Most-Wanted Episodes, and Runners-Up
Based on the listings at
http://www.emailman.com/video/fugitive/fugitiveguide.html
(from program listings of the A&E cable network) and at
http://www.negia.net/~dgoggans/fuge.html,
with kind assistance from Brian J.E. VanDommele,
Marie Sunny and Rick O'Shay.
First-season episodes ( September 17, 1963 - April 21, 1964 )
Second Season ·
Third Season ·
Fourth Season
FEAR IN A DESERT CITY
September 17, 1963
(1)
While working as a bartender in
Arizona, Kimble tries to help
a woman (Vera Miles) who he works with and her
young son, who are being harassed by a local big-shot (Brian
Keith). Harry Townes plays a scary cop who
gives Kimble a hard time because he's in the big-shot's pocket, but he
doesn't realize Kimble is wanted for murder, even though he walks
right by Kimble's mug shot at headquarters. At the end, the big-shot
is killed by the police when he threatens the woman and Kimble with a
gun at a bus station. At the beginning of the last episode,
THE JUDGMENT, Kimble is again in
Arizona. Written by Stanford Whitmore.
THE WITCH
September 24, 1963
(2)
In Missouri, Kimble is suspected of molesting
a child (Gina Gillespie) in a backwoods community populated by great
craggy-faced character actors, including Elisha (Maltese Falcon)
Cook as Sailor. Towards the end Kimble gets a cut over one eye
that makes him look sort of like Spock from Star Trek. Apart
from this distraction, the suspense is pretty intense. Finally, the
Bad Seed who at first accused him recants and pleads for his life in a
teary scene. He has helped her learn the error of her ways, and the
townsfolk decide he's okay after all. Written by William D. Gordon,
directed by Andrew McCullough.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN
October 1, 1963
(3)
At first it's another one of these nightmarish backwoods towns that
Kimble blunders into, and has to flee from. Then he meets incredibly
cute hillbilly Sandy Dennis, who leads him over the mountains to
safety, falls for him, and does a lot of
method acting. Written by Harry Kronman.
NEVER WAVE GOODBYE
October 8 - 15, 1963
(4 and 5)
In California, Kimble befriends an old
sailmaker and his cute blond niece (Susan
Oliver), but the sailmaker's assistant, played by Robert Duvall with
an awesome Scandinavian accent, suspects Kimble is not all he's
cracked up to be. The old man likens Kimble's persecution to the Nazi
occupation of his homeland. The first part is capped by the
brilliantly suspenseful Hall of Justice sequence (imitated in the
1993 movie), culminating in Kimble's incredible
escape using two Los Angeles municipal
buses. At the end of the second part, Kimble has his first of many
opportunities to save Gerard's life after
a chase on the high seas off the California coast. With Bert Remsen
and Rachel Ames. Written by Hank Searls.
DECISION IN THE RING
October 22, 1963
(6)
Written by Arthur Weiss, directed by Robert Ellis Miller (The Heart
Is A Lonely Hunter). Kimble works as a cut
man for a black prize fighter, and discovers that the fighter
ought to quit boxing because he is getting his brain knocked around
too much. The fighter's wife, Ruby Dee, agrees. Then the fighter helps
Kimble by shielding him from his pursuers. Kimble, always a good
example of the strong silent type, in this episode outdoes himself,
convincing the fighter to help him by uttering just three one-word
sentences. There is the obligatory '60s moralizing about race
relations. With James Dunn as the fight manager.
SMOKE SCREEN
October 29, 1963
(7)
Kimble gets caught up in a forest fire. Written by John D. F. Black.
SEE HOLLYWOOD AND DIE
November 5, 1963
(8)
In a small town in New Mexico, Kimble is
working in a gas station. Two trigger-happy hoods
show up and blow away Kimble's kindly boss, also wounding a friendly
cop who comes along at the wrong moment. They take Kimble hostage,
along with Brenda Vaccaro, who only wanted to get her windshield
cleaned. The four of them go on a cross-country spree, ending up in
L.A. Showing his resourcefulness, Kimble pretends to be a hard-boiled
robber himself, in order to gain the confidence of the two hoods and
get the upper hand in the situation. Meanwhile he secretly reassures
Brenda, telling her that he will protect her. The cops follow their
trail and dust for fingerprints; when they realize that Kimble is in
the car, they put out an A.P.B. and notify the newspapers, who print a
picture of Kimble on the front page. The hoods buy the paper and are
impressed with Kimble's criminal credentials, but Brenda freaks out
and tries to make a break for it. Hence they decide to do in Brenda,
but Kimble cleverly manipulates them into the hands of the police,
making them think that they are going to be his partners in an
imaginary robbery. He saves Brenda and makes his escape, but
ironically, when the cops show up, they tell Brenda that she's lucky
Kimble didn't hurt her, since he was, in their opinion, the worst of
the lot. The story is engrossing and there is a fascinating sense of
existential play-acting as Kimble assumes the villainous role which
society has projected on him. In a remarkable scene, Kimble pretends
to make out with Brenda to prove his prowess to the hoods; inside the
car, he and Brenda go through the motions, but they are actually
talking about how they plan to escape, while outside, one hood presses
his nose against the front windshield, watching them like fish in a
fishbowl. In another scene, Kimble pretends to be talking to his
criminal accomplice for the benefit of the eavesdropping kidnappers,
but in fact he is notifying the police of their whereabouts. The whole
premise of course is pretty sexist, though. Written by George
Eckstein, directed by Andrew McCullough.
TICKET TO ALASKA
November 12, 1963
(9)
Kimble is aboard a luxury liner for murder on the high seas. Geraldine
Brooks turns out to be the killer. Kimble plays Sherlock Holmes so
that the case can be solved before the ship reaches land, thus ruling
himself out as a potential suspect and avoiding police
scrutiny. Written by Oliver Crawford.
FATSO
November 19, 1963
(10)
Kimble befriends a rancher (Jack Weston). With Glenda Farrell. Written
by Robert Pirosh.
NIGHTMARE AT NORTHOAK
November 26, 1963
(11)
Possibly the best episode. While wandering through the woods, Kimble
rescues a busload of little kids when their schoolbus crashes in an
accident. He even saves the old driver just before the bus explodes in
flames. Kimble gets knocked out though and has to recuperate from
these heroics. They take him to the house of the parents of one of the
kids from the bus. An eager-beaver local reporter takes a picture of
Kimble while he's lying there unconscious, with a cold compress or
something over his eyes. Faster than you can say ``relentless
pursuit,'' Lieutenant Gerard has arrived on the scene; it seems that
he spends all his free time scanning small-town papers around America,
looking for pictures of Richard Kimble. Though his boss is skeptical,
Gerard is sure the man in the photo is Kimble, even though half his
face is covered with a cloth. Kimble tries to make a break for it, but
he's still too weak. What's worse, the father of the kid whose house
Kimble has been taken to (Frank Overton) is the local sheriff! There
is a tense scene between Kimble and the sheriff's wife. Kimble appeals
to her for mercy, asks her to help him get away. She though has been
brought up to respect the law piously, so she refuses, and Kimble is
hauled off to the local jail. Gerard takes charge of the prisoner, and
he and Kimble have an excellent exchange through the bars of Kimble's
cell, Gerard scorning Kimble's assertions of his innocence, while
Kimble is contemptuous of Gerard's narrow-mindedness. Before heading
back to Indiana, though, Gerard decides to enjoy a home-cooked meal
chez the sheriff and his wife. But his dinner conversation,
which is all about how relentlessly he has pursued Kimble, makes
everyone else lose their appetites. The poor kid whose life Kimble
saved bursts into tears. Meanwhile, the sheriff's wife is on the horns
of her moral dilemma; should she abide by the law or act on the higher
commandment of ``a life for a life''? After dinner, all the townsfolk,
whose children Kimble has rescued, come down to the jail to say
goodbye to him. They file past his cell under the watchful eye of
Gerard, reaching through the bars to shake his hand. At the end of the
procession, the sheriff's wife reaches out to touch his hand, and when
she is gone, Kimble discovers that he has been given the key to the
jail cell he is in. Later that night, Gerard comes to check on Kimble,
but the cell is empty. Kimble is hiding in the neighboring cell, and,
when Gerard isn't looking, Kimble knocks him unconscious and takes his
gun. Amazingly, nobody else is anywhere near the jail except for one
stupefied deputy who Kimble locks up with Gerard, brandishing the
gun. Then Kimble is free to run off across the town square,
escaping! Apart from this ridiculous ending,
the episode is a gripping distillation of the drama of Kimble's
situation, depicting the fateful irony whereby
Kimble, free-lance do-gooder and all-around righteous man, is hunted
by the law as a criminal pariah. There is some scenic
New-England-esque photography of the woods around the town,
contrasting with a series of visually intriguing, noirish
nightmare images (many of which are later used in the opening credits
of the show) that are supposed to represent Kimble's recurring dreams
about Gerard. Written by Stuart Jerome, directed by Chris Nyby.
GLASS TIGHTROPE
December 3, 1963
(12)
Kimble witnesses Leslie Nielsen kill someone in a parking lot. But an
innocent bystander is instead arrested, and Leslie doesn't come
forward to clear things up. So Kimble risks his own neck to coax the
real killer into confessing. Written by Robert C. Dennis, directed by Ida
Lupino.
TERROR AT HIGH POINT
December 10, 1963
(13)
A construction boss (Jack Klugman) tries to patch up his marriage with
Kimble's help. Written by Peter Germano and Harry Kronman.
THE GIRL FROM LITTLE EGYPT
December 17, 1963
(14)
Kimble is hit by a car in San Francisco. This gives him an extreme
case of flashback-itis. He relives his murder trial, and events of the
night of the murder of his wife (September 17, 1962). At the trial,
Gerard vows that he left no stone unturned in looking for the
one-armed man. Meanwhile, back in the present, the driver of the car
that hit Kimble is a woman who is having an affair with a married
man. Kimble shows her the error of her ways, and she ends the
affair. The high point: at a cocktail party, someone asks Kimble what
his opinions are about capital punishment.
Written by Stanford Whitmore.
HOME IS THE HUNTED
December 24, 1963
(15)
Old family loyalties could mean the end for Kimble as he tries to help
out his ne'er-do-well brother back in his hometown. Written by Arthur
Weiss.
GARDEN HOUSE
December 31, 1963
(16)
The stakes are high for Kimble when a family fortune is on the
line. Written by Sheldon Stark.
COME WATCH ME DIE
January 7, 1964
(17)
Directed by Laslo Benedek (The Wild One), featuring Bruce Dern
as an angry farmer, and a busload of wooden character actors. Kimble
is recruited for a posse in
Nebraska, and he has to help transport an accused
murderer (Robert Doyle) to the county seat so the man can stand
trial. On the way, the rest of the posse drinks a lot of moonshine or
something and turns into a lynch mob, but Kimble protects the
prisoner, who seems pretty innocent until suddenly, when Kimble's back
is turned, he reveals himself to be a demonic sociopath who was only
pretending all along. But Kimble wrestles him to the ground and turns
him over to the sheriff, who is so impressed with Kimble's sense of
fair play that he offers Kimble a job as a cop! Much is made of the
similarities and differences between Kimble and the prisoner, who is
rather like Kimble's evil twin. Written by
Stanford Whitmore and Perry Bleecker.
WHERE THE ACTION IS
January 14, 1964
(18)
In Nevada, Kimble becomes a pawn in
the feud between a tyrannical hotel owner (Telly Savalas) and his
daughter. Features a cameo
appearance by the one-armed man. Written by Harry Kronman.
SEARCH IN A WINDY CITY
January 21, 1964
(19)
Written by Stuart Jerome. In Chicago,
Illinois, Kimble teams up with Pat Hingle, a newspaper columnist
who offers to help him find the one-armed man. They get a really
crappy artist's rendering of the one-armed man, which nevertheless is
good enough to generate a few leads. One of Pat's underworld contacts
has seen the man in question, but the police take the contact into
custody just before he is about to get in touch with the one-armed
man. Nan Martin plays Pat's lush of a wife, who at a critical moment
is too drunk to tell Kimble the crucial information that the one-armed
man is leaving town. Kimble finds out eventually, but when he runs
over to the bus depot to try to intercept him, he's a few fateful
seconds too late. He does catch a glimpse of the one-armed man through
a bus window, though. Meanwhile, Gerard has gotten wind of what
Kimble's up to, and he's putting pressure on Pat to rat on
Kimble. Pat's boss also wants this, because if Kimble is captured, the
newspaper can do an exclusive story about it and improve its
circulation. Pat is down on his luck as a columnist, needs a big
story, so he reluctantly agrees, and Gerard's men take up positions
around Pat's apartment, waiting to close in on Kimble when he shows
up. But at the last second, Pat warns Kimble that it's a set-up, and
Kimble manages to escape by hiding in the basement. The story has
many suspenseful moments, including an impressionistic depiction of
Kimble's fears, in a scene evoking the capture of Dillinger. The
conclusion is touching; Hingle and Martin both create vivid, memorable
characters. Kimble though in this story is reduced to being merely a
pawn and a victim. In his next
appearance, Pat plays a bad guy.
BLOODLINE
January 28, 1964
(20)
A dog breeder's terrible family secret puts Kimble's freedom on the
line. Written by Harry Kronman.
RAT IN A CORNER
February 4, 1964
(21)
A two-bit thug (Warren Oates) puts the stranglehold on Kimble.
Written by Sheldon Stark and William Morwood.
ANGELS TRAVEL ON LONELY ROADS
February 18 - 25, 1964
(22 and 23) Kimble is thrown together with Eileen Heckart, a nun who
is having a crisis of faith. Together they try to coax the nun's
ancient car across the mountains from Nevada to
California, pursued by cops who are onto Kimble. The nun is rather
like Kimble's alter ego; while he is a
fugitive from man, she is a fugitive from God. At one point, the nun
is watching some cop show on TV in a motel, and marvels at how
the police are always shooting first and asking
questions later. What if the suspects they are chasing turn out to
be innocent? The story, written by Al C. Ward, is cleverly plotted
and there's some suspense, plus some moments of verisimilitude amidst
the hokey, cloying sentiment. The huge hand of Fate
is very much in evidence. Eileen Heckart returns in the color
season as The Dying Nun.
FLIGHT FROM THE FINAL DEMON
March 10, 1964
(24)
Kimble runs with Ed Nelson, who plays a sort of
anti-Kimble; though someone died at his hands,
he was acquitted of any wrongdoing, but now pursues himself with
obsessive feelings of guilt. Meanwhile, Carroll O'Connor plays a
sheriff with a long memory for faces, who keeps trying to figure out
where he's seen Kimble before. Kimble fails to help Ed, who dies in
the end, but manages to escape from Carroll's clutches, albeit in a
not-too-suspenseful way. Written by Philip Saltzman.
TAPS FOR A DEAD WAR
March 17, 1964
(25)
Kimble's army past comes back to haunt him in the person of a
disfigured guy. Written by Harry Kronman and Merwin Gerard.
SOMEBODY TO REMEMBER
March 24, 1964
(26)
Kimble concocts a daring scheme to throw Lieutenant Gerard off his trail . . . for
good! With Gilbert Roland as a dying guy
trying to help Kimble, plus beautiful Madlyn Rhue. Written by
Robert C. Dennis.
NEVER STOP RUNNING
March 31, 1964
(27)
Claude Akins is a football player gone bad. Now he's the leader of a
band of crooks who have kidnapped a chubby young rich boy and are
holding him for ransom. The kidnappers force Kimble to help the kid
when he takes ill, but when Kimble tells the kidnappers that the kid
has to be brought to a hospital or else he'll die, they don't
listen. Eventually Kimble manages to get them all to the hospital, and
in the exciting climax, the boy staggers desperately across the front
lawn towards the entrance of the emergency room as Kimble battles to
keep Akins from snatching him back. In the epilogue, Kimble walks off
into the landscape dramatically. Written by Sheldon Stark.
THE HOMECOMING
April 7, 1964
(28)
In Georgia, Shirley Knight is a young woman
who has just returned home from a hospital, after witnessing a
terrible attack by a pack of dogs; Gloria Grahame plays the scheming
stepmother determined to drive the daughter out of the house and back
into the hospital, by capitalizing on the daughter's fragile emotional
state and her intense fear of the past. Kimble, of course, catches
on, and exposes the stepmother's fraudulent scheme. Written by Peter
Germano.
STORM CENTER
April 14, 1964
(29)
Kimble weathers a hurricane to avoid capture. He is at the mercy of a
woman who he angered back in Stafford by refusing to perform an (at
that time, pre-Roe v. Wade, illegal) abortion for her. Kimble
is an outspoken pro-lifer, according to this and several other
episodes. Written by George Eckstein.
THE END GAME
April 21, 1964
(30)
After seeing Kimble in the background of a newspaper picture,
Lieutenant Gerard moves in for the kill, but his plans are foiled by a
pair of kooky old geezers. This is as close as the series ever comes
to comedy, but many of the episodes that are trying to be serious are
actually a lot funnier than this one. Written by Stanford Whitmore.
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