By Geno McGahee
David Banner (Bill Bixby) has found another job, assisting Leigh Gamble (Christine Belford) at a wax museum. Does he have any experience working at a wax museum? No. But who cares? He’s a good hire and you know they’re not paying him much. Besides, Walter Gamble (Max Showalter) is having a hard time getting anyone to take the job. There was a fire where Leigh’s father died and she has hallucinations that makes her tough to work with. Beggars can’t be choosers and Banner takes the job.
On the job, he starts to witness Leigh’s mental issues. At one point, she sees a mime come to life next to David. This is where the episode gets a little strange. Instead of switching out between a man dressed like a mime and a wax dummy mime to show just how whacked Leigh was, they kept the dude dressed as the mime there. So when David says “what is it?”, the mime guy is right there. Leigh should have tickled the mime to prove that it’s a person. No way was that a wax dummy.
Banner watches Leigh pop pills like crazy, insisting that she has to in order to control the hallucinations, but David was once a doctor and he smells a rat. He makes some calls and discovers that the meds she’s on is the equivalent to LSD. As much as Walter seems protective of his niece, he doesn’t seem to be working in her best interest. He says one thing and does another but Leigh trusts him completely. That control starts to go away as she becomes fond of David. She is so fond that she created a wax dummy of him, which was, once again, Bixby standing there. They should have went full dummy for this and the mime.
There’s a big deal on the table to sell the museum, but Leigh refuses. It was her father’s dream. If she was sent back to the institution, Walter could sell it and make a lot of cash. I think he’d keep the mime. He looked like a mime groper to me. Unfortunately, David loses his job after he begins questioning Walter, but he will not give up on Leigh. Like most episodes, David is there to save the damsel in distress and there was some chemistry between the two. She liked David…like every female character does in the series.
The truth comes out that the fire was not accidental and that Leigh’s dear uncle had a hatred for her father. Walter makes the mistake of attacking David and pays the price. The Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) emerges and breaks up some shit and rescues Leigh. Walter pays the price and will now have to deal with Bubba behind bars and an old man in prison doesn’t receive any mercy. They will run a train on him like any other newbie, especially when they find out that he’s an abuser of women.
The Hulk sighting brings Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) to the scene, but David has already left. Once again, McGee comes up short, but you would think that he would eventually meet up with David and things would go down. McGee runs the risk. If he pushes it too hard and gets David to turn into the Hulk, things would get messy. The Hulk would grab that old dude and shake him so hard that he’d give him shaken baby syndrome. Is that worth getting the scoop? I think not.
WAX MUSEUM is a good episode of the Hulk. It’s rather straight forward but some of the visuals are pretty creepy. The cast is very good in this and you can’t go wrong with the setting. I highly recommend this one.
Rating: 7/10
