Seasons 2 and 4 kicked off with a movie-length episode with a relatively hefty budget and a big concept to hook viewers in. Season 5 settles for a regular-length, regular-budget opening with the more subtle distinction of being more fun than the average episode. Though I'm sure most would disagree, I'll gladly take that over a flashy but contrived and sluggish episode like "Prometheus".
This time David hooks up with an aspiring ball player named Joe. A crooked agent sets his sights on Joe. And we're off! Admittedly, there's a huge amount of silliness here. David hangs on simply because Joe wants moral support. Joe says it was the Hulk smashing into the room and wrecking havoc that clued him in to the fact that his new girlfriend was conning him. The villain's thugs resort to violence so quickly that you'd think they were on a tight schedule. And so on. Also, great an actor as Dick O'Neill is, it's weird to see him reprise the "drunken reprobate who redeems himself" bit so soon after "Fast Lane".
And yet, I didn't mind any of the silliness that much. Maybe it's because unlike the vast majority of the series, "The Phenom" is emphatically a "fun" episode rather than a "serious" episode. If nothing else, the brilliantly goofy sequence in which the Hulk hits one out of the ballpark makes that abundantly clear.
What makes this episode special to me is David's new response to his lot in life. Always before, he seemed quite happy to help others out with their personal problems. Which is great, because we need role models like that, and they're all too rare in modern television. But in this episode, David actually tries to avoid getting involved with other people's hang-ups, and when he fails, he takes on the task of Good Samaritan with a weary resignation that this is his lot in life. While this could have been dry, Bixby's delivery makes it humorous, charming, and utterly human.
