User Reviews

"Incredible Hulk" meets "Car Wash" meets standard 70's urban-action movie plot..

David is the "minority" in this plot, working at an inner-city car wash.. there's the stock "militant" who has a problem in general with "Whitey".. also a younger kid, who's a type-1 diabetic, looking after himself.. the main threat involves a drug lord who asserts himself into the lives of the locals..

there are too many subplots here.. the one about the young kids is fine, but there's also another guy who's on parole, and who nervously points a gun at the hulk in the climax-- but doesn't shoot-- this episode features the line "now that's what I call a colored man"-- referring to the Hulk, of course..

a drug lord's pet black panther is named "Huey"-- presumably a pun on the radical activist Huey P. Newton..

Ernie Hudson plays a heavy here-- he would go on to play the heroic Winston in the "Ghostbusters" movies, also the HBO series "Oz", and more..

David Banner(Bill Bixby) is working at a car wash in a mostly black neighborhood. David only wants to earn a living, caring nothing about skin color, though a co-worker initially dislikes him for it, he comes to change his mind when he learns David has medical experience, since his kid brother is a diabetic whose medicine is paid for by a drug dealer who uses him, and David becomes determined to help his new friends, as the Hulk takes on the drug gang, and scare off a hungry black panther named Huey... Amusing yet serious episode tackles race relations in a tasteful, intelligent manner, and good-hearted David is at his best despite the pummeling he inevitably takes...

The standout feature of this episode is that David is the only non- African American character in the whole cast. Don't get nervous, though; though the race issue is brought up, it's not the driving theme. Black characters are allowed to simply be themselves, not mere representatives of their genetic grouping.

So why did I say the standout feature of the ep is all the black people? Well, in part because there's a fair amount of blaxploitation stylistics here, and in part because aside from those stylistics, this is a by-the-numbers episode. David works a small- time job (washing cars), makes a few friends, one of the friends has a problem (he's a 16-year-old illegally acting as his diabetic little brother's guardian), and they all run afoul of this week's gangster. The only thing missing is a love interest for David.

It mostly works very well, mind you. David does an even better than usual job as a father figure in his dealings with the 16-year-old guardian and his bro, and the considerable-sized cast are all given their own distinctive characterizations. The scenes are entertaining, and the dialogue works.

However, there are two humongous plot holes. Halfway through, the gangster has his head thug beat up David - for no reason at all! You get the sense that after a lot of head-scratching, the writers just shrugged and said, "Well, we've got to get some action moving in this episode *somehow*." Second, at the end the gangster pressures David's friend to deliver some explosives set to go off in 20 minutes. The explosives never go off, and we aren't told why.

The Incredible Hulk was part my teenager days around 1978 when it was first aired on Globo TV it was an great successful series at this time, not so serious of course but enjoyable, in this episode is pretty decent blaxploitation episode about David working on a Car Wash where he made a friendship among Nigros co-works and end up faces a drug dealer who don't like him for helping a diabetic kid and his brother who he intent to use as delivery boy, the highlights on this episode is a black panther called Fantine how beautiful girl played by Rana Ford also Ernie Hudson in a role as bad guy.