By Geno McGahee
David Banner (Bill Bixby) has no luck. No matter what job he gets, he somehow gets tied up in bullshit and has to sort shit out. In most instances, I feel very sorry for him…just a poor victim of circumstance, but in the episode “TWO GODMOTHERS,” I have little sympathy. He took a job delivering and picking up linens at a prison. Sure, it was a female prison, but they can still stir up shit. They can’t drag you into the shower room and run a train on you, but they can still give you a bad day. Why would Banner take this job and how the hell did he get it? You’d think that anyone going into the prison would be heavily screened. Somebody definitely dropped the ball here.
Barbara (Suzanne Charny) and her two fellow inmates, Sondra (Sandra Kerns) and pregnant Lannie (Penny Peyser), make a daring escape, holding a knife on the warden, Hackett (Kathleen Nolan) and the prison guard, Grubb (Gloria Gifford). They lock them in a room and take off, but not before we see just how crazy the warden must be. When Barbara has her at knife point, she has a lot of joy. I think she thought that because of this she would have the right now to kill her and won’t that be fun. “I can’t wait to see you again,” Hackett notes as Barbara replies “Don’t worry, you ain’t.” Who the fuck says ain’t? I think they wrote in the word “ain’t” because inmates must be stupid and they had to portray them as uneducated morons. I guess I can’t argue with that logic. I’ve watched a lot of those shows like SCARED STRAIGHT and the inmates seem rather stupid, but they also seem like aggressive cornholers. I would not be surprised if a spinoff to SCARED STRAIGHT comes out called “SCARED SPLIT LIKE FIREWOOD.”
The inmates jump into Banner’s truck and they take off. Banner is trying to be the voice of reason, but Barbara is a total bitch. As they speed down a dirt road, David notes that it’s dangerous and Barbara insists he keeps on going. He does and soon the vehicle is incapacitated. They are now on foot and David really has every opportunity to haul ass here. All she has is a little knife and there are plenty of times where he could make a run for it. He just lingers around, which is in his nature. He is a busybody. He’s always in somebody’s business and here we go again. He had to know how this situation would play out. He could have been home jacking off, but he stayed for the duration. To his credit, he did assist Lannie through a river and wanted to make sure her baby was not harmed. Barbara, on the other hand, did not care and just wanted to push forward.
Grubb and Hackett, along with some other officers, are in pursuit and we learn the details of the background check on David. He was a “drifter. His ID belonged to a school teacher.” What school teacher did Banner jack to get that ID and did he put down teacher as his prior occupation prior to delivering linens?
“You were a teacher huh?”
“Yup.”
“Why did you leave that job.”
“Fucking sucked. Trust me, teaching is the sort of job where they bend you over and fuck you in the ass at every turn. I’m happy to be out of there and look forward to a career in picking up dirty laundry.”
“You’re hired.”
The group marches on and into an area that is marked for blasting. Barbara notes that nobody works on Saturday, which means that there will be no blasting, but David knows better. Reluctantly, he goes along and sure enough, the blasting begins and rocks start falling on everyone. Now, I assume these are fake rocks made out of Styrofoam, but they still hired stuntmen to do the work of the actors. The stuntman playing Barbara has a wig on that’s three times the size of his head. That’s right. I said his. It’s a dude. This would not be the only bad wig in this episode. In fact, they use stunt doubles for most of the actors here. Perhaps I never noticed before or maybe they just hired these stuntmen and figured they should do something rather than just sitting on their asses the whole time. Most of the stunts were rather tame and probably could have been done by the actors, but they erred on the side of caution I guess. My point is that they should have gotten a better wig company.
Here’s where the episode goes off the rails. Banner goes to help Barbara after some rocks hit her and we are about 30 minutes into the episode. So you know the Hulk is coming soon. Banner gets his hand smashed with a rock and he Hulks up. He throws the rock, but then the Hulk looks down and he’s bleeding and his hand is all fucked up. Doesn’t the Hulk heal immediately? Where is this change coming from? Instead of being the bad ass Hulk, he is nursing his hand and runs away, and this is where the real bullshit begins. I hate how they shove unrealistic characters into these episodes for comic relief…I guess. They’re never funny.
Hulk sits there wincing about his hand and some dog comes up and starts licking the wound. The Hulk smiles and enjoys. “Hulk need peanut butter.” Well, that’s the line I was hoping he would not say. He didn’t. There was no implication that this was sexual at all. So, I give the episode credit there for taking the high road, but when Hulk changes back to Banner, the girls catch up and they prove how really stupid they are. Banner was wearing a shirt with the linen company printed on the back. He was the only one there when the rocks fell. Hulk emerged with that same exact shirt on and runs away. They find Banner sitting with the shirt on and it’s totally ripped up as if a huge muscular monster wore it and ripped it to shit. His hand is fucked up. Hulk’s same hand was fucked up. None of the girls connect the two. They give a brief note about the “big green man” and then move on to another subject before being interrupted by the dog’s owner, Phil (John Steadman). Phil is also the worst part of this episode.
Barbara takes Phil’s hunting gun and points it at him, prompting him to say “you can rob me. You can burn my cabin to the ground. Just please don’t shoot my dog.” Why did he volunteer that he had a cabin? Why did he volunteer that he probably has money? Who the fuck wrote this shit? It makes no sense. Of course, with a baby one the way, Banner advises they go to the cabin, which is why they wrote in the cabin line to begin with but don’t you think that it would have been better if Barbara sort of forced out that information. “Hey you old cocksucker. You must live around here. Where’s your house. You’d better tell me or I will shove this rifle so far up your ass you’ll be shitting lead for a week.” See. Doesn’t that work much better than him volunteering the information?
As Phil leads them to the cabin, I noticed that David’s pants weren’t ripped anymore. He had a full set of pants. Where did he get these pants? He still has the ripped shirt, but his denim is immaculate. Can you refer to denim as immaculate? I guess. It just sounds weird. I guess it’s more PC than calling jeans and a denim jacket a “Canadian tuxedo,” but not as fun.
At the cabin, David begins talking to Phil and keeps cutting him off. I’ve never seen David this rude, but I think he’s just sick of these types of characters as well. In a rare idiotic move, David sends Phil out to get water and, as expected, Phil takes off to get the police. Hackett and the group show up and, after two babies are delivered, grab David and plan to tear gas the cabin. David is handcuffed but goes apeshit and tackles Hackett and Hulks up to save the day. Even though the cops told Phil to stay at his truck, he insists on returning to the story and tries to run the Hulk over with his truck, maniacally laughing and yelling “I’ll get you.” Hulk knocks the truck over but the old cocksucker lives and then says something really stupid like “what in tarnation,” or some other phrase used by backwoods shitheads. I forgot what he said and I don’t ever want to hear it again. So, I apologize if the quote is wrong. I’m sure it is.
Hackett is exposed as a crazy warden. The girls are brought back to prison and Grubbs is promoted to the new warden position. What’s odd is that the girls all escaped prison and they are being called heroes by the press, according to Grubbs. Why? Because she gave birth in a cabin? Look at the facts. The girls did the following: 1. Attacked a prison guard at the prison hospital to start the escape. 2. Attacked another prison guard and threatened the warden before getting into the truck. 3. Hijacked David’s truck and held him hostage. 4. Probably cost David his job. 5. Held a gun on Phil and held him hostage temporarily. Where are they heroes and why the fuck are they releasing Lannie? She was in on this too. Without her initial involvement, Barbara would not have gotten anywhere.
Also, how did Barbara go from complete bitch to a good person so quickly? She was ruthless and could care less if the rocks killed Lannie and Sondra. She ditched them at the cabin when they needed her the most. She eventually returned, but that’s not the point. She was no hero and should not have had that change of heart at the end. It made no sense. This entire episode made very little sense and was rather piss poor.
TWO GODMOTHERS is one of the weakest episodes of the Hulk that I’ve seen. Hulk being hurt was stupid, the hick Phil blew horse cock, and the story wasn’t anything special. Special props though to Kathleen Nolan. She was a standout here and Penny Peyser did a good job, especially with her interactions with Bixby at the fire. Overall, the cast tried to make a go of it with what they had to work with, but there was nothing they could do. I can’t recommend this episode unless you are a die hard Hulk fan that wants to see every episode no matter what. If that is the case, have at it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Rating: 3.5/10
