which picks up on the Red Hulk subplot as well as shows fans what happened with Bruce Banner/The Hulk after he/they were convinced to surrender to the Hulkbusters by "Skrull-Cap" in "NIGHTMARE IN RED", a Hulk-less drought of 12 episodes. This episode is also written by MAN OF ACTION without James Felder (who co-wrote "WINTER SOLDIER" and "YELLOWJACKET") and while it is still leagues better than "POWERLESS", it does occasionally have a few lame one-liners which give a hint that something is slightly off. The gist is that with the Skrull impostor of Cap taken care of, the genuine article as well as the rest of the Avengers want to get the Hulk out of prison so he can join their team again. Naturally, Thunderbolt Ross (Keith Ferguson) is whole heartedly against this with a personal vendetta against a hero which would almost make J. Jonah Jameson blush. Seriously, have Ross and J.J. ever met in the comics? At any rate, while Banner is bitter towards his former allies at the start, his transformations into the Hulk appear to be beyond his control, and the Hulk is even more out of control than he ever was. By sheer coincidence, the Red Hulk shows up after being "de-programmed" from Dell Rusk's employ and makes his pitch to join the team.
The "mystery" is paper thin; any child will figure out that the Red Hulk is manipulating the entire situation and by this stage that he's even Ross himself. Even the detail of a doohicky on Banner's skull which triggers his rage via remote would have been standard fare in the 1960's. Where this episode shines is in some of the character portrayals. Much like in Season 1, the genuine Cap sees the Hulk as a hero and will put himself on the line - even to the point of committing a crime - to back him up and attempt to prove his innocence. The Wasp, who was really the first to even try to befriend the Hulk in "THE BREAK OUT", is concerned in a similar manner and proves key to unraveling things. And while Iron Man seems like he's bought what Red Hulk was selling a bit too quickly, at the end of the episode we learn that he'd hedged his bets with a gadget of his own. Considering how much of a maniac the Red Hulk is, I genuinely wonder whether Dell Rusk had to even "brainwash" him like he did to Falcon and Samson; one would have imagined Rulk would have been gung-ho for Rusk's anti-superhero agenda. Which actually makes him even scarier, as that implies how close Ross/Rulk is to a genuine Nazi. Naturally, Red Hulk almost has half the team and the public fooled until he goes berserk fighting the Hulk and endangers civilians at the same docks which always seem to be magnets for trouble.
Thunderbolt Ross as Rulk here still reminds me a little of General Eiling in "JLU"; a gruff anti-superhero zealot who so hated the "metahumans" that he shamelessly transformed himself into a massive monster to try to destroy them. Given that Winter Soldier under orders from Rusk/Red Skull was the one who did the legwork of empowering Ross, this still counts as one lingering subplot from "CODE RED" being sewn up. The only difference is while JLU's "PATRIOT ACT" had a bit of a lame ending, it is completely satisfying watching Jeph Loeb's big red power fantasy get the beat-down he deserves here. Perhaps that's the REAL reason why this show was canned.
If there was one major caveat, it was that Hulk seems to accept Captain America as his true friend despite not knowing from a cell that he'd been replaced by an alien and it was the alien that sold him out to Ross in the first place. Nobody explained that to Banner or Hulk on screen; was Hulk merely the only one on Earth who figured out that it wasn't "the real Cap" because the Skrull changed the costume? At the very least, this show has managed to portray the Red Hulk in a far less decompressed manner than Loeb's original comic and while I feel empowering too many people into "Hulks" diminishes the original, there is some charm to the thought of Ross becoming so deranged that he literally becomes his enemy and doesn't see the hypocrisy. T-Bolt Ross is literally a guy who was so crazed he once interrupted his own daughter's wedding to Banner with a firearm in the comics, after all. If I had one quibble, it was that Cap's stale one-liner of, "This team already HAS a super-soldier!" sort of reminded me that MAN OF ACTION really was scripting this.
Bottom line? Any show which makes Rulk almost work proves it's quality to me. It is ironic since Loeb & MAN OF ACTION took over a segment of the season because among other reasons they wanted to make sure focus was on the "core movie Avengers", this is essentially the last time Hulk talks in the series. After sitting out twelve episodes, the Hulk doesn't appear until the series finale 4 episodes later, and even then only grunts. Fred Tatasciore has voiced the Hulk for Marvel Animation ever since "ULTIMATE AVENGERS" first hit DVD shelves and this series to me will always stand out as really giving Fred a chance to flesh out his performance as Hulk to do and say more than screaming. The fact that he got to play "Red Hulk" as an evil version was also fun I imagine. Much as Steve Blum IS Wolverine or Brian Bloom IS Captain America, Tatasciore IS the Hulk by this stage. Among the many strengths that "A:EMH" has shown to me is the fact that it managed to craft a version of the Hulk who not only didn't annoy me, but whom I genuinely learned to like and appreciate BECAUSE he didn't fall into his old ruts of talking in single syllables, hogging his peers, and being invincible. This won't be the end of Tatasciore's performances as the Hulk in animation, but I suspect it may be the last really terrific one.
