the scripts, we always referred to him as 'The creature.' And sort of a haunting image of Bix being pursued by this curse--this thing he wanted to make go away. Its odd that the subtext of this whole series is to try to make the series go away! To get a handle on the anger and find a way to make it stop."

Banner's nightmare--Caroline being taken away by the hooded spectre of death--has long, real world cultural roots, usually in the idea of a dead (or dying) loved on being taken away by force, or by circumstances beyond the survivor's control. In fiction, if the development of characters and the their trial is as flawless (as possible) then the horrible mix of loss, fright and being left alone makes for unforgettable drama, as we see in this nightmare, which jumps from Laura's life--and fiery death, Caroline being taken away, and in both cases, David's inability to save either. Among THE moments of the series.

The nightmare's triggering a Hulk-out played realistically, as Caroline leaps up from the bed--staring at David, no longer really David, as he--in one of the few times in the series--looks monstrous.

Caroline losing her fight with the disease (e.g. her speech problem) is not easy to watch---not due to its inevitability (by this point in the story), but its a credit to how much Hartley brought to the character to make her feel real and warm to audiences, so it was not just another "drama of the week" / "oh, how sad this is" situation.

Kenneth Johnson on Caroline's decline and the finale:

"The reason that I chose to play the ending sequence in a hurricane was not only for the inherent dramatic qualities of the weather, but also because it really reflected the turmoil and emotional turmoil that she was going through."

"Footage of hurricanes is usually very degraded like this is, usually shot on 16 millimeter at that time, and it was not very good, and our concern was that is we cut our studio footage into it, it would really look terrible, and be so clear that our footage was so clear compared to theirs, so John McPherson and I determined that we would degrade the images of our film--

--this is all stuff that we shot on New York street at Universal, where Chuck Davis had put in median strips to give me some green to shoot around; we shot with long lenses. We shot with rain and wind, and unfortunately, you'll notice--if you look carefully at it, that there is sunlight streaming down, and it may be nuts, but we couldn't wait for it to cloud over in southern California...that's why the movie industry care here, after all."

"It was challenge to try to make this film look as degraded as the stock was; rarely is the cinematographer asked to make his film look bad, but John understood what I was going for, and absolutely went with it. And by staying on longer lenses, that sort of helped compress the energy in the rain and the wind "

--Caroline's pain:

"Notice the music has dropped out, and its into effects and this sort of squealing in her head. I was looking for an effect--I asked Kyle Wright of sound effects to come up with an almost feedback sound in her head that would be something someone can identify with as driving them nuts, you know, the ringing in her ears, as it were."

This was shot on out last day of filming "Married," it was on the 14th of August in 1978. For once--once in a row, I actually shot the end of the picture on the last day of the picture, and i think it certainly gave Mariette an opportunity to have embraced all the work that had gone up to this point, and really capture the madness and pain she was feeling to take her into these final moments."

"Imagine playing this--its extraordinarily difficult to have the energy and consistent energy that it takes for an actress to keep up a scene like this--at length, and not only keep it up, but build it, so that you really feel the anguish that she's going th---I mean you just want to--I find myself even now watching to want to climb up on the screen and help her."

--on the death scene:

"And now, we've got this great, primitive guy (The Hulk) who is here to help, but of course, doesn't know how to help...the ultimate kind of irony. Help has arrived and he does not know what to do."

"Very strong moment. Played beautifully by Mariette, and also by Louie."

"I thought as I wrote this, how do I get out of this? How do I transition? And I thought, well, we shouldn't see the transition back. we should just let the storm abate, and come back to Bix, standing right were Louie had been, still holding Mariette the same way."

If someone ran a poll of the most memorable images of this or any superhero TV series, I would be shocked if the image of the silent Hulk holding Caroline's lifeless body did not make the top three in terms of the visual power, the bleak implications for the lead character, etc. The Incredible Hulk production crew set new, often unmatched standards for superhero TV.

Ending on such a tragic note, a teary-eyed Banner sits facing the wrecked gazebo; Johnson said the structure was meant to represent the destruction of the relationship, and Banner facing it suggests he is still very much immersed in the whole of what he had and lost ("Oh, it never would have been long enough.") not quite ready to face the opposite direction, or moving on.

Here are two TV Guide ads for the movie--

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Dang, man, you really went all out with the behind-the-scenes info this time!

The Incredible Hulk
"Married" (Part 2)
Originally aired September 22, 1978

FWIW, I found a video of the two-part version online...the cutoff point between episodes was exactly where I remembered. I don't know whether to be gratified, or scared that this is the sort of thing that's stayed locked in my brain all these years...!

I also realized that there's some questionable parking continuity in the bar sequence. When Caroline arrives, she dramatically parks sideways across three spaces...when David passes by The Swingers the first time, and Caroline's car is hidden by a truck, and when David goes back and pulls up next to her car, it seems more neatly parked.

The incident with the swingers feels so tacked on to put a little "jeopardy' in the middle and give the Hulk some bad guys to toss around. And yeah, the bald cap is horrible--the actor looks like he should be in clown makeup--but I guess he had to compete with David's full-frontal stunt double hurtling down from the loft into the camera. Ah, the things we weren't supposed to notice in those snowy, rabbit-eared days....

I really have to wonder about the circumstances of David going back to the swingers' pad for the jeep. "Oh, hey, don't mind me, I'm just here to get the car...and no, I have nothing to do with that creature that tore your place up...and no hard feelings about hurling me from that loft!"

So...David definitely seems to be getting some ACK-shun in this one...he obviously doesn't have the same transformation threshold as Ed Norton's Banner....

"A new drug is coming," as the cavalry rides over the hill...plays like a pharmaceutical commercial.

It would have been a nice touch if David and the Hulk had been wearing the same type of pants in the hypnosis sequences.

Hurricane Kevin--the male name caught my attention, as I remember a big deal being made when they started using male names for hurricanes in the late '70s. Had to do some digging, but it turns out the first "himicane" was Hurricane Bob in July 1979--Nearly a full year after this episode was made!

The last Hulk-Out does indeed fall back into the formula, at -7:55. The next-to-last one in the bedroom isn't too far off the usual first Hulk-Out time for an hour-long episode, at -18:12.

The people behind this show really left no stone unturned in trying to make their viewer think about the meaning of just about everything, and often it was accomplished in subtle ways.

This one definitely had a lot of symbolism...most notably the boy serving two related but contrasting roles, as a symbol of the things that Caroline didn't have time for, but also of her continuation through somebody whom she shortened her days to save. There were also the shots of the crashing surf during David's last transformation...symbolic of the Hulk's power, or of his relative impotence against the power of nature?

So, David signs the marriage certificate...assuming he registered as David Banner, and met all of the requirements, no red flags were raised? Yes, this is long before the instant background check of the internet age, but I wonder if he would feel it was worth the risk? Or maybe, "David" and "Banner" were just common enough for no one to blink an eye.

Yeah, David was really getting smug about McGee not being in this half of the episode, thumbing his nose like that. Even signing his real name, I have to wonder how legal a marriage it was with one of them supposedly being dead. (Which raises the question of whether David Banner is legally dead, what with no trace of a body having been found.)

Banner's nightmare--Caroline being taken away by the hooded spectre of death--has long, real world cultural roots, usually in the idea of a dead (or dying) loved on being taken away by force, or by circumstances beyond the survivor's control. In fiction, if the development of characters and the their trial is as flawless (as possible) then the horrible mix of loss, fright and being left alone makes for unforgettable drama, as we see in this nightmare, which jumps from Laura's life--and fiery death, Caroline being taken away, and in both cases, David's inability to save either. Among THE moments of the series.

Definitely...very powerful and memorable stuff...and kind of makes you think twice about getting on buses....

Ending on such a tragic note, a teary-eyed Banner sits facing the wrecked gazebo; Johnson said the structure was meant to represent the destruction of the relationship, and Banner facing it suggests he is still very much immersed in the whole of what he had and lost ("Oh, it never would have been long enough.") not quite ready to face the opposite direction, or moving on.

Indeed, there's no freeze-framed walkaway...which is good continuity, as David presumably still had access to the jeep.

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 don't think that this version of the Hulk does "wake up" per se...he's just a continuation of wherever David left off, with reduced mental faculties. He always seems familiar with the situations that David was in. If he woke up without memory of how he got into a situation, then all those times that the thugs of the week toss him into another room, down a stairway, etc., the creature wouldn't know who to go throw around.

 

[Christopher]

Indeed, there's no freeze-framed walkaway...which is good continuity, as David presumably still had access to the jeep.

But there's an interesting inversion, though, since the credits are shown over a shot of Meeno Peluce walking away while Bixby stays in place in the foreground. I didn't realize it until after the fact, but it maintained the "walkaway" convention after all.

I don't think that this version of the Hulk does "wake up" per se...he's just a continuation of wherever David left off, with reduced mental faculties.

I know. It's an amusing idle thought, not a serious proposal.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Quite a lot of recognizable faces in the cast. The spy mastermind, Fynch, is character actor Joseph Sirola, who's been in all sorts of things and was the voice of Dr. Doom in the original Fantastic Four cartoon. His dimwitted henchman Pierce is none other than DS9's Marc Alaimo. Fynch is trying to buy out an amusement park as his base of spy operations for some reason. But he meets resistance from its owner Leon, whose supposedly lost-in-Vietnam brother David is -- obvious spoiler alert -- the titular Phantom, scarfaced and shuffling around under the park. Both brothers are played by Jared Martin, late of The Fantastic Journey and future star of War of the Worlds: The Series. This is odd, since one brother is explicitly two years older. .

How is that odd...didn't William Shatner do that with Sam Kirk?

I'll have to re-watch this episode... i never noticed that Leon was also played by Jared Martin (I recognized David at a previous ME-TV showing)

 

[Christopher]

How is that odd...didn't William Shatner do that with Sam Kirk?

For maybe five seconds as a corpse on the floor. That makes it an easier illusion to sell.

It's just that there's nothing in the story that requires the brothers to look alike, so I wonder why they did it. Was it cheaper to do a number of split-screen shots (well, at least two, one of which was very long) than just to hire a second actor? Or was it intended as some kind of showcase for Jared Martin's acting?

I'll have to re-watch this episode... i never noticed that Leon was also played by Jared Martin (I recognized David at a previous ME-TV showing)

Oh, I wouldn't ask anyone to inflict this one on themselves a second time. Unless they really, really like watching endless footage of roller coasters and amusement-park rides.


I was going to say what a coincidence it was that this episode reunited Jared Martin and Ike Eisenmann from the recent The Fantastic Journey (which, by the way, was a short-lived sci-fi show about a family lost in the Bermuda Triangle, with Roddy McDowall as a "Dr. Smith"-like character). But then I realized that this was around the time when Eisenmann was pretty much the go-to child star, like Bill Mumy had been in the '60s. At least, I remember him showing up pretty ubiquitously in the things I saw.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

^Dang, man, you really went all out with the behind-the-scenes info this time!

Kenneth Johnson is a fascinating talent who really shines a light on why this show worked. Not ever producer/writer is capable of that.

I really have to wonder about the circumstances of David going back to the swingers' pad for the jeep. "Oh, hey, don't mind me, I'm just here to get the car...and no, I have nothing to do with that creature that tore your place up...and no hard feelings about hurling me from that loft!"

If they hung around the swingers' pad; after the destruction, I can imagine they set it on fire for the insurance pay out. That would keep them in enough gaudy clothes and cheap cologne until 1988.

This one definitely had a lot of symbolism...most notably the boy serving two related but contrasting roles, as a symbol of the things that Caroline didn't have time for, but also of her continuation through somebody whom she shortened her days to save. There were also the shots of the crashing surf during David's last transformation...symbolic of the Hulk's power, or of his relative impotence against the power of nature?

Right on both points--The Boy did symbolize life and the fact she would never experience a child of her own, yet played a part in a child's life by saving him, and yes, the Hulk--for all of his power was no match for the obstacles both he and Banner faced, which separated them from Caroline long enough for her to be beyond help. Along with the pilot, this is the second time the Hulk's power was too little, too late to save a loved one at the most trying, threatening of times--the very thing Banner's experiments sought to understand / tap into. That's the double burden he carries: pre-Hulk, he could not save Laura, and after his experiment, it still failed Elaina and Caroline.

Yeah, David was really getting smug about McGee not being in this half of the episode, thumbing his nose like that. Even signing his real name, I have to wonder how legal a marriage it was with one of them supposedly being dead. (Which raises the question of whether David Banner is legally dead, what with no trace of a body having been found.)

Yes, he's legally dead. In fact, in a season three's "Broken Image," a policeman refers to Banner dying in a fire and being buried, while in the same season's "A Rock and a Hard Place," Banner (if memory serves) is arrested, and his prints lead an officer to say, "Congratulations. We arrested a dead man--doctor David Banner." So, we can safely assume Banner is considered legally dead.

Definitely...very powerful and memorable stuff...and kind of makes you think twice about getting on buses....

...especially if the driver looks like death. That should set off at least one alarm to enjoy the pleasures of a nice, brisk walk in the opposite direction...

Indeed, there's no freeze-framed walkaway...which is good continuity, as David presumably still had access to the jeep.

I do wonder about the epilogue: David has his bag packed, and it seems that was the following morning after the hurricane. If so, as the legal widower, did he settle Caroline's affairs? Close her bank account? Use her money to leave? Contact any relatives? Or did he abandon the property?

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Good question. Of course he had to haul out of there to not be discovered...the marriage certificate was pushing things as it was. I have to wonder if he really had any legal access to anything, if he had to keep his head low to avoid discovery. If she had any next-of-kin, they probably didn't know he existed.

 

[publiusr]

"Married":
I think I remember being impressed seeing Bixby and Ferrigno finally sharing scenes together.?

I wanted more of that. Maybe David in a coma or something. I can even see a whole episode done in that desert if done correctly.

I can see--near the end--after nothing works--David yelling at the Hulk--and Ferrigno getting one spesaking line.

The Hulk cock's his head. as he often does--he and Michael Meyers (The Shape).
The Hulk then speaks one line.

"I'm you" then vanishes as David wakes up.

David doing a mock Chinese and/or Japanese accent as a joke..

Well, I love hearing Margaret Cho talking about her Mom--but you are right. Even the John Wayne impersonation.. Really bites.

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

It was only for a moment. Still some nice comic relief.

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 thought that sounded familiar. Another goodie: "Sorrow shared is halved. Joy shared is doubled"

Good to see Hartley herselfl going strong
http://www.mariettehartley.com/Mariette_Hartley/Mariette_Hartley.html

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.

In some respects, that was the point. They've tried everything. The 70's were big into powers of the mind and all.
Actually a good episode for skeptics--even though placebo effect is real enough.

In "Another Path" (coming up) David is able to avoid transforming in his sleep at least.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

"The Antowuk Horror"--

After the tour de force that was "Married," the next episode takes the edge off of David's tragedy in a clever comment on the very thing so many in-series characters believed about the Hulk--that he's made-up, tabloid fiction. Only in this episode, the horror of Antowuk is the contrast of something fraudulent, while the Hulk is real, although Harlen makes a Bigfoot reference to the creature.

Ever the appealing wanderer, David Barton connects with young Samantha Bates, who has an interest in science (just as The Boy expressed an interest in becoming a doctor in last week's episode), and is not naive about what's happening to her town, or her need for a stronger father figure.

Harlen Bates starts off as the beer-loving, education-phobic, jealous father, so it would take much to rehabilitate his standing--even after his sob story about not fitting in the city. Samantha cares for her father, but he earns the Dick of the Year Award for 1978 for faking his woolly alter ego, knowing that trigger-happy hunters would be all over town, not caring every time they shoot at any random noise. Did he really consider what his game might do to an only child with one parent?

There are a few similarities between washed-up big game hunter Buck and McGee: Buck thinks only of restoring glory by killing the Hulk, while McGee says he's worth more alive than dead (and his motives are not much better). Further, Buck is still living off of a single reputation, while McGee is a year into a similar path with his Hulk obsession, not realizing that he's potentially headed toward the same, irrelevant state. This is an issue that will be dealt with in future episodes.

"The Antowuk Horror" returned the series to the lighter human interest / slice of life stories seen in 1st season stories such as "Never Give a Trucker An Even Break," which was a needed moment to pause after the season premiere, with a story ending with Harlen's near loss of his daughter finally making him understand his responsibilities.

William Lucking (Harlen Bates) appearances in hero adaptations started with 1975's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (opposite 1960's Tarzan, Ron Ely in the title role). Lucking would return to TIH as a father facing a chemically-induced, "evil" David Banner in season four's "Dark Side." In between visits with the Hulk, he appeared in another Marvel / CBS TV adaptation: Captain America II: Death Too Soon--

Dennis Patrick (Buck) was no stranger to fantasy, with credits dating back to Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("The Day of the Bullet" / "The Last Escape"), Keema "The Golden Man" from Lost in Space, to a recurring role as the arms dealing (among other crimes) Carlton Harris on both The Six Million Dollar Man ("The Return of the Bionic Woman: Part Two") and The Bionic Woman (the 2-part "Welcome Home, Jamie"), however, he's best known for his 1967 run as the conniving Jason McGuire on the original Dark Shadows, the man unknowingly responsible--through his companion Willie Loomis--for releasing vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin.

Myron Healy (Sheriff Colton) was no stranger to sci-fi, fantasy or horror, with appearances on Land of the Giants ("Flight Plan"), Circle of Fear ("The Ghost of Potter's Field"), Kolchak: The Night Stalker ("Mr. R.I.N.G.") four episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Kenneth Johnson's V miniseries.

However, he has a very long history with superhero (or masked hero) TV, starting with 3 episodes of The Adventures of Superman ("The Jolly Roger," "Dagger Island," & "The Bully of Dry Gulch"), seven episodes of The Lone Ranger, and like Rosalind Chao in last week's episode, an appearance on another CBS/Marvel series--The Amazing Spider-Man, in "The Chinese Web."