Customer Reviews

The Fugitive: A Complete Episode Guide, 1963-1967 (Pci Collector Editions)

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Of the three books that have been published about "The Fugitive" television series (my favorite of all time), this one I would rate as the most flawed. "The Fugitive Recaptured" by Ed Robertson and "The Official Fan's Guide to The Fugitive" by Mel Proctor are both much better.

Cooper's book is largely a series of summaries of each of the 120 episodes in the four-year series. The problem is that careless factual errors pop up again and again. And I am basing this on checking the summaries of only the 60-odd episodes (just slightly over half the total) that I'm familiar with. Who knows about the others!

For example in Episode 27, "Never Stop Running," the author doesn't even get the name right for the character played by Claude Akins. He said it was Jim, when in fact it was Ralph. In Episode 63, "Crack in a Crystal Ball," in which a wife of a phony clairvoyant drives Kimble to a certain destination, Cooper says, "She leads him (Kimble) to believe that she is in trouble and asks him for help....They arrive at the agreed-upon location, but Mrs. Mitchell tips off Kimble and he escapes before the police arrive." Wrong. She drove Kimble because she said she had a lead on the whereabouts of the one-armed man. SHE was the one doing the helping (or so she claimed). She also did not tip him off. She just dropped Kimble off and drove away. He learned about the trap from a friend on the phone.

Sometimes the errors are small, but they still count as errors. In Episode 25, "Taps for a Dead War," the book says, "The police arrive. Joe and Millie hide Kimble in the house." I just saw that episode recently on video. In fact, he hides behind a tree outside.

Perhaps the most egregious example of an inaccurate summary is Episode No. 53, "The Survivors," (one of my favorites) in which Kimble secretly visits his financially troubled in-laws. The book first says Kimble wanted to help them find "a savings passbook, part of his wife's effects." In fact, what he was looking for was any information recorded on paper about a forgotten bank account. Eventually they find some hand-written notes inside a regular book. Cooper also says that Kimble's father in law "believes him innocent." Actually the father in law is uncertain.When asked about his opinion on Kimble's guilt, he says, "I don't know." Also Cooper says that at the end of the story "Mrs. Waverly (is) now thinking that perhaps Kimble is not guilty of murdering her daughter after all." There is no hint of this in the story. The ONLY reason Mrs. Waverly helped Kimble was because she was trying to heal her damaged relationship with her daughter.

Another example: in Episode 14, "The Girl From Little Egypt," a story that starts with a woman hitting Kimble with her car, the book says, "When he awakes, Ruth sneaks him out of the hospital." Not true. They left openly together.

I think John Cooper should do a second version of this book with the various errors corrected.