Dr. Richard Kimble, portrayed so sensitively by David Janssen, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife, and sentenced to the electric chair, but fate intervened on his way to the death house, as a train wreck freed him from the handcuffs that tied him to the relentless police lieutenant Philip Gerard. And it sent him on a nationwide one-pointed quest for the one-armed man, who he saw flee nervously from his home and the murder scene. It also sent Gerard on a similar search for him.
The show garnered five Emmy nominations, and finally won for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1966, was ranked 36 in “TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Shows of All Time.” (The one-armed man was number 5 in its 2013 list of “The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.” The award-winning TV series inspired a wonderful motion picture with Harrison Ford in the lead, as well as another TV series starring Tim Daly that ran for 22 episodes in 2000-01.
The Knight in Shining Jacket and Tie Richard Kimble, who swore the Hippocratic Oath to save human life before becoming a physician, continually searches for the one-armed man who could free him from his life as an interstate fugitive. As a result, he finds himself in one town, city or rural area after another, looking for leads for the murderer. Often, he settles into these areas in one job or another, learning all kinds of skills that keep him employed, and in the money he needs to rent a room, eat a little, and get on busses to get out of town when the cops are on his trail.
Invariably, he runs into one form of injustice or cruelty after another, between spouses, siblings, parents and their children, and business partners. Despite usually slipping into alleyways when he sees police cars, he does everything he can to create justice where there has been injustice, healing where there has been pain or grief, and a kind of life coaching, for those who need someone with an objective point of view to see the forest from the trees, that they were missing because of booze, hate or pain. Often he does this at his own peril, sometimes hanging around in towns to help clear those, like himself, who are wrongly accused, to gain justice – even though his testimony to police or to judges in courtrooms could easily cost him his freedom and his life. He even saved the life of his relentless pursuer Gerard on several occasions.
He’s chivalrous, kind and considerate, and tries not to fall in love, even though a woman in almost every episode tends to fall in love with his good looks, his manly physique, and his huge heart. He tries to resist, because he knows that no woman has a future with him, until he can find the one-armed man and clear his name.
In a 1964 episode I saw today called “Detour on a Road Going Nowhere,” a woman who felt jilted by him, because he never wanted to give his heart for fear of hurting her, continually referred to him as Sir Galahad. It’s a telling reference, evoking the great knight heralded for his gallantry and purity. Like Kimble, who eventually finds the one-armed man and gains his freedom, Galahad finds the Holy Grail and later dies, escorted to Heaven by angels.
Bodhisattva on the Run The Bodhisattvas are Mahayana Buddhists who vow to help all beings gain Enlightenment. Moreover, their pure hearts are committed to the liberation of all others, delaying their own Nirvana for the sake of others. The vow they take even extends into their future incarnations if they haven’t found Nirvana in this one. So why am I comparing Dr. Richard Kimble to a Bodhisattva? To begin with, the fugitive has had about 120 different identities (one per episode), yet he maintains his Hippocratic vow behind his changing names, jobs, and whereabouts, much like these Buddhists, who are in spiritual service to mankind in one incarnation after another. Each episode is a metaphor for a new lifetime, bringing with it a new identity, task and location. As the Bhagavad Gita puts it, “As a man casting off worn-out garments takes other new ones, so the dweller in the body casting off worn-out bodies takes others that are new.”
While Kimble isn’t a Zen-type beatnik like the heroes of the novels of Jack Kerouac (who was writing at the same time that “The Fugitive” was airing every week), he was hopping his share of freight trains like the novelist’s dharma bums. As a pediatrician, Dr. Kimble certainly healed many hundreds of children from flus and viruses, but he added far more to the lives of those he could touch by being on the run. While his karma was a difficult one – persecuted for no fair reason – the Universe – or at least the dozens of writers who scripted the episodes – used him to transform the lives of so many people throughout the nation. I’m surprised that nobody ever aired a spinoff series of Dr. Kimble after he gained his freedom. But then his appeal to viewers was always about much more about what he gave to others, rather than what he took for himself.
