Nicholas Corea seems to have a jones for b-grade sci fi concepts. He wrote the two Li Sung episodes, and this ep opens with a computer named Max telling the 16-year-old girl who designed it, "I... love you, too." The kookiness is all the stronger because it's pointless; there's no thematic connection to the rest of the ep, and we never hear from Max again.
Anyway, the girl, Joleen, is a fantastically intelligent child who was given up to a covert organization by her mother because she felt she couldn't handle her. (I nearly wrote "covert government organization", but really, the organization's nature is not at all clear.) Years later, Joleen is tired of being a lab rat and escapes so that she can find her mother and be with her.
There's more kookiness, most notably when the Hulk rescues Joleen from a witch who was waving a stick with an animal skull on it at her. Joleen's terror at this utterly lame display of menace is all the more hilarious because she had just finished explaining to everyone that witchcraft is phony. What the heck is she afraid of?
Beneath the bemusing adventure elements, though, this episode is full of real heart. I don't know if the behavior of Joleen's mother really makes sense, but it's hard to deny the emotional impact of an institutionally raised child reaching out to the mother she never knew, afraid that she's too much of a freak to receive love from her, or from anyone. For all the hokey fantasy, this episode's message is centered on real human problems.
