The WORST episodes of The Fugitive
Every episode of The Fugitive ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of The Fugitive!
Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen), wrongly accused of murdering his wife, escapes custody while on the road to prison and must elude the police to continue his quest to find the real killer.
#1 - Masquerade
Season 2 - Episode 26 - Aired 3/23/1965
While traveling through an small Oklahoma town, Kimble is arrested, not because the police recognize him, but because they've mistaken him for Leonard Hull, a former numbers runner about to testify against a big-time racketeer, whom has run away from a witness relocation program in that very town. Kimble is taken to a motel where Leonard's wife, Mavis, knows he's not Leonard in which Kimble asks for her help to get away from the police, and a local hit man pursuing them.
#2 - Ballad for a Ghost
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/29/1964
Kimble finds himself working with Hallie, a woman who bears a strong resemblance to his late wife. Hallie knows of the resemblance, and Kimble's danger is increased when Hallie's husband becomes jealous.
#3 - Fun and Games and Party Favors
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 1/26/1965
While working as a chauffeur for a wealthy family, Kimble learns that the teenage daughter of the family is dating the pool cleaner. While chaperoning a party for the daughter's friends, Kimble throws out a unruly young man who crashes the party. But Kimble is soon faced with a little blackmail when the man turns out to be a crime buff and recongizes Kimble from a police magazine.
#4 - Last Second of a Big Dream
Season 2 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/20/1965
Barry Craft figures he'll get some publicity by arranging to have Kimble captured at his wild-animal show.
#5 - Scapegoat
Season 2 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/2/1965
A man who knew Kimble during one of his disguises, meets him again. He tells him that on one of his hurried, silent departures from a town, he left behind evidence which indicated he was dead and an innocent man is being held for his murder.
#6 - The Sharp Edge of Chivalry
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/4/1966
Kimble, working as an apartment janitor in a nameless big city, becomes implicated in a murder when Roger Roland, a neighbor whom lives across the street, is a troubled young man and a part of Irish royalty, but he profanes his family history by dying his red hair black. Roger murders a neighbor woman in the building where Kimble lives by bludgeoning her to death with a marble statue after she refuses his advances. After a tenant reports seeing a figure run from the murder victim's apartment, the police arrive and suspect Kimble despite his alibi. Roger then hides the statue in Kimble's room and when Kimble finds it, he hides it in an air conditioning vent. Kimble thinks Roger is involved and tells his father, Edward, and Roger's younger sister Liz. But naturally, Edward Roland refuses to believe Kimble and unbelievably thinks Kimble is the killer and calls the police. Kimble escapes and tries, with Liz's help, to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, Gerard arrives in town after hearing the
#7 - Not With a Whimper
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 1/4/1966
Kimble arrives in the factory town of Hempstead Mills, West Virginia to assist Andrew McCallister, his longtime mentor whom is dying from lung cancer which he is confined to a wheelchair. McCallister's vigorous anti-smog campaign has earned him a reputation as a local crackpot. But the old man plans to go out with a bang; by having a bomb hidden in a package where he has Kimble deliver to the local factory. But when McCallister discovers that a group of school children will be inside the factory during a school tour at the time of the explosion, he dispatches Kimble to evacuate the building and deactivate the bomb before time runs out.
#8 - Decision in the Ring
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/22/1963
Kimble finds work as a cut man for boxer Joe Smith. Joe confides in Kimble that he wanted to be a doctor, but he chose boxing because he felt that being a black man would be an obstacle in the world of medicine. When Kimble discovers that Joe is suffering from memory loss, both he and Joe's wife, Laura, fear that Joe might have brain damage from his boxing. Meanwhile, a police detective, named Henry Stone, goes undercover as a sports writer to investigate Joe's manager, Lou, for possible mob ties. But when a distgrutled boxing worker tips off Stone that someone might be wanting Joe to throw his next fight, the detective investigates Kimble.
#9 - Tug of War
Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/27/1964
Kimble is working on a farm when he is captured by a sheriff and his deputy. The two men start fighting about how and when to turn Kimble over to the authorities-and one of them will go to any lengths to make sure he gets the credit for the capture.
#10 - The Witch
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/24/1963
Working as a handyman in backwater Missouri, Kimble encounters Jenny, a schoolgirl and pathological liar who speaks to a rag doll that she keeps at a nearby pond. When Jenny is late for school, she claims Kimble attacked her. As Jenny's teacher, Emily Norton, speaks to Kimble about Jenny's compulsive lying, Jenny runs home and tells her mother she saw Emily and Kimble making out in the barn. Kimble's co-workers rough him up, Emily gets fired, and both are told to leave town. Instead, Kimble goes to a school hearing on Emily and tries to clear her by catching Jenny in a lie, but his plan backfires when the skeptical townfolk believe Jenny and form a lynch mob to hunt Kimble down.
#11 - Smoke Screen
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/29/1963
A forest fire prevents access to a local hospital. Kimball, now a farm laborer, decides to risk blowing his cover when he elects to help deliver a woman's baby at the labor camp. When the news of Kimball's charitable act is reported to the press, Gerard gets wind of it and believes that Kimball is the unnamed doctor.
#12 - Dark Corner
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/10/1964
Kimble finds refuge from the police in a rural farm house, where he meets Mattie Braydon, a sculptress who suffers from hysterical blindness whom lives with her older sister and their uncle. Mattie protects Kimble and while hiring him as a farmhand, she also begins using him as a model for her clay sculptures see keeps in the barn. But Kimble soon finds out that the sweet and innocent Mattie is in fact a possessive and manipulative sociopath who wants Kimble for herself and will do anything, including committing murder, to ensure her dark secrets of her past never get revealed.
#13 - The Ivy Maze
Season 4 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/21/1967
Fritz Simmons is a college professor doing research on sleep depervation. One of his patients is the one-armed man Fred Johnson, whom works as a groundskeeper at Wellington College. When Johnson begins talking in his sleep about having killed a woman, Fritz contacts Kimble. When Kimble arrives, he verifies that it is indeed Johnson, and he and Fritz realize that by recording Johnson's confession will prove Kimble's innocence. Meanwhile, Gerard has found out about the experiments from Fritz's wife Caroline, and believes that Kimble may be on the premises. Gerard's arrival at the facility leads to an incredible confrontation between himself, Kimble and the one-armed man.
#14 - Moon Child
Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired 2/16/1965
Kimble arrives in a small town where women are being murdered by an unknown serial killer and a vigilante mob mistakes Kimble (a stranger in town) of being the killer. Kimble hides out with a mentally retarded young woman named Joanne Mercer, a 'moon child' befriends Kimble and hides him in the basement of her house which is connected by a underground tunnel to a closed-down textile factory where the real killer is hiding out.
#15 - Terror at High Point
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/17/1963
While working at a construction site in Utah, Kimble convinces his supervisor, Buck Harmon, to hire Jamie, a mentally retarded but physically strong young man to help out. Because Jamie is an easy target for the taunts of the other work crew members, Kimble becomes Jamie's protector. When Jamie is accused of sexually assaulting Buck's wife, he becomes frightened and runs away. The crew foreman, Dan Pike, convinces Buck to organize a posse to hunt down Jamie and kill him.
#16 - Where the Action Is
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/28/1964
While working as a hotel lifeguard in Reno, Nevada, Kimble is caught in the middle of a feud between the hotel owner Dan Polichek, and his spoiled and rambunctious teenage daughter Christine. 'Chris' belives her father drove away her mother whom commited suicide years ago and she sets out to disgrace Mr. Polichek by provking bar fights, humiliating herself, and goes too far when she pretends to be engaging herself in an affair with the reluctant Kimble.
#17 - The Old Man Picked a Lemon
Season 2 - Episode 29 - Aired 4/13/1965
While working as a ranch hand on a California citrus farm, the owner, Leland Hagerman, suddenly dies in an accident and the man's racist and sadistic son, Blaine, arrives to stake his claim to the place and sees everyone as expendable, including Kimble whom must find a way to quietly slip away with the help of the Hispanic workers before Blaine stumbles upon his true identity.
#18 - Nicest Fella You'd Ever Want to Meet
Season 2 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/19/1965
While traveling though a small town in Arizona, Kimble is arrested by the brutal and sadistic Sheriff Jo Bob Sims whom has political ambitions. Sheriff Sims (unaware of Kimble's true identity) subjects him to slave labor with a group of other vagrants he arrests on a daily basis for no reason other than to torture or humiliate them. When Kimble witnesses Sims murder another prisoner and has the equally corrupt mayor and town council cover it up to look like an accident, Kimble becomes aware that his own life is in danger.
#19 - The Homecoming
Season 1 - Episode 28 - Aired 4/7/1964
While working as a research technician for the wealthy Allan Pruitt, Kimble gets involved in the business of Allan's teenage daughter, Janice, who returns home after spending a year in a mental hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown after witnessing a young boy under her care get killed by two vicious stray dogs. But Allan's new wife, Dorina, does not take a liking to Janice and plots to drive her insane by hiring a neighbor to make his pet dogs bark in the nearby woods and convince Janice that the dogs are alive (they were captured and put to sleep by the local dog catcher.) But when Kimble claims that he has heard the dogs barking, Dorina asks the local sheriff to investigate Kimble to find any dirt on him.
#20 - Come Watch Me Die
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/21/1964
While working as a farm hand in a small Nebraska town, Kimble witnesses the arrest of a local man, named Bellows, whom is suspected of a double murder. Kimble finds himself 'deputized' by Deputy Bowers to help transport Bellows to the county jail, along with four witnesses whom saw Bellows fleeing from a farm house which was the scene of the crime. Although Bellows convinces Kimble that he (like Kimble with his wife's murder) is an innocent victim of circumstantial evidence. But the townsmen remain unswayed. That night when the men get drunk and decide to lynch Bellows, Kimble helps him escape. But Kimble is betrayed when Bellows, whom really did kill the farm couple, escapes and holds another farm couple hostage.
#21 - When the Bough Breaks
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/6/1964
While hoping freight trains, Kimble meets a young woman named Carol Hollister with her baby whom she is traveling to meet her husband. But Kimble doesn't know that Carol is a mentally disturbed young woman whose newborn baby died a year earlier and she has abducted another baby. Soon, Carol becomes so far gone that she mistakes Kimble as her late husband. Kimble must find a way to get the baby away from Carol and return it to it's rightfull parents while avoiding the police looking for her.
#22 - The Cage
Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/24/1964
While working as a handyman in the predominantly Hispanic fishing village of Puerto Viejo, Kimble becomes aware that the area is beset with a plague epidemic and he's forced to call the state health inspector to have the entire area quarantined. But he soon finds himself trapped when the local doctor suspects his true identity and the irate villagers set out to find him.
#23 - Ticket to Alaska
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/12/1963
On a small freighter, Kimble is traveling to Alaska when an FBI agent, named Paul Vale, arrives and begins questioning him and all the passengers in a search for a Korean War criminal and traitor. Vale becomes most suspicious of Kimble, as well as passenger George Banning and his wife Adrienne whom are embezzlers fleeing the States. When Vale is found murdered the next day, Captain Carraway interogates all the suspects and when the captain discovers that Kimble's references are fake, Kimble becomes the chief suspect.
#24 - Bloodline
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/11/1964
Kimble works as a kennel man for Max Bodin, a breeder of prize-winning Irish Setter show dogs, and whom is currently putting his kennel up for sale. Max's son, Johnny, and Johnny's wife Cora discover that one of the dogs has developed hip dysplasia which means all of the dogs in the bloodline will likely inherit the condition and be worthless as show dogs. But they keep the news from Max and plot to live off the sale. But when Kimble stumbles onto their plan, they have him investigated.
#25 - Glass Tightrope
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/3/1963
Working as a stock clerk in a department store, Kimble witnesses his boss, Martin Rowland, accidentally kill a business associate in the parking lot after hours. When Kimble learns that a local vagrant found near the crime scene is the prime suspect, Kimble anonymously phones Rowland to get him to confess to the murder. But Rowland and his wife, Ginny, thinking that the caller is blackmailing them, hires the store detective, Angstrom, to find the person ""blackmailing"" Rowland.