This will be a review of the actual pilot movie "Greatest American Hero," as opposed to a screed about the original music missing and an absolutely insane "review" by a person who did not even watch the show long enough to see the opening titles before he leapt to a wrong conclusion and threw the DVD set in the garbage!
This was a winning pilot to a winning series. Coming at the end of the superhero trend in television, with WONDER WOMAN and SPIDERMAN long ago canceled and THE INCREDIBLE HULK in its fourth of five seasons, this was a refreshing throwback to the traditional superhero with chest emblem and cape, boasting super-strength and the ability to fly. Was it a superhero spoof? I don't think so. It shows what it would be like for an average guy to get superpowers. And yeah, in "real life" people likely would consider a superhero mentally ill and an unfit father for a young child.
The movie does have a slow start, and I never liked the Ralph being a special ed teacher to a loveable class of Sweathog knockoffs. Didn't the producers learn anything from the BIONIC WOMAN, where the scenes of Jaime teaching her misfit class just ground the momentum to a halt? But at least Cousin Oliver isn't one of Hinkley's charges. A small consolation, however, as we get the tough guy who's really a teddy bear and his squeeze who everyone thinks is cheap and easy. Michael Pare and Faye Grant do fine in their roles, but John Travolta as Vinny Barbarino and Debralee Scott as Hotsie Totsie did it all before and better.
I wondered if scenes were trimmed before broadcast because where did Rhonda get the idea in one day that Ralph had a thing for her? It's Ralph's first day with this class, they go on a spontaneous field trip into the desert, and Rhonda implies to Ralph they have something going on. Huh? Where did that come from? And how does a teacher take an all-day into the night field trip with his class without pesky formalities like permission slips?
Okay, that field trip was a necessary plot device to introduce fast-draw Bill Maxwell and also set up the Close Encounter of the Third Kind. That whole scene was awesome! So efficient and so effective! A nice touch was having Bill's partner John Mackie reappear, which made sense of the seemingly senseless and irrelevant pre-credit scene with the dune buggy chase. What leapt out to me was the moving moment where Bill and John say goodbye by pressing their hands together through the glass, a scene which presaged by a year its reappearing just as meaningfully at the climax of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.
Oh, back to the "skinheads" chasing the black guy that an earlier critic completely misread as some racist scenario. It wasn't. That scene was meant to evoke the Charles Manson "Family," for whom shaved heads and dune buggies were hallmarks. The Christian lingo and singing indicated their religious zeal and devotion to their false messiah, Nelson Corey. John Mackie wasn't chased down and murdered because he was black, but because he was an FBI agent getting too close to uncovering Corey's plot to overthrow the United States government. Black "skinheads" are seen in Corey's mansion headquarters later in the show.
So Ralph gets the suit, Bill flips out and drives off, and Ralph drops the instruction manual. A lot happens and the pace is brisk. Pam is kinda lurking in the background for the first half. Little Kevin Hinkley doesn't get to do much at all, though his enjoying SUPERFRIENDS on a Saturday morning does play a pivotal role in emboldening Ralph to step and into the role fate has cast him to play. The scene with the little kid teaching Ralph how to fly was a fun one, and I suspect inspired similar scenes in the 2019 film SHAZAM.
Connie Selleca as Pam is perfectly cast. She plays well the straight woman to the two clowns that are William Katt and Robert Culp. Pam's getting a slow grip on this radical shift in her relationship with Ralph unfolded naturally. I liked how she would think of how her parents will react to the funny suit. Very real reactions that came along as she pondered in her heart all the ramifications of Ralph's new calling.
Guaranteed to puncture with levity any soap opera melodrama is Bill Maxwell, played with aplomb by Robert Culp, late of I SPY and no stranger to playing hardbitten and world-weary tough guys with a comic touch. Bill is no superspy, however, and I appreciated his toggling between take-charge bravado and vulnerability, needing a few swigs of rye in the boy's room to brace himself for this bold venture into the superhero business.
The pilot's plot is standard billionaire megalomaniac with a private militia planning to overthrow the government stuff. It's really just a plot to hang all the characters onto, and is upended in short order by Ralph, Bill, and an assault-weapon-wielding Pam. Add "girl with a gun" to the episode's keywords!
The closing musical interlude with Ralph flying and marveling--no pun intended--at his newfound powers played out perfectly with Joey Scarbury's theme song. Was "Rocket Man" there originally? A great song (especially when performed by William Shatner), but it would not fit in that scene or any other one.
Noteworthy among the guest cast is Jeff MacKay as the arresting police officer. He shines in his small part. I smiled thinking of Corky, the quirky character he would soon be playing on the 1982-83 series TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY.
A fun, action-packed and lighthearted TV film and a successful launch to the 44-episode series (please, let us not discuss the ill-conceived, ill-fated, and noncanonical forty-fifth episode, "The Greatest American Heroine")!
PS: I was in eighth grade when this show premiered in March of 1981. I was also a committed comic book collector. So why didn't I watch this show regularly? I saw a handful of episodes along the way. I thought perhaps it was up against a favorite series of mine, but looking over the prime-time schedules confirms it wasn't. This more-than-midseason replacement series had a brief first season of nine episodes, airing against ENOS and REAL PEOPLE in the spring of 1981. For its sophomore season the show faced soft competition in the waning series REAL PEOPLE and WKRP and short-lived new shows like MR. MERLIN, HERBIE THE LOVE BUG and THE TWO OF US. For reasons unknown, in its third season ABC set the show up to fail, rescheduling it to Fridays against DALLAS and KNIGHT RIDER, then at midseason moving it to Thursdays against FAME and MAGNUM, P. I. ABC pulled the plug with five completed episodes still in the can. What happened?
Forty-two years later I'm making up for lost time and setting out on a summer binge watch. I'm curious to see where the show slipped and lost the chemistry and momentum so evident in this opening episode. Gotta catch 'em all! Yes, even THAT one! Comic book fans are compulsive completists after all.
This was a winning pilot to a winning series. Coming at the end of the superhero trend in television, with WONDER WOMAN and SPIDERMAN long ago canceled and THE INCREDIBLE HULK in its fourth of five seasons, this was a refreshing throwback to the traditional superhero with chest emblem and cape, boasting super-strength and the ability to fly. Was it a superhero spoof? I don't think so. It shows what it would be like for an average guy to get superpowers. And yeah, in "real life" people likely would consider a superhero mentally ill and an unfit father for a young child.
The movie does have a slow start, and I never liked the Ralph being a special ed teacher to a loveable class of Sweathog knockoffs. Didn't the producers learn anything from the BIONIC WOMAN, where the scenes of Jaime teaching her misfit class just ground the momentum to a halt? But at least Cousin Oliver isn't one of Hinkley's charges. A small consolation, however, as we get the tough guy who's really a teddy bear and his squeeze who everyone thinks is cheap and easy. Michael Pare and Faye Grant do fine in their roles, but John Travolta as Vinny Barbarino and Debralee Scott as Hotsie Totsie did it all before and better.
I wondered if scenes were trimmed before broadcast because where did Rhonda get the idea in one day that Ralph had a thing for her? It's Ralph's first day with this class, they go on a spontaneous field trip into the desert, and Rhonda implies to Ralph they have something going on. Huh? Where did that come from? And how does a teacher take an all-day into the night field trip with his class without pesky formalities like permission slips?
Okay, that field trip was a necessary plot device to introduce fast-draw Bill Maxwell and also set up the Close Encounter of the Third Kind. That whole scene was awesome! So efficient and so effective! A nice touch was having Bill's partner John Mackie reappear, which made sense of the seemingly senseless and irrelevant pre-credit scene with the dune buggy chase. What leapt out to me was the moving moment where Bill and John say goodbye by pressing their hands together through the glass, a scene which presaged by a year its reappearing just as meaningfully at the climax of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.
Oh, back to the "skinheads" chasing the black guy that an earlier critic completely misread as some racist scenario. It wasn't. That scene was meant to evoke the Charles Manson "Family," for whom shaved heads and dune buggies were hallmarks. The Christian lingo and singing indicated their religious zeal and devotion to their false messiah, Nelson Corey. John Mackie wasn't chased down and murdered because he was black, but because he was an FBI agent getting too close to uncovering Corey's plot to overthrow the United States government. Black "skinheads" are seen in Corey's mansion headquarters later in the show.
So Ralph gets the suit, Bill flips out and drives off, and Ralph drops the instruction manual. A lot happens and the pace is brisk. Pam is kinda lurking in the background for the first half. Little Kevin Hinkley doesn't get to do much at all, though his enjoying SUPERFRIENDS on a Saturday morning does play a pivotal role in emboldening Ralph to step and into the role fate has cast him to play. The scene with the little kid teaching Ralph how to fly was a fun one, and I suspect inspired similar scenes in the 2019 film SHAZAM.
Connie Selleca as Pam is perfectly cast. She plays well the straight woman to the two clowns that are William Katt and Robert Culp. Pam's getting a slow grip on this radical shift in her relationship with Ralph unfolded naturally. I liked how she would think of how her parents will react to the funny suit. Very real reactions that came along as she pondered in her heart all the ramifications of Ralph's new calling.
Guaranteed to puncture with levity any soap opera melodrama is Bill Maxwell, played with aplomb by Robert Culp, late of I SPY and no stranger to playing hardbitten and world-weary tough guys with a comic touch. Bill is no superspy, however, and I appreciated his toggling between take-charge bravado and vulnerability, needing a few swigs of rye in the boy's room to brace himself for this bold venture into the superhero business.
The pilot's plot is standard billionaire megalomaniac with a private militia planning to overthrow the government stuff. It's really just a plot to hang all the characters onto, and is upended in short order by Ralph, Bill, and an assault-weapon-wielding Pam. Add "girl with a gun" to the episode's keywords!
The closing musical interlude with Ralph flying and marveling--no pun intended--at his newfound powers played out perfectly with Joey Scarbury's theme song. Was "Rocket Man" there originally? A great song (especially when performed by William Shatner), but it would not fit in that scene or any other one.
Noteworthy among the guest cast is Jeff MacKay as the arresting police officer. He shines in his small part. I smiled thinking of Corky, the quirky character he would soon be playing on the 1982-83 series TALES OF THE GOLD MONKEY.
A fun, action-packed and lighthearted TV film and a successful launch to the 44-episode series (please, let us not discuss the ill-conceived, ill-fated, and noncanonical forty-fifth episode, "The Greatest American Heroine")!
PS: I was in eighth grade when this show premiered in March of 1981. I was also a committed comic book collector. So why didn't I watch this show regularly? I saw a handful of episodes along the way. I thought perhaps it was up against a favorite series of mine, but looking over the prime-time schedules confirms it wasn't. This more-than-midseason replacement series had a brief first season of nine episodes, airing against ENOS and REAL PEOPLE in the spring of 1981. For its sophomore season the show faced soft competition in the waning series REAL PEOPLE and WKRP and short-lived new shows like MR. MERLIN, HERBIE THE LOVE BUG and THE TWO OF US. For reasons unknown, in its third season ABC set the show up to fail, rescheduling it to Fridays against DALLAS and KNIGHT RIDER, then at midseason moving it to Thursdays against FAME and MAGNUM, P. I. ABC pulled the plug with five completed episodes still in the can. What happened?
Forty-two years later I'm making up for lost time and setting out on a summer binge watch. I'm curious to see where the show slipped and lost the chemistry and momentum so evident in this opening episode. Gotta catch 'em all! Yes, even THAT one! Comic book fans are compulsive completists after all.
