Over the course of the series, he is presented with a lot of evidence that should at least lead him to question whether or not Kimble is truly guilty. But he continues with his relentless pursuit of Kimble to make sure he's executed, rather than trying to find the truth.
A more fitting end would have been for him to have been framed and sent to the "death house" - let's see how he likes it.
What ? Lt Gerard, not your favourite person ? !
I agree. As the series ran, having Gerard gradually change his attitude, would have added to the story line.
Haha. My OP is a little overdramatic, but I can't stand people who are so inflexible in their thinking that they refuse to acknowledge reality. Agree with you that an attitude shift would have made Gerard more interesting. Perhaps torn between his duty as the officer of the court to bring Kimble in, and his growing feeling that Kimble was innocent.
sharethe jury found him guilty.you have to wonder about the EVIDENCE. gerard was "obsessed " with his capture. being that we still resent him more than 50yrs later might say something about the quality of the writing and actor.
shareHe was also a bastard in The Twilight Zone episode "A Piano in the House". Turns out he was just a frightened insecure little child in the TZ episode. On The Fugitive, Gerard was just a narrow minded, obsessive ghoul who wouldn't consider Kimble's innocence until last one or two episodes.
"Don't tell me your little problems son, all I'm interested in is results."
IDK... season 4 Episode 14 'The Evil That Men Do.' saw a hit man try to 'thank' Kimble by killing Gerard... Kimble seeks out Gerard to warn him...
Talking with Kimble while pinned down, Gerard expresses some doubts about Kimble's guilt.
and given the choice between running after Kimble and facing the hit man, he opts to shoot it out...
Later talking with the hit man's girlfriend Gerard he explains that while he's not 100% convinced of Kimble's innocence he is convinced that Kimble is obviously not a danger to the public.
Not so much unfeeling as unyieldingly Type A, and a highly cerebral individual who lives by principles. We don't get to see much of Gerard's emotions during the course of the show but Barry Morse was a fine, subtle actor, and as time went by I get a sense that he was coming to doubt Kimble's guilt. He just couldn't stop chasing the guy. It's become a compulsion with him. He reminds me a little of E.G. Marshall's hyper-rational a juror in the movie 12 Angry Men, a cool customer for sure, he also admits that emotion was a major factor in the murder and that it can't be ruled out entirely in the deliberations of the jury.
shareMakes sense. But if he was starting to doubt Kimble's guilt, then he should have been putting some effort into chasing the one-armed man. That would have made him much more principled in my view.
share]True. Indeed, if Gerard had just chased the one armed man he would have had a better chance of catching Kimble . More seriously, my sense is that what doubts Gerard may have had regarding Kimble's guilt were offset by what had become for him an addiction. Gerard needed to chase Kimble the way a gambler needs horses (or roulette wheels, keno parlors or a deck of cards). But there are many questions about Gerard, as his behavior often makes no sense even if one understands his motivations for pursuing Kimble every chance he got. How was it that the town/small city of Stafford, Indiana was subsidizing Gerard's regular trips all over the country to catch a criminal? Why did his superiors permit this? Kimble's case was a well known one, but it's not like the murder of his wife was a crime on the scale of, say, the Kansas City Massacre.
In that case I can understand that some KC police would want to be on the trail of the perps,--especially if it had been an outside job--but Stafford? It wasn't the Stafford murder, it was the Kimble case. Yet as a dramatic device, it works, as Gerard is essentially a symbol of the Law, of literally blind justice. The producers were fortunate in being able to hire an actor who was sheer perfection as Gerard: Barry Morse. English born, classically trained, Morse was the kind of actor who always seemed smarter than everyone else. Something in his voice, his demeanor, suggested superiority (but not snobbery, nor was there anything supercilious about Morse's playing of Gerard). Whenever Morse's Gerard arrives in some small city or town in pursuit of Kimble he always come across as a big shot, almost a fed. He's a take charge kind of guy.
Morse was brilliant in the role. Never realized he wasn't American until about a year ago.
shareGerard is a career cop with one big stain on his record: he failed to deliver a condemned killer to the death house. That's enough rationale for his relentless pursuit of Kimble.
And in Part 1 of The Judgment, while he starts out using the one armed man only as a tool to lure in Kimble, he does interogate the one armed man about his whereabouts on the night of the murder, and becomes furious when the guy lies to him.
Good analysis. I don't agree with the OP. Gerard has his arrogant moments. Certainly obsessive. But I don't think he's such a bad guy. He's a man who sincerely believes in the rule of law and in his duty. In a number of episodes he's asked if Kimble is really guilty and his answer is, "The law says he's guilty". In Gerard's world view, the court decides who's guilty, and his role as a police officer is not to question the judgment of the law but only to enforce it.
I could imagine in the hands of a lesser creative team, they might have made the police officer a real jerk, some stereotypically hot-headed lawman. That would be predictable and formulaic. For the most part Gerard is just a man doing his job, and that makes it more interesting. There are episodes where he defends Kimble. There are episodes where other people wonder if Kimble might commit another killing or some other terrible act and Gerard says in so many words, "No, I know him. He's not that sort of man."
The fact that we don't see Gerard every episode either also made it a better show. It would have been predictable if every episode just came down to a showdown of the mean ol' policeman versus the nice fugitive.
Thanks.
True enough, and the writers were wise in lending Gerard as measure of dignity (a large measure) as a professional, which makes him at times sympathetic,--I doubt he ever used a sick child child as a hook to lure Kimble out into the open knowing that Kimble's professionalism would trump the danger that his reverting to pediatrician mode would put him in. That's dirty pool, and Gerard didn't play dirty.
Indeed, Gerard defended Kimble on a number of occasions, stating even to fellow officers of the law that Kimble was not a dangerous character; that he was not a criminal by nature. In many respects Gerard and Kimble were two sides of the same coin: men driven by professionalism, and yet who often erred (Gerard, obviously much more) on the side of an unyielding sense of duty: Gerard, always, on the side of the law (Kimble must be caught); Kimble on the side of his profession, medicine, which got him into a lot of hot water over the years.
BTW: an actor Barry Morse reminds me very much of is E.G. Marshall, who, like Morse, was peerless at playing men of high intellect and integrity. I wonder if anyone else thinks so. I don't mean their acting styles per se but rather the way each actor "leads with his brain", gives off early and often vibes that the character he's playing has a first class mind.
Telegonis: yep, right on the money re: E. G. Marshall and Morse and the similar "cut-and-dried" and "either black or white" way of looking at everything that both actors projected into their roles. Great observation on your part.
You could also include Police Inspector Javert (Jean Valjean's pursuer in "Les Miserables") and Mr. Spock in the demographic.
Gerard is a cold, unfeeling bastard
I thought the writers were inconsistent. At times, Morse seemed to imply that he had doubts, and at times he seemed to fall back into the guilty mode.
shareFor this particular episode, I say tough sheet, Gerard. Gerard let himself get taken by Kimble from behind. For all the money he wasted over the 4 years, Gerard should have been busted- to a traffic cop.
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