Fugitive comes to DVD in a 33 disc set on Nov. 1st 2011 (3 Viewers)

[boothman58]

Took about 6 weeks but got my replacement discs today. Feels great to have a complete set now.

 

[jimmyjet]

i hadnt heard anything from this thread for awhile.

i thought maybe richard was in hiding ?

 

[Harry-N]

I guess everyone who wanted the MOST WANTED set got one, got their replacements and are happily watching. I tried to aid in some episodic discussion, but that's quieted down too. It's also summertime - a lot are on vacation and busy with outdoor stuff during the nice weather.

Harry

 

[Richard V]

I kinda think this topic has been beaten to death, and not much else to add. Maybe time to be retired, or locked.

 

[stevelecher]

Fugitive fans with nothing to complain, or be unhappy, about. Kind of nice.I've tried a couple of times to get discussions about episodes going, but nobody seems to want to participate. Someone tried to start a thread a number of years ago but nothing really developed.In The Girl From Little Egypt, Helen and Richard's final fight began when he mentioned seeing Ross Carter earlier that day. I think it would have been cool if that scene had been used in the final episode and then the Lloyd Chandler character was instead Ross Carter. It would have at least tied that character to the early days of the show, even if he never really figured in it afterward. Just an idle thought I had when recently watching "Little Egypt."

 

[Harry-N]

I was watching "World's End" and happened to spot something odd in the end credits. The screen after the Peter Rugolo credit has Assistant Director as Wes McAfee. Oddly, though, if you look closely at the words "Assistant Director", you can see a bit of the bottom of the characters cut off, as if a card with the words "...Wes McAfee" were pasted in but skewed a bit.

Another episode on that same disc also has the same credit, but the bottom of the words aren't cut off. It was probably something that's always existed from the original broadcast - I just noticed it and thought I'd mention it here.

Harry

 

[Harry-N]

Today I was looking for a good rip-roaring episode of THE FUGITIVE and I picked "Running Scared" from the third season. This is the one where Kimble gets word in the newspaper that his father had passed away and he wants to make contact with Donna, his sister. With Gerard and his men lurking about the Taft residence, they set up a meeting in another city, but the plan goes south when the wife of the prosecutor who won the Kimble case recognizes Donna in an airport.

Lots of good tense moments, and some genuine pathos for Donna Kimble in this one. Gerard is as menacing as ever here.

Harry

 

[Jack P]

Fugitive fans with nothing to complain, or be unhappy, about. Kind of nice.I've tried a couple of times to get discussions about episodes going, but nobody seems to want to participate. Someone tried to start a thread a number of years ago but nothing really developed.In The Girl From Little Egypt, Helen and Richard's final fight began when he mentioned seeing Ross Carter earlier that day. I think it would have been cool if that scene had been used in the final episode and then the Lloyd Chandler character was instead Ross Carter. It would have at least tied that character to the early days of the show, even if he never really figured in it afterward. Just an idle thought I had when recently watching "Little Egypt."

I agree, my one regret about the last episode was that they could have done a stronger job continuity wise with what was established earlier, but unfortunately in those days that just wasn't something they gave too much thought to. That said, they at least brought back Diane Brewster (albeit uncredited) to play Helen Kimble and the running theme of them arguing about adoption was still there.

The biggest continuity gaffe overall over the course of the series IMO was how Richard's brother Ray was never referred to again after his S1 appearance. Off to the same realm later inhabited by Eugene Barkley and Chuck Cunningham among others!

 

[stevelecher]

Harry, Running Scared is a wonderful episode that has all the ingredients present in the best Fugitive episodes. Acting is first rate. There is real chemistry between J. Scott and David Janssen. There is pathos, tension, gamesmanship, and satisfaction when Donna gets to see her brother, if only for a few minutes. How horrible for Donna to see Richard running for his life after Gerard shows up at the arena. Then, the cute dig she gives him the next morning at the hotel makes for a great ending of a terrific episode.Pretty big fan of "The 2130" also.

 

[John DeAngelis]

A great online article about The Fugitive:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-fugitive-broke-new-ground-to-become-an-unlikel,102733/

 

[stevelecher]

Thanks John for posting the article. I think they're a little too hard on Gerard and we all probably could come up with a better top 10 or top 20 episodes, but it's a good read.Tuesday, September 17 marks the 50th anniversary, to the day, of this great show's debut on ABC.

 

[Harry-N]

I'd somehow missed "Running Scared" for a lot of years. I remember it being one that I finally got to see on some syndication run, probably in the early '70s. One of the things that initially impressed me was that it was a "family" episode and that Jacqueline Scott reprised her familiar role in this episode I'd missed.

It feels like a forgotten "great" episode to me - one that doesn't engender much discussion - and I was happy to see it listed in the article linked above.

Harry

 

[stevelecher]

I agree, my one regret about the last episode was that they could have done a stronger job continuity wise with what was established earlier, but unfortunately in those days that just wasn't something they gave too much thought to. That said, they at least brought back Diane Brewster (albeit uncredited) to play Helen Kimble and the running theme of them arguing about adoption was still there.

The biggest continuity gaffe overall over the course of the series IMO was how Richard's brother Ray was never referred to again after his S1 appearance. Off to the same realm later inhabited by Eugene Barkley and Chuck Cunningham among others!




Thanks, Jack. Continuity was a problem here at times. In a fake letter he was writing to throw off the police in "The End Is But The Beginning," Kimble tells his dad to say hi to Doug and Sis. Who is Doug? Doesn't he, one other time, mention mom? I'm not sure about that one.

Their main inconsistency is when the murder took place. In Never Wave Goodbye, it was fall of 1960. Other times it was 1961. Then, in a number of later episodes, they indicated the murder was a couple years ago even though he had been on the run for two years. Didn't leave much time for the trial and appeal process. Anyway, small inconsistencies. The show is great and I'm happy to overlook a few writing errors.

 

[Harry-N]

I always forgave shows from the '60s with their inconsistencies in continuity. Back then, television producers were concerned with getting an hour's worth of material onto TV screens, with the thought that it might be rerun once or twice, but that no-one was really paying that close attention to every little detail.

So if Kimble had a black-sheep type brother in an early episode, and he just wasn't important in later episodes, he wouldn't be missed. Or one could rationalize that these black-sheep types tend to distance themselves from the family and that perhaps everyone just knew that old Ray was drifting along somewhere out there in America, oblivious to what was happening in his family. There are certainly long stretches of Richard Kimble's life on the road that we were not privy to in the episodes. Much time would have been spent on buses, in terminals, settling in, finding hotels and work, even shopping for clothes and such. During such stretches, a phone call to Donna could have easily gotten him caught up on Ray's whereabouts.

Dates of past events weren't all that critical either - all that mattered was the episode at hand. I'm sure that had the Quinn Martin people realized how long-lived and how analyzed their show would be in future years, they might have taken better care of these little details. As it is, they're a quaint reminder of how television shows were regarded in a past age.

Harry

Even into the '70s, shows had these kind of inconsistencies. In M*A*S*H for example, there's a mention of Hawkeye's mom and "Sis" in his letter home. Later on, we find that Hawkeye only has a father back home in Maine. Early on, it's mentioned that the only book his father ever read was THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and was young Mr. Pierce was known as "Hawkeye", and yet later it's revealed that his father was also a doctor, so it's rather unlikely that that was the ONLY book he'd ever read.

 

[Jack P]

Don't even get me started on trying to add up the inconsistencies in "The Odd Couple" (which TV Land parodied once in a hilarious promo spot).

There's even a gaffe in "The Judgment" at one point when Len Taft asks Donna if the kids can stay with "your mother". The scriptwriter didn't seem to realize that this would mean Richard Kimble's mother as well who is already established as dead! That was a case of someone I think writing a line without thinking of the logical ramifications.

 

[stevelecher]

That was the mention of Mom I was trying to come up with. Ha! Thank you. Yes, don't you think Donna's mother would have come to see Richard when the rest of the family did in Home Is The Hunted?

I agree with Harry about forgiving them their inconsistencies.

 

[Harry-N]

There are always contorted ways of explaining stuff like that. Donna could, in fact, be Richard's half-sister, making her mother not related to Richard at all. But again, it's really just part of the inconsistency of television writers of the time. As long as the drama or comedy at hand made sense within itself, that's all that mattered. No one envisioned ways for people to see entire series back-to-back-to-back. It just wasn't even imaginable at that time.

It's the same with the stunt men in fight scenes. The cameramen and producers never imagined that we'd be looking at this stuff on 60" high definition televisions and easily able to spot a different face in a long shot stunt.

Harry

 

[Fritzl Dog]

Had to weigh-in with my 2 cents. Tuesday evenings, 9 p.m. on the ABC network in 1963 was event television for me and my family. When the 2-part finale aired in '67, I remember feeling let down as Kimble's running came to an end. Subsequently viewed re-telecasts on the A&E network until the single-season DVD's were acquired, and I felt I was in heaven! With the reported disc-related problems with the boxed set, I held off a few months thinking the defective product would be through the logistics pipeline and it would be safe to purchase. Of course, Murphy's Law came to be front and center. I followed the procedure outlined by CBS/Paramount to report the problem. After e-mailing with a follow-up phone call, I received the 5 replacement discs and thought that was the end of the story. I only wished I had examined each and every disc after my initial purchase for I discovered CBS-P had forgotten to include Season 2/Disc 3/Vol.1, and instead packaged DUPLICATE discs of Season 2/Disc 3/Vol. 2. I immediately e-mailed their Fugitive Team(sic) of this oversight and have not heard back in nearly 2 months.
I only know too well that corporations can make mistakes as I worked for one in quality control for over 20 years. My belief is that CBS-P rushed this product to market for the 2012 holiday season without the necessary QC protocols to prevent a re-call campaign this extensive. I ended up purchasing again, the single-season Season 2/Vol. 2 edition to complete the library, and I'm stuck with the horrible Heyes music soundtrack.
My last hope is that CBS/Paramount elects to release a Blu-Ray version of this which I wouldn't hesitate to purchase.
Here's to the memory of David Janssen, a wonderful actor!

 

[Harry-N]

Sorry to hear of your travails, Chuck, but I'm confused with your disc descriptions.

...CBS-P had forgotten to include Season 2/Disc 3/Vol.1, and instead packaged DUPLICATE discs of Season 2/Disc 3/Vol. 2. ...

My understanding is that the only replacement disc for Season Two was in fact Volume 1, Disc Four.

My replacement package included:

S1, V2, D2
S1, V2, D3
S2, V1, D4
S3, V1, D2
S3, V1, D3

Harry

 

[Harry-N]

Oh - and tonight, 50 years ago, was the initial telecast of the second episode of THE FUGITIVE, "The Witch."

Harry