Date of airing: November 13, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 9.84 million viewers, 6.3/11 in Households, 3.1/10 with Adults 18-49
written by: Doris Egan
directed by: Gary Nelson
I saw and heard a bit of THE FUGITIVE in this episode, making me wonder if the writers and producers were thinking about "borrowing" some audiovisual and plot elements from the TV shows and the 1993 movie to fill an hour of television about a guy receiving tomorrow's newspaper today with it. Especially the scene with Detective Armstrong chasing Gary in the printing basement of the Sun-Times building very much sounded like a straight rip-off of the 1993 movie, with the pompous score accompanying a cat-and-mouse game on a factory floor between the fugitive and the cop holding a gun in his hand. It was clear what pop culture the writers were looking at or thinking about when they created this episode.
This was not such a shady conclusion to Gary's story at all. It was an episode equal to its thrilling and dramatic predecessor, and I loved that the writers decided not to fill the story with twists and turns that could have made it all look like Gary was about to solve this murder case all by himself with the help of the paper, as was the case in the first-season two-parter "The Wall." This time around, Gary did not even need to solve the case by himself, since Brigatti found out all the answers, thanks to some assistance from Gary about where to look and what questions to ask. And it was not Gary who was eventually facing the villains of the story: It was all about Detective Armstrong and Brigatti getting in danger and facing their mortality, and for Gary to come running and save them. As he always does.
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| To be a fugitive running from the law is exhausting. |
Although the episode did manage to fake out the viewers and Gary during
the climax, as the show sometimes does as well. The paper said that Brigatti was found murdered at her
home, yet Gary did nothing to bring pathologist Jake to convince himself to drug Brigatti and drive her to the train tracks. Gary's paper should have predicted, as soon as he sent the fax to Brigatti, that she and Armstrong would be killed at the tracks, but that headline showed up much later, making me think that the writers figured the headline should change as soon as Brigatti was at the morgue and asking Jake all those questions. The episode could have saved the minute or two of Gary trying to reach Brigatti and just have him drive to the tracks instead, since a scene of Gary unsuccessfully phoning Brigatti was not needed for the narrative at all.
I was a little surprised that Armstrong became the detective engulfed in catching Gary, essentially turning into the character of Samuel Gerard, United States Marshal, while Brigatti was the one who believed him and investigated the murder on his behalf, becoming the character who was emotionally connected to Gary and would not give up on him. After the previous episode, I expected it to be the other way around, and now I cannot even say how it happened the way it happened in this episode. I guess Brigatti knew what she felt for Gary and decided it would not cloud her judgment, but that meant Armstrong’s judgment was clouded as heck, even though he had less of an emotional connection to Gary. Armstrong wanted the killer to be Gary a lot more than Gary wanted to find the real killer. Logically speaking, it was Armstrong who was supposed to keep his head cool in this investigation and to be impartial, but in the end, Armstrong was the hothead obsessed about catching Gary while Brigatti remained calm and actually investigated the six previous deaths connected to Scanlon's murder-for-hire investigation.
However, the murder investigation was not that much of an interesting aspect of the episode, and I would have loved the hour even more if the backstory had not been that convoluted at times. First of all, how idiotic of the dirty killer cop to commit a drive-by with his cop car – how convenient that was for the story and for Gary to realize that a cop was behind all of this. Second of all, how convenient for Gary to find a way out of the print basement of the Sun-Times building, although he has been in there enough at this point to know the ins and outs of the building, even if the factory basement looked like a maze at times. Third of all, the investigation did not look much better with Armstrong being so obsessed about catching Gary before thinking about any other potential suspects out there, especially when there is circumstantial evidence and enough intelligence to figure that there was more to Scanlon's murder than meets the eye. I am not even talking about the residue on the gloves (I was glad that the inconsistency was brought up though, even if it was not the inconsistency I was speaking about in the previous episode's review), I am simply talking about the fact that Scanlon was working on stories that could have made killers out of more people than just Gary. Brigatti started smelling the bacon already, but the way Armstrong threw her off the task force was just ... not idiotic (but it totally was), but extremely convenient for the narrative, and every once in a while I hate conveniences like these.
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| Detective Armstrong is very close to the fugitive. |
Still, the two-parter had a nice build-up, knew how to create tension, and even had some minor action sequences in it, with Gary going all in on the killer with his fists at the end. Desperate-looking Gary is a good kind of Gary for the show's stories, and I would not mind if Kyle Chandler would have shown up with a shadow on his face more often – tired, exhausted, done with this BS, but with still enough power in him to solve the case and prove his innocence. His character’s desperation is also good for the story, as it turns EARLY EDITION from a G-rated Saturday primetime family show into an actual crime drama, in which the writers were able to go a few miles with the story before having to drop back again. Sometimes, you do not need a shootout in the middle of the episode to create tension and action. Sometimes, a cat-and-mouse chase in the basement of the Sun-Times building does the trick.
