The Girl from Little Egypt

This episode ranks on the "all-time best list", filling in the details of Kimble's story.

Pamela Tiffin and Ed Nelson give solid performances. It will keep you interested as well as appreciating Kimble's moral character. The courtroom scenes are outstanding.

When the show begins, a total dirt-bag reveals to his long-time girlfriend that he's already married!! Ruth (Pamela Tiffin) is naturally heartbroken and leaves. She should NOT be driving, as she's hysterical and crying and before you know it, she's run over poor Richard Kimble (David Janssen) who is just happens to be standing in the wrong spot at the time!

When Kimble awakens, he does something odd. While he clearly was hit by Ruth, he lies to the police and tells them he stepped in front of her car. She appreciates him lying to save her from jail but soon comes to realize why he lied. While he's in his hospital bed, he is asleep and starts having a nightmare...and begins talking out in his sleep! She now knows that he's a wanted murderer...but she takes pity on him and agrees to keep that a secret between them. Later, when he's able to be discharged, she brings Kimble home to recuperate.

The style of this particular episode is very unusual in many ways. There is no opening montage like usual and Kimbel's backstory is completely fleshed out here. You learn about his wife's miscarriage and hysterectomy and you learn that try as he might to make the marriage work, his wife was so depressed and angry that the marriage was a nightmare for him. And, you see the events unfold during the night his wife was murdered...including him seeing the one-armed man. At least half of the episode is just these flashback scenes. It's also a different episode because there isn't the usual threat to Kimble during the episode or at the end. So, instead of this conflict, they insert the backstory.

While I am not a sexist sort of guy, I was absolutely struck by Pamela Tiffin. She was mesmerizingly gorgeous and I never saw her made up so beautifully in films I've seen her in, such as "One, Two, Three". You REALLY want to see him stay with her at the end...especially since she is a fundamentally decent lady despite her troubles.

So is the episode any good? Well, that's hard to say. While I hate flashbacks, this is a novel way of telling Kimble's story...and it does fill in a lot of gaps. I would have preferred just a straight retelling of the past and a separate episode involving Tiffin...but it's still pretty good. I especially like the scene where Kimble takes Ruth to a surprise party...it's very poignant and well played.

Although this is perhaps not the best episode in the series, and Kimble does not face as much danger from the law as he usually does, this is a good episode, and certainly the most important one in terms of giving background information about Kimble and his case. Outside the final episode, this is the only one that has a significant appearance by Helen Kimble, played by actress Diane Brewster.

Ruth Norton (actress Pamela Tiffin) has just learned her boyfriend, Paul Clements (actor Ed Nelson), is a married man. Upset and crying while driving home, she hits Kimble (first George Browning, later George Norton), who is standing near the road. He is taken to the hospital, and Ruth comes along. As he goes in and out of consciousness, in flashbacks we see snippets of the life of Mr. and Mrs. Kimble in Stafford, Indiana, incidents from his trial, and the details of Kimble's first escape.

In these flashbacks, we learn Helen is an unpleasant drunk, unhappy about her stillborn child and subsequent inability to have children. Helen and Kimble argue about her drinking, and also about his desire for adoption, and her insistence that would be living a lie. Kimble storms off, and returns to find a one armed man running from the scene. He goes in the house and finds Helen dead.

Ruth hears Kimble say things while delirious, and believes he is innocent, since people in a delirium normally do not lie. Kimble protects Ruth (and defeats further police inquiry) by falsely claiming the accident is his fault. Ruth decides to keep Kimble's statements a secret, and takes Kimble home to help him recuperate.

Paul Clements keeps chasing after Ruth. Kimble, realizing how unhappy Ruth is, develops a plan to help her to a happier future without Paul. However, Paul is doing his own scheming.

This episode contains an interesting scene at a party where guests call upon Kimble to settle an argument by giving his view of capital punishment.

This episode shows Kimble's prosecutor as being Mr. Rand, played by actor Bernard Kates. In "Running Scared," Kimble's prosecutor was Mike Ballinger, played by actor James Daly. The judge who sentences Kimble to death, not identified by name, is played by actor William Newell.

Actress Diane Brewster, who plays Helen Kimble, is frequently seen in reruns of Leave It To Beaver, where she plays his teacher, Miss Canfield.

Ruth Norton, a distraught young stewardess, accidentally runs down Richard Kimble on a San Francisco highway. He's taken to the hospital with a concussion and bad injury to his leg. Kimble takes the blame, so she's cleared of the accident. But feeling guilty, she helps him get discharged and lets him recuperate at her apartment. Through flashbacks, we get the back story of Kimble and his wife losing their baby, his argument with his wife, finding her body that night, his trial and conviction, and his escape. It sets up the basic structure of the whole Fugitive series. In that regard, it's the most important episode of the series outside of the finale.

The main story, though, is about Kimble and the young woman. Ruthie, as Kimble calls her, has just found out that her boyfriend Paul is a married man. Kimble and Ruthie develop a friendship; and Kimble's paramount feeling for Ruthie is protectiveness. Kimble's sense of values, his sympathetic ear, and his caring nature are on full display. Ruthie (actress Pamela Tiffin) is young and beautiful, also gentle and trusting. Over the course of a few days, Kimble counsels her, trying to get her to understand that Paul isn't the right man for her. While Ruthie has fallen in love, Paul is just using her. He tells her that for men like Paul, "if somebody gets hurt, it won't be them. And they'll always find somebody else."

In the epilogue, Kimble takes Ruthie to the same restaurant where she and Paul were meeting at the beginning of the episode, telling her not to avoid the place. Kimble tells Ruthie that he knows she'll be fine, that eventually she'll meet someone right for her. He even tells her to "think of me" when she's there with the new man. In a sense, he's actually asking Ruthie to remember him. It's an unusual thing for Kimble to say. Over the course of his 4-year run, he's admitted to feelings of loneliness, reaching out to people for temporary relief of that loneliness. But he knows that ultimately he has to move on and he's never asked before or after for anyone else to think of him. Dr. Kimble has helped yet another person through her crisis and Ruthie is in tears as she watches this special man walk away. It's a remarkably touching scene, at once showing Kimble's compassion and maturity, but also his sadness. Kimble too has been touched by Ruthie's sweetness and he thanks her for her friendship.

The doc is hit by a car this time. He has survived numerous gun shot wounds, explosions, fires, floods, strangulation, decapatation, and, of course, a train wreck, so he's no stranger to being hurt. He was minding his own business when a heartbroken young woman was blinded by her own tears and nailed him. The real danger is not from his injuries, but his delirious condition in the hospital in which he relives his past. Luckily, the cops don't pick up on what he is babbling about, but the girl from little Egypt does. This episode provides more of Kimble's backstory. His troubled marriage, the trial and the aforementioned train wreck. Interesting that when he was thrown clear of Gerard, the lieutenant's prosthetic arm came loose and remained handcuffed to Kimble. Well, that would have been interesting. Anyways, Kimble recovers enough to come home with the girl, a real babe, Ruth Norton. Kimble pretends to be her brother, Ed Norton, a sewer worker from Bensonhurst,NY. He and the boyfriend don't hit it off, and Dick takes his "sister" to the cad's house to meet his wife and kids. I don't know how the doc got the guy's address, but there is quite the party going on. Must be a hundred of the guy's closest friends, valet parking, the guy's house is like a nightclub. And he is furious when he opens the door and sees them, but Kimble says he will " knock the guy into his wall-to-wall carpeting" if he doesn't let him in. Really. The poor girl finally gets the point and dumps the guy, so it all ends well. Although it would have been fun to see the guy get knocked into his wall-to-wall carpeting.