Rob Price
Dr. Billy Hayes (Dean Paul Martin Jr.) is a research scientist at Humanidyne institute and specializes in “human anomalies” along with Dr. Elvin Lincoln (Kevin Peter Hall) who is over seven feet tall. Their project with humanidyne is cancelled due to lack of commercial and military applications. But when their mentor and friend Dr. Momquist (Eric Christmas) finds out that Humanidyne has created a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the earth, he is held against his will at the Humanidyne Military section. To save him, Hays and Lincoln put together a team of superpowered humans dubbed the Misfits of Science. Dr. Lincoln, tested an experimental compound on himself giving him the ability to shrink down to about the size of a “Ken Doll”. Johnny ‘B’ Bukowski, was a rock and roll musician that gained electrical powers during an accident at one of his concerts, he can shoot bolts of electricity from his hands and can move at superspeed. Gloria Dinallo (Courteney Cox) is a seventeen-year-old who has immense telekinetic abilities. And the addle minded Arnold Biefeiter (Mickey Jones) who freezes anything he touches due to putting himself in an experimental cryogenic chamber in 1937. Together, the team becomes a family and after rescuing Dr. Momquist and saving the world from the Neutron Beam Weapon, they continue to have zany adventures together, well, at least for sixteen episodes, only fifteen of which were actually shown.
I loved this show when it came out. I was in my teens and there weren’t a lot of options for shows with superpowered characters. Then president of NBC Entertainment, Brandon Tartikoff came up with the name and wanted a show that relied on “The National Enquirer” for story ideas and had a “…sort of kick-back, Friday type of show” vibe. As much as I liked the show, it was not perfect by any means. It was over the top corny at times and like most superpowered shows, didn’t know how to take itself seriously, banking on the zany humor to try to recreate the atmosphere of a supernatural comedy like Ghostbusters. The show’s special effects weren’t terrible, but they weren’t amazing either. I am sure the show was expensive to produce, so they found ways to limit the amount of “Powers” that were displayed in each episode, sometimes leaving the audience underwhelmed. The show ran for fifteen episodes before being pulled by NBC and the final sixteenth episode was never shown.
I really enjoyed the character dynamics between Johnny B and Gloria, and I felt the actors that played them did a good job. Courtney Cox as Gloria did a great job playing a young and vulnerable girl who had great power but didn’t always know how to control it. This would be her first major role in a series. At the time, she was best known as the girl in the Bruce Springsteen video “Dancing in the Dark”. Cox would, of course, go on to star in the hit series Friends and the Scream horror film franchise as well as many other series and popular movies. The rest of the cast didn’t fare as well, Dean Paul Martin died only a year after the show was canceled, when in 1987, the plane he was flying as part of the California Air National Guard, crashed. In 1991, Mark Thomas Miller was in an accident that temporarily prevented him continuing his acting career, he would attempt to get back into acting, but had lost his love for it. In that same year, Kevin Peter Hall would pass away from AIDs related pneumonia after contracting it during a blood transfusion, he was only 36 years old.
Rewatching the show now, I still really enjoy it, but it was definitely a product of its time. It has a very distinct 80s feel and ambiance, with a unique voice and sense of humor.
Episodes of Misfits of Science can be seen on You Tube.