Death of a Very Small Killer

After jumping ship, Dr. Kimble arrives in a small town in Mexico. Despite the fact Kimble could have run out of the US long ago in the series, this is the first time he left the States...and I am pretty sure it's the last. Soon after arriving, he collapses and is taken to a nearby clinic run by Dr. Howell (Arthur Hill). Once Kimble is up and on his feet, he learns that Howell knows exactly who he is....and doesn't care. All Howell cares about is his research into a resistant form of Meningitis....and forcing Kimble to stay and run the clinic will allow Howell to devote all his time to his research. However, when Howell claims to have found a cure, Kimble soon comes to realize that Howell is using these Mexicans as guinea pigs....allowing some to die much like lab animals! What is Kimble to do?

All in all, a decent and unusual episode of the series. It's nice to see this, as I have long thought Arthur Hill was a very good actor...and its always good to see him in action.

Kimble, desperate to escape as police close in, meets a friendly sailor who advises him he can get away on a particular fishing boat. Kimble pays some money and agrees to work, but becomes quite ill. The boat drops him at a small Mexican village.

Collapsing at his hotel, Kimble is brought to the clinic of Dr. Howell, played by actor Arthur Hill. In addition to curing Kimble, Dr. Howell is working on an experimental drug treatment for a virulent local strain of meningitis that has killed many people. Knowing Kimble's identity, Dr. Howell persuades Kimble to stay and help. However, Dr. Howell and Dr. Kimble disagree on the ethics of the experimentation. Complications arise from the illness of Dr. Howell, the snooping of a suspicious Mexican policeman, and Kimble's romantic interest in Dr. Morales, played by actress Carol Lawrence.

The ending, involving Kimble's escape, is unusually touching.

This was one of the episodes I remembered years after first seeing it on A&E. Kimble escapes from the cops by hopping on board a boat bound for Mexico. He gets deathly ill and is delivered to a clinic run by Arthur Hill, a runaway doctor who cares for the local populace while he studies a strain of meningitis for which there has been no cure that seems peculiar to the area. Hill is obsessed with this goal, although it's not clear if it's a personal obsession or an attempt to gain medical glory and restart his career back in the states. He nurses Kimble back from pneumonia and then recruits him to work in his clinic. The additional doctor will give Hill more time to work on a cure for the meningitis. He does a pretty good job of it and seems to have created a break through. The conflict comes when Hill refuses to give the new medicine to half of his patients, whom he needs as a "test group" while Kimble feels they have an obligation to try to help them, as well.

Despite the latter, this situation brings up the possibility that must surely have occurred to Kimble at some point that he might have an alternative to finding the one-armed man: he could find a place where he could live in anonymity and start a new life - in this case as a doctor so he could use his medical knowledge and resume trying to help people. Unfortunately, an ambitious policeman wonders who this new doctor is, so maybe that isn't a possibility after all. But the concept adds some depth to the Kimble character.