Middle of a Heat Wave

When the show begins, Richard Kimble is having difficulty dealing with his girlfriend. He's told her that he needs to be moving on and she is not at all willing to allow this! She creates a bit of a scene at the restaurant they are in and Kimble tries hard to keep her civil and stop her from drinking any more. He heads home. In the meantime, the lady disappears and her sister immediately assumes Kimble is responsible for harming her. When she is discovered later, beaten but alive, once again the sister is leading the attack on Kimble and pushes the police to arrest him...though there's no evidence he did anything. Now here's where it gets worse...when the beating victim awakens, she decides not to tell the police anything and let Kimble suffer. After all, he wasn't willing to stay and he deserves whatever happens to him next!!

This is an interesting portrait of some truly screwed up people-- both sisters and the husband who has a secret of his own. Well worth seeing and a great example of some really despicable jerks!

Actress Carol Rossen, who appears in many episodes, plays the part of Laurel, whom Kimble is casually dating. Kimble, noble guy that he is, seeks to break it off because he knows he is leaving town soon. Laurel cannot understand why he is dumping her. Kimble and Laurel are seen arguing, and she scratches his face and storms off.

Unfortunately, later that night Laurel is attacked and (it is implied) raped, but says she cannot remember who was her attacker. Laurel's sister has no doubt who was the attacker: Kimble. The sheriff (actor J.D. Cannon, who plays a prominent role in the final episode), also suspects Kimble.

Kimble needs to find the real attacker and clear himself before the police realize who he is.

Actor James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek) plays a doctor.

Saw Mimi Dillard in this episode last night and had to look her up. What a beauty! ~~Montayj

I really hate this episode of The Fugitive, and for someone who loves the series, that's hard for me to say. It's got nothing to do with David Janssen's great character work and wonderful acting. The story and the supporting characters are just written so poorly, especially the women. The first half is actually good. The scorned girlfriend goes running off and is now missing. It tugs at the audience's heartstrings a little. But it falls apart in the second half and is unsatisfying, to say the least, with how the missing woman goes from being the victim to being someone who "asked for it".

Carol Rossen makes her third appearance on the show, this time as a love-sick co-worker of Kimble's whom he has to brush off. She gets drunk and winds up being raped, (implied) and dumped in a field, not able to remember anything. Kimble was the last one seen with her. He gets held on suspicion and finger-printed but insists that a witness, (no, not the one-armed man: the night clerk at the hotel he's staying in), who is temporarily out of town will clear him. Of course, Carol could clear him if her memory clears- and if she wants to. Her sister, (Sarah Marshall), is sure Kimble attacked her sister- until she finds out the real culprit is closer to home.

At the end we see another wonderfully inept police dragnet, led by J. D. Cannon- later to earn fame as McCloud's boss. There's always been a controversy about this one as the culprit is not brought to justice at the end and Rossen's character seems to blame herself for the incident. There's a lengthy discussion of this in Ed Robertson's book on the series. It's a combination of network standards about talking about rape at the time and society's attitude toward sexual assault in that era. The casting of Rossen, who normally played strong women seems to have been an attempt to buttress the idea that it was somehow her fault. She seems less the victim than the perpetrator. Anyway, Kimble didn't do it.