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 - 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
#3 - 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.
#4 - 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.
#5 - 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.
#6 - 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.
#7 - 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.
#8 - Passage to Helena
Season 4 - Episode 23 - Aired 3/7/1967
After being arrested in a small Montana town for a minor loitering charge, Kimble is put in jail next to a suspect in a race-related killing. A determined black deputy becomes determined to transport Kimble and the racist murderer to the state capital for arraignment. But their journey is filled with adventure and danger when they are ambushed by the killer's accomplices and are now forced to travel on foot through hostile territory.
#9 - 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.
#10 - Death Is the Door Prize
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/20/1966
Kimble visits an enclosed plaza in the heart of the city. Due to a misunderstanding, on-site security mistakes him for someone else and gives chase. Thinking they are on to him, Richard tries to jump a fence but is caught by a guard, and has to punch him out to get away. A lady working at a camera store lets him stay at her place (in the plaza), while he rests and heals. To complicate things more, Kimble's earlier visit to the video store was caught on video tape, and someone who sees the tape recognizes him. Kimble's visit also coincides with an accidental shooting inside of a storage room, so the police are at the plaza, investigating.
#11 - 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.
#12 - An Apple a Day
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/2/1965
Running from the police, Kimble hides out at a farm owned by a local country doctor, named Josephus Adams, whom treats his patients with little more than a dose of honey and a reassuring word. After one elderly woman under Adams care dies from a protracted bronchial infection, an angry Kimble intervenes and tries to help the patients. But in the meantime, Adams' wife, Marianne, stumbles upon Kimble's identity and tries to use that to her own advantage. When Dr. Adams teenage niece, Sharon, falls into a coma after having an alergic reaction to bee stings, Kimble risks his freedom to take her away from Adams to a hospital for treatment.
#13 - End of the Line
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/21/1965
After losing his wallet, Kimble steals another wallet to pay for his train fare. The wallet belongs to R.T. Unger, who owns a local dairy. Kimble finds work as dishwasher at a local diner in order to repay the debit. But when Unger finds his wallet missing, he calls the police. Kimble goes to Unger's house and gives back the wallet and money to Unger's daughter, Betty Jo, whom is pregnant by Neil, a disreputable youth whom works at Unger's dairy. Unger offers Neil $1,000 to leave town. But when Neil refuses, their argument turns into a fistfight where Kimble walks in and sees Neil kill Unger. Kimble flees and tries to find a way to get out of town before Neil decides to pass the blame for the killing on the fugitive.
#14 - The Savage Street
Season 4 - Episode 24 - Aired 3/14/1967
Kimble is working at a cigar-making store owned by Jose Anza, and becomes close friends with his son Jimmy. Jimmy is caught between the expectations of his demanding father who wants him to play the violin and the harassment Jimmy receives from three street punks. When Kimble is shot in the leg after the police discover him, Jimmy hides the fugitive from both his father, and his uncle Miguel, a police officer determined to capture the fugitive.
#15 - There Goes the Ball Game
Season 4 - Episode 20 - Aired 2/7/1967
While attending a minor league baseball game, Kimble unwittingly witnesses a man walk away with a woman whom is later revealed to be the daughter of newspaper publisher Andy Newark. After discovering that Kimble witnessed the proceedings, Newmark summons Kimble to his office where he tells him that the woman is his daughter and she has been kidnapped. Her abductors want a $200,000 ransom. When word leaks out, reporters surround the Newmark household and Kimble is unable to slip away. Meanwhile, the kidnappers, a former baseball player and a friend, realize that Kimble witnessed them. So, they plot to have Kimble deliver the ransom money so they can kill him.
#16 - Coralee
Season 3 - Episode 30 - Aired 4/26/1966
After a diver dies in an underwater mishap, Kimble comes to the defense of the diver's girlfriend-whom the locals believe is a jinx. Kimble knows that the death may have been due to negligence- knowledge that puts him in jeopardy.
#17 - The Walls of Night
Season 4 - Episode 27 - Aired 4/4/1967
Kimble, working as a truck driver out of Portland, Oregon, becomes romantically involved with the radio dispatcher Barbara Wells, unaware that she is a convicted embezzler on loan through the state prison's work-release program. Distraught after her parole is denied for another six months, Barbara flees to Seattle where Kimble is staying and asks to take her to Canada with him. But when Kimble learns the truth, he decides to take her back to Seattle. Meanwhile, Barbara's parole officer, Art Meredith, soon stumbles upon Kimble's true idenity and decides to set a trap for him to bring both Kimble and Barbara back to Portland.
#18 - Death Of a Very Small Killer
Season 4 - Episode 25 - Aired 3/21/1967
Fleeing to Mexico, Kimble somehow contracts pnenmonia and seeks refuge at a local hospital where he is recognized by Dr. Howell, an ambitious American doctor whom is conducting reseach on menigitis. After Kimble recovers, Dr. Howell blackmails him into assisting with his research in exchange for protection from the local state police. While working with Howell's assistant, the attractive Reina Morales, Kimble soon discovers that several of the patients are being unwittingly infected and sacrificed for Howell's research purposes. Meanwhile, a persistent police sergeant, named Rodriguez, begins investigating Kimble's true idenity.
#19 - Runner in the Dark
Season 2 - Episode 27 - Aired 3/30/1965
A woman calls the police after she recognizes Kimble's picture on a TV quiz show and in the ensuing manhunt, Kimble hides out in a home for the blind. Kimble becomes acquainted with some of the residents, including the attractive Claire Whittaker whom he assists, as well as Pete Haskell whom Kimble discovers is not really blind and was actually temporarily blinding in a school bus accident months earlier which Pete blames himself since he was driving drunk at the time. But one of the residents is a certain Dan Brady, a veteran lawman whom was blinded in the line of duty and has now been put out to pasture. Brady remains bitter for having lost his position as the town's sheriff to the younger, more educated, but less experienced, Barney Vilattic. When Brady suspects Kimble's true identity, he sees an opportunity to capture the fugitive to reclaim his former job.
#20 - 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.
#21 - Joshua's Kingdom
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/18/1966
While working as a veterinarian assistant in a rural town in Utah, Kimble becomes aquainted with Ruth Simmons, an unwed teenage mother whom has a sickly infant. But her father, Joshua, is a Christian Scientist whose religion prohibits the use of medicine for any ailment. Kimble brings over antibiotics, but Joshua destroys the drugs. After determing that the baby is anemic, Kimble secretly arranges for a blood transfusion. Meanwhile, after stumbling upon Kimble's true idenity, a would-be deputy, named Pete, searches for the fugivtive with the aid of his two bloodhound dogs.
#22 - A.P.B.
Season 2 - Episode 28 - Aired 4/6/1965
Kimble hops onto a freight train and finds himself in the company of three escaped convicts (two of which are wounded during their escape). One of the convicts dies from his wounds while the second one, a brutal murderer named Neil Pinkerton, forces Kimble to treat his leg wound. Pinkerton decides to keep Kimble as a hostage as a safeguard against the police. Pinkerton, Kimble, and the other prisoner, named Matt Mooney, seek refuge in a farm house owned by widow Mona Ross and her mother whom recognize all of them and treat Kimble, Mooney and Pinkerton as their celebrity guests.
#23 - 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.
#24 - 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.
#25 - 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.