I am just so tired of snotty young punks and the hypocritical, hypercritical dismissive purist types who it seems can
never be satisfied with anything that isn't 110% CB-based. (Christ, even then they bicker & whine about which CB version is the 'real' Hulk). There's just no pleasing these whiny snots. I have no problem when criticism is
constructive. These folks though just blubber and screech for the pure joy of hearing themselves making noise. More to the point, even constructive criticism is a moot point regarding this show, since it's over & done with - and has been for 30 years!! I'd like to take a baseball bat and brain idiots who make ignorant A-hole-ish "green-painted muscle man"-type comments. God that irritates me; which is the exact response these troll-ish sorts are jonesing to achieve, I suppose.
What other manner of portraying a huge, heavily-muscled superhuman do they think would have worked back in 1977?!? Ummmmm... NOTHING! So shut the hell up! We (whiners & CB fanboys included) should thank our lucky stars that we were fortunate enough to get the likes of a serious-minded producer like Kenneth Johnson. No, he admittedly didn't care for (or really 'get') the source material, but at least he chose to do it straight and not camp it up and go for laughs, which is the route many would have chosen if they didn't understand the stuff or couldn't figure out how to re-work it to a TV budget and the restrictions that imposes. For heaven's sake, the man even stopped production well into the pilot movie and re-cast the Hulk role because it didn't look right. Otherwise we'd all have been subjected to Richard 'Jaws' Kiel as the Green Goliath. Ick.
And bless Lou's Hulk. Give him a break, folks. He didn't ask to be mute. That was Kenny's decision; because he felt that prime time TV audiences would have laughed at Ferrigno running around bellowing "Hulk smash!" And honestly, I feel he was right. The only viewers who might have loved it would have been kids / younger CB fans, but that's not the demographics crowd that keeps a show in production and on the air. Mainstream viewers back then simply were not as accepting. We are that audience nowadays, but the ones watching the Hulk in the late 70's were our parents (and grandparents), and they didn't know and love this character like we do. Sticking true-to-source might well have turned this show into another Adam West "BOFF!" fest.
Regardless of person opinions, I think it's a safe to say that Bill Bixby was the best thing to happen to TIH since the character was created in '62. At least that's one area where even lovers & haters seem to agree. Another actor could easily have wrecked what Johnson intended, so let's be thankful that Bix took it seriously and played it that way.
I think we'd all love to have seen more CB-based Hulk powers. Problem is how to portray them in a manner that looks good and doesn't cost a zillion dollars a shot? The TIH crew did the best work they could under the constrictive F/X budget they were given and the rather limited options available to them in that day and age. Remember, these were pre-CGI days, and many F/X people of the time were schooled on the Universal monster movies of the 30's & 40's, and techniques really hadn't changed all that much since way back then either. It was only in the late 80's when advanced make-ups like Rick Baker's became cost-effective for a TV budget, and the computer didn't became a tool for turning imagination into celluloid reality until the mid-90's, and the successful effectiveness of that is often heavily debated even today!
Okay, I'm hopping down off my soapbox now. Think I'll go watch "Death in the Family." Stuffed grizzly bear and all, it's still one of my favorite TIH episodes.

Peace all!