Of Guilt, Models and Murder

DVD, The Incredible Hulk (Of Guilt, Models and Murder)

I still can't get used to the story being told in advance by teaser clips at the beginning, and this time it really did undermine what was otherwise a dramatically different opening to the story. For this time we begin just after Banner has Hulked-out, the man cooling off in someone's mansion. The signs don't look good: he sees a dead woman, the room wrecked. Can this mean… the Hulk is a killer? That's the central idea for this story, but it doesn't come across strongly enough. There's an attempt at breaking the formula, doing something different instead of the tried and tested 'Banner arrives somewhere, helps a lady in distress and goes Hulk-mad when she's threatened, uncovering criminals in the process,' that had worked reasonably well so far. I was only saying last episode how long it takes reporter McGee to get into the story since he's only summoned once the Hulk appears. They got round that this time by having the first Hulk-out before the episode starts, so he's in on the action much quicker than usual.

It was a good stab at doing something more with the format, adding a bit of a mystery of multiple points of view, each telling a different tale. But the trauma and deeply felt motive that drives Banner this week (or David Blaine as he calls himself this time), is his guilt over whether it was really the Hulk that crushed model Terri Ann Smith's back, or something more sinister. That first Hulk-out has everything you'd expect: a fight with dumb animals (seeing the dog sailing through the air looked more real than the usual puppets, so maybe it was a real dog?), Hulk smashing through a door and turning a room into a war zone! If we're talking different points of view, it could be said that there's either one Hulk-out (in the car crusher), or many - the pre-episode one is seen in flashback several times. As soon as we know Hulk didn't do the deed the story loses its potential, with only the double-crossing of Sheila to make up for the certainty about what's going on. Jeremy Brett (ten years after he was in an episode of 'The Champions' and still a few years away from his most famous role as Sherlock Holmes in the 80s), was fine as the suave head of a business empire, Joslyn Cosmetics, but once the truth was known he became just another ruthless enemy.

Did Sanderson not realise Banner had turned into the Hulk, or was he so glad to escape, and so terrified of the creature that he ran into the distance never to be heard from again? What about the recording on McGee's tape recorder? Won't Banner's voice be on there? It was daft enough that he could lose all his clothes but still had the recorder when he came to, even after the encounter with the crusher! It's like one of those computer games where you have a bag to put stuff in and there's infinite space, nothing getting damaged in all your adventures! And that supposedly weighty statue that Joslyn hit Terri with in one version of the story was seen to roll lightly away when Hulk picked up her dead body! There were also some technical flaws again, this time in the dubbed lines during the car crusher scenes which were cut abruptly short and sounded unnatural, and some scenes that were slowed down didn't look right - I'm used to it when the Hulk's on screen as that's a device to make him look larger and weightier, but when it's the other characters, as if for some directorial reason, it was a mistake.

I liked the flashback to Elaina from the first pilot, and all the stuff they did early on with Banner staggering around, wondering about himself, almost turning himself in to the police, so I just wish the multiple viewpoint idea and the head of an empire opponent could have become something more. I hate to say it, but I think this is the new low point, and that's very sad when it comes at a time they were trying something different and shaking up the style of the series a little - it wasn't that that was the problem, it was diverting from that into the same old story of Banner being locked away by the bad guys, Elkin the hairy heavy this time, who manoeuvres the old banger into the crusher. It wasn't trying hard enough after a good start. Disappointing.

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