The Hero That Could Be You
Returned from play rehearsal last night, flipped a couple dips of low-fat ice cream into a bowl, and slipped a disc into the old DVD player. This one featured episodes from Season One of The Greatest American Hero. Remember GAH? It came out not long after Chris Reeve made us believe a man could fly, riding the cape of Superman‘s success. Stephen Cannell (who also produced the A-Team) had a simple but compelling idea: what if an ordinary guy was given extraordinary powers and told to save the world? The Emmy-nominated series, particularly the first season, was a delightful mixture of sci-fi and comedy with a wonderful cast and, for its time, great fx. Having enjoyed several of these episodes on DVD, none of which we could remember seeing, Barb and I and were struck by how good this thing really was. The dialogue is witty and sharp, the situations and characters believable. The theme song remains a great pop tune, capturing with cheerful irony the plight of the hero:
Believe it or not/I’m walkin’ on air/I never thought I could feel so free/Flyin’ away on a wing and a prayer/Who could it be?/Believe it or not, it’s just me!
We watched the interviews with Cannell, William Katt (Ralph Hinkley), and the still-lovely Connie Selleca (his girl, Pam). Along the way, we gathered interesting tidbits of information like where the unique emblem on the super-suit came from (a pair of scissors on Cannell’s desk) and the fact that Katt and Robert Culp (excellent as FBI agent, Bill Maxwell) didn’t get along well in the beginning.
What drew the principals to this show was the down-to-earth, human approach. Stephen Cannell, who disliked super-heroes and had no desire to make a “Saturday morning cartoon,” wanted to show an ordinary man in an extraordinary, not to say absurd, situation. In this, he succeeded. The theme of each episode revealed some aspect of human nature–greed, egotism, even hypochondria. The network bosses, however, wanted Ralph to “chase monsters through sewers,” as Bill Katt put it. They wanted huge world-ending threats and super-villains. Toward the end, the suits got their way and Katt thinks this is what killed the series.
Nearly thirty years ago, when the show first appeared, I thought the title a little odd: “‘The Greatest American Hero?’ “What’s so great about this guy?” I wondered. “He doesn’t like the suit or the powers or the responsibility. He can’t even fly right.” Now I see what Cannell was after and why the title is appropriate: The truest hero has always been a person confronted with an impossible situation, torn between security and responsibility. He chooses to shoulder the responsibility, like Ralph Hinkley does, invariably at great cost. By that definition, the Greatest American Hero could well be reading this post.
On behalf of a grateful nation, Sir or Ma’am, thank you.
