Hello, Jim, and all,
As obviously a huge fan of TGAH, even I shudder to say here, more so than "I Spy", I have to agree that Katt did not, and has not, had any type of problematic personality attached to him, while, that was assigned to Culp in Trackdown and has never been removed, no doubt for good reasons!
I do have to say that for folks who really haven't watched TGAH as a real afficionado, both the Culp FBI persona and Katt's Hinkley persona are frequently misinterpreted, but both were vital and well done by the respective actors. I'm not a Katt fan, but he's a good actor, absolutely and was an excellent choice for Ralph. However, Culp by no means was "over the top" as Maxwell, in my opinion, and without his dogged nature and persistence, much of the saving of towns and the world would not have occurred as his partner, Ralph, needed a ton of prodding at times to do anything with the suit. This is seen in numerous episodes where without Culp's professional FBI experience and intuition, and his dragging Ralph along while he thought up what to do, catastrophe would have happened. Instead, Ralph assumed his alien gifted role and with Bill saved the day.
Also, Bill was not really "mocked" by anyone, nor should he have been. He could be hard to get along with, because he took over control of Ralph and the suit immediately, and he had an abrupt speaking style (which did soften a lot as the show progressed) but that was also because Ralph did not like or innately respect ANY type of authority, including his mother! Maxwell though wasn't designed to be Ralph's humorous or stupid sidekick--he ran the show and good for the Earth, as Ralph really needed him, and knew he needed Bill. When you see the episodes written by Cannell, or Frank Lupo or Babs Greyhosky, you see episodes where Bill and Ralph process their relationship, which absolutely grew tighter and closer in even the short three seasons the show was on air. Watching that happen is really very cool. This was a show after all about the struggles of normal, good-hearted, competent people to adapt their lives to a suit of red magic jammies. It wasn't easy a lot of the time, but they stuck together and became incredible close friends as a result--we saw that all right there during the run of the series.
As for Ralph, it's odd people think he was this left leaning liberal, so different from Maxwell's Right wing conservatism. Actually, these two men were not that far apart. Ralph was as big a meat eater, and fast food eater as Maxwell (no lefty vegetarian at all); he wanted a nice sports car (he couldn't afford), and didn't care that he wore ski boots made from animal fur, thus showing his blatant materialism and his lack of alignment with PETA. Yes, he taught somewhat disenfranchised and not very intelligent teens and did care for them, but he has no monopoly on caring in the series. We see Maxwell caring for his African American partner in the pilot--obviously specifically showing us this tough FBI agent was by no means a racist or bigot. In the series, we see Maxwell caring for his aged, blind ex-partner, going out of town to visit him weekly. Maxwell had a good heart, as well, and cared deeply about people, as did Ralph. Maxwell was twenty years older than Ralph, was wounded twice in the Korean War, was alive during the chaotic anti-communism America filled with paranoia and hatred, and did distrust the Russians--so yeah, Maxwell spewed chauvinistic and patriotic comments in a reflex, but when push came to shove, he helped save wild horses, loved saving children lost in the forest, risked his own career to save the delinquent Tony of Ralph's class, immediately befriended Rose, the mother of another of Ralph's kids, dropped everything to help out Pam the Counselor, and so forth--very "liberal" things. And, btw, he stopped the Russians from spying on Americans and kidnapping people from our country, so maybe his concerns against Russia and communism being our enemy were not, at that time, hard to understand.
Okay, okay, I'll stop here. But, my point, lost in all the rambling above is that if you give it attention and some introspection what you find in Bill Maxwell is a very complex, complicated character, by far equal to Kelly Robinson and just as fascinating and enthralling. So, I'm going to have to leap to the defense if I read blithe one-liners compressing the entirety of his personality into little catch phrases--Culp's creation of Maxwell really deserves more.
)))
Mona