"The Fugitive" Middle of a Heat Wave (TV Episode 1965) Poster

(TV Series)

(1965)

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7/10
These are some truly awful people....
planktonrules14 April 2017
When the show begins, Richard Kimble is having difficulty dealing with his girlfriend. He's told her that he needs to be moving on and she is not at all willing to allow this! She creates a bit of a scene at the restaurant they are in and Kimble tries hard to keep her civil and stop her from drinking any more. He heads home. In the meantime, the lady disappears and her sister immediately assumes Kimble is responsible for harming her. When she is discovered later, beaten but alive, once again the sister is leading the attack on Kimble and pushes the police to arrest him...though there's no evidence he did anything. Now here's where it gets worse...when the beating victim awakens, she decides not to tell the police anything and let Kimble suffer. After all, he wasn't willing to stay and he deserves whatever happens to him next!!

This is an interesting portrait of some truly screwed up people-- both sisters and the husband who has a secret of his own. Well worth seeing and a great example of some really despicable jerks!
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6/10
Plot summary
ynot-1626 October 2006
Actress Carol Rossen, who appears in many episodes, plays the part of Laurel, whom Kimble is casually dating. Kimble, noble guy that he is, seeks to break it off because he knows he is leaving town soon. Laurel cannot understand why he is dumping her. Kimble and Laurel are seen arguing, and she scratches his face and storms off.

Unfortunately, later that night Laurel is attacked and (it is implied) raped, but says she cannot remember who was her attacker. Laurel's sister has no doubt who was the attacker: Kimble. The sheriff (actor J.D. Cannon, who plays a prominent role in the final episode), also suspects Kimble.

Kimble needs to find the real attacker and clear himself before the police realize who he is.

Actor James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek) plays a doctor.
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8/10
Good episode up until the Epilogue
Christopher3702 August 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I really enjoyed this episode which was filled with high drama and tension. Right up till the end when that phone call came in, I wondered just how a handcuffed Kimble was going to get out of this seemingly no escape situation.

How he did wind up escaping was very well done and believable, but what transpired in the Epilogue was so terrible and probably a sick commentary of it's time.

When Laurel actually tells the police that the sexual assault inflicted upon her by her brother in law was her fault because she "led him on" I cringed. She was actually saying the attack was her fault and will even say this in a court of law too. Wow, it's just so hard to believe a woman could think this way, and even more hard to believe such twisted and backwards thinking was shown on TV. We've thankfully come a long way since then.

I see that the writer of this episode was a man by the name of Robert Hammer. That guy must have had some serious issues with women to write this. On a positive note though, something like this would surely never fly on television in 2023.

It's still a great episode up to that final scene so i'm only taking off 2 stars for that as everything that came before it was riveting drama. It's just sad that this is the way some people apparently viewed sexual assault back then. (I'm not sure if i'm able to use the R word here and don't want my review to be unaccepted by IMDB.)

One thing had me a bit puzzled, which was the opening conversation between Kimble and Laurel in the restaurant. It wasn't mentioned how long they were going together, but if he had to have a break up conversation with her, it implies to me that they were having some kind of serious relationship for a while which is unusual for him to do up until this point.

In all the episodes after his relationship with Karen Christian from "Never Wave Goodbye", Kimble appeared to make it a rule to keep at arms length with women since having a long term relationship is impossible for a fugitive to do unless he's taking her on the run with him. I figured he learned this out of his heartbreaking experience with Karen in season 1, yet he seems to have been in a steady relationship with Laurel as this episode begins.

Did he not think she would as heartbroken as Karen was when he left her? It seems to me that Kimble wouldn't consciously do this to someone, and I believe that he would have made it clear from the start that nothing serious would come from their time together. The opening scene however, implies that he didn't mention any of this to Laurel when they first began dating, and by waiting until she falls for him over time and invested herself in the relationship to say "Hey, I gotta go now. See ya" is kinda heartless and very out of character for him.

Maybe they only had a couple of dates, but that opening scene really implied to me that they were pretty heavy with each other for a few weeks at that point with no previous warning given to her by Kimble that he had to split town and leave her high and dry.

I'm not taking any stars off for it, but I just found it puzzling and very out of character for Kimble to do since he's not the type to treat people that way.
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9/21/65 "Middle of the Heat Wave"
schappe19 July 2015
Carol Rossen makes her third appearance on the show, this time as a love-sick co-worker of Kimble's whom he has to brush off. She gets drunk and winds up being raped, (implied) and dumped in a field, not able to remember anything. Kimble was the last one seen with her. He gets held on suspicion and finger-printed but insists that a witness, (no, not the one-armed man: the night clerk at the hotel he's staying in), who is temporarily out of town will clear him. Of course, Carol could clear him if her memory clears- and if she wants to. Her sister, (Sarah Marshall), is sure Kimble attacked her sister- until she finds out the real culprit is closer to home.

At the end we see another wonderfully inept police dragnet, led by J. D. Cannon- later to earn fame as McCloud's boss. There's always been a controversy about this one as the culprit is not brought to justice at the end and Rossen's character seems to blame herself for the incident. There's a lengthy discussion of this in Ed Robertson's book on the series. It's a combination of network standards about talking about rape at the time and society's attitude toward sexual assault in that era. The casting of Rossen, who normally played strong women seems to have been an attempt to buttress the idea that it was somehow her fault. She seems less the victim than the perpetrator. Anyway, Kimble didn't do it.
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9/10
Mimi Dillard Though
Montayj13 November 2018
Saw Mimi Dillard in this episode last night and had to look her up. What a beauty! ~~Montayj
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7/10
A rather confusing episode
jsinger-5896913 February 2023
Dick is trying to dump his casual girlfriend Laurel when this one starts. Laurel, played by fuge familiar face Carol Rossen, responds by clawing his face and driving off. Laurel goes missing and the sheriff, JD Cannon, aka the coward Lloyd Chandler from the finale, brings Dick in for questioning. Laurel's sister and brother-in-law are also involved. The sister never wanted Laurel to date Dick, who she thought was a worthless drifter. Anyways, Laurel is found and it's implied she was raped by doctor Jimmy Doohan. That is, Doohan was the one who implied it. She claimed she can't remember anything. Dick is arrested and fingerprinted, so he knows he has to clear himself before the prints get back. He gets the cops to let him talk to Laurel, but she still unconvincingly claims amnesia. Meanwhile, the sister has somehow figured out that her husband was the one who raped Laurel, and he starts feeling guilty about it. She tells him to shut up and let Kimble take the rap, since the prints came back and he is, after all, a convicted murderer anyway. By this time, Dick has been handcuffed but escapes by hilariously knocking a deputy over a railing. He is running around the grounds of the sister's impressive estate and it really looks like the end is near for him, when the sister for some unknown reason decides to help him. She hides him in the basement but then reluctantly tells the cops where he is. Confusing. When the cops run to the basement, they see a window open and the brother-in-law standing there. So he also, for whatever reason, is motivated to help Kimble. Also strange is the fact that on the hottest day of the year, Dick continues to wear his sport jacket. Laurel then says that she was mad at Dick for dumping her, so she picked up the first man she saw and asked for it, and then it was too late to stop. So the brother-in-law was apparently walking around that part of town late at night when this happened. He seemingly doesn't face any consequences for the rape or for letting Kimble escape, and Richard Kimble somehow frees himself from handcuffs that restrained his hands behind his back to remain.....a fugitive.
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4/10
Not up to par
MissClassicTV12 November 2018
I really hate this episode of The Fugitive, and for someone who loves the series, that's hard for me to say. It's got nothing to do with David Janssen's great character work and wonderful acting. The story and the supporting characters are just written so poorly, especially the women. The first half is actually good. The scorned girlfriend goes running off and is now missing. It tugs at the audience's heartstrings a little. But it falls apart in the second half and is unsatisfying, to say the least, with how the missing woman goes from being the victim to being someone who "asked for it".
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1/10
Social, Moral, Legal ethics ? Not Here !
toyguy-315195 October 2021
Leaving out the revenge sex / rape , there is not one sympathetic character except for Dr. Kimble. Carol Rossen, a mediocre looking woman scorned who has been down this path enough times that she immediately becomes vengeful and seeks the 1st man to come along and gets burned. You're not a victim, You're stupid.

Sarah Marshall, living a privileged life with the large estate and a new Continental looks like a dowdy farm woman with an attitude, ready to defend her sisters honor (?) no matter what. You're not a protector, You're stupid.

Sarah's husband ? He really screwed himself. He's stupid.
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