Suspension of disbelief

I've noticed that Kimble never aged throughout the 4-year run of the series. Whenever his physical description was put out over police radios, he was invariably described as being 35. Now, I suppose that constantly-reapplied black hair dye could account for his not appearing to age over 4 years, but it's a stretch.

Well, of course, your points are valid. But this is the movie Or this is TV, the land of make believe, not reality. I don't mind these stretches of reality because the show- the plot of the episodes- the acting- was so good.

If it were aired today, they'd have to build more reality into many of the episodes. Nevertheless, the excellence of the show overrides the fact that many of the events are stretches and dated.

When he was finally free, how come he didn't face charges in all the different jurisdictions where he slugged or knocked out cops in a bid to get away?

ID with picture on it in 1964.....lol. Sorry, but that really is funny. Drivers licenses didn't start having pictures on them until the late 70s/early 80s, before that they were just a piece of paper with your information on it. School IDs, if the school had them, didn't have pictures, either. The only ID with a picture on it was probably the passport. And you know us Americans, hardly any of us have one. rme

It wasn't until the terrorist attacks, mostly in the form of hijackings, became all the rage did security over IDs come to the fore. Same with working under the table. The jobs he took were dead end jobs that even now are often paid out in cash. You wonder why there is an illegal immigrant problem in our country? It's because too many job creators are willing to pay them cash, at less than market rate, so they don't have to pay as much in taxes.

What do you think about all the smoking indoors and non passengers able to get to the gates at the airport. Heck, you used to be able to go on the plane to say good-bye. Times have changed.

That's part of what makes the show interesting - the improbability that someone hiding in plain sight would elude capture for four years. I think it forces viewers to look at what makes the show really good - David Janssen's haunted journey to both escape capture and find the real killer. A lot of his close calls are plausible, and create tension in the stories. The reactions of people who discover his identity are very fascinating. And the show has that unique early-to-mid 60s black-and-white texture that pulls you into the drama.

1. IDs or Drivers Licenses were very easy to forge or alter then, even up through the 1980s. Most were a preprinted form run through a typewriter with no photo and just name and description.

Cash was the standard form of payment for the kinds of jobs Kimble took. Checks were cashed at nearly all grocery stores with the ID which may have been a fake ID.

Your SSN was whatever you said it was, and false SS cards were also easily made and still are. It was very rare for anyone to check up on them, or even ask for the SS card and if they did send away to check, the response took weeks and so Kimble was probably already gone.

He's not really got a lot of overhead, so whatever he makes goes to the few things needed and traveling.

The hair thing is a bit strange but it looks like he uses the comb-in dye which is pretty easy. My question is why didn't he ever grow moustache or goatee or beard, and try some phony glasses. That would alter appearance more than dye.

Gerard would have realized Kimble was telling the truth a lot sooner than the last episode if you want reality, and would have been digging more into the case. He still would not have let Kimble just hang loose like he did otherwise. And no he would not have travelled as he did as a local cop.



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The Eyes of the City are Mine!  Mother Pressman / Anguish (1987)

Some of those things a smart guy like Kimble conceivably might have been able to get away with in those pre-computer days. And back then someone might more likely hire you for a job based on a handshake.

Things like the apparently flawless hair dye and the suitcases, I can chalk that up to dramatic license. The one thing that sometimes bothers me is that a local police officer in Stafford, which is presumed to not be a very large city, would be chasing around all over the country after Kimble. Gerard's superiors would say it's not worth the limited resources of a local police department. Especially since Kimble's one alleged act of killing would be presumed to be an act of passion, he's not likely as much of a danger to the public as some deranged serial killer.

But I also agree with you that it's still a great show.

What I find interesting is the fact that with any of these old vintage TV shows, even with the best ones you have to suspend a lot of disbelief. In contrast, nowadays the better dramas and the limited cable series shows are smarter in a sense, more realistic and gritty. People demand that from television nowadays. Viewers might be more "sophisticated" today, but I don't think really smarter on the whole.

In the old days, watching TV was an experience of being comfortably entertained. When the invention of TV was still relatively new, the experience of sitting for an hour in your own home watching a half-decent drama enacted in pictures and sound was enough. Nowadays that's not enough.

I'd be the first to agree today's shows (the good ones anyway) are smarter and more challenging and don't require as much suspension of disbelief. But in the old days they did a good job of delivering an entertainment experience of comfort. And there are times when that's exactly what I want, which I watch shows like The Fugitive.

I just caught the episode '2130' in which Girard and Melvyn Douglas try to track down Kimble using a computer to predict the probabilities of his movements, job preferences, etc. I didn't find it the strongest episode by any means, but thought it remarkably prescient in that it anticipated our much less private age today a half century later in which so much of our lives, personal history, etc. is available digitally.