Sulfuric acid doesn't crop up too often in the course of Richard
Kimble's adventures, but when it does, it plays the most pivotal role
imaginable. The fateful moment comes in the
last-season episode THE IVY
MAZE, an acting tour-de-force for one-armed man Bill
Raisch. As the end of the road draws nearer, this episode provides a
fascinating opportunity to ponder about how Kimble's name can ever be
cleared. For, even if he manages to capture the real killer, how could
he hope to prove his case, if the one-armed man denies everything?
The answer is so simple, it's brilliant: sleep-deprivation
research. When Kimble's old pal William Windom, who happens to be a
sleep-research scientist at a university, discovers the one-armed man
guising as a cleaning man there, the solution to Kimble's problem
would seem to be at hand. Kimble's friend lays a trap for the
one-armed man, advertising a need for guinea pigs in his experimental
lab. The ad is placed where the one-armed man is sure to see it, and
indeed, he does, and decides to volunteer with a mellow shrug of the
shoulders that sums up his callous indifference to all human
existence.
One-armed man Raisch then is locked in a chamber for days on end and
deprived of crucial REM cycles in an effort to break down his defenses
and extract a confession from him. In a dopy trance, Raisch describes
details of the murder and even remembers confronting the man who has
since been falsely convicted of the crime. ``Yeah, it looked just like
you, Kimble,'' he says to the good doctor, who is hovering tensely
nearby.
Alas, just as it seems that Kimble is saved, the one-armed man wakes
up and smells the rat, and bolts out of the lab seconds ahead of
Lieutenant Gerard, who, in another feat of amazing police work, has
tracked Kimble down yet again. Despite his intense mental depletion,
the one-armed man nevertheless has the presence of mind to snatch up
all the tapes which Kimble and his colleague were using to record his
confession, and, on his way out of the lab building, manages to dump
them in a conveniently located vat of . . .
Sulfuric Acid!
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