Ahhh, to be ten again. Friday nights in
my innocent youth were spent at my grandmother's house. My
cousin Chris, my younger brother Patrick and I would spend
almost every weekend there and spend all day Saturday fishing
and riding around in a  small aluminum boat being complete
fools. Take away the fishing poles and the boat and some would
argue that nothing has changed.
I digress.
The point is that the weekend really started at 8:00 on Friday
night. My grandmother would throw down three foam rubber mattresses
for us to sleep on in the living room and Chris, Patrick and
I would be glued to the TV. We would
watch The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard and then as we drifted off to sleep my grandmother and great
aunt would watch Dallas.
Yes, CBS had Friday night locked the fuck down!
Since then, I've caught the Dukes on TNN a couple of times and, while my wife doesn't appreciate its finer qualities, I still enjoy it (especially any scene involving Daisy in shorts or even rarer, a dynamite charged arrow). I haven't seen The Incredible Hulk though in ages. Getting this DVD set in the mail was like having Christmas in July (literally).
Nostalgia aside, I was looking forward to seeing this in
comparison to the big screen version which I have watched
more than a few times. Unlike many others out there, I liked
Ang Lee's version because I felt it stayed pretty true to
the depressing, desperate feel of the comic. Now, after spending
approximately twelve hours watching The Incredible Hulk
-The Complete First Season on DVD, I'm not feeling so
nostalgic anymore.
There
were things about the TV series that I remembered being frustrated
with almost immediately. For instance, even at the age of
ten or eleven, I remember thinking that the show was predictable.
From 1978 to 1982, Bill Bixby wandered from town to town getting
mixed up in one bad scene after another. Invariably he would
 get pissed off around 20 minutes into each episode and change
into Lou Ferrigno in green paint. Then he would change back
until the last ten minutes of each episode when he would get
super-pissed again and take care of business by smashing the
shit out of people and things. It's like fucking clockwork
and it's hard to keep an audience's attention through five
seasons when the formula remains the same with each episode.
So it was with some hesitation that I put in the first disc, thinking to myself that I had ten episodes and two pilot movies to watch. Fortunately, I had forgotten about two things that set this show apart: good writing and great acting.
Where most superhero shows would focus on the "super" power
of the protagonist, The Incredible Hulk focused
on the man. David Banner (Bill Bixby in some of his best work)
walked or hitchhiked from place to place, always searching
for a cure and never finding one. His  struggle
is the underlying theme to every episode and that's what makes
this show work. While none of the episodes in The Incredible
Hulk - The Complete First Season are award winners (the
show was nominated for three Emmys and won one), most of them
are strong nonetheless.
Before I hit some specific episodes, though, I would like to ask a few questions and get the cheap shots out of the way. First up, what kind of material are The Hulk's pants made of? While his shirt rips to shreds every single time (often in long strips which hang about his shoulders like some kind of cape), his pants miraculously remain intact. Sure, you could argue that because they're bellbottoms and probably polyester, they could provide some elasticity. All I know is that my pants don't do that when my groin expands significantly.
(Insert small penis joke here)
Secondly, what's with the 70s' penchant for adding a snippet
of zany music to a scene where it is completely unwarranted?
More specifically, ladies and gentlemen, what in the fuck
is with the xylophone music in what is supposed to be a drama?
In the episode, The Final Round, the protagonist, a
wannabe boxer, gets added to the card he's been dreaming of
and instead of some uplifting music as he celebrates, we get
treated to something similar to what plays when 50 clowns
climb out of a tiny car at the circus.
 Lastly,
what's with all the "shot from the floor" camera angles? I
mean, I can see why they would do it when they're filming
a scene with The Hulk. You want to make him look larger than
he actually is, but I swear there seem to be whole episodes
where every single shot involving a speaking character was
filmed by midgets. The worst offender of all is the episode Life and Death which also is probably the worst episode,
period. That was the only episode where at the end of it,
my wife turned to me and literally said, "What the fuck?"
It left major points of the plot unresolved.
Still, aside from those gripes, most of these episodes are reasonably strong.
The way I see it, not many people will be reading this review while sitting on the proverbial fence about this collection. If you are a diehard fan, you're going to buy this and it doesn't matter if I say it's good or bad. However, if you are a casual fan you're probably not going to buy the entire set even if I say it fellates you upon opening the shrink wrap. (It doesn't. don't get your hopes up). So, instead of going through each episode, let me just hit a handful of highlights so you can add them to your Netflix queue at your convenience.
Disc One: Pilot: The Incredible Hulk is pretty much
a must see if you like the TV show at all. It's the one that
set the whole series up and it's pretty well done. Also on
that disc is a  two
hour movie called The Incredible Hulk: Death In The Family which is not bad either. It guest stars Gerald McRaney
who is best known as the mustached brother from the TV show Simon And Simon. I could throw in a cheap shot
here about him being used to spending time around big green
things but he wasn't married to Delta Burke when this was
filmed.
Disc Two: Of Guilt, Models And Murder is probably one of the most outlandish of the episodes in that it finds David Banner acting like Jessica from Murder She Wrote. He wakes up next to a dead model and thinks that maybe The Hulk killed her. Overall, it's a weak episode but it does guest star Loni Anderson. 'Nuff said.
Terror In Times Square is also on this disc and this is one of the best episodes in the collection. David tries to help out his employer (a kindly arcade owner with a knockout daughter) by fighting off a mafia boss. The story and pacing of this one is fantastic.
 Disc
Three: This disc contains my two favorites. 747 was
the one I was least looking forward to but ended up being
my favorite of the bunch. David is on a plane to Chicago but
the pilots have all been drugged. If you think the idea of Snakes On A Plane sounds horrifying imagine some big
green motherfucker hogging the bathroom! Also on this disc
is The Hulk Breaks Las Vegas. This one is key because
we start seeing the effects take a small but significant step
forward. No longer is The Hulk content to just sling someone
around. Now he's picking them up and throwing them across
rooms. He's picking up construction equipment and flipping
it over. Also, this is the first episode where he starts jumping
great distances. It sounds like a small thing but it added
so much to the experience I had to mention it. The story in
this one is good also, with David caught up in a casino corruption
cover-up.
Disc Four: Earthquakes Happen is worth the rental alone. A great episode that finds David trapped in a nuclear facility after an earthquake hits. Great story and good acting.
How does it look?
The transfer is pretty good. Still, it's nothing to really rave about. It looks like a 70s' TV show.
How does it sound?
Well, it's Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. What? You were expecting more?
Extras
There are two but one is a repeat. The pilot episode has a commentary track by Kenneth Johnson, the man who wrote, directed and produced it. It's not a bad commentary but it's the exact same one that was used for the previous DVD release of this episode. If you have that already, there's really no reason to watch it again.
The second "extra" is just an additional episode (from Season Two) making its DVD debut.
 The
Bottom Line
This is a good set for anyone who dug the series. However,
the one big problem I have with this show is actually not
its predictability, but rather its lack of a true enemy. It's
all small time thugs and mobsters where, if there were one
overall arc where a villain continued to return, things would
be a bit more interesting. The X-Files had the conspiracy
to make it compelling, but let's face it, the reporter who
is on The Hulk's trail is less than threatening.
The three pants rating is simply because of the lack of any real new "extras".
Even a token interview with Stan Lee would have been nice.
Otherwise, for the budget afforded it, this show kicked some
ass and you should check out at least one disc.
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