Believe it or not, July 4 Syfy Greatest American Hero Marathon

[Christopher]

The only problem I had with it is the lack of a mask or anything to conceal his identity. I had a hard time understanding how he could keep operating without anyone recognizing him-- though, as others have pointed out, a version of L.A. with hardly any people does help. .

Especially with Bill constantly addressing him as "Ralph" right there in front of the bad guys. You'd think Bill Maxwell of all people would have more regard for operational security. Surely code names are called for in this scenario! (I don't think I was familiar with the word "scenario" before this show. I certainly could never forget the word after this show.)

And as we also saw, the vast majority of people he encountered simply thought he was a weirdo who liked dressing up in a superhero costume. Not very many of them saw him actually using any superpowers.

Indeed, there was that episode where Tony was suspected of torching a government records building and every federal agency was monitoring Ralph 24/7 since they thought he was sheltering Tony. There was a scene where Ralph tried to take off from his roof and fell facefirst on the lawn. The feds clearly saw Ralph in the supersuit, knew it was him, threatened to blackmail him by exposing his embarrassing habit, but dismissed it as just freaky behavior. You'd think somebody would've put it together with all the reports from bad guys about being caught by a curly-haired guy in a red supersuit.

 

[Silvercrest]

If Superman can get away with going maskless, so can he.

Yes, but Clark Kent wears glasses, and that makes all the difference! I mean, they completely, totally, 100% obscure his identity. Right? Right?

 

[broberfett]

Did you see him fight Andre' the Giant, who was supposed to be some sort of engineered beast?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ Yeah. At first I thought "Lou Ferrigno ?", but then I saw how tall he was and figured it out.

 

[Christopher]

What always bugged me about TGAH back in the day was the way Ralph always had to unbutton his shirt or pull out the sleeve or otherwise expose some part of his supersuit to the camera before he could use its abilities. I understand that it's visual storytelling, a way of driving home to the viewer that the suit is the source of the power, but it just seems arbitrary. If wearing the suit gives him powers, he should have those powers even if the suit is hidden under his clothes.

Let's see, just how many powers did the suit give Ralph, anyway? The standard suite of powers seems to be:

*Superstrength.
*Superspeed.
*Invulnerability (or nearly so).
*Flight (theoretically).
*Invisibility.
*Psychometry (reading "vibes" by touching objects), with his visions being called "holograms" for some reason. Occasionally had variant manifestations as a form of "x-ray vision" and as a sort of "spider-sense" to warn him when friends were in danger.

Powers that were only seen once include:
*Perception of/access to a "fourth dimension" or astral plane
*Shrinking/growing

And probably various others I don't recall.

That's quite an extensive repertoire. If Ralph had had total control, he would've had too much power. I feel it's generally not a good idea to give a superhero too many powers; it makes things too easy as well as overcomplicated. The Glen Larson show NightMan (and presumably the comic it was based on) was particularly ridiculous. That guy had a psychic sense of evil, and a suit that gave him superstrength, invulnerability, and flight, and a cape that made him invisible, and a hologram projector to give him a handy alibi for superheroing. Conceptually, he was just plain cluttered, with no theme or focus. Come to think of it, it's a very similar range of powers to what Ralph had. In Ralph's case, it helped that he struggled with the powers and could only intermittently use them right. And since all his powers came from a single source, rather than a bunch of different sources as in NightMan, it felt more cohesive.

 

[davejames]

What always bugged me about TGAH back in the day was the way Ralph always had to unbutton his shirt or pull out the sleeve or otherwise expose some part of his supersuit to the camera before he could use its abilities. I understand that it's visual storytelling, a way of driving home to the viewer that the suit is the source of the power, but it just seems arbitrary. If wearing the suit gives him powers, he should have those powers even if the suit is hidden under his clothes.

That always seemed weird to me too. He couldn't even do the vision thing without taking his shirt off. All I could figure was that the suit was solar-powered or something.

Speaking of which, I couldn't help but feel bad for William Katt and all the time he seemed to spend putting on and taking off his clothes on that show. I wonder how many times he almost got finished getting redressed before someone flubbed a line and he had to start the process all over again!

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of which, I couldn't help but feel bad for William Katt and all the time he seemed to spend putting on and taking off his clothes on that show.

Yeah, it just occurred to me the other day that they missed an opportunity for fetish fuel by having a woman get the supersuit. (They did make a pilot for a sequel series called The Greatest American Heroine, but it, err, didn't get off the ground.)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Speaking of which, I couldn't help but feel bad for William Katt and all the time he seemed to spend putting on and taking off his clothes on that show.

Yeah, it just occurred to me the other day that they missed an opportunity for fetish fuel by having a woman get the supersuit. (They did make a pilot for a sequel series called The Greatest American Heroine, but it, err, didn't get off the ground.)

I just checked that on on youtube and I think I can see why. There's also a goofy Greatest American Hero web series on there with a silly blonde girl in the suit as well but at least that one is silly self-consciously.

 

[Tom]

Well there havebeen times the suit has been completly covered and he still had superpowers, for instance when he substituted for the quarterback in a football game, had the full uniform on, helmet and all.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

[*]Connie Selleca: fairly hot, but her comic timing was phenomenal. I read a Starlog articles years ago: apparently she was quite the practical joker back in the day -- who knew?

I suppose it was hinted by the fact that she married John Tesh.

Or that she *used* to be married to Gil Gerard.

 

[sojourner]

Just watched the "Greatest American Heroine" pilot on youtube. Wow, they sure did simplify the costume. They got rid of the spats on the boots (which I thought looked cool) and tucked the shirt in to make it a true unitard.

The story of the pilot seemed to indicate the show was going to follow the MacGyver trend of later seasons and switch to environmental issues. Meh.

I thought it was nice to also tie it in as a sort of final episode for the original show.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

With all this discussion, and the skipping of episodes on SyFy, I'm actually thinking about the "full" series (including the not well thought of "Heroine") on DVD.

$25 for the set including S&H from a 3rd party Amazon seller.

It's apparently not super high transfer quality, but as good as anything we saw over the weekend.


Also, happy promotion to me.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I really loved this show and was so pissed off when they cancelled it. Connie Selleca and Faye Grant were (and still are) total hotties!

I still hear the theme song being played on soft rock and oldies stations.

 

[Christopher]

While watching the titles the other day, I was struck by the incongruity between the lyrics and the images. You have the guy singing "I never thought I could feel so free" and "Just like the light of a new day" and "Makin' all of my wishes come true," all very glowing and joyful, but it's over images of Ralph screaming in terror as he flails through the air, crashing into walls, and generally looking very unhappy with the whole thing. So the theme song's kind of false advertising.

Although I guess the song wouldn't have been so popular with lyrics like "Believe it or not, I'm flailing in air / I never thought I could feel such fear / I want to quit, it's constant despair / How can it be? / Oh, why did this happen to me?"

 

[Tom]

Makes you wonder if such a show could work today, it would have to be reimagined a little bit. Chuck is clearly a take off of this show only with spies instead of superheroes.

 

[davejames]

While watching the titles the other day, I was struck by the incongruity between the lyrics and the images. You have the guy singing "I never thought I could feel so free" and "Just like the light of a new day" and "Makin' all of my wishes come true," all very glowing and joyful, but it's over images of Ralph screaming in terror as he flails through the air, crashing into walls, and generally looking very unhappy with the whole thing. So the theme song's kind of false advertising.

Although I guess the song wouldn't have been so popular with lyrics like "Believe it or not, I'm flailing in air / I never thought I could feel such fear / I want to quit, it's constant despair / How can it be? / Oh, why did this happen to me?"

Speaking of the credits, every time I watch them I'm always struck by that one shot of him flying into the billboard. It's such a great and realistic looking shot (clearly being done with wires), and really makes me wish they had done more of the flying effects that way.

I can't remember if I was ever impressed by those green screen flying effects when I was a kid, but they certainly don't hold up well today.

 

[Christopher]

^Oh, that reminds me, in "Plague" they did a stunt sequence of the sort that I've always wanted to see in a Superman movie. Bill was taken up in a helicopter and pushed out by the bad guys, and Ralph flew up to save him -- and they actually filmed it with a pair of skydiving stuntmen! No cheesy Magicam, but actual live performers falling through the air. True, you could tell that "Ralph" suddenly had a ripcord attached to his costume and had a parachute pack badly camouflaged under his cape, but still, they ponied up the budget for an honest-to-goodness aerial stunt. And that made up for a lot of the Magicam.

 

[davejames]

Yeah it was cool that they did that, but the drawback was that the greenscreen FX now looked even MORE fake in comparison.

 

[Christopher]

Bluescreen, actually. Green didn't become the standard color until sometime in the '90s. With video effects, you can use any color for chromakey, but blue was the standard from film effects and that generally carried over into video as well.

 

[Samurai8472]

^Oh, that reminds me, in "Plague" they did a stunt sequence of the sort that I've always wanted to see in a Superman movie. Bill was taken up in a helicopter and pushed out by the bad guys, and Ralph flew up to save him -- and they actually filmed it with a pair of skydiving stuntmen! No cheesy Magicam, but actual live performers falling through the air. True, you could tell that "Ralph" suddenly had a ripcord attached to his costume and had a parachute pack badly camouflaged under his cape, but still, they ponied up the budget for an honest-to-goodness aerial stunt. And that made up for a lot of the Magicam.

Ah the days when you could get away with a slow country ballad playing while the hero saves his best friend

Skip to 4:44

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL8m3VISTec

There's that rip cord on the right leg but they did it