The Fugitive (TV Series) The Shattered Silence (1967) User Reviews

Plot summary

[ynot-16 · 8/10 · 19 March 2009]

Kimble escapes a trap at a trainyard, then makes it to Pinedale, Washington, a small town, where he meets Andrea Cross (actress Antoinette Bower). She takes an instant liking to Kimble and brings him home with her so he can help her prepare for her ceramics exhibition. When he arrives he meets her friend Bob Howe (actor Paul Mantee), a deputy.

The next day Andrea hears of the escape of Kimble on the radio, and his description, and realizes that "Ben Lewis" is really Richard Kimble. She offers Kimble her car to make his escape, suggesting that he wreck it over a mountainside to throw off the police.

Kimble is shot by Howe, bails out of the vehicle, and flees into the mountains, where he comes across Mallory (actor Laurence Naismith), an older man who has fled society and has not seen another person for 14 years. Mallory patches up Kimble and tries to sell him on his philosophy and lifestyle, using his dogs to make sure Kimble sticks around, contrary to his supposed desire for isolation. A series of further complications follow.

Familiar stuff....and the reason we love "The Fugitive"

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 20 April 2018]

The show begins with Kimble passing through a town. Andrea (Antoinette Bower) meets him in the general store and immediately offers him a job. But when it later becomes obvious Kimble is a wanted man, she helps him escape. And, strangely, he's found by a hermit! This hermit is starving for friendship and seems willing to force Kimble to stay. But when the man gets sick, Kimble seeks out Andrea again so that they can find help for the old guy.

"The Shattered Silence" is a very typical installment of "The Fugitive". And, after nearly four full seasons, this one is just about the prototypical episode. It has a woman who very, very quickly falls for him and KNOWS Richard Kimble is innocent. It has a deputy who just happens to be interested in this same lady! It also has a chance for the fugitive to disappear safely from the police...yet he selflessly stays behind to help someone in need. None of this is to say it's a bad episode...just a familiar one. And, considering it's the last regular episode (just before the two-part finale), it's about time to wrap up this excellent series.

The doc is captured... by a hermit

[jsinger-58969 · 8/10 · 5 April 2022]

This one begins with Kimble running from the cops yet again. Maybe if he shaved his head, grew a beard, or got some glasses with a fake nose, he wouldn't be recognized everywhere he went. He gets away by hopping a freight, but the cops put out an APB. Dick goes into a store where the great Dabbs Greer has a cameo as a dim witted clerk and is seen by this week's babe, who sees the fur poking out from the top of his shirt and offers him a job and anything else he wants. She hears a news bulletin on the radio about the fugitive and tells him to take and wreck her car on a mountain road and run away, because it only makes sense that she would do that. Her deputy boyfriend sets up a roadblock and shoots Kimble as he drives by. Dick is shot in the arm this time and not his usual leg wound, but the blood ruins his new $10 jacket. While stumbling around in the woods, Dr K is found by an old hermit walking his two dire wolves. Kimble gradually recovers and wants to leave, but the hermit, played by Laurence Naismith, who invented the game of basketball, wants him to stay. Cool that this episode aired on me tv on final 4 weekend. Kimble leaves when the old goat comes down with a life threatening illness. He walks back to his girlfriend's house, which is miles away and down the mountain, to go with her to the drugstore to get the life saving drugs the old guy needs. Kimble writes a script since he is a doctor. He then goes back to save the hermit's life and narrowly escapes for the umpteenth time. At the time this was shot it was intended to be the last episode so the hermit tells Kimble he will run for the rest of his life. But, we know that will not be the case.

David Janssen: The best ears of our lives..

[beaudare-70996 · 10/10 · 28 April 2020]

As an American actor/ screenwriter I think this episode sums up the timeless, classic series, "The Fugitive". The scene where Lawrence Naismith deftly trys to convince David Janssen that humans can't see that eternity is passing them by, is one of the most riveting in television history. And when "Andrea", played by the lovely Antoinette Bower, says goodbye to Kimble, it's truly a heartbreaking moment. And not to be overlooked, is Paul Mantee's serious but playful performance as the jealous police officer, and David Janssen's intelligent, thoughtful Richard Kimble. Truly a classic TV series... Beau Dare

4/11/67 "The Shattered Silence"

[schappe1 · 24 March 2016]

Kimble, still on the run, encounters a woman, (Antoinette Bower), who needs a handyman and instinctively knows (A) she likes and trusts him and (B) when she finds out who he is, she immediately knows he must be innocent. Kimble's greatest virtue is that his virtue shines through so powerfully that each week somebody who can help him "just knows he's innocent". It's a good quality to have.

Unfortunately, she has a boyfriend who is- you guessed it- a deputy sheriff. Kimble has to leave and winds up encountering Lawrence Naismith, in an over-the-top performance, playing a hermit with a couple of snarling dogs he uses to keep strangers away. But for some reason he decides to help Kimble who has once again been wounded, (by now he has more scars than Matt Dillon). They befriend each other, which means Kimble is subjected to Naismith's rants about the evils of civilization. As a fugitive facing execution for a murder he didn't commit, he might be inclined to agree. This is another possible chance for Kimble to find a new life, if a rather empty one. Kimble recognizes that the old man, for all of his contempt for civilization, is lonely and needs Kimble for companionship.

Any hope of staying with him ends when Naismith becomes deathly ill and Kimble has to return to civilization to get the medication that might save him. Eventually he connects the compassionate Bower to the situation and there is some hope for the old man- but Kimble is again off, searching for his own hope. But now he's finally going to find it.

A distillation of the fundamentals, with one performance worthy of Samuel Beckett

[ColonelPuntridge · 10/10 · 4 April 2022]

This installment of "The Fugitive" is one of the purest, simplest presentations of the core idea of the show, the pure theme we have now seen so many variations of: Kimble encounters a sympathetic character in a predicament, and tries to help the person regain personal power; then someone else learns his (Kimble's) true identity and calls the authorities, and then the sympathetic character must follow Kimble's lead, take ownership of his (or her) own life, and assert his (or her) new personal power by helping Kimble escape.

But this installment is very simple, and all about one person: the Hermit, and his predicament is purely existential, without any complexity. He battles only himself, and his own mortality and physical limits (illness), and his own marginal sanity. Laurence Naismith does such an amazing job with such an amazing script that the other actors (including David Janssen) don't have to do anything here except wear the right costumes and recite their one-dimensional lines. Really, they might just as well be props.

Naismith's part alternates between quasi-rational self-presentation and lunatic feverish raving. Naismith demonstrates total mastery of the sense and the mood: frenzied and almost-intelligible, but not quite. The whole thing reminds me of Samuel Beckett's monologues like KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, and his strange first-person non-novels like MOLLOY and MALONE DIES. Looking around the web, I'm not seeing any recordings of Naismith reading anything by Beckett, but he might have done them in performance, and if he did, there's no doubt he did them fantastically well. If only we could watch!

The only thing good about this episode is the title.

[Christopher370 · 1/10 · 3 May 2023]

At least I like the title, but this episode would definitely fall in the bottom 3 of my least favorite episodes of the series. I hated it that much because it was so badly written, badly paced and the story was all too familiar and nothing we haven't seen done before, only better.

Within the first 5 minutes, the woman of the week who meets Kimble in a convenience store, pretty much throws herself at his feet and makes no secret that she wants to get him to her house at all costs under the guise of needing a handy man, but it's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that she just wants a man. She all but ropes and ties him into her trunk to get him there and it's laughably bad how hastily the scene plays out. This woman was definitely on a mission for a man and wasn't going home that day without one!

Kimble of course accepts without hesitation since lately he's been getting romantically involved with a woman in each town he visits, and since this one looks so much like his old fishing port girlfriend Coralee from last season, he just can't resist going home with her.

At the house, a man visits and as soon as he entered the scene I said to myself "He's going to be a cop"...and sure enough within a couple of minutes it's revealed that's exactly what he is. So sadly predictable and I don't enjoy making fun of this excellent series, but this is how far the quality of the show has fallen by this point. You can pretty much guess the character before they're even introduced to the audience.

And by evening Coralee, I mean Andrea, wastes no time and makes her move, seductively walking into the living room with unkempt, tousled hair and wearing a robe while Kimble is watching the rain fall. She plants herself in a chair and purrs to him, "Isn't the rain pretty?"...."It is" Kimble replies....."Do you want me to leave?" she asks with a hungry look on her face...."No, I don't" Kimble replies.....Such badly written melodrama! Is this "The Fugitive"?! Blech!

At least we were spared the swooping kiss and slow walk into Coralee's, I mean Andrea's bedroom. I have to admit I FF through much of the episode after this dreadful scene which I have only done once before in this series during that atrocious motorcycle gang episode earlier in the season.

I can't fault David Janssen for any of this because none of it is his fault. He does appear to be exhausted and tired by this point and while that should be helpful to a character who's been on the run for so long, it's not.

Janssen just doesn't appear to be into it anymore and seems to be just going through the motions without much feeling and that can carry over to the audience and make the viewer feel the same and not be into it either. At least that's my personal observation of things.

I really wish this series had ended at the end of the third season and it would be a solid 10 star series for me. This fourth season is like watching a totally different show, and the garish color is such a huge turn off too.

Before I got up to the fourth season I was really looking forward to seeing it in color, but in comparison, I now believe that the black and white only underscored the drama, emotion and charm of the series and I think black and white is the only way to watch it.

As for "The Shattered Silence", such a great title like that deserved a better story than it got. I'd rate this one negative stars if I could. Just bad all around and it was definitely past time to close up shop on the series.

Flub

[Bill_S_DE_NJ · 7 April 2022]

Kimbal was shot in the left arm earlier in the episode... At the very end, he grabs his right arm as if that is the one that was hurt. I'm just pointing out a mistake here this isn't really a review.