One of the series's best episodes. David foregoes his routine of small time jobs and potential cures to spend Thanksgiving at home with his family (who still think him dead since the events of the first pilot). The trouble is, Mom died when David was a child, and there's still bad blood between him and Dad because of it. For the requisite dose of danger, a wealthy developer wants to get rid of the Banner family farm by any means necessary.
The criminal plot line works just fine, with David working his scientific stuff in the realm of entomology, but it's merely a light diversion from the exploration of David's past and his family. This could easily have been throwaway material, but writer Andrew Schneider's first solo story for the series (he co-wrote "Behind the Wheel" and did the teleplay for the superb "Haunted") serves not only as first rate family drama, but as a look into what makes Banner and the Hulk tick. Like the comic book series, "Homecoming" makes it clear that radiation didn't create the Hulk; it just set him free from the dark confines of Banner's mind.
The dialogue between David and his father is so startlingly realistic that I found myself thinking of arguments I've witnessed between different generations of my own family. Bill Bixby's superb acting is such a fundamental, consistent element of the series that it can't be mentioned in every review, and in fact is too easily taken for granted, but he outdoes himself here in his show of vulnerability, anger, and frustration. That David wants to reconcile with his father but can't overcome his own foibles is in the script, but without Bixby to bring it out it wouldn't be nearly as poignant.
Mirroring real life, the problems between David and Dad are left unresolved. Dad may never come to accept David's decision to be a scientist, and David may never learn to open up to his family, but that doesn't stop the three of them from loving each other just the same.