Misfits of Science in the 80s: Superpowers Before Superhero TV Took Over
Billy has a project. El has questions. Gloria has a pretty good idea what the two of them are about to ask.
It might help if Johnny stays to hear the whole thing.
Three people eat hamburgers and come away with superpowers. That may sound like I’m remembering three different shows at once. It was one episode of Misfits of Science. The people who already had powers on the show had to deal with the people who’d just picked some up over lunch. It’s the sort of thing you could try explaining at school the next week and get only as far as the hamburgers before somebody wanted to know what channel you’d been watching.
NBC premiered the series in October 1985. Dean Paul Martin was Dr. Billy Hayes, Kevin Peter Hall was Dr. Elvin “El” Lincoln, Mark Thomas Miller was Johnny B, and Courteney Cox was Gloria Dinallo. They had a lab, a few reasons to get out of it, and more to worry about than which one of them could do the most spectacular thing. At any given moment somebody had a question about where Billy wanted them to go.
The powers are a good way to recognize the show if somebody’s describing it to you. The part I’m happiest to find again is the way the four people sound in the same room. Billy thinks he can get somebody interested in what he’s just found. El knows enough to say whether that’s a good idea. Johnny may already be ready to leave. Gloria gets time to listen until she hears a reason to have an opinion of her own.
Billy and El had somewhere to put the strange stuff
“Deep Freeze” begins with Billy and El working at Humanidyne. They get interested in a man who’s still alive after being frozen for decades. Their boss has a use for him. So does the military project that gives the scientists a reason to assemble a group of people they would probably have wanted to meet anyway. At a point when an ordinary television pilot is still introducing you to somebody’s desk, this one has a frozen man and an argument about who gets to do what with him.
Billy’s gift is getting people involved. Dean Paul Martin gives him the energy of somebody who has found the most interesting thing he’s heard all week and can’t understand how much of your day it will take to make you agree. He can be the person who starts everything off and still leave plenty of the work to somebody else. It makes him the kind of leader a show can put into a tight spot without knowing how he’s going to get himself out.
El is a scientist too, with a knack for making himself small. I like how much of the joke is already there before he does it. Kevin Peter Hall can be very easy to find in a room. Then the show asks us to consider what it would be like for a man that tall to disappear from the height everybody was looking at. One minute a person standing next to him would have to tilt their head up. The next they could lose track of where he went by looking down too late.
The lab has some of the fun of a place where people are allowed to leave their projects out overnight. A stranger turns up, and you can imagine how far Billy’s attention is already from whatever he meant to finish yesterday. El has just as much reason to be interested. If either of them stopped for every person who wanted to know what was going on, they’d spend a good part of their week trying to explain what they’d only just decided to look into.
Max Wright as Dick Stetmeyer is another reason to give the lab a minute. If you know Wright as Willie Tanner on ALF, there’s a familiar sound to him being the person expected to handle something odd while looking as if he’s got work to do. Here he has a company to run and two scientists who might well have a different idea of what it’s for. Anybody who has ever had to find the person who signed off on a new piece of equipment can imagine how long it would take to get an answer in that place.
Johnny B and Gloria both knew how to get your attention
Johnny B is a musician who can absorb and release electricity. Mark Thomas Miller gives him a way of standing around that makes it easy to imagine he has somewhere more interesting to be. Then the show gives him a reason to let somebody know what he can do. The effect is the thing you could describe to a friend. The decision about when to do it belongs to the guy who still looks as if he’d rather get a little more of the story first.
Gloria can move things with her mind. Courteney Cox plays her as a teenager with reasons of her own to decide whether she wants to be in the room with these people. There’s something appealing about Billy needing the help of a person who has had plenty of time to decide what she thinks of adults asking her for things. Gloria may understand how much she can do well before the adults understand how much they’re asking her to get involved.
It’s easy to go looking for the show because you know Cox from Friends. I’d stay for the scenes that let you see what Gloria is doing on a night when she has a friend in trouble. “Once Upon a Night” starts with her pen pal and a stolen bracelet. Gloria is the one taken by the people doing the chasing. It sends the others off in different directions and leaves you with the sense that knowing what Gloria can do is only one part of knowing where she’ll wind up.
“Sort of Looking for Gina” lets Johnny keep seeing somebody who disappears when he isn’t looking. There’s also the question of something the others think they saw in the sewer. Both stories give the person with the least confidence in an explanation a good reason to keep asking for one. That’s where the show feels most like a group of friends to me. Somebody is trying to say what happened in a way that will make everybody else get up and come with him.
The powers could get in the way of an ordinary afternoon
“Steer Crazy” is the hamburger episode. A meteor hits a farm, and three senior citizens wind up with powers after eating meat from the affected cattle. Gloria serves the food without knowing what she’s about to set in motion. It’s a beautiful use of something the show could have gotten through in a more ordinary way. There was an afternoon to get through and some food to hand out. Now everybody has a new problem and exactly the same places to be.
“Sonar… And Yet So Far” has El’s friend Eddie working out a way to communicate with Donald the dolphin. The information he gets sends the two of them into a mystery. I like the idea of somebody who already had an absorbing way to spend his time finding out that it can take him a lot farther from home than he thought. The dolphin has done enough work by the time anybody else gets there to give them a genuine reason to hear Eddie out.
In “Grand Theft Bunny” a scientist takes a rabbit from a lab and leaves the team with a race to contain the danger it carries. It’s a neat measure of how far the show can go from its original pitch and still give the whole group something to do. There’s a rabbit to find, there’s somebody who thought taking it would help, and there are other people who have to get across town with an explanation that will take a little while to believe.
I especially enjoy the titles that could make you picture half a show without knowing what was going to happen. “Grand Theft Bunny” was enough. “Your Place or Mayan?” has a map, a dead friend, and the possibility of something very old buried in a place people see every day. You could open the listings and hear the person who’d come up with the title having a good time with the night’s work.
“Center of Attention” takes them to a basketball case, with a manager betting on his own team to lose and players who are helping make it happen. Put the same group into an ordinary detective show and somebody still has to see what’s strange about the game. I enjoy episodes where you can follow the problem just from looking at who’s where on the court. A person at home who has seen enough games can have a thought of their own before the characters get around to saying what they noticed.
A superhero team at the other end of the week
The ’70s had already taught us the fun of putting several people with different powers in one room. Super Friends did it on Saturday morning, when you could get up and see who was already at the Hall of Justice. Misfits of Science did it at night with a research company and a boss who had an opinion about what the scientists were doing. I liked knowing that either set of people might find a reason for the one who could do something unusual to wait his turn.
If you had followed the powers from one show to the other, Gloria might be the person who gave you the quickest reason to pay attention. The way she can move something is easy to understand. Getting the other people in the room to hear her is another kind of work. Those characters have enough reasons to be friends and enough things to disagree about that the show can get along for a while before it needs anybody to move a thing that can’t be reached.
NBC’s run lasted from October 1985 to February 1986. In its regular Friday slot it went up against Dallas. The 1985–86 television season gets you back among the shows that had more time to become the thing people expected to see on a particular night. It makes sense that somebody could see Misfits a few times, remember the people on the screen, and never find out when they’d be back.
The broadcast ended with “The Avenging Angel” in February. “Three Days of the Blender” was made and left unaired in NBC’s original run. I enjoy the fact that the last title you run into when you look through the complete episode list belongs to an hour that had to be found somewhere else. It still sounds exactly like a problem these people would have had to deal with after somebody in the lab left a machine where Billy could get to it.
Three places to drop in again
Start with “Deep Freeze.” There’s time to see Billy and El work out what they can do with an idea while the other people in the room are busy deciding who gets to keep it. “Steer Crazy” is the one I’d put on for somebody who can remember the characters and wants to know what the show sounded like once it felt comfortable with them. “Once Upon a Night” is a good place to see why Gloria had her own life to get back to between jobs.
I’d also put it near Manimal for anybody who remembers wanting to see the effect and staying long enough to find out who was still in the room. Jonathan Chase had a friend and a detective who could help him get through an hour. Billy needed three people to agree that something was worth a little more of their time. If you watched enough television in the eighties, there’s a good chance somebody told you what one of those shows was about before you got to see how the people got along.
When I go back to Misfits of Science I want a minute in the lab before anybody has worked out what to do. Give El a reason to think about it. Give Johnny one reason to stay where he is. Let Gloria look around and see what the others have missed. Then I’ll be ready to hear Billy’s idea, even if the first thing he wants to do is go see what everybody’s eating for lunch.
There’s room for a few more people around the group, too. Jennifer Holmes plays Jane Miller, who has her own reason to keep an eye on Gloria. Give the young woman a life between the places Billy wants her to go and you can see why a word from a person who knows her might mean something different from what the scientists have to say. For all the times the show asks what these people can do when they get to a place, I’m just as interested in who’s going to be waiting for them when they get home.
Questions about Misfits of Science
When did Misfits of Science air?
NBC premiered it on October 4, 1985. Its original run lasted through February 21, 1986. “Three Days of the Blender” was produced and didn’t air in that original NBC run.
Who played the Misfits?
Dean Paul Martin was Dr. Billy Hayes, Kevin Peter Hall was Dr. Elvin Lincoln, Mark Thomas Miller was Johnny B, and Courteney Cox was Gloria Dinallo. Max Wright played Humanidyne boss Dick Stetmeyer.
What were their powers?
El could shrink, Johnny B could absorb and discharge electricity, and Gloria could move objects with her mind. Billy led the group and relied on the others’ abilities when the job called for them.
Which episode gave people superpowers through hamburgers?
“Steer Crazy.” A meteor affects a farm, and three senior citizens develop powers after eating hamburgers from the affected cattle. Gloria is involved before she knows what the food can do.