This was one of the first series that I attempted to binge-watch, and it was during my senior year of high school. With Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno as David Banner/The Hulk, this was a decent show with a premise similar to The Fugitive. Throughout the show, you see David Banner trying to find a cure for his condition of turning into The Hulk whenever stressed or angered, and he is willing to go anywhere in the United States to find it. Obviously, this show is very dated because it was aired during the late seventies, but the episodes were self-contained and had some interesting morals that would often be solved by David turning into The Hulk. My favorite episode is probably the Season 2 opener, “Married.” The plot involves David as he finds a famous psychologist, Dr. Carolyn Fields, that could possibly help him control The Hulk, he finds her and reveals his true identity to her as The Hulk/David Banner. She tries to help him control his transformation into The Hulk, even to the point where they almost cure him, but the creature still thrives no matter what they do. David and Carolyn eventually fall in love and marry each other, but it is all shattered when it is revealed that Carolyn has a terminal disease that is incurable, and she eventually goes into the final phase of her illness. David and Carolyn get caught up in a storm and Carolyn gets lost into the storm and begins to suffer a devastating amount of pain due to her illness. David/The Hulk tries to find her, but it is too late, Carolyn dies in The Hulks arms and David is left once again without a cure. The Incredible Hulk has a good number of dramatic scenes and most of it is due to Bill Bixby’s acting as David Banner. David is still a kind person at heart and will do his best to help others, but he still desires to be cured of the creature and sacrifices everything, even his own identity to find a cure. What also makes this show good is the music by Joe Harnell, particularly the piano theme at the end credits, “The Lonely Man.” This is one of the saddest songs you will hear on television and it’s made even more sad when the character is eventually killed in a direct-to-tv movie, The Death of the Incredible Hulk. Bill Bixby died a couple years after that special aired, so we never got a happy ending to this character, and that honestly sucks in my opinion. I didn’t really finish this series as it got a little repetitive in later episodes, but for the first three seasons of this show, I was hooked, and I will always remember how good it was to watch throughout my senior year and freshman year of college.
