The Incredible Hulk--
"The Psychic"--
San Francisco--the Hulk races along nighttime streets--with the police searching for him. Concurrently, a policeman chases two teenagers into an alley, where he finds one unconscious & bloody--at the feet of the Hulk. The officers considers taking on the creature, but sirens settle the matter, sending the Hulk away.
The following day, Annie Caplan sits at a switchboard, trying to warn a caller of some impending accident; her supervisor--tired of Annie's constant use of her job (Wright Answering Service) for her psychic abilities--suggests Annie find employment elsewhere. Before she departs, Annie has a vision of her supervisor spilling coffee on her hand--which comes to pass.
While working at a market, David learns (from the local radio & newspaper report) of the injuries suffered by the 15-year old (Robbie Donner)--allegedly due to the Hulk. Grief and confusion registers on his face. Down the street, Annie witnesses the aftermath of the accident she predicted, and bumps into David. Through touch, she instantly sees visions of his alter ego, which sends her running off in fear.
Arriving at her low rent motel room, Annie is harassed by her landlord, and his offer of other arrangements (sex is implied) to make up for the rent she owes. On top of that, she reads a letter from a Dr. Charles Faulkner, warning her about detectives locating her. Awash with despair, she reaches for her prescription bottle, dumping pills in her hand, but decides against that dark thought at the same time she picks up
The National Register, with yet another Hulk cover story. Relieved that her vision was not the result of insanity, she blurts out her running into John Doe. The landlord thinks she should call the
Register and collect the $10,000 reward, but Annie refuses. If not for the money--pushes the landlord--then she should call for the sake of the teenager allegedly hurt by the Hulk. Bound to her moral character, Annie calls McGee....
At the hospital, David listens to Mrs. Donner's discussing her son's condition with the surgeon--
Doctor: "Mrs. Donner. Robbie came through the surgery, but he's still in critical condition. We won't know anything for at least 24 hours. Please, go home and try to get some rest. I'll call you myself if there's any change."
Mrs. Donner: "There's just me and Robbie. If I go home, I'll be alone."
Checking on Robbie herself, Annie spots David and immediately leaves a message for McGee--that John Doe in in the 3rd floor waiting room...
Hours pass. Annie nods off with her coffee cup about to fall, when David grabs it. Once again, Annie has strong, defining visions--this time of the car accident that killed Laura Banner, David at Elaina's casket, the deceased Caroline held in David's arms and something from the future--Annie and David hugging for some reason.
Knowing the tragic truth about Banner, Annie warns him about McGee. Before he can leave, Annie brushes by a man delivering oxygen tanks--and smoking, causing the vision of the man's carelessness leading to an explosion. True enough, the explosion rips a room apart, trapping the delivery man; David tries to free him, but is blown into a wall by another tank...and a transformation into the Hulk. The creature rescues the man & leaps out of a window--remembering David's need to escape.
Later, David visits Annie...with McGee having the same idea only minutes behind Banner. While Banner hides on the fire escape, Annie feigns not knowing John Doe's whereabouts...which McGee does not believe. Once McGee leaves, Annie explains her unusual power --
Annie: "You'd be surprised how often people touch one another. We give change, exit elevators, we crowd into supermarkets, and push our way down the streets. Not even intentional, but casual, as if it doesn't even matter. "
David: "Was there something special about me?"
Annie: "You were in turmoil. Touching anybody who is in an emotional state triggers the visions."
David: "And these visions, they began with what--an injury, an accident?"
Annie: "It was an accident of birth. And as I grew, so did the visions."
David: "But your parents must have known."
Annie: "At first I told my mother and father everything that I saw, but then the town's pediatricians diagnosed me as having a talent for storytelling."
David: "But the stories came true."
Annie: "Yes, yes. Sometimes they did. But often I would misread a vision, or I would only get a glimpse of the future, and that event taking place and then I would be punished for lying. So I learned not to get involved and not to let anyone touch me. It made growing up lonely, but at least bearable until I could graduate high school and leave town."
David:
"And then you came to San Francisco?"
Annie: "No, no, I...I read about a doctor at New York University. Dr. Faulkner studied me full time, and I audited classes at the university part time."
David: "Why did you leave?"
Annie: "Well, Dr. Faulkner and I were working with the police on some kidnapping cases, but on...on the last case, I read the vision wrong. What appeared to me to be a cave was really a sewer. By the time the police gave up on my lead, it was too late. It was a little boy. I can't stop thinking about how frightened he must have been and how he must have called out for help. If I hadn't been there, maybe the police would have listened to another clue. and that little boy would be alive today. Well, I...I ran away. I've lived in a dozen different cities under a dozen different names."
Annie finally reveals she almost attempted suicide, sadly ending with a line from
Romeo and Juliet:
"...past hope, past cure...past help."
...clearly applying to both. David stops short of touching her arm. Eyeing the newspaper, David is flattened by the headline:
"Boy Attacked by Creature Dies"
Completely breaking down, Annie tries to comfort David (and receives visions of the Laura Banner car crash / Caroline nightmare) with no success.
Annie & David attend Robbie's funeral; McGee enters the church and if not for Annie's diversion, Banner would have been exposed. As David moves to leave, his arm brushes hers, triggering a vision of David writing a letter with the same quote from
Romeo and Juliet, then preparing to jump from a fire escape. Annie tries to pursue David, but is grabbed by McGee, with a vision of a teenager shooting him in the back. Annie tries to warn him, but McGee is so surly over the woman not providing his all-important John Doe lead, he storms off before she can say anything.
Racing back home, Annie pleads with David..who is preparing to jump...
Annie: "David...David, suicide is not the answer. It not going to bring that boy back to life!"
David: "This isn't a suicide. This is an execution. The power of the creature has gone beyond the courts. I must be the judge and jury."
Annie: "You are not the creature, and you have a right to live."
David: "At the expense of how many innocent people like Robbie Donner?"
Annie: "But you're destroying yourself."
David: "Day by day, the creature has been destroying me...David Banner is dead. But I am taking the life of a fugitive. You know the curse may not be the creature that I turn into, but the man that I have become."
Annie: "No."
David: "Yes."
Annie: "David...we can go someplace peaceful."
David: "Utopia does not exist."
Annie: "I could help you, then. I could keep you away from the people and places where the creature might appear."
David: "With your visions?"
Annie: "Yes!"
David: "Even if it was possible, its only a matter of time before McGee finds me."
Annie: "He's not going to be a problem for you anymore."
David: "Oh, you don't know McGee. He'll never quit."
Annie: "David, I tried to tell him. By tomorrow, Jack McGee may not be alive."
This catches David's attention.
At the boxing arena, McGee interviews one of Robbie's gang member associates--Johnny Wolff--about the crime committed the night Robbie was injured. Outside, David sends Annie to notify the police while he tries to find a way in the building. Inside, Wolff's anger grows from McGee's suspicious questioning. In truth, it was Wolff who (accidentally) hit a blindsided Robbie in the neck with a board--not the Hulk. Knowing his fate would be sealed--particularly if the truth of his indenting to hit the cop comes out--Wolff shoots McGee with a homemade gun, sending the wounded reporter to the floor, bleeding. Banner breaks into the arena's balcony, shouting at Wolff to stop; the thug shoots Banner--grazing his forehead, and causing him to pitch over the balcony railing, crashing to the floor below...and transforming into the Hulk.
The Hulk's menacing expression is clear as he slowly walks toward Wolff, and rips the ring turnbuckles from its foundation, tossing Wolff to the center of the ring. The Hulk is not finished with him, but his revenge is cut short by Annie, who asks him to stop. The Hulk calmly studies Annie, allowing her to touch him (seeing a vision of Banner smiling), before running away at the sound of approaching police cars. McGee is sure the creature will get away.
Sometime later, David sees Annie
Cassidy off on a bus back to Dr. Faulkner in New York. She leaves the door open for Banner to visit if he needs her help. The two embrace, but whatever vision she received, she keeps it to herself. Left alone, a thoughtful David hits the road....
NOTES:
A powerful, mature episode (while not uncommon for TIH, it is for most superhero TV series). One cannot help thinking Karen Harris and Jill Donner--more than likely aware of the decaying Bixby / Benet marriage--tailored the George Arthur Bloom screenplay to fit the troubled couple, as so much of the dialogue between the two addressed the
actors as much as the characters. Knowing some of what Bixby & Benet were going through at the time makes this episode a somewhat difficult screening, as the on-screen emotion clearly had a real life thrust behind it.
Much can be said of the marriage of Bixby & Benet--its beginning, the death of their only child, or Benet's final year, but as noted weeks ago, I'm posting some of
Kenneth Johnson's impressions on what was happening to Bixby while working on
The Incredible Hulk--
Bill's marriage to Brenda--by now--was beginning--unfortunately, to sort of go south, and uh, it was making some tension in his life...which occasionally find its way out on the set--he was not quite the cheerful, happy guy that he was when we started the pilot.
Bix's own marriage was coming apart by now; his situation with Brenda had gotten very difficult, very desperate, and there was a lot of anger and upset beginning in his life, shortly after we finished shooting "Married." But again, he never completely let it show.
The marriage with Bill and Brenda unfortunately dissolved, and it left Bill with a tremendous amount of residual anger. It was always somewhat interesting to me that a man who played Dr. David Banner--whose cross to bear was his anger--could be as angry as Bill would sometimes get about Brenda and about their situation. Really, really dark, and almost venomous at times, though always protecting Christopher--his son--from it, and just trying to maintain when Christopher was around, but in private moments, Bill would confide in me his real anger at Brenda for various aspects of their divorce, and their situation.
The "situation" included the raising of their son (disagreements that a year later, would lead her to take the child on a trip that played a part in his death) and other personality issues with origins dating back to her relationship with her 1st husband--former
Donna Reed Show star and A Minor Consideration* founder Paul Petersen. Perhaps hurt, Petersen once described her as having
"...a beautiful face and an ugly mind." One can choose to believe that, but mutual friends and observers (pre-1978) have talked about Benet's other side--how much love & friendship was shared between the two up to a point. Still, at the time
"The Psychic" was filmed, the Bixby/Benet relationship was in a disastrous freefall, and it has been said that the motivation to cast her in the episode was not so much an act of reconciliation, but to illustrate to their son that his father & mother did not hate each other.
In-story, the Banner character's complex nature gains another wrinkle in this episode; in
"Broken Image," Banner was all too willing to suggest mobster Mike Cassidy treat McGee in his usual manner. Knowing Cassidy was a criminal of the worst kind, a clear mind was not going to believe David wanted to Cassidy to slap McGee's wrist in the event he was harassed by the reporter. Here, Banner attempts to save his tormentor, even as he fears (as expressed to Annie) that McGee will never stop hunting and eventually capture him. Banner is not a simple character and the series benefits from such a fascinating mix.
Banner's
"This is not suicide, but an execution" speaks to his sense of justice (or how he views it through the lens of his upbringing) in that he should--without question--pay the ultimate price for his "crime." Curiously, he wanted to end it all in this case, yet for three years he's carried the weight of thinking he could be responsible for Elaina Marks' death (as he's mentioned in a couple of episodes). While he was not as certain as in the Robbie Donner case (or so he thought by believing the newspapers), he had no other evidence for the lab explosion other than
an incident or action probably caused by the Hulk, yet he carried on. Perhaps Donner was the breaking point, as he said he was being "killed" by the Hulk every day.
In a sad, post-series coincidence, Benet's 1st suicide attempt (not long after her son's death) would mirror her character's selected methods--pills.
GUEST CAST:
Brenda Benet AKA Mrs. Bill Bixby (
Annie Caplan)--
- The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 1967) - "The Prisoner of Zalamar Affair"
- The Green Hornet (ABC, 1967) - "Alias the Scarf'
- The Horror at 37,000 Feet (CBS, 1973)
- The Magician (NBC, 1973) - "Illusion in Terror"
- Wonder Woman (CBS, 1978) - "Diana's Disappearing Act"
Nick Pellegrino (
landlord)--
- The Bionic Woman (ABC, 1976) - "Welcome Hone, Jamie: Part 2"
- The Greatest American Hero (ABC, 1982) - "Dreams"
Stephen Fanning (
Johnny Wolff)--
- Scared to Death (Lone Star Pictures, 1981)
- Highlander: The Series (Syndicated, 1992) - "Deadly Medicine"
- The Outer Limits (Showtime, 1995) - "Caught in the Act"
- Sliders (FOX, 1996) - "The Good, the Bad and the Wealthy"
- The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (Syndicated, 1998) - "Voices"
- The Dead Zone (USA, 2004) - "Collision"
*Link
That's a bit unfair. He may not have done much on his own, but he was an equal contributor to the success of Simon & Garfunkel. I doubt if Paul Simon would have really gotten much attention on his own, let alone the phenomenal success that he achieved.
