"The Fugitive" Fun and Games and Party Favors (TV Episode 1965) Poster

(TV Series)

(1965)

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6/10
Not fun and games for our favorite fugitive
MissClassicTV20 September 2015
Richard Kimble, working as a chauffeur for a wealthy family, and Danny the pool boy are the only two likable characters on this show. The daughter, Joanie, wants to elope with Danny. Frankly, I don't understand what Danny sees in her. She's the stereotypical snobby rich girl, kind of haughty and demanding. The scenes between Kimble and Danny are great though. Danny's a senior in college studying pre-med. I love David Janssen's acting in this one. When Joanie attempts one of her put-downs, he conveys his point effectively with just the slightest head movement and the expression in his eyes. It's no more than a look – very subtle. David Janssen was a master at this. It's unbelievable that he didn't win an Emmy during this second season of The Fugitive.

The scenes with David Janssen and Mark Goddard save this episode. They are very, very good in their scenes together. Kimble is the mature adult offering words of wisdom to Danny the college kid about his future. Later this year, 1965, Mark Goddard will start his star-making role on Lost in Space.

The girl dancing atop a table at the party in this episode is played by Carol Connors, a songwriter who 12 years later would be Oscar-nominated for the Rocky theme song. Carol and David Janssen would become a couple around the time that Rocky came out in 1976-1977.
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8/10
The Fugitive meets High School Confidential...
planktonrules4 April 2017
During the 1950s and early 60s, there were a lot of exploitation films about wicked teenagers, such as BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and even TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE!! So it is not surprising that a plot like "Fun and Games and Party Favors" is used in THE FUGITIVE.

Richard Kimble is posing as Douglas and he works for a rich family, the Glenns. But Mr. and Mrs. Glenn are having problems with their daughter...but they don't realize it. Mrs. Glenn is trying to micro-manage her daughter's love life and it's not surprising that Joanne is feeling rebellious. But it's more than just token rebellion going on with this young lady. She is desperate to get out of the house and is trying to convince her boyfriend (who the mother does NOT approve of) to elope with her. As for Dan (Mark Goddard), he's actually a pretty nice guy and would much rather date Joanne openly and get her parents' permission to one day marry her.

In the midst of all this, Mrs. Glenn wants to throw her daughter a party...with the PROPER sort of young people. Instead of staying home to supervise, she leaves all this up to Douglas! This turns out to be a serious problem, as one of the jerkiest young men, Phil, has learned who Douglas really is...and is planning on using extortion to get him to allow him and his stupid friends crash the party. What's next? See the show.

While this all sounds a bit inconsequential, it's handled very well and the show worked just fine. And, it illustrates the familiar refrain of the day that kids run amok when parents are just too busy with their own fun to adequately supervise them.
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7/10
Plot summary
ynot-1628 January 2009
The Craigs are a rich couple dominated by the social climbing of the wife. The neglected college-age daughter, Joanne (actress Katherine Crawford), is having a big party, but the parents have another engagement. Despite the misgivings of Mr. Craig, who thinks they have a duty to stay home and chaperone, the chauffeur, Kimble, is left in charge along with the elderly butler.

Mrs. Craig is trying to push Joanne into a romantic relationship with Phil Andrews (actor Anthony D. Call), a spoiled rich boy from a good family, but Joanne only has eyes for Dan (actor Mark Goddard), a blue collar worker for a pool maintenance company, who has dreams of studying to become a doctor.

Kimble has to quell Joanne's rebellious and romantic impulses, and persuade her and Dan to grow up and behave responsibly. Meanwhile, the other teenagers are running wild, and when one of them finds out Kimble's identity, his ability to maintain order and preserve his own freedom is put in doubt.
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1/26/65 "Fun and Games and Party Favors"
schappe130 May 2015
The title says it all. Kimble has a comparatively cushy job as a chauffeur for a well off family "in the Hills above Los Angeles". His situation gets more complicated when the parents leave the house for a high class party and leave Kimble to chaperone a lower class party given by their rebellious daughter. The party gets crashed by her rejected boyfriend and his rough friends who wreck the place and crash her bed room, (rape is strongly implied). Kimble is reluctant to call the police but the pool boy, who loves the daughter, calls them, making things very tight for our hero.

The back-story is that the mother is very ambitious and has her husband going around to various parties to "meet the right people". He thinks the rejected suitor of her daughter is also "the right people" and would be a good match because he comes from a prominent family, even though her daughter knows he's a jerk. Both her husband and the pool boy are reluctant to stand up to her. The daughter is also very willful. She's rebelling against Mommy by planning to elope with the pool boy, who doesn't want to do it that way. A pretty good story but Kimble is mostly on the sidelines

The rejected boyfriend knows who he is, thanks to his "strange hobby" of collecting newspaper articles about criminals. He has pictures of them on his walls, oddly including a shot of Stalin and Malenkov. Some may regard them as criminals but they are obviously not of the Kimble ilk. The suitor played by an actor named Anthony Call, who resembles Russell Johnson, the Professor on "Gilligan's Island", (but isn't as good an actor). Peter Deuel is the most brutish of his gang. Five years later he achieved stardom in "Alias Smith and Jones", (he spelled his name "Duel" by then), and then shot himself in a fit of depression. Mark Goddard of "Lost in Space" plays the "nice guy with no prospects" pool boy. Katherine Crawford, the daughter of Roy Huggins the creator of this show, is the daughter. She greatly resembles a blonde Pamela Tiffin.

Per Ed Robertson's book, Producer Alan Armer told him "We were terribly over-budget at that time. I think that was the only show we shot in 6 days, trying to save a little money. It shows, I guess." I'm guessing it was filmed and around the house of one of the show's executives to save money. The police car shown doesn't even have anything written on it. It's just black and white with a flashing light on it.
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4/10
Strange episode
Christopher37014 July 2023
Warning: Spoilers
A few things in this episode confused me. First was the way the kids went all went ape inside the house and literally destroying everything in sight as soon as they entered. It was so weird.

At the end of the episode the mother states that the kids all came from good families and she knew all their parents. So it's logical to conclude that they were friends of the daughter Joanne, so why would they trash her house the way they did and with such glee?

Especially when we saw them all acting like civilized humans at the Pizza Parlor before going to the house. Why weren't they all going ape there too? Did they all just hate Joanne and want to wreck her place?! Made no sense.

And that one spastic girl who ran inside the house, immediately climbed a console and kicked a vase of flowers to the floor shattering it, really got on my nerves. I was so hoping she'd fall through that window behind her and break her neck. She was just so annoying the way she danced like she was having an epileptic attack.

There's also a winner who tosses a statue into the wall mirror just because he wanted to shatter it. Their actions were just weird and nonsensical because there was no basis for this savage lunacy when they were all so docile at the Pizza Parlor earlier. The whole scene of destruction was very bizarre.

The other thing that left me confused were the ages of Dan and Joanne. Both were said to be in college, with Dan in his senior year, yet in the Epilogue he mentions he'll get his guardian's signature to marry Joanne if he wanted to. Why would a college senior need that when he's clearly of age?

They both seem to be at least 20 years old, yet Joanne's father is fretting the whole time about her being at home without him to supervise her party. Why? She's not a young teen of 14 or 15, which would have made his fretting reasonable, she was a young adult who smokes cigarettes in front of Mom and was clearly capable of hosting a party without Daddy watching over it. His concern was strange and just didn't fit in with the circumstance.

The mother was domineering over both her daughter and husband, yet she wasn't wrong either. The episode tried hard to paint her in some irresponsible bad light but I don't think she was.

She wanted this business dinner to go off well which isn't wrong of her and left a number to be reached in case of emergency, and Kimble even did reach Dad early in the evening before the animals descended upon the party.

I think it was wrong of Kimble to accuse her of being neglectful when he challenged her with "Where were YOU?" because he couldn't get in touch with her the second time.

Maybe she could've called home to alert Kimble of her change of plans, but how was she to know her responsible 20 year old daughter's party would turn into a zoo?! That wasn't her fault. All she was guilty of was trying to control her daughter and husband's lives, but she and her husband were hardly negligent or irresponsible parents for going out to a business dinner.

The blame belonged squarely on the spastic neanderthals who trashed the home and I think trying to pin blame on the innocent parents was just wrong in the writing.

I've viewed this episode twice now and just can't warm up to it. The one bright spot that saved this mess though was actor Mark Goddard who played Dan. I really enjoyed his performance here and now want to get "Lost in Space" dvd to see him in there.

In a series that liked to bring back the same guest stars multiple times, I would have liked to have seen him return in other episodes, but sadly this was his only Fugitive performance. I rate this 4 stars only for him and of course David Janssen who's performance was always top notch, even in the few stinker episodes this wonderful series had, which are thankfully relegated mostly to the final season.
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