Monkey House Games

It's taken me a couple of months, but I've managed to watch all the episodes from season one and the first few from season two, about 20 in total.

I loved this show as a kid, so I am probably biased. But I've been amazed by how good most of the episodes are.

I had been really underwhelmed when I'd re-watched other vintage TV shows like The A-Team and Miami Vice. So I was girded for disappointment. But these Incredible Hulk episodes from 1977-1978 have been much, much better than I expected. It's also been very interesting to see 1970s footage of many famous places in these episodes. Times Square and Las Vegas were each notably different 35 years ago. It was striking to see the dirty, run down, salacious Times Square of my youth. (The fugitive Banner works as a janitor in an 'arcade' there in one episode.)

Granted, there are some patterns that become very clear when you watch so many episodes over just a couple of months: like the fact that Banner experiences a very predictable two 'Hulk-outs' per episode (without exception).

The DVD set also contained, as a 'bonus feature,' an interview with the show's creator, Kenneth Johnson. He explains that the show was very intentionally not 'super heroic.' Rather, he took the concept of the Hulk comic book character and modified it significantly by adding elements of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (i.e. the Hulk is a monstrous Mr. Hyde who can't speak, and is the result of Banner's own experimentation on himself) and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (i.e. Banner is a 'wanted man' on the run, chased by his own Inspector Javier- in this case a relentless tabloid reporter).

Thanks Doug!

I was accidentally introduced to Les Miserables as a kid in the late 1970s, when I found myself reluctantly watching a TV adaptation of it (probably on PBS) out of sheer boredom on some quiet weekend afternoon. (Ah, the days when we only had four TV channels, so lazy kids like me occasionally got force-fed culture on TV.) Despite being set in France in the 1800s, I found myself getting into the epic story as it went along.

The main character is a French peasant named Jean Valjean. He ends up spending, like, 15 years in prison after stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. Upon his release, he's bitter about the harshness of his sentence and feels rejected by the world (as an ex-con) until he's shown surprising kindness by a village bishop. This experience affects him deeply, and he vows to turn over a new leaf. Valjean moves to a new town, takes on a new name, and reinvents himself entirely. The story flashes forward years later and Valjean is now a successful factory owner and mayor of this small town (under a new name). But then one of his former prison guards, Inspector Javier, appears, and begins to suspect that this rich, respectable mayor of this small French town is really ex-con Jean Valjean. The story goes on from there, detailing many, many twists and turns (involving many other characters) over a couple more decades until Jean Valjean's death. It was pretty depressing, but was, I thought (even as a kid), an interesting dramatic analysis of whether it really is possible to escape your past and be truly redeemed.

Quote from Justice on June 23, 2012, 17:05The only other music that touched me like that - I mean, made my heart ache - was the music from the ending credits of The Incredible Hulk.

I really liked this "Lonely Man" theme from the end of the Incredible Hulk TV show, too Justice. A very evocative piece. I noticed that, when I did a search on ebay for "Incredible Hulk TV show," one of the items that turned up most commonly was piano sheet music for that composition.(Presumably for young boys learning to play the piano in the 1970s?)

Before I started watching this DVD collection, I really only remembered three things about the show (which I'd liked so much as an elementary school kid): (i) that famous line in the opening credits, "don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry," (ii) the "Hulk-Out" transformations into the Incredible Hulk, and (iii) the image of Banner hitch-hiking down some country road at the end of every episode, with that "Lonely Man" theme music playing.

On a related note, I was very interested to learn that, before he created the 1977 "Incredible Hulk" TV show, Kenneth Johnson worked on "The Six Million Dollar Man," another show I think both you and I liked a lot.