The Fugitive (TV Series) When the Bough Breaks (1964) User Reviews

Plot summary

[ynot-16 · 9/10 · 26 December 2006]

Kimble hops a train, and in the car finds Carol Hollister, played by actress Diana Hyland. She is there with her baby. Another man, Preacher, played by actor Royal Dano, is fleeing the railroad guards and is helped aboard by Kimble.

Carol is weak and broke and needs to find her husband Jimmy. Kimble offers to help. He slowly learns that Carol is delusional. She survived a crash a year earlier that killed her husband and baby, and has kidnapped a baby. The police, led by Detective Malleson (actor Lin McCarthy), are looking hard for Carol and her unknown traveling companion, Kimble, after a tip from Preacher. Carol begins to think that Kimble is Jimmy.

In her confused state, Carol puts the baby in jeopardy. Kimble must find and save the baby, even at the risk of his own freedom. The ending, where he gets away, is very well done.

This lady has issues...

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 14 April 2017]

When the story begins, Kimble is aboard a freight car with a man who calls himself 'the Preacher' (Royal Dano) and a strange young mother with her infant. However, what neither one yet realizes is that the lady is a wanted woman, as she's mentally disturbed and has stolen the baby! So, while Kimble, as unusual, tries to help, he might just be helping a person who really is guilty and really should get caught...and soon considering the child's age. As the story progresses, it becomes painfully obvious just how disturbed this woman is...especially when she misplaces the kid and can't exactly recall where she left him!!

This is an unusual episode though not an especially compelling one. Worth seeing, as are all the episodes in the series...but not among my favorites from Season 2.

10/6/64: "When the Bough breaks"

[schappe1 · 29 April 2015]

This series is noted for the difficult situations the writers cook up for Richard Kimble to get out of but even by their standards this one seems contrived. Kimble hops a freight train only to find a woman, (Diana Hyland) with a baby on board. Police are searching every car. She says that her father sent them. Kimble seems to accept that at face value. He is, of course, primarily interested in not being caught. But he was not only a doctor but a pediatrician, (Ed Peterson's book on the series says that Quinn Martin specifically chose that discipline because it made him a humanitarian whereas other medical disciplines were more likely to produce a guy who was in the profession to get rich. Thus, Kimble could not tear himself away from situations like this.

But even after they get away, he makes no attempt to contact the authorizes over this woman who is clearly endangering her baby by hitting the road like this – until he finds out it's not her baby at all, that her baby is dead and she stole this one. Then he finally disengages, only to find the deluded woman has left the baby someplace and will only tell her 'husband', (Kimble), forcing him to return and announce himself.

You meet the craziest people in boxcars

[jsinger-58969 · 13 December 2022]

Doc is doing his Boxcar Willie thing when he hops into a car with a baby on board sign on it. In the boxcar is a blonde with a baby. They are soon joined by an odd guy who looks like a cross between Abe Lincoln and a scarecrow. It's Royal Dano! Dick gives him a 5 spot to distract some approaching cops, and takes a bus with the girl and her baby to Fargo. The girl, Carol, says she is going there to meet her husband. Oh yah, you betcha. But really, her husband and their baby were killed in an accident, and she stole the baby she's with. So Dick is in a very sticky situation. He soon finds out the truth and alerts the cops as to her whereabouts, but Carol hides the baby in the trashy basement of an apartment building. The cops grab her but she says she will only tell her husband (Kimble, in her mind) where the baby is. Dick hears all this on a radio and after smoking a pack while he thinks it over, tells the cops (not Marge Gunderson) that he's the guy she thinks is her husband. The cop thinks Dick looks familiar, as he should since Lin McCarthy, the cop, was one of three Len Tafts that Dick's sister, Donna, was married to. So Dick, at one time, was his brother-in-law. Anyways, he goes to look for the baby with him. Kimble finds the baby and looks to leave it in the cop car and slip away, but the cop sees him and tells him to get in the car. Dick is getting pretty twitchy, but the cop is thankful for Dick's help and thinks he only looks familiar because he recently saw Gone With The Wind. He drops Kimble at a bus depot and Dick gets away, while the baby gets returned to its real parents and Carol makes up with her father. And Richard Kimble remains....a fugitive.