Bill Bixby, I owe you an apology

Back when CBS’ The Incredible Hulk was on the air, I was in college. I largely skipped it but caught one episode when I was home on break. I didn’t care for it.

The plot of “Never Give a Trucker an Even Break” has David Banner (Bill Bixby) unwittingly embroiled in a battle between a pretty trucker (Jennifer Darling) and a gang of hijackers — a battle the latter would win except David keeps getting angry and hulking out. It struck me as a story that could fit into any of TV’s wandering-hero series, except with the Hulk as a deus ex machina.

Wandering heroes were a thing in the 1960s. Route 66. Then Came Bronson. Run, Buddy Run. Characters criss-crossing the country, dropping into small towns or big cities, then moving on; I’m not sure if it was the zeitgeist or the flexibility it gave writers in terms of stories but it was way popular.

Most significant for the purpose of this post was The Fugitive, which ran from 1963 to 1967. Richard Kimble, convicted of the murder of his wife, travels across country hunting the one-armed man who really killed her, pursued by the cop who thinks Kimble’s guilty as sin. That template — wandering hero is both pursuer and pursued — would inspire lots of later specfic show, including The Immortal, The Phoenix, Starman and a bunch of shows that never got past the pilot movie stage.

Rewatching The Incredible Hulk for Jekyll and Hyde, I like it much, much better. I wonder if that’s because wandering heroes, particularly the Fugitive-knockoff type, aren’t as much of a thing any more? But definitely it’s much superior to my memory of it. That’s all the more impressive given that producer Kenneth Johnson wasn’t at all enthused about doing a comic book show. He didn’t like the “incredible Hulk” name, didn’t like Bruce Banner’s alliterative moniker (hence changing his given name to David) and didn’t want it to look too comic-book. Nevertheless, he made a good show out of it.

A lot of that is due to Bill Bixby in the lead (with Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk of course). He’s a good actor and really radiates decency. As my fellow Atomic Junk shop blogger Greg Hatcher (now deceased, alas) puts it, his first thought when he recovers from hulking out is “what did I break this time? Who did I hurt?” The trucker episode works because he spends much of it with this baffled smile reflecting that he has no idea what the heck is going on.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1977) was the movie that started it all. A year ago David lost his beloved wife (Lara Parker of Dark Shadows) in a car crash. Since then he and research partner Elaina (Susan Sullivan) have been researching the question of how some people exhibit superhuman strength in a crisis enabling them to save lives, because David would very much like to know why he couldn’t do that. It turns out to be a combination of genetics — David has the same DNA element as the “lift the car off my kid” people — and gamma radiation from sunspots (not hitting David at the time). David decides to test himself late at night by using a gamma-radiation device to dose himself (the one weak moment — I don’t buy he couldn’t have waited) but it’s wired to give off way more radiation than the dial says.

Later, when David’s driving home in pouring rain, his car gets a flat. He gets out to change it, gets increasingly frustrated and suddenly he changes … the Hulk is born.

By the end of the movie, thanks to an unwitting screw up by tabloid reporter Jack McGee (Jack Colvin), Elaina’s dead, the Hulk is blamed for killing both her and David and Dr. Banner is on the run, searching for a cure. McGee, as we learn in subsequent stories, is in pursuit.

It’s a good movie, well acted, mostly effective special effects and the Hulk shows more power than I remembered. It pointedly sets up that for all his rage, the Hulk is still David and “David Banner doesn’t kill.” The Hulk never punches anyone, just throws them aside (which is bad enough but it’s easier to believe they’ll walk away)

The follow up movie A Death in the Family, AKA Return of the Hulk, is underwhelming. David gets a gig working on a paraplegic young woman’s estate, only to discover her widowed stepmom is paying the woman’s doctor to poison her (the real reason she can’t walk). It’s very much a stock Wandering Hero story and made me think I was right to avoid the show.

No, I wasn’t. Johnson and his writers (he wrote some shows, not all), and Bixby’s performance manage to make the shows absorbing. Even the Hulk is more than the deus ex I thought; multiple episodes show that like his comic-book counterpart he’s capable of being tender and protective in many situations. And his feats of strength, if not up to the comics, are pretty impressive. There’s a reason it ran five seasons when other Marvel attempts to hit live-action TV flatlined.

The Wandering Hero aspect does have its drawbacks, particularly as I had to binge the first season. Some sketchy geography (this week in NYC, next week in San Diego!). Too many romances, all the more awkward when he’s still grieving his beloved wife and then Elaina. McGee has little purpose in most episodes other than a goad to keep David moving on. This aspect also makes me aware how times have changed: this was an era when you could walk in and get a job without a background check or providing a list of every job you’ve ever had back to your college days.

I may not get to more of the series before the book wraps up but having bought the DVD set I’ll definitely watch it all.

Art top to bottom by Jack Kirby, Marie Severin, Kirby again, Severin again. All rights to images remain with current holders.