8.1/10420 votes#1 - Fear in a Desert City
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 9/17/1963
Richard Kimble rides into Tucson, Arizona under the name James Lincoln. He checks into a hotel and finds a job as a bartender at the Branding Iron. He meets Monica Welles (Vera Miles), the piano player who escaped from her stalking jealous husband (Ed Welles) played by Brian Keith.
Director: Walter Grauman
Writer: Stanford Whitmore
7.3/10327 votes#2 - The Witch
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 9/24/1963
While working as a handyman in a backwater community in Missouri, Kimble has a few run-ins with a young girl named Jenny Ammory whom is a pathological liar whom speaks to a rag doll she calls 'Nyet' which she keeps at a nearby pond. Jenny uses Kimble as an excuse when she's late for school when she claims that a man attacked her. When Kimble shows up making a routine delivery of supplies to the school, Jenny idetifies him as the man whom attacked her. As Jenny's teacher, Emily Norton, speaks to Kimble about Jenny's compulsive lying, Jenny runs home and tells her mother she saw her teacher and the local handyman making out in the barn. Kimble gets roughed up by his co-workers while Emily gets fired and both are advised to leave town. Kimble goes to a school hearing on Emily and tries to clear her by catching Jenny in a lie. But his plan backfires when the skeptic townspeople belive Jenny and decide to form a lynching party to track Kimble down.
Director: Andrew McCullough
Writer: William D. Gordon
7.5/10314 votes#3 - The Other Side of the Mountain
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 10/1/1963
In West Virginia, Kimble arrives at a local coal mining town where he is roughed up by the redneck locals, and then chased by a sheriff's posse. Hiding in the mountains, Kimble meets Cassie, a young woman living in a remote cabin with her grandmother. Cassie tells Kimble she get him to safety because she knows the area, when she is really wanting to keep him around for her own selfish reasons. Meanwhile, Gerard flies to West Virginia after learning from the sheriff that Kimble has been spotted in the area and teams up with the posse to try to find Kimble.
Director: James Sheldon
Writer: Alan Caillou
8.2/10300 votes#4 - Never Wave Goodbye (1)
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 10/8/1963
Kimble, working as an apprentice sailmaker in Santa Barbara, California, falls in love with Karen, the daughter of his stern but compassionate boss Lars Christian. But earns scorn from Karen's jealous and overprotective brother Eric. When Lars suffers a heart attack his last wish on his deathbed is to implore Kimble to stay with Karen. Meanwhile, Gerard flies to nearby Los Angeles when he hears about the arrest of a one-armed man for armed robbery and lets the story hit the newspapers, hoping it will flush out Kimble.
Director: William A. Graham
Writer: Hank Searls
8.3/10281 votes#5 - Never Wave Goodbye (2)
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 10/15/1963
After finding that the one-armed man is not the same man he saw fleeing his house the night of Helen's murder, Kimble flees from Los Angeles, bearly escaping Gerard's dragnet. Tired of running, Kimble hopes to lie low in Santa Barbara and finally confides with Karen his secret. But Gerard tracks Kimble to Santa Barbara from a single clue that Kimble leaves behind at the L.A. County Jail: a match with the word ""sails"" printed on it. When Kimble discovers that Gerard has arrived in town looking for him, with the assistance of Eric, Kimble and Karen flee by sailboat and hope to end the running by faking his and Karen's death in a sailboat accident during a storm at sea.
Director: William A. Graham
Writer: Hank Searls
7.7/10259 votes#6 - 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.
Director: Robert Ellis Miller
Writer: Arthur Weiss
7.6/10257 votes#7 - Smoke Screen
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 10/29/1963
A forest fire prevents access to a local hospital. Kimball, now a farm laborer, decides to risk blowing his cover when he elects to help deliver a woman's baby at the labor camp. When the news of Kimball's charitable act is reported to the press, Gerard gets wind of it and believes that Kimball is the unnamed doctor.
Director: Claudio Guzmán
Writer: John D.F. Black
8.0/10276 votes#8 - See Hollywood and Die
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 11/5/1963
While working as a gas station attendant in New Mexico, Kimble is taken hostage, along with customer Joanne, by two holdup men, named Miles and Vinnie. Once on the road, Kimble pretends that he is a criminal and is heading towards Los Angels for a ""big job."" At the same time, he lets Joanne know that he's on her side, but she's suspicious to his true motives. Once arriving in L.A., Kimble decides to set up Miles and Vinnie to be arrested. But Miles, not trusting Kimble enough, wants him to kill Joanne to prove himself.
Director: Andrew McCullough
Writer: George Eckstein
7.6/10246 votes#9 - Ticket to Alaska
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 11/12/1963
On a small freighter, Kimble is traveling to Alaska when an FBI agent, named Paul Vale, arrives and begins questioning him and all the passengers in a search for a Korean War criminal and traitor. Vale becomes most suspicious of Kimble, as well as passenger George Banning and his wife Adrienne whom are embezzlers fleeing the States. When Vale is found murdered the next day, Captain Carraway interogates all the suspects and when the captain discovers that Kimble's references are fake, Kimble becomes the chief suspect.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: Oliver Crawford
7.9/10260 votes#10 - Fatso
Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 11/19/1963
After getting into a car accident in a rural Kentucky town, Kimble lands in jail by the redneck sheriff who hates outsiders. But Kimble manages to escape with his cellmate Davey ""Fatso"" Lambert. Hiding out at the Lambert ranch, Kimble sees that Davey's father and brother, Frank, treat the slow-witted Davey badly for blaming him for a barn fire years earlier. Kimble tries to prove Davey's innocence as Gerard flies out to Kentucky after learning of Kimble arrest and forms a posse to track him down.
Director: Ida Lupino
Writer: Robert Pirosh
8.8/10329 votes#11 - Nightmare at Northoak
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 11/26/1963
Kimball is injured while helping save some children from a fiery crash. While recuperating at a local home, he learns that his caretakers are the local sheriff and his wife. As if this weren't bad enough, a news article describing Kimball's heroic deeds goes nationwide. The all-seeing Lt. Gerard reads the article, and then goes to the small town to arrest Kimball.
Director: Christian Nyby
Writer: Stuart Jerome
7.7/10243 votes#12 - Glass Tightrope
Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 12/3/1963
Working as a stock clerk in a department store, Kimble witnesses his boss, Martin Rowland, accidentally kill a business associate in the parking lot after hours. When Kimble learns that a local vagrant found near the crime scene is the prime suspect, Kimble anonymously phones Rowland to get him to confess to the murder. But Rowland and his wife, Ginny, thinking that the caller is blackmailing them, hires the store detective, Angstrom, to find the person ""blackmailing"" Rowland.
Director: Ida Lupino
Writer: Robert C. Dennis
7.6/10257 votes#13 - Terror at High Point
Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 12/17/1963
While working at a construction site in Utah, Kimble convinces his supervisor, Buck Harmon, to hire Jamie, a mentally disabled but physically strong young man, to help out. Because Jamie is an easy target for the taunts of the other work crew members, Kimble becomes Jamie's protector. When Jamie is accused of sexually assaulting Buck's wife, he becomes frightened and runs away. The crew foreman, Dan Pike, convinces Buck to organize a posse to hunt down Jamie and kill him.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: Peter B. Germano
8.5/10281 votes#14 - The Girl from Little Egypt
Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 12/24/1963
In San Francisco, Kimble is nearly run over by a car driven by Ruth Norton, a young flight attendent distraught over discovering that the man she has been dating for the past four months is married with two children. While recuperating in the hospital, a delirious Kimble flashes back to the months leading upto the night of Helen Kimble's murder and Kimble first seeing the one-armed man fleeing from his house. Followed by Kimble's trial, sentence, and escape from the train wreck. Ruth, who has been keeping a vigil at Kimble's bedside, hears him mutter Helen's name. Thinking that he's in some kind of trouble, Ruth takes Kimble (now going by the alias George Browning) to her apartment to recover. Kimble then gives Ruth advice on her relationship with her boyfriend, Paul, and to put her life problems in perspective.
Director: Vincent McEveety
Writer: Stanford Whitmore
8.2/10258 votes#15 - Home is the Hunted
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 1/7/1964
Kimble returns to his home town in Illinois after learning that his father, John Kimble, has suffered a heart attack and has donated his medical library to the University of Wisconsin and in the process of selling the family house. While Kimble hides out at the home of his sister Donna and her sympathetic husband Leonard, Kimble blames himself for his father's condition, but is more troubled by his younger brother Ray, whom belives Kimble is guilty and thinks he's to blame for ruining his life since people see Ray as ""the brother of a killer."" Meanwhile, Gerard arrives in town to search for Kimble and focuses on Donna and Leonard whom try to shake off the relentless detective long enough for Kimble to get out of town before Gerard finds him.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: Arthur Weiss
7.5/10227 votes#16 - The Garden House
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/14/1964
Kimble is working as the caretaker at a spacious ranch in Connecticut which is owned by newspaper heiress Ann Guthrie who lives with her husband Harlan and her sister Ruth. Ann and Ruth's late father founded the Westborne Clarion, the newspaper that Harlan currently runs. Although Ann is the sole benefactor of her father's estate, she believes Ruth is entitled to part of the fortune. But Ann is unaware that the greedy Ruth is having an affair with Harlan and they plot to murder Ann and claim everything. When Kimble suspects Ruth and Harlan's plan and informs Ann, the skeptic heiress refuses to believe Kimble. Knowing that Kimble knows, the crafty couple plot to frame him for Ann's murder.
Director: Ida Lupino
Writer: Sheldon Stark
7.8/10243 votes#17 - Come Watch Me Die
Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 1/21/1964
While working as a farm hand in a small Nebraska town, Kimble witnesses the arrest of a local man, named Bellows, whom is suspected of a double murder. Kimble finds himself 'deputized' by Deputy Bowers to help transport Bellows to the county jail, along with four witnesses whom saw Bellows fleeing from a farm house which was the scene of the crime. Although Bellows convinces Kimble that he (like Kimble with his wife's murder) is an innocent victim of circumstantial evidence. But the townsmen remain unswayed. That night when the men get drunk and decide to lynch Bellows, Kimble helps him escape. But Kimble is betrayed when Bellows, whom really did kill the farm couple, escapes and holds another farm couple hostage.
Director: László Benedek
Writer: N/A
7.8/10253 votes#18 - Where the Action Is
Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 1/28/1964
While working as a hotel lifeguard in Reno, Nevada, Kimble is caught in the middle of a feud between the hotel owner Dan Polichek, and his spoiled and rambunctious teenage daughter Christine. 'Chris' belives her father drove away her mother whom commited suicide years ago and she sets out to disgrace Mr. Polichek by provking bar fights, humiliating herself, and goes too far when she pretends to be engaging herself in an affair with the reluctant Kimble.
Director: James Sheldon
Writer: Harry Kronman
8.3/10248 votes#19 - Search in a Windy City
Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 2/4/1964
Beliving that the one-armed man is in Chicago, Kimble contacts Mike Decker, a newspaper columnist who defended Kimble during his trial. Kimble and Decker organize a city-wide search for the one-armed man. But things get complicated with the arrival of Decker's alcholic wife, Paula, whom gets nervous of Kimble's presence and falls off the wagon. Meanwhile, Gerard learns about Decker's search for a one-armed man and decides to use the writer to set a trap for Kimble.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: Stuart Jerome
7.4/10208 votes#20 - Bloodline
Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 2/11/1964
Kimble works as a kennel man for Max Bodin, a breeder of prize-winning Irish Setter show dogs, and whom is currently putting his kennel up for sale. Max's son, Johnny, and Johnny's wife Cora discover that one of the dogs has developed hip dysplasia which means all of the dogs in the bloodline will likely inherit the condition and be worthless as show dogs. But they keep the news from Max and plot to live off the sale. But when Kimble stumbles onto their plan, they have him investigated.
Director: John Erman
Writer: Harry Kronman
7.6/10216 votes#21 - Rat in a Corner
Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 2/18/1964
Herbie Grant, a second rate hoodlum, is shot in the leg while trying to rob a liquor store that Kimble works at. Herbie later takes Kimble hostage where Herbie claims that although he tried to rob the store, he is innocent of two other liquor store robberies in the other towns. Kimble agrees to help clear Herbie in which the hood lets the fugitive go. Kimble is summoned to the local police station to give his statement on the robbery where he is recognized by Herbie's sister, Lorna, whom works at the local post office. She threatens to turn Kimble in unless he turns over her brother whom she belives to be guilty of those other robberies. But at a local motel where Herbie is staying at, he is recognized by a maid who calls the police and they arrest him. Thinking that Kimble doublecrossed him, Herbie reports Kimble to the police.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: William Wood
8.1/10228 votes#22 - Angels Travel on Lonely Roads (1)
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 2/25/1964
On the run from the Nevada State Police, Kimble hitches a ride with Sister Veronica, a nun traveling to Sacramento where she plans to renounce her vows. After fixing her car when it breaks down, Kimble agrees to travel with Veronica only to the nearest train station. But Veronica belives Kimble to be her savior and insists that he tag along with her all the way to Sacramento.
Director: Walter Grauman, Meredith M. Nicholson
Writer: Al C. Ward
8.2/10224 votes#23 - Angels Travel on Lonely Roads (2)
Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 3/3/1964
Kimble and Sister Veronica continue their journey to Sacramento, unaware that the Nevada State Police have put up a roadblock at the state line. While Kimble deals with a disgruntled ranch hand, named Chuck Mathers, whom suspects his true idenity, Sister Veronica accidently discovers Kimble's idenity through a TV news report. But she does not tell Kimble about her knowledge of who he really is.
Director: Walter Grauman
Writer: Al C. Ward
7.8/10216 votes#24 - Flight from the Final Demon
Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 3/10/1964
While working as a health club masseuse, Kimble is recognized by Sheriff Bray, a local lawman with policial aspirations. But Kimble manages to escape with the help of co-worker Steve Edson. After confiding with Steve his secret, Kimble learns that Steve is a fugitive of conscience: five months earlier, Steve was tried and acquitted for the murder of his girlfriend Linda's abusive brother, a murder that Steve actually committed and he apparently cannot live with the guilt over having gotten away with it. Kimble reluctantly lets Steve travel with him. But Steve begins leaving behind clues that soon puts Sheriff Bray back on their trail, including contacting Linda for help and letting her vengeful other brother, Joey, track them down.
Director: Jerry Hopper
Writer: Philip Saltzman
7.5/10213 votes#25 - Taps for a Dead War
Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 3/17/1964
While working as a roller rink supervisor, Kimble is recognized by the horribly scared Joe Hallop, a former Korean War veteran whom blames Kimble for his condition. Apparently back in the Korean War, Kimble was nearly killed in an enemy grenade explosion in which Joe shielded Kimble and got his face disfigured in the process. Knocked out, Kimble never knew who saved his life. Joe then plots to lure Kimble into a remote area and kill him by using one of his war mememtos: a live grenade.
Director: William A. Graham
Writer: Harry Kronman
The Best Episodes of The Fugitive Season 1
Every episode of The Fugitive Season 1 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of The Fugitive Season 1!
Richard Kimble is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death penalty. En route to death row, Kimble's train derails and crashes, allowing...
Genres:Action & AdventureDramaMystery
Network:ABC
Season 1 Ratings Summary
"Fear in a Desert City" is the best rated episode of "The Fugitive" season 1. It scored 8.1/10 based on 420 votes. Directed by Walter Grauman and written by Stanford Whitmore, it aired on 9/17/1963. This episode is rated 0.8 points higher than the second-best, "The Witch".