MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
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Just give him a hiatus where he doesn't have a quota to fill...and keep him away from hot coffee...and payphones...and taxicabs...and swingers....
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^And nightmares? That one's harder to arrange.
I used to watch Gore De Vol a few years ago when he had an Internet show. Maybe he still does, actually.
Good point. Even in the TV series, when David is sort of established somewhere (enough for supporting characters to be attached to him as in "The Waterfront Story"), one can theorize that he has not Hulked out for (at least) a little while, since he's not beating a path out of his location of the week.
...and drunks. He never plays well with the "Miller Time" crowd.
Honestly, I don't think the problem is stimuli, I think the problem is David himself. For all that Bill Bixby seemed like an easygoing guy, it was established in the pilot that David Banner has always had difficulties controlling his temper. Certainly he's tried to learn self-control since then, but sometimes it doesn't take much to set him off. Perhaps it's because of my own perennial difficulties with anger management, but I've always been inclined to see David's bursts of anger more as a character flaw than as an inevitable response to circumstances. After all, there are other people who would probably keep their cool better in a crisis, who would get more focused and disciplined rather than giving in to frustration and fear -- or at least who would keep their cool well enough to avoid constantly hurting themselves when trying to use a crowbar or a tire iron. (You'd think a medical doctor would be less clumsy with his hands.) And really, David knows full well that he can't afford to lose control, and yet he keeps doing it anyway. He's just really, really crummy at managing his emotions, despite a powerful incentive to learn. Sometimes he gets lucky and manages to go for a fairly long spell without having a bad day, but there will inevitably be another bad day.
Well, if he hadn't needed to fill the requirements of a weekly series, he certainly could have taken a more systematic approach to staying out of trouble and avoiding transformations, like Norton's Banner did in TIH film. I'm not sure David's problem is temper so much as an inherent recklessness...first the recklessness of his research that led to his becoming the Hulk...then choosing to jump into a Fugitive Premise lifestyle that could limit his ability to get a stable hold on his situation and focus on finding a cure...then being too eager to get involved in the problems and schemes of everyone he meets on the road....
But...wrong network!
Considering how dramatically a metamorphosis or two helps him to recover from gunshot wounds, lethal dosages, and crippling injuries, I'm sure that the Hulk would burn off a buzz real quick.
Good eye--went back to check, and you're absolutely right!
But...wrong network!
Considering how dramatically a metamorphosis or two helps him to recover from gunshot wounds, lethal dosages, and crippling injuries, I'm sure that the Hulk would burn off a buzz real quick.
Good eye--went back to check, and you're absolutely right!
I swear there must be a rule that every show has to have at least one horse racing episode.
This one was pretty good. I was a little disappointed they didn't address the cure more at the end. It seemed to work, at least a little, but we never got a mention of doing any more work or anything on it, David just left.
I was kind of hoping for twist when it came to who tried to burn down the barn and all of that, but there wasn't one.
I did notice one possible blooper during the scene in the barn. While the horse is rearing, it actually fell over backwards. luckily it must have been OK because it get right back onto it's feet. I couldn't help but wonder if that was actually supposed to happen.
In that scene was it just supposed to be that The Hulk was strong enough to control Rainbow's End, or was his presence supposed to have calmed him down all by itself?
This one was pretty good. I was a little disappointed they didn't address the cure more at the end. It seemed to work, at least a little, but we never got a mention of doing any more work or anything on it, David just left.
I was kind of hoping for twist when it came to who tried to burn down the barn and all of that, but there wasn't one.
I did notice one possible blooper during the scene in the barn. While the horse is rearing, it actually fell over backwards. luckily it must have been OK because it get right back onto it's feet. I couldn't help but wonder if that was actually supposed to happen.
In that scene was it just supposed to be that The Hulk was strong enough to control Rainbow's End, or was his presence supposed to have calmed him down all by itself?
Well, that's the point, isn't it? Because they did need to justify him getting really angry twice a week, the pilot established up front that David had perennial trouble controlling his temper. (It's always the quiet ones...)
Well, for one thing, he needs to earn a living in order to afford to search for a cure, and as a homeless drifter, he'd often end up having to take jobs in disreputable establishments, or take what he could get without being able to choose based on the temperament or character of his employers (cf. Harland in "The Antowuk Horror"). So he can't entirely help getting into situations where trouble is likely. Also, he's a doctor and a basically good guy, so he can't turn his back on people in need. That's not recklessness so much as selflessness. That's pretty much inherent in the Fugitive Premise (Richard Kimble was a doctor too), but empathy over self-interest is what we want in our TV heroes, at least in the '70s and '80s.
Anyway, it comes down to the same psychological principle I discussed in my comments on "Married" -- that you can't fix an issue with your own behavior as long as you focus on external factors as the cause. You can't control what the world will throw at you -- but you can potentially change how you respond to it, whether you let it get to you or not. You can react to a recurrent frustration by giving in to anger, or you can decide it's not worth the energy and just laugh it off. You can react to someone else being a jerk by being a jerk back, or you can turn the other cheek and not let them drag you down to their level. So ultimately it's not external factors that dictate your behavior -- it's how you respond to external factors. No matter what circumstances David found himself in, he could learn to react to them differently. And as long as he doesn't have mastery over his own reactions, then even a minor thing could set him off. So changing his inner life is more important than changing his outward circumstances.
Back then, maybe. These days it's underground fight club episodes.
Yeah, I winced at that. I do hope the animal action was properly monitored. I think that was required by then, but still, that horse did a couple of rather alarming stunts (the other being the bucking that threw the jockey), and that one was particularly scary. (Assuming it was the same stunt horse in both shots.)
I'd say it was a combination of being strong enough to hold the reins firmly and being intimidating enough that the horse accepted his dominance.
Banner's transformations have never been demonstrated as being the result of just having "anger management" issues--there's always an external trigger tied to an emotional or life threatening situation (to himself or others).
Some examples:
- In the pilot, his first Hulk out is caused not only by a painful slamming of his hand on concrete, but the reaction was compounded by his being extremely frustrated after his first gamma treatment did not seem to alter his strength. His entire research was built on the tragedy of Laura's death--which haunted him all through the period covered in the pilot. He's a man living in a state of perpetual heartbreak and a need to know the eternal "why" of his failure as opposed to others who succeeded, so his 1st Hulk out was not the result of a guy with a bad temper.
- Continuing with the pilot and "Married," his constant nightmares about tragically departed loved ones is a trigger with no anger / hothead association. The dream sequences contain frustration (at failing to save Laura), but the series has thoroughly shaped David to be a man with a deep-feeling, sensitive heart who--despite his comment to Elaina about not getting angry--was never painted as being quick to anger, or having trouble dealing with it.
- In the climax of the pilot, David is separated from Elaina; he spots her trapped under a concrete pillar, surrounded by a raging fire. In "Married," David was blocked from reaching Caroline by the dangerous, live transformer as he sees Caroline's condition spiraling out of control--essentially ending her life in front of his eyes. His reaction in both cases is more than natural, and not that of one with "anger management" issues. Who would not react similarly in those life or death situations?
- In "Death in the Family," David Hulks out as he's sinking in quicksand---his life seconds away from ending, and he's also frustrated with Julie's inability to overcome her fed disability lie and help him, but again, David's reactions and subsequent Hulk out are all the result of external triggers.
- The latest episode--"Rainbow's End"--has David Hulking out as he's being stomped, etc., which was enough, but its the threat of Jimmy seconds away from shooting his own daughter that is a natural trigger for the transformation.
That was part of my point...he made a choice at the end of the pilot to let people believe that he was dead and take on such a lifestyle, which made sense as a weekly series premise, but wasn't necessarily the best thing that he could do in his situation at that point...not if he wanted to avoid stressful situations and focus on finding a cure.
I tend to agree on the general principle, but David isn't always very smart in the way that he jumps into people's situations, some of which would be way over his head if he were just an ordinary doctor, and should ideally be dealt with by the authorities. Sometimes it's like he's practically begging to put himself into situations that will inevitably result in Hulk-Outs.
So I maintain that there's a pattern of recklessness rather than anger issues to David's behavior...plot-driven recklessness, but it is a through-line starting with the pilot.
The underground fight club thing is especially true for SFF shows. It's hard to come up with a long running SFF show that didn't do one.
No Animals Were Harmed has been around since 1940, so I'm assuming as long as the show was filmed in the US, it would have been monitored.
Okay, so what's the alternative there? I suppose he could've gone to the police and testified that Elaina had been killed in an explosion whose cause he didn't know, but there would've been an investigation that might've led to the discovery that he was the Hulk. And then you've got the government labs and the experiments and the attempts to harness his discovery as a weapon of war, and how many Fugitive Premise shows have been about people trying to avoid exactly that? We'd have ended up in the same place, just with Thunderbolt Ross or some sinister CIA spook chasing David instead of a tabloid reporter, and with his identity known and his face on countless wanted posters.
(Hmm. In the modern age of domain-awareness cameras and facial-recognition software, is the Fugitive Premise defunct?)
Maybe he could've tracked down a scientific colleague he trusted and gotten their help, but after just going through the tragic loss of Elaina, how willing would he have been to put another colleague in that position? Maybe there's a degree of self-flagellation in his choice to go it alone, but I still wouldn't call it recklessness. The original experiment, hell, yes, that was reckless -- but that was motivated largely by his unresolved guilt at Laura's death.
As he said here, he tries to avoid entanglements with the police. Nonetheless, we have seen a number of occasions in which he tried to contact the authorities, without success.
Basically, he's just a guy who can't stand by when he sees someone in need -- which is part of why he blames himself so much for failing to save Laura. Indeed, maybe that sense of guilt is why he can't stand by when someone needs help -- much like the motivation that drives Spider-Man in the comics (though not in the contemporary TV adaptation, since Nicholas Hammond's Peter Parker had no Uncle Ben tragedy driving him, just an arbitrary "I have powers so I will be a hero" origin).
Yeah, that's what I had in mind. But they've probably done plenty in cop/detective shows and the like as well.
That's a relief.
Something along those lines--Did he have any colleagues or family with whom he might have holed up while keeping his head low and exploring options for a cure? We learn something of his family situation later in the series, and we can infer from his actions at the end of the pilot that he didn't, but we weren't really let in on David's thought process. We just had to buy into it as the start of a series premise.
Not wanting to put others in danger is a sensible reason for why he chose to go on the run solo, but he's trading away the option of putting himself in a stable environment in which Hulk-Out situations might have been less likely to occur.
Yeah, that's what he said...as I pointed out earlier, it conflicts with what he often does. He's often very quick to get in over his head with career criminals and other shady types. They could have written in the odd beat where he weighs not getting involved but chooses to do the right thing...but as written, it comes off as a bit reckless, given his condition and the likely consequences.
Although, given what the pilot established about nightmares setting it off, that could never be assured. The nightmare angle was usually played down in the weekly series, except when it was plot-relevant as it was here, but the pilot opened with David's nightmare about Laura, then repeated it as the trigger for his second Hulk-out, establishing that it was a recurring thing for him. So within the context of the pilot, it's understandable why he didn't feel he could safely remain anywhere for long, regardless of the stability of the environment. His very presence would make the environment unstable.
We have seen episodes where he's hesitated to get involved, e.g. "The Hulk Breaks Las Vegas." But that episode also established that he would risk sacrificing his own self-interest to help someone else, even his nemesis McGee, the one person he has the strongest incentive not to help. After that, we don't need to see him wrestle with that dilemma again. We know what he'll choose.
Basically you seem to be saying that he would've been better off being selfish and callous. But that's not what makes a hero. We admire David because he does the right thing even though it goes against his own interest.
And think about it: Elaina reassured David that the Hulk would never kill because David Banner would never kill. If David were capable of being selfish enough to place his own self-interest over someone else's life or safety, then it follows that the Hulk would also care less about others' safety, and the consequences of that would be devastating. We'll see when we get to "Dark Side" and "The First" what happens when someone lacking empathy gets the power of the Hulk. So we can't have it both ways. The same empathetic imperative that compels David to keep helping out despite his self-interest also ensures that the Hulk will use his power for good.
That's not what I'm saying at all...I went out of my way to indicate that I wasn't saying that. But as written, he does get into Hulk-Out-triggering situations with alarming frequency, and from an in-setting perspective, we can question if his choices are enabling Hulk-Outs rather than seeking to prevent them.
Out-of-universe...yeah, it's a TV series premise and he's the good samaritan David we all know and love.
That's pretty much an issue with any weekly adventure series, though. Real cops can go through their entire careers without ever shooting anyone, but TV cops get in shootouts every week. Real astronauts only infrequently have to cope with life-threatening hazards, but it's a constant fact of life for TV space explorers. Ideally, fiction should be about exceptional, extraordinary situations, the instances where things go wrong. But weekly series have to treat the extraordinary as routine, and that always works against plausibility.
There's the old meme that it was crazy to have families on the Enterprise-D because it was in such constant danger. But any setting for a TV adventure series will face constant danger. Sunnydale High in Buffy the Vampire Slayer had students and teachers dying almost weekly. Hamilton Hill High in Batman Beyond had a staggering percentage of its faculty and student body turn to supervillainy. The title town in Eureka was endangered by science run amuck at least a dozen times a year, and there were plenty of kids living there.
That's one reason I like the modern trend to have shorter seasons. Facing 13 life-threatening situations per year is still pretty extraordinary compared to real life, but it's marginally less implausible than facing 26.
No argument here. The shorter seasons also tend to have tighter story arcs where a season is roughly equivalent to the content of a novel...so it's not so much a matter of 13 episodic adventures as chapters in a single adventure.
It's funny, because I'd just been thinking about how the premise of TIH might have worked in a cable-style short-season format. It might have given David's journey more "breathing room" for periods in which he was staying in stable environments and avoiding transforming, with each season's story being a larger "unusual circumstance" that caused multiple Hulk-Outs. Going back to the era of the TV show, a series of TV movies, rather than a weekly series, could have achieved the same effect.
He had no choice; Elaina's death turned his world upside down in that the explosion--and McGee's witnessing her being carried out of the lab by the Hulk--could not be written off. David popping up would automatically involve law enforcement, and even if the lab's owners wrote it off as an accident, Banner sticking around his home and job--while not being able to control his Hulk-outs would expose him to the general public faster than we see in his life as a wanderer.
Just imagine if he was at work, dozed off for whatever reason, then had a nightmare about Laura and/or Elaina...he's exposed, and in a highly visible environment, his life would go in the fugitive direction anyway, taking on a more serious meaning from associates either trying to capture him, or believe McGee's half-incorrect eyewitness account of the Hulk being the cause of Elaina's death.
Its a no-win situation either way, but hitting the road, and avoiding his former life that was so much a part of "the world" (or instant law enforcement, calls to official interested parties (think the 2-part "Prometheus") is worse.
You have to look at this from Kenneth Johnson's POV--David is an extremely moral man, and find it difficult to just stand by and allow bad things to happen--even if he's out of his depth in a situation. Johnson's sound way of making the audience relate to David was to get you to think of the question: "what would you do?" and hope (a successful hope, as it turned out) you support his willingness to--as you put it--jump into people's situations.
You are correct; there are no "anger" issues in the character as presented. His triggers are all things that would push anyone beyond their ability to maintain emotional control, hence this TV series' success in capturing the audience support, understanding and sympathy for the Banner character.
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