Incredible Hulk is on MeTV

[roadman65]

The Incredible Hulk, a late 70's and early 80's sci fi adventure is now on the Saturday Night MeTV line up.

I always liked the show, as I was a kid then when if first ran.  I was more interested in the heroics of the Hulk himself and his superhuman strength.  Of course I was always unaware of the real story at hand.  I used to think that main character David Banner should have confronted that sleazy McGee and told him he was alive to make an ass out of his reporting that phony story that he himself was dead and that the Hulk was a killer, mainly being accused of killing him and his girlfriend who really was killed by negligence of McGee himself being a nosy asshole in the original pilot movie.

I now learned they copied The Fugitive with the format and had David Banner, played by Bill Bixby in the series, moving around from city to city assuming many false aliases like Dr. Kimble did in the 60's series of the man running from the law to search for someone.   Though in this one Banner was looking for a cure to end his transformation into the Hulk instead of a one arm man that  Richard Kimble was searching for in The Fugitive.  In this one Banner too was a fugitive as if he came clean to McGee, he would have had some explaining to do to the authorities as McGee did such a job in his reporting that he has the cops believing his nonsense.

The premise of the David Banner/ Hulk thing is that Banner blacks out completely not knowing what happens when he is the Hulk.  Therefore causing Dr. Banner to worry that he is a menace  and, of course, out of control when he is in complete transformation.  Basically he indirectly believes McGee's claim that the Hulk is a threat which is why he is desperate for a cure to curb the reaction of his anger.  After all its his angry emotions that causes the Hulk to appear including a nightmare which transformed him in the pilot. 

Anyway, I am still into it again as the show is great along with an excellent cast.  Jack Colvin, I must say was a great actor to portray McGee as he was so good he made you want to hate the guy in each episode.  Then Ferrigno was an excellent choice to play the Hulk all together with Bill Bixby doing a great job in playing the wandering doctor in search of the one cure that can make him normal again.

[US71]

Then you had the TV movies with the first Thor and Daredevil...and Danny DeVito asKingpin.

[roadman]

Too bad David Banner never learned how to properly maintain the tires on his car.  It was a blowout that killed his girlfriend, and fixing other flats usually caused him to transform into the Hulk.

[Desert Man]

While we're on topic on MeTV and others like Ion, Retro TV/RTN, Antennae TV, This TV and Decades, networks devoted to preserve 20th century television and many of their affiliates are in smaller populated areas or have 2 affiliates in the same TV market. Locally, channels 30 from San Bernardino (Ion owned by NBC), 31 from Palm Springs (MeTv) and 45 from Yucca Valley (RTN) are quite popular with the area's large retired/senior population. MeTv has 3 stations in the sprawling L.A. metro area and one in San Diego. I believe a CBS/MeTV transmitter (29) from Bakersfield is in Victorville and Mojave.

[roadman]

Of all the retro-tv channels, MeTV is the only one that doesn't blatantly resort to using syndication edit versions of most of the shows they air - i.e. deliberately cutting or editing scenes (usually by eliminating the 'epilogue' scene at the end of the episode) to get more time in for commercials.  MeTV is also the only channel that doesn't superimpose the closing credits onto the final scene.

[PHLBOS]

Of all the retro-tv channels, MeTV is the only one that doesn't blatantly resort to using syndication edit versions of the shows they air - i.e. deliberately cutting or editing scenes (usually by eliminating the 'epilogue' scene at the end of the episode) to get more time in for commercials.  MeTV is also the only channel that doesn't superimpose the closing credits onto the final scene.

The M*A*S*H reruns MeTV airs are indeed the syndicated versions that have cut scenes.

[US71]

FWIW, I think it's Warner that has a streaming service for a lot of old shows (such as Search). First 30 days are free, I'm not sure how much per month.

[cjk374]

I remember that Friday night lineup on CBS back then: (all times CST/CDT)

7 p.m.:  Incredible Hulk

8 p.m.: Dukes of Hazard

9 p.m.: Dallas

Another retro station not mentioned above is GetTV. It is on Dish satellite. On Super Bowl Sunday they played a marathon of "The Life & Times of Grizzly Adams". I was 3 years old when those came out as new episodes. It was probably the only place John Denver's music was really used in any show or movie as much as in the Grizzly Adams shows.

[roadman]

Of all the retro-tv channels, MeTV is the only one that doesn't blatantly resort to using syndication edit versions of the shows they air - i.e. deliberately cutting or editing scenes (usually by eliminating the 'epilogue' scene at the end of the episode) to get more time in for commercials.  MeTV is also the only channel that doesn't superimpose the closing credits onto the final scene.

The M*A*S*H reruns MeTV airs are indeed the syndicated versions that have cut scenes.

I stand corrected.  However, having recently watched a few M*A*S*H episodes on MeTV, it appears that they have fewer cut scenes than the versions shown on TV Land.

[ET21]

Of all the retro-tv channels, MeTV is the only one that doesn't blatantly resort to using syndication edit versions of the shows they air - i.e. deliberately cutting or editing scenes (usually by eliminating the 'epilogue' scene at the end of the episode) to get more time in for commercials.  MeTV is also the only channel that doesn't superimpose the closing credits onto the final scene.

The M*A*S*H reruns MeTV airs are indeed the syndicated versions that have cut scenes.

I stand corrected.  However, having recently watched a few M*A*S*H episodes on MeTV, it appears that they have fewer cut scenes than the versions shown on TV Land.

What's sad is MeTV is slowly starting to follow the other channels where they butcher the episode scenes so it can fit the TV slots. MeTV is still the best, but I hope they don't go full TV-Land and commercialize the hell out of the classics

[cjk374]

Of all the retro-tv channels, MeTV is the only one that doesn't blatantly resort to using syndication edit versions of the shows they air - i.e. deliberately cutting or editing scenes (usually by eliminating the 'epilogue' scene at the end of the episode) to get more time in for commercials.  MeTV is also the only channel that doesn't superimpose the closing credits onto the final scene.

The M*A*S*H reruns MeTV airs are indeed the syndicated versions that have cut scenes.

I stand corrected.  However, having recently watched a few M*A*S*H episodes on MeTV, it appears that they have fewer cut scenes than the versions shown on TV Land.

What's sad is MeTV is slowly starting to follow the other channels where they butcher the episode scenes so it can fit the TV slots. MeTV is still the best, but I hope they don't go full TV-Land and commercialize the hell out of the classics

I'll drink to that!   

TV Land really lost all of my attention when they started making their own original shows vs what they said their mission was to do...play classic TV shows.

[wanderer2575]

TV Land really lost all of my attention when they started making their own original shows vs what they said their mission was to do...play classic TV shows.

TV Land used to have a fun and carefree style.  They pulled some wild stunts (wild for a TV network, that is):  For St. Patrick's Day one year, they broadcast a bunch of black-and-white episodes tinted in shades of green.  For Cinco de Mayo one year, they broadcast shows for a couple hours with Spanish voice dubbing.  When they "lost" an hour of broadcast time one spring when Daylight Saving Time started, they countered by broadcasting two episodes of a show at the same time, shrunk so they would both fit on the screen, with the audio playing for one and text captioning showing for the other.  The grandest stunt of all was when they essentially went off the air during the Seinfeld finale -- if you tuned in during that hour, all you saw was a card reading "We're TV fans, we're watching Seinfeld!"  The bean counters and suits finally took over and decided this was no way to make money, and TV Land has since become just another channel on the menu.

MeTV has a bit of the style (without the stunts, as far as I know) and I hope that lasts.  And I too hope that includes not showing movies or new shows.

What's sad is MeTV is slowly starting to follow the other channels where they butcher the episode scenes so it can fit the TV slots. MeTV is still the best, but I hope they don't go full TV-Land and commercialize the hell out of the classics

The worst offender there is the SyFy channel.  I love the original Twilight Zone but I refuse to watch the New Year's Day marathons because SyFy butchers the hell out of them, cutting huge portions of scenes and disrupting what's left by inserting extra commercial breaks where they were never intended.  I'll do my own marathons from the DVDs, thank you.

[US71]

What's sad is MeTV is slowly starting to follow the other channels where they butcher the episode scenes so it can fit the TV slots. MeTV is still the best, but I hope they don't go full TV-Land and commercialize the hell out of the classics

Notice how a lot of current TV shows have dropped or deleted the opening/closing soundtracks? MeTV, et al have been doing this to old shows. Or it's stuck in a lower corner while the announcer goes "coming up next..."

[wanderer2575]

What's sad is MeTV is slowly starting to follow the other channels where they butcher the episode scenes so it can fit the TV slots. MeTV is still the best, but I hope they don't go full TV-Land and commercialize the hell out of the classics

Notice how a lot of current TV shows have dropped or deleted the opening/closing soundtracks? MeTV, et al have been doing this to old shows. Or it's stuck in a lower corner while the announcer goes "coming up next..."

MeTV hasn't done this (yet).  They show the opening and closing sequences in full screen.