The Grim Reaper
People who try to help Richard Kimble have a way of ending up . . . dead.
Sometimes they are already dying, and this motivates them
to do a good deed or two before it's too late. On other occasions,
they may start out relatively healthy, but their death is precipitated
(though not always directly) by the efforts they undertake on Kimble's
behalf. Finally, there are a few cases where the death just seems to
be a coincidence or an accident of Fate.
Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: guest stars on the
show have a high morbidity rate. There are in fact no less
than five episodes with the words ``die'', ``dead'', or
``death'' in the title.
Dying man Telly Savalas fits into the first category in
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY; he
knows he's got some incurable disease or other, and he wants to make
up for his sins by doing Kimble, who he knows from Stafford, a
favor. He decides to confess to the murder of Kimble's wife, even
though he has two arms and hence would not qualify as the prime
suspect. He comes up with a very plausible story, giving himself the
means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime, but Gerard secretly
listens in on Telly's conversations with his wife, in clear violation
of the U.S. Constitution, and learns that it's all a ploy.
In the other category, there is the unlucky man of the cloth from
STROKE OF GENIUS. The
favor that he does for Kimble is pretty small potatoes; he merely
offers him a ride to the next town when he sees Kimble trudging along
a country road. Nonetheless, it is only a matter of moments before
this Good Samaritan has been dispatched to the hereafter by a stray
bullet from the rifle of wayward youth Beau Bridges.
An in-between case is old lawman Arthur O'Connell in
TUG OF WAR. O'Connell knows his
heart isn't what it used to be, but his prognosis is not exactly
terminal. Still, when he sets out with a younger rival cop to snare
Kimble, his health starts to decline from all the stress and melodrama
involved; it doesn't help matters either that his rival tampers with
his supply of nitroglycerin pills. When finally he is at death's door,
O'Connell becomes convinced of Kimble's innocence and very elegantly
furnishes him with a means of escape.
Towards the end of Kimble's odyssey, he is confronted with an epidemic
of dying guest stars. In quick succession, he is aided by a dying
ambassador in DOSSIER
ON A DIPLOMAT, teams up with doomed hermit Laurence Naismith in
THE SHATTERED
SILENCE, works for terminally ill contractor Jack Warden in
CONCRETE EVIDENCE, and
is shielded from the police by Arthur Hill, a fellow doctor with
a fatal disease, in DEATH OF A
VERY SMALL KILLER. Even the saintly Eileen
Heckart, whose faith in God was restored in the first season in
ANGELS TRAVEL ON
LONELY ROADS, ends up meeting her maker when she reprises the role
of a kindly nun in THE BREAKING OF
THE HABIT. Audiences so enjoyed Heckart's
Fugitive appearances that ABC created a spin-off for her
character, entitled The Dying Nun, in the fall of
1967. However, the show was short-lived, probably because of its
poorly chosen time slot (it aired opposite The Flying Nun).
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