The American sci-fi-comedy television series The Greatest American Hero aired from March 18, 1981, to February 3, 1983, and starred William Katt, Robert Culp, and Connie Sellecca. It consists of 45 episodes in three seasons.
Series overview
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | |||
| 1 | 9 | March 18, 1981 (1981-03-18) | May 13, 1981 (1981-05-13) | |
| 2 | 22 | November 4, 1981 (1981-11-04) | April 28, 1982 (1982-04-28) | |
| 3 | 14 | October 29, 1982 (1982-10-29) | February 3, 1983 (1983-02-03) | |
Episodes
Season 1 (1981)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | "The Greatest American Hero" | Rod Holcomb | Stephen J. Cannell | March 18, 1981 (1981-03-18) | ||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||||
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Series pilot: School teacher Ralph Hinkley meets FBI Special Agent William "Bill" Maxwell on a field trip to the desert, where extraterrestrials team them up for a mission: Ralph is given a functional super suit with amazing powers (flight, holographic vision and super speed), and an instruction book . . . which he quickly loses. Their first assignment is to prevent an assassination attempt on the President. Note: The pilot was originally shown as a two-hour movie, and was the fourth most-viewed television program of the week. It was later split into two one-hour episodes for syndication. | |||||||||||
| 3 | 3 | "The Hit Car" | Rod Holcomb | Stephen J. Cannell | March 25, 1981 (1981-03-25) | ||||||
| Ralph's class prepares to perform Shakespeare, while he works with Bill to dodge professional killers and transport a beautiful and flirtatious FBI informant to testify against her drug-dealing mobster boyfriend. | |||||||||||
| 4 | 4 | "Here's Looking at You, Kid" | Robert C. Thompson | Juanita Bartlett | April 1, 1981 (1981-04-01) | ||||||
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Someone has stolen a secret gunsight ad Bill hopes to use the super suit to help solve the case. However, Ralph has his own problems: he stumbles onto his power of invisibility and is having difficulty controlling of it. To add to his worries, he is also scheduled to meet Pam's parents (June Lockhart, Bob Hastings) for the first time. Note: Two days before this episode aired, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Consequently, all references to Ralph's last name being Hinkley were overdubbed in this episode, so that his name was now Ralph Hanley. Subsequent first season episodes generally omitted mention of Ralph's last name. The original name, "Hinkley", was restored at the beginning of season 2. | |||||||||||
| 5 | 5 | "Saturday on Sunset Boulevard" | Rod Holcomb | Stephen J. Cannell | April 8, 1981 (1981-04-08) | ||||||
| Bill flunks an FBI polygraph test, and may be drummed out of the Bureau, on the basis of one question: "Has anything strange happened to you in the last six months?" Unable to tell the truth about the suit, Bill reluctantly recruits Ralph's students to help him track down a Russian defector, and trade him for a pardon. | |||||||||||
| 6 | 6 | "Reseda Rose" | Gabrielle Beaumont | Juanita Bartlett | April 15, 1981 (1981-04-15) | ||||||
| Ralph and Bill try to unravel a case involving secret military plans, a Russian submarine, and the kidnapping of Rhonda's mother. | |||||||||||
| 7 | 7 | "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" | Arnold Laven | Stephen J. Cannell | April 29, 1981 (1981-04-29) | ||||||
| Ralph is despondent after nearly wrecking a tour bus and is seriously considering giving up the suit . . . until he gets a pep talk from his childhood hero The Lone Ranger (John Hart). | |||||||||||
| 8 | 8 | "Fire Man" | Gabrielle Beaumont | Lee Sheldon | May 6, 1981 (1981-05-06) | ||||||
| Tony is hired to repossess cars, and unknowingly takes a car filled with arson equipment. When he is wrongly accused of setting fires, Ralph must find the real arsonist. Star Danny Glover cameos. | |||||||||||
| 9 | 9 | "The Best Desk Scenario" | Robert C. Thompson | Juanita Bartlett | May 13, 1981 (1981-05-13) | ||||||
| Pam and Ralph get promotions, and Bill begins to worry about his mistakes and mortality. Pam's new boss is mixed up with the mob, and they must rescue her and Bill's career. | |||||||||||
Season 2 (1981–82)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 1 | "The Two-Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Fast Ball" | Georg Stanford Brown | Stephen J. Cannell | November 4, 1981 (1981-11-04) | |
| Crooks needing cash to swing an arms deal bet heavily on a baseball game and beat up the star of the team they bet against. Ralph joins the underdogs to make sure they win and the gamblers lose their money. Guest Markie Post. | ||||||
| 11 | 2 | "Operation Spoilsport" | Rod Holcomb | Frank Lupo | November 11, 1981 (1981-11-11) | |
| The aliens return and tell Ralph and Bill that World War III is imminent: a fail-safe system, which will launch an attack on the other side if the country's been decimated, has been activated. They have to stop it, but unfortunately, they discover someone on their side is behind the whole thing. | ||||||
| 12 | 3 | "Don't Mess Around With Jim" | Robert C. Thompson | Stephen J. Cannell | November 18, 1981 (1981-11-18) | |
| Ralph and Bill are kidnapped by a tycoon who fakes his own death . . . and seems to know more about the suit than they do. He then blackmails them into retrieving his will and prevent it from being misused by the president of his company. | ||||||
| 13 | 4 | "Hog Wild" | Ivan Dixon | Stephen J. Cannell | November 25, 1981 (1981-11-25) | |
| When a motorcycle gang learns about Ralph and the suit, they grab Bill and force Ralph to help them get back at the Sheriff who humiliated them. | ||||||
| 14 | 5 | "Classical Gas" | Bruce Kessler | Frank Lupo | December 2, 1981 (1981-12-02) | |
| Ralph and Pam help his students rehearse their rock band for a show, not realizing the promoter plans to release nerve gas into the audience. | ||||||
| 15 | 6 | "The Beast in the Black" | Arnold Laven | Juanita Bartlett | December 9, 1981 (1981-12-09) | |
| Ralph finds a window into the Fourth Dimension while scouting an old house. Bill gets possessed by a woman's spirit, and Ralph must return her through that window . . . but therein waits a vicious beast, against which the suit is powerless. | ||||||
| 16 | 7 | "The Lost Diablo" | Lawrence Doheny | Juanita Bartlett | December 16, 1981 (1981-12-16) | |
| Bill learns of a lost gold mine and tricks Ralph and the kids into helping him search for it; they are met with resistance from the local thieves. | ||||||
| 17 | 8 | "Plague" | Arnold Laven | Rudolph Borchert | January 6, 1982 (1982-01-06) | |
| Ralph and Bill have to save mankind from a deadly plague virus that a fanatical right-wing military group hopes to unleash on an unsuspecting world. | ||||||
| 18 | 9 | "Train of Thought" | Lawrence Doheny | Frank Lupo | January 13, 1982 (1982-01-13) | |
| Ralph is injured after a head-on collision with a train and suffers selective amnesia: he remembers everything BUT Bill, the suit . . . and a terrorist plot to release atomic waste into a small town. | ||||||
| 19 | 10 | "Now You See It" | Robert C. Thompson | Patrick Hasburgh | January 20, 1982 (1982-01-20) | |
| Ralph is able to see two hours into the future, at which time Pam's plane will crash. | ||||||
| 20 | 11 | "The Hand-Painted Thai" | Bruce Kessler | Stephen J. Cannell, Patrick Hasburgh & Frank Lupo | January 27, 1982 (1982-01-27) | |
| During the Vietnam War, four American POW pilots were brainwashed to respond to a code phrase by a Laotian colonel. Now in the present day, someone is using them to commit vengeful acts of sabotage. Bill and Ralph investigate, but Bill inadvertently falls under a hypnotic trance, leaving the heroics up to Ralph. | ||||||
| 21 | 12 | "Just Another Three-Ring Circus" | Chuck Bowman | Stephen J. Cannell | February 3, 1982 (1982-02-03) | |
| Ralph takes a job at the circus as a human cannonball while trying to help Bill bust a crime ring that involves a phony dating service. | ||||||
| 22 | 13 | "The Shock Will Kill You" | Rod Holcomb | Story by : Patrick Hasburgh Teleplay by : Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo | February 10, 1982 (1982-02-10) | |
| While rescuing a stricken space shuttle Ralph becomes hyper-magnetized, resulting his being attracted to all things metal. Meanwhile, a strange creature aboard the shuttle heads towards Los Angeles, electrocuting all who get in its way. | ||||||
| 23 | 14 | "A Chicken in Every Plot" | Rod Holcomb | Danny Lee Cole & J. Duncan Ray | February 17, 1982 (1982-02-17) | |
| Ralph, Pam and the kids fly to a Caribbean island to visit a friend of Bill's. When they arrive, they find Bill's friend murdered and the island racked by a voodoo-driven revolt against the government. | ||||||
| 24 | 15 | "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" | Sidney Hayers | Frank Lupo | February 24, 1982 (1982-02-24) | |
| Ralph and Bill hunt for the sea creature "Carrie" in the Bermuda Triangle, thinking that the monster may be responsible for all of the boats that disappear there. Instead, they uncover a stolen boat ring. | ||||||
| 25 | 16 | "It's All Downhill from Here" | Sidney Hayers | Patrick Hasburgh | March 3, 1982 (1982-03-03) | |
| While on a ski trip, Ralph witnesses the murder of an American Olympic team member, who had actually been receiving top-secret military information from a Russian defector. He must then protect him and his girlfriend from a KGB hit squad. | ||||||
| 26 | 17 | "Dreams" | Bruce Kessler | Stephen J. Cannell | March 17, 1982 (1982-03-17) | |
| An act of kindness backfires badly when Ralph uses the suit to help a co-worker with a personal project. This leads his other co-workers to take daring chances for their own shots at success. Soon, he must hustle to prevent them from ruining their lives, but also to save Bill from a vengeful, recently paroled killer. | ||||||
| 27 | 18 | "There's Just No Accounting . . ." | Ivan Dixon | Frank Lupo | March 24, 1982 (1982-03-24) | |
| Bill convinces the parents of a kidnap victim to pay the ransom, certain that Ralph can recover it when he saves their little girl. Alas, when he does so, Ralph finds himself being audited by an overzealous IRS agent who is convinced that he took the ransom money. Meanwhile, Ralph and Bill keep getting shot at by a mysterious adversary with no connection to the kidnapping. | ||||||
| 28 | 19 | "Good Samaritan" | Bruce Kessler | Rudolph Borchert | March 31, 1982 (1982-03-31) | |
| Ralph, tired of simply pursuing criminals, decides that he wants to help people. He starts by helping a man who is being forced out of his home. | ||||||
| 29 | 20 | "Captain Bellybuster and the Speed Factory" | Arnold Laven | Stephen J. Cannell & Frank Lupo | April 7, 1982 (1982-04-07) | |
| An actor (Chuck McCann) who plays a superhero mascot in commercials for a hamburger joint has just learned that the restaurant is a front for an amphetamines ring. Realizing that could get him killed, he calls on a real superhero for help: Ralph. | ||||||
| 30 | 21 | "Who's Woo in America" | Bob Bender | Patrick Hasburgh | April 14, 1982 (1982-04-14) | |
| Ralph's mother (William Katt's real-life mother, Barbara Hale) comes for a visit, and announces that she is engaged to be married to Philip Kabala, a much younger man. Kabala has a shady background, though, and a bunch of thugs mistake Ralph for the fiancé. | ||||||
| 31 | 22 | "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell" | Robert Culp | Robert Culp | April 28, 1982 (1982-04-28) | |
| Ralph breaks into the FBI archives and helps Bill solve a number of cold cases. As a result, Bill becomes a hero and a target for a beautiful KGB assassin. This was the first of the two episodes that Robert Culp wrote and directed. | ||||||
Season 3 (1982–83)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32 | 1 | "Divorce, Venusian Style" | Ivan Dixon | Patrick Hasburgh | October 29, 1982 (1982-10-29) | |
| After an argument with Bill, Ralph quits the hero business, leaves Bill with his super-suit and is immediately shot. To save his life, the Green Guys are forced to reveal themselves, bring Bill and Ralph aboard and give them a new Instruction Book, as well as the purpose for having chosen them. | ||||||
| 33 | 2 | "The Price Is Right" | Ivan Dixon | Stephen J. Cannell | November 5, 1982 (1982-11-05) | |
| While attending a high-school reunion, Ralph discovers that the wife of a famous pro football player is being held hostage to ensure her husband will throw the big game. | ||||||
| 34 | 3 | "This Is the One the Suit Was Meant For" | Ivan Dixon | Babs Greyhosky | November 12, 1982 (1982-11-12) | |
| Pam is ready to break up with Ralph because he always puts the suit first. Bill gives them tickets to a tropical island to keep them together. Once there, they discover Bill's true plan: to use the suit to find a missing experimental aircraft. | ||||||
| 35 | 4 | "The Resurrection of Carlini" | Arnold Laven | Frank Lupo | November 19, 1982 (1982-11-19) | |
| A magician who was killed performing his greatest trick seemingly returns from the grave to murder his three rivals. Ralph must use his suit to out-trick the would-be killer. | ||||||
| 36 | 5 | "The Newlywed Game" | Chuck Bowman | Babs Greyhosky | January 6, 1983 (1983-01-06) | |
| On the way to Ralph's bachelor party, he and Bill are kidnapped and Ralph is persuaded to fly a mission for the president. | ||||||
| 37 | 6 | "Heaven Is in Your Genes" | Christian I. Nyby II | Patrick Hasburgh | January 13, 1983 (1983-01-13) | |
| Ralph must rescue Bill from kidnapping by a crazed scientist who wants to experiment on him to find out what makes him such a successful agent. Andre the Giant guest stars. | ||||||
| 38 | 7 | "Live at Eleven" | Arnold Laven | Babs Greyhosky | January 20, 1983 (1983-01-20) | |
| While foiling a plutonium robbery, Ralph gets exposed to radiation and discovers a new ability: he can mentally influence people. He and Bill must discover who is behind the robbery attempt and find the connection to a TV news anchor who plans to run for president. | ||||||
| 39 | 8 | "Space Ranger" | Ivan Dixon | Rudolph Borchert | January 27, 1983 (1983-01-27) | |
| Ralph finds that his newest student is wanted by the CIA and KGB after tapping into a Soviet satellite. | ||||||
| 40 | 9 | "Thirty Seconds Over Little Tokyo" | Arnold Laven | Danny Lee Cole & J. Duncan Ray | February 3, 1983 (1983-02-03) | |
| Ralph and Bill find themselves trying to protect a Japanese inventor after a terrorist tries to kidnap him and steal his invention: a powerful laser weapon. | ||||||
| 41 | 10 | "Wizards and Warlocks" | Bruce Kessler | Shel Willens | N/A | |
| Bill is called upon to find a missing Middle Eastern prince, but it turns out that the prince is playing Wizards & Warlocks, a game in which someone gives him a task to do. Ralph and Bill try to unravel the mystery of the game and find the prince before the potential kidnappers do. | ||||||
| 42 | 11 | "It's Only Rock and Roll" | Christian I. Nyby II | Babs Greyhosky | N/A | |
| After receiving a bomb threat, Bill is put in charge of protecting Dak Hampton, the lead singer of a rock and roll group. | ||||||
| 43 | 12 | "Desperado" | Christopher Nelson | Stephen J. Cannell & Frank Lupo | N/A | |
| Ralph and Pam come across some horse rustlers who steal a herd of wild mustangs, but Ralph stops them from capturing the prize stallion, Desperado. | ||||||
| 44 | 13 | "Vanity, Says the Preacher" | Robert Culp | Robert Culp | N/A | |
| Bill accepts an invitation to be honored as Man of the Year by a Latin American country where, years before, he was instrumental in helping them establish a democratic government. This time, however, Ralph suspects treachery and refuses to intervene. The Green Guys return and warn Bill that Ralph was right. This was the second of the two episodes that Robert Culp wrote and directed. | ||||||
| 45 | 14 | "The Greatest American Heroine" | Tony Mordente | Babs Greyhosky | N/A | |
| The aliens tell Ralph to find a suitable replacement for himself when his secret identity is revealed to the world. Much to Bill's disgust he selects a woman. Although this episode was created as the pilot to start a new series, with Mary Ellen Stuart as Holly Hathaway in the lead role, the spin-off was ultimately scrapped. | ||||||
U.S. television ratings
| Season | Episodes | Start Date | End Date | Nielsen Rank | Nielsen Rating | Tied With |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980-81 | 9 | March 18, 1981 | September 3, 1981 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 1981-82 | 22 | November 4, 1981 | April 28, 1982 | 44 | N/A | N/A |
| 1982-83 | 14 | October 29, 1982 | February 3, 1983 | 92 | N/A | N/A |
Home releases
At present, the following DVD sets of this series have been released.
| DVD set | Episodes | Company | Release date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Greatest American Hero: Season 1 | 9 | Starz/Anchor Bay | February 15, 2005 (2005-02-15) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: Season 2 | 22 | Starz/Anchor Bay | April 5, 2005 (2005-04-05) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: Season 3 | 13 | Starz/Anchor Bay | August 2, 2005 (2005-08-02) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: Deluxe Collector's Tin | 44 | Starz/Anchor Bay | October 3, 2006 (2006-10-03) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Series | 43 | Mill Creek Entertainment | May 18, 2010 (2010-05-18) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: Season 1 | 9 | Mill Creek Entertainment | May 18, 2010 (2010-05-18) | |
| The Greatest American Hero: Season 2 | 22 | Mill Creek Entertainment | October 12, 2010 (2010-10-12) | |
References
- (25 March 1981). '60 Minutes' topped even the umpteenth historical rerun of..., UPI
- "The TV Ratings Guide: 1982-83 Ratings History -- Soap Bubbles Rise, Several Veterans Part and NBC Renews Poorly Rated Masterpieces". Retrieved 8 April 2018.
- "The TV Ratings Guide: 1982-83 Ratings History -- Soap Bubbles Rise, Several Veterans Part and NBC Renews Poorly Rated Masterpieces". Retrieved 9 April 2018.
- The Greatest American Hero Archived 2012-11-12 at the Wayback Machine at TVShowsOnDVD.com