Customer Reviews

Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season, Volume Two

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These final 15 episodes from the 1966-67 season complete this outstanding series. The first half of the fourth season was this series' lowest point. Still, by the standards of most television series, that's pretty darn good. But by the standards of The Fugitive, there's no question the first half of this season took a marked dip in quality as compared to the previous three seasons.

The drop in quality through the first half of the final season was likely due in part to the replacement of producer Alan Armer with Wilton Schiller. Armer had gone to work on another Quinn Martin production that year, the sci-fi series The Invaders. However, partway through the season writer George Eckstein was brought aboard and the quality of the episodes soon began to reach soaring heights once again. This collection of the second half of the fourth and final season is noticeably stronger than the first half of the season.

Notable episodes in this final volume include "The Breaking of the Habit," a sequel to the first season two-part episode "Angels Travel On Lonely Roads"; "The Ivy Maze" in which guest star William Windom plays an old friend of Kimble's who helps him trap the one-armed man in the hopes of getting a confession from him; "Passage To Helena," an episode full of racial tension, in which a black lawman has custody of Kimble and an antagonizing prisoner played by James Farentino; "Death of a Very Small Killer," in which Kimble is forced to assist in finding an antidote to a meningitis strain that has stricken a Mexican border town, even though he questions the ethics of the doctor in charge of the project; "Dossier on a Diplomat," in which Kimble is sheltered from Gerard inside an African embassy; "The Shattered Silence," where Kimble takes refuge with a hermit who, ironically, has fled society of his own volition; the two-part final episode "The Judgment," which brings the series to its exciting conclusion. Part two of "The Judgment" was the most watched television show in history until it was surpassed in 1980 by the "who shot J.R.?" Dallas episode.