The Witch

It is 10 months on after his escape and Dr Richard Kimble is still on the run. Pretending to be Jim Fowler, a delivery driver the small townsfolk regard him to be too close with an attractive schoolteacher Miss Norton. Kimble spends a lot of time in the library with her.

A schoolgirl Jenny Ammory who has a history of lying accuses Miss Norton of improper behaviour with Kimble. This is revealed to be untrue as there were other kids present.

Then she accuses Kimble of chasing her in the woods. This riles the menfolk to try and lynch Kimble.

Now I did wonder what the community had against two single people romancing each other even if this was not actually the case. Worse Kimble gets in a fight with his boss who thinks Miss Norton is his woman even though she does not go out with the boss. The boss essentially threatens to run Kimble out of town for being friendly to a woman he himself fancies.

The Witch is really about a naughty child who maliciously lies and a weirdly intolerant community. It is a wonder how Kimble lasted so long, although I did wonder why he elected not to keep his head down, instead he ended up fighting his boss.

Gina Gillespie plays a very flaky little girl, Jenny. Jenny lives in a dream world and has a doll which she thinks gives her magical witchy powers. She also has a very active imagination and lies compulsively. So, when she has a chance meeting with Dr. Kimble, she later paints a crazy story about a stranger chasing her through the woods. Then, when this story doesn't pick up much traction, she lies about a meeting between Kimble and the school teacher--making it sound like some sleazy business was going on there! Soon folks start thinking the worst in this incredibly crappy and awful town. As for Gina's mother, she somehow thinks that the teacher and folks have it against her daughter and doesn't recognize that her kid is very troubled and leads this mob. The mother is clearly wrapped around the child's weird, lying daughter's finger.

I noticed one reviewer compared this to Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". However, while there are clear similarities, it's really much closer to Lillian Hellman's play "The Children's Hour"--a play (and later a film) about a horrid child who makes up lies about her teachers and destroys them in the process. It's really a re-working of "The Children's Hour" but with a stupid witchy doll angle...one that makes the child less malevolent than the one in "The Children's Hour" but also a lot more mentally disturbed and weird.

So is it any good? Yes. But hardly original...which is odd considering this is the second episode! You'd think they'd begin stealing plot ideas later in the series! Well made and compelling...just not anything new.

I'm 73. I watched this series occasionally when I was in my early teens and loved it. Now, 60 years later, having watched the evolution of tv series, I went back and watched the first two episodes. I am going to watch all of it that is available. Unique stories imbedded in the drama of the chase. And the chase becomes secondary. The stories are a depiction of American and human trials and tribulations that should reverberate over the ages. I cannot recommend it any higher. It is what television drama should seek to emulate and add to. Gripping drama and stories pertinent to our lives today. Writers with the talent to tell a story, not to showcase special effects. The evolution of our visual medium has devolved, not evolved.

If you can stand the way Kimble coddles the little liar and BELIEVE that his coddling led to the liar all of a sudden getting religion near the end, then you probably vote Republican or Democrat and expect good things from either. You probably enjoy commercials and are so gullible that your vote depends on the political ad you just saw. LMAO.

This episode is clearly inspired by Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". An unhappy and imaginative young girl, (played brilliantly by 11 year old Gina Gillespie, who did a lot of TV in that era but did not elect to pursue the profession as an adult).constantly lies to adults and beseeches her doll to save her from the situations her lies create. She alleges seeing Kimble, who has a job as a delivery man, romancing the local school teacher, (Patricia Crowley). Later she alleges that Kimble has molested her and the whole town is out after him. It's all very well done, especially by Gillespie, who reminds me of Patty McCormick in "The Bad Seed", except she doesn't kill anybody.

William Conrad's narrator tells us that it's been 10 months since Kimble's escape, (which makes it four months after" Fear in a Desert City"). The writers eventually realized that if they kept citing the time between episodes in months, Gerard, Kimble and the One Armed Man would be chasing after each other in walkers by the end of the season and they stopped 'timing' things in the show. There are 120 episodes of The Fugitive. You'd have to figure that it would take a few weeks for Kimble to get from one location to another, (this one is set in Missouri), find a job, get to know people a little, have the action of the story and leave. You couldn't really live this life and have as many adventures as he does in the actual time the series ran. But that's true, to an extent, of most series, if you think about it. Sometimes, if you're going to enjoy a show, you just have to go along with it and not ask too many questions.