User Reviews

*SPOILER ALERT*

As the series winds down, this episode has Dr. Kimble coming to Washington, DC in an attempt to have his murder conviction retried by having an attorney to refile a motion to reopen the murder investigation. The attorney discusses the matter with Dr. Kimble and believes that they have a good case to have the original verdict overturned. However, he needs at least a couple of months to arrange it. Dr. Kimble has come across an African country diplomat, who he helps out in the streets when the ambassador has a fainting spell. He is invited to the embassy, but draws the wary suspicions of the ambassador's wife. She contacts the police which then brings in Lt. Gerard to the embassy. Because Kimble is on embassy grounds, Lt. Gerard cannot arrest him. Kimble hopes to remain in the embassy for the time needed for the attorney to reopen his legal case. The ambassador is later found to have a brain tumor and his wife then makes arrangements to move out of the embassy which then leaves Kimble as a sitting duck to get arrested. The ambassador's secretary, who is sympathetic to Kimble, then concocts a lie to Lt. Gerard as the moving vans load the furniture to be moved. Gerard then calls the squad cars to go after the moving vans. That then provides the escape route for Kimble. At the end, as he leaves he does not say "thank you" to the secretary for having lied for him which I thought was a bit out of character. The secretary appeared to have some affections towards Kimble and maybe that was why he was so silent when he departed.

The show opens with a sharp dressed doc getting out of an old truck. He appears overdressed for his usual menial labor gigs. Dr K has come to DC to meet with a lawyer/author who says Kimble was Unjustly Convicted. The Fuge sees a man lying in front of a cab and goes to investigate. The guy turns out to be an African ambassador who invites Kimble to the embassy for tapioca pudding. Once at the embassy, ambassador Umgawa offers Kimble free room and board. "12 rooms, 12 vacancies", says Umgawa, sounding oddly like Norman Bates. Kimble agrees to stay, but locks the door when he showers. Meanwhile, Umgawa's wife notices a paperback sticking out of doc's pocket, and even though the author's name is not visible, she sends the secretary to a bookstore armed with the book name and author. Upon reading the book, she surmises that her hubby's new bestie is Dr Richard Kimble. She tells Umgawa to throw him out, but the ambassador is determined that he stay. It seems obvious that his idea is to convince Kimble to kill his wife, since she is a hateful, conniving woman, but he never approaches Dick with the idea. Anyways, it happens that Umgawa is dying of a brain tumor, and the wife is keeping him drugged while she closes the embassy. In real life, she would not have the authority to do the drugging or the closing, but this is not real life. The secretary has the hots for Dick, but she, for some reason, keeps calling him "Charlie", even though she knows he is a doctor. Kimble finds this a bit disrespectful, and leaves without thanking her after she sends the police on a wild goose chase, allowing him to slip on out the back door and past the last two cops who are totally not paying attention to any of this.

As this series wounds down, it is clear the writers are stretching to find new story lines. This is a fine outing headlined by Ivan Dixon as an ambassador of an unnamed emerging African nation. Dixon is taking a break from Hogan's Heroes and this role of a dignified diplomat is right up his alley. He is excellent as a dying man but still living life on his terms while engaging in a gentle tug of war with his wife, played by Diana Sands. Her role is to be the "bad guy" here and she is good at it while still gaining a measure of sympathy from the audience. Diana Hyland is the secretary/chief of staff/general helper here and is on Kimble's side. She is excellent as the smiling face and cheerful attitude regardless of the circumstances. Lt Gerard is his usual stern self. I suspect Barry Morse was glad to move on from this role. It is extremely one-note most of the time.

The credible gaps emerge as when the ambassador invites Kimble to stay in the embassy for no real reason. Also, the wife decides to close the embassy and makes it seem as if the process is only slightly harder than leaving your dorm room at the end of the school year. In truth, I suspect it would take at least a year for any nation to change its embassy in Washington DC. Lots of diplomatic hoops and red tape involved.

Kimble's only help to his hosts is his advice that husband and wife need to deal with the husband's medical condition with an honest conversation. Not sure what else he could do given the circumstances. Kimble escapes again with the clothes on his back and the semi-heartbreak of a good woman left behind. The acting makes this a decent episode. Do see it.

This entry is not without interest but it is, unfortunately, without credibility. The writers were always putting Kimble in fascinating situations and giving him amazing dilemmas. Here the idea is to put him in the embassy of a foreign country in Washington, where the police cannot apprehend him but they know exactly where he is and his presence there creates a diplomatic crisis. The idea should have produced a great episode but not enough thought went into this one and they came up considerably short of greatness.

Kimble has come to Washington because there is a lawyer there who thinks he could engineer a successful appeal of his conviction if only they could come up with some new evidence. Kimble tells him there is none but, as Ed Peterson points out in his book on the show, there have been several new pieces of evidence that have been unearthed over the course of the series: - In "The Ivy Maze" Johnson confessed to the murder to Dr. Simmons and said that he wiped the lamp base off with Helen's dress. - Barbara Webb, the reporter in "Wife Killer" witnessed another Johnson confession. - Captain Eckhardt, in "Trial by Fire" saw the one-armed man running from the house. But the attorney needs time to search for new evidence and needs Kimble to hole up somewhere where the police can't get to him while he does it.

Conveniently, Kimble is present when a diplomat, (played by Ivan Dixon) collapses in the street. Kimble helps him up and the grateful Dixon reveals he's an ambassador from an African nation and invites Kimble to dinner. There we find out that Dixon is a Mandela-like character and he and his wife, (Diana Sands) have been persecuted by a previous regime. In Dixon this creates a sympathy for Kimble's plight, (which they find out from a book he's carrying written by the lawyer). In his wife it creates anxiety because she is protective of her husband who has been through so much and is now dying of a brain tumor he hasn't been told about. She considers Kimble a threat to her husband and wants him out because of the adverse publicity and stress his presence there would create.

She goes to the extent of deciding to relocate the embassy so Kimble can no longer use it for asylum. Gerard knows he's there and is waiting outside with a battery of police. (One thing that seems to have lapsed over the course of the series is that Gerard used to acknowledge that he did not have jurisdiction and that he needed the co-operation of the local police. Here he seems to be in charge of the DC police department.)

Spoiler: As the embassy is being moved, boxes are being put on a large moving van. It pulls away while Gerard is talking to Sands. One of the staff comes out with an armful of clothes that were supposed in be in one of the boxes. Gerard and his cops zoom off after the van, leaving a couple guys at the embassy. Kimble is informed that the one covering the back has come to the front and he can get out the back way.

Firstly I doubt any ambassador is going to grant asylum to a convicted murderer, regardless of the amount of sympathy he might have for him. And it seems amazing to me that the location of an embassy could be determined by the wife of an ambassador. But beyond that, this situation, even then, would have been a cause celebe. The place would not only have been surrounded by police but also by the press. Kimble could hardly have "snuck out the back way".

I liked the plot of having Kimble at an Embassy where he can't be touched by American authorities. And his talks with the lawyer who wanted to represent him and get a new trial made me wonder if this was how it was all being set up to end. I almost thought they were going to have Kimble stay at this Embassy for the remaining 4 episodes of the series.

When the lawyer mentions that it would be fairly easy to get a new trial since his first conviction was based on mere circumstantial evidence, you wonder how on earth he was convicted in the first place and why he wasn't able to have that conviction overturned. I actually would have liked to have seen the remaining episodes delve into all of that while Kimble got his new trial.

But I guess they had other ideas since he left the Embassy by episodes end and was yet again back to square one as in previous episodes.

I liked the acting but hated the wife who was incredibly cold and hateful towards Kimble. And keeping the truth of her husband's terminal illness from him for his career was especially heartless. What an ice queen that woman was and i'm glad the husband already knew the truth of his condition because he has the right to know.

This was Diana Hyland's fourth appearance in a lead guest role and while I cannot fault her acting because she is good...I just find it distracting when the same actor/actress comes back in the lead guest role so many times.

It makes me wonder if they had contracts with the show or something, and i'd rather have seen new faces in those lead guest roles. Granted, it's a small nit pick, but it does get distracting seeing the same face after the third or fourth appearance.

Now the absurd ending. There was absolutely no way in hell that Gerard was not going to check every large wardrobe box exiting that house onto the moving truck. No way, no how. I realize we must suspend disbelief here and there for TV shows, but not for this.

It's way too big a plot hole to let slip by. I can't believe for one second that Gerard would let those wardrobe boxes go by him without peeking inside for Kimble. Yet he just stands there looking at his watch lol. No, he wouldn't let those boxes go by!!

Heck, he'd even be checking the small ones too, i'm sure of it because that's how he is. So in order for the secretary's plan to have worked, she and Kimble had to assume Gerard was dumb enough to not check what was being wheeled into the moving van, and Gerard is a lot of things but stupid he isn't and Kimble knows that.

It was such an absurd and insulting ending because it expects the viewer to accept it without question. And it also made Gerard look like a huge buffoon. Perhaps that was the intention?... But if it was, it went against all we saw of Gerard for the past 4 seasons, and I don't believe he would have made such a huge slip up like that, especially after how badly he wants to catch Kimble. He would leave no rock unturned...or no wardrobe box unopened in this case.

And even more incredible than Gerard's ignorance with the moving boxes, Kimble is able to just hop on a city bus less than a block away from the Embassy where nearly the entire Washington D. C police force has closed off the block. Come on! Don't insult the viewer this much! And since it's D. C. you have the FBI right there to immediately lock down the city and check all public transportation. So there was no way Kimble would have gotten away on a city bus in that area....maybe in Hicksville, USA he could, but not in Washington D. C. The show has gotten so bad by this point that I was laughing too much at the absurdity of all of it to be insulted by it anyway.

Thankfully, there's only 4 more episodes left to go. It's really sad to watch such an excellent series limp along to it's ending like this. But even more thankfully, it takes nothing away from the first 3 great seasons, so I can't complain because those excellent first 3 seasons will forever remain unblemished....and in glorious black and white to boot.

I'll still give this episode 4 stars because I did find the plot interesting and original and the acting all around was good. But that ending was just written for pea brains.