Co-starring: Hulk Hogan as Himself, Titos Vandis as Papa Kotero, Deborah Wakeham as Dicki Gordon, Michael Gregory as Sonny Carter, Sam Melville as Rocco, Lance LeGault as Colonel Decker
Written by Bill Nuss
Directed by Craig R Baxley
Hulk Hogan asks the team to help save a youth centre from closure.
This is one of the infamously bad episodes of the show’s entire run and it’s easy to see why. It was another guest star episode, the first of two to feature WWF wrestler Hulk Hogan. For the most part, the only entertainment value to be had is from witnessing the whole car-crash dreadfulness of it all.
The episode is built around the teaming of BA and the Hulkster and it isn’t long before they are in pursuit of the bad guys, leaving the rest of the team behind. The first half of the episode actually looks suspiciously like a try-out for a spin-off series with Hannibal, Face and Murdock reduced to making cameo appearances in their own show. It’s not strong on credibility either, as demonstrated by the early scene in which BA and the Hulkster discuss their Vietnam experience. ‘The Sound of Thunder’ it certainly isn’t!
An early chase scene (featuring two van jumps) is actually a pretty good set piece but belongs in a better episode. The plot is only touched upon in a series of badly written and exposition-heavy scenes that aren’t worth trying to follow. The villains are dull and one-dimensional and it quickly becomes very difficult to keep watching. Of course, Hogan fans are well catered for and he gets three fight scenes to demonstrate his unique skills, two in the ring and one in a warehouse to the almost-tune of ‘Eye of the Tiger’.
Truth be told, it actually gets slightly better in the second half with the arrival of Decker and the sidelining of Hogan. The team are captured and Murdock has to pose as a high-ranking military official to get them out. To their credit, Benedict and Schultz do try to get into the spirit of things but Peppard can hardly disguise his contempt for what is, by and large, a complete shambles. Indeed Peppard and Schultz aren’t even in the closing scene, maybe they walked off the set in protest? Probably not but you could hardly blame them if they did. 3/10
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