Escape into Black

When the episode begins, Richard Kimble goes into a diner to get a bite to eat. The kitchen soon catches fire and he tries to help...and the oven explodes in his face in the process. When he awakens, he's in the hospital and he is a mess. His ear drums were ruptured, he has brain damage AND cannot remember who he is. His hands are also burned...so getting fingerprints is difficult. The social worker at the hospital (Betty Garrett) works hard to try to straighten all this out and one thing she and the other hospital staff notice is that this John Doe has medical skills. As for the social worker, once Kimble starts to recall who he is, she goes in search of the one-armed man.

This is an excellent episode for someone who isn't familiar with the series as it pretty much goes through the old case bit by bit. It's also entertaining and worth seeing.

This is Season 2's version of "The Girl From Little Egypt", only it's a better version of it. One weak point is the accident that renders Kimble vulnerable: he's in a diner in Decatur, Illinois, where he's heard the One-armed man might be working in a restaurant when a fire breaks out in the kitchen. Everybody flees except Kimble, who tried to stop the fire by fiddling with the controls of a gas stove that he obviously doesn't know how to work. There's an explosion and he winds up with the script writer's best friend, amnesia. Why didn't he run? The interesting thing about this sequence is that David Janssen is clearly not doubled when there is a major flair-up of the fire to suggest the explosion. Janssen recoiled backwards and falls. Obviously, he wasn't as close to the flames as it appears but it still seems a risky scene to put your star in.

Anyway, Kimble winds up in a hospital, not knowing who he is. He gets flashes of a dead woman, a one-armed man, etc. But he can't add it up. The hospital staff and the local police try to help him find out who he is, which is the last thing he would want- if he knew who he was.

Meanwhile there's a conflict between the doctor caring for him and the social worker who is trying to find out who he is. The doctor long ago decided he could be a better doctor if he took no personal interest in his patients. The social worker is a bleeding heart advocate for everyone whose case winds up on her desk. They've clashed before and are now jousting about what to do with Kimble. Kimble, searching for the truth of his life, agrees with the doctor's plan to use sodium pentothal to pull Kimble's hidden memories to the forefront and we again see the flashbacks to the night of the murder and the subsequent trial. The doctor now knows who Kimble really is. He convinces Kimble he's really running from his own guilt.

When Kimble finds out he's a doctor who killed his wife, he thinks he may be guilty of the murder. He even goes to a library and looks up the old newspapers and decides the case against him is pretty strong. Meanwhile the social worker finds the one-armed man, who denies knowing Kimble in an unconvincing manner. The man then calls the police to report that Kimble is in the hospital. He escapes but decides to call Gerard to turn himself in. He takes a train headed for Stafford. But on the way he looks out the window and sees his reflection- which becomes the reflection in the original opening credit sequence, which then gets repeated, allowing Kimble's memory to come back.

The social worker is played by old time song and dance gal Betty Garrett, who was familiar with men in dire straits, having been married to the blacklisted Larry Parks, who got off the blacklist by naming names and thus winding up with the contempt of both sides in that era. The doctor is played by Ivan Dixon and that's significant because Dixon was black but there's no reference to that in the script. One break through is to get roles as black characters in stories about racism. But the greater breakthrough is to be considered for all roles with color not being an issue. Unfortunately, that didn't happen enough for performers like Dixon, who wound up taking the insubstantial role of "Kinchloe" in "Hogan's Heroes". Eventually he turned to directing, where it didn't matter what color he was.

Ironically, at one point Garrett, discussing Dixon's impersonal attitude, sarcastically says "You wouldn't want to stain your lily- white coat, would you?" Dixon points out that he could lose his license to practice if he allowed a convicted murderer to escape and says "You wouldn't want two defrocked doctors would you?" Apparently, he thinks of himself as a priest more than a doctor.

One of my favorite's, all the main characters are in it, and we have Kimble's flashbacks trying to restore his memory. What I find most interesting is his emotional turmoil at the end of the episode, where he doubts his innocence, and believes the right thing to do is turn himself in.

The doc is Decatur, where he got a tip that a guy with one arm is working at a restaurant. Dick is a bit overdressed when he asks about an old friend with one arm at a greasy spoon, and runs into the kitchen when it catches fire. He probably wants to get the last piece of pie before it gets ruined, but the stove blows up, leaving him with busted ear drums, head trauma and a nasty scar when he's taken to the hospital. With all that, his hair is perfect. He has amnesia, but his hearing is fine. He gives away that he's a doctor by diagnosing patients ailments, and a doctor gives him drugs to jar his memory. So he's a pediatrician, Dr Richard... something and his wife is dead. A social worker at the hospital finds out that he was looking for a one-arm man and goes off to one-arm town, the local community for amputees. She talks to a bunch of them, including Fred Johnson! Oh, you doesn't have to call me Johnson, he says. She shows him a picture of Kimble and he immediately calls the cops and turns him in. This convinces her that Kimble is innocent. In fact, she's more convinced of it that he is. Interesting that Kimble had earlier promised to pay the hospital bill, but we all knew that wasn't going to happen. After all, Dick is crime. And crime don't pay. The soach sneaks him out of the hospital and Dick goes to the library to look up the details of his trial. Interesting that Helen was strangled, which she wasn't, and that she had Dick's hair under her fingernails, which she didn't. But Dick doesn't know those details are false, and thinks he may be guilty. He sees the doctor who lies that his amnesia is enough to get him a new trial, gives him $20 and puts him on a train to Stafford. Dick calls a stunned Gerard to tell him he's headed his way to turn himself in. Meanwhile, the social worker gets on the train and tells Dick she's sure he's innocent, she saw one arm Fred. Kimble looks out the train window and gets a flashback to the opening credits from season 1, and also remembers seeing Johnson running from his house. He jumps off the speeding train just before Gerard can grab him, and after rolling down a hill, his hair is still perfect. He later calls the delighted social worker to tell her he's all right, and he's still....a fugitive. Fortunately, there is no trace of the scar by the next episode.

This episode had a strong, interesting story line. There was tension throughout, especially when Kimble called Gerard to turn himself in. I enjoyed the flashbacks and they were effective in enhancing Kumble's plight. Both the doctor and social worker displayed empathy toward Kimble and gave the story a degree of warmth and compassion.