In The Fugitive episode “Moon Child” Virginia Christine played the mother of a girl with a learning disability, and her performance would have an eerie pre-echo of a series of commercials for Folgers Coffee that she would make in the 70s and 80s as “Mrs. Olsen”.

Here’s a gallery of some of the second season guest stars that you might know from things they did either before or after The Fugitive. The answers are at the bottom of this post.

While I’ve mostly been enjoying episodes of The Fugitive, there are things about it that are annoying. These are mainly conventions of 1960s TV, so they aren’t direct shots at The Fugitive itself, it’s just the way things were back in those days.

Richard Kimble is practically never shown without an immaculate haircut and a closely shaven face. This makes no sense for someone who is on the run, especially in those episodes where he claims not have had any sleep for several days. Nor does he ever have a five o’clock shadow after a hard day’s work.

And where does he keep getting all those sport jackets and ties? He might be shown leaving town with nothing but the shirt on his back— 

—and when next we see him he has a tie, a sport jacket, and a suit case.

Actually, the show uses that same closing image on at least a half a dozen or more shows. I guess they didn’t have the budget to keep filming Kimble thumbing for rides.

And why, oh, why doesn’t Dr. Kimble grow a mustache or beard? Oh, I can answer that one. Because in the 1960s, mustaches and beards were out of fashion, so the audience might have lost sympathy for him.

Then there’s the matter of each episode being a standalone episode. The show doesn’t really build any momentum as it goes along. With very few exceptions, you could mix and match any episode from any season into any other season without noticing any difference. The very few exceptions have to do with the ones where the one-armed man appears; those do build up a little momentum as Kimble slowly learns the man’s name, etc.

It’s because of the standalone nature of the episodes and the fact that the guest stars keep being recycled into new roles all the time (again a common feature of 1960s TV) that I think the show didn’t do well when it went into syndication. That was blamed at the time on the fact that the show came to a well defined ending, but I think if the show had had more of a forward momentum, that it would have done better. That’s merely my two cents. The idea of plot threads extending over entire seasons didn’t come about until the 1980s. With the exception of outright soap operas like Peyton Place.

Answers to The Fugitive Guest Stars:

1: Ed Begley Sr.

2: Suzanne Pleshette

3: Ron Howard

4: Daney Coleman

5: Janis Paige

6: Kurt Russell

7: Leslie Nielsen 

8: Barbara Barrie

9: Angie Dickinson

10: Tom Skerritt

11: Ed Asner

12: Celeste Holm