"I Ran" is the first regular season episode of Rainbow the Mummy Hunter. This episode was preceeded by the pilot episode Rainbow in the Dark although it does not seem to fit into continuity with the pilot.
The episode opens up with our first ever look at Theresa Copperfield a playing "Kitty" (her role had been played by Darlene Wood in the pilot). The camera faces Kitty at eye level as she sits on a park bench, she is wearing the soon to be iconic green woolen "kitty hat" as well as a pair of earphones. Her eyes face downward at a comic book she is reading. Astute fans who have freeze framed the DVD release have been able to determine that the comic was Luke Cage #9 from the early 70s.
After a few seconds of the viewer taking in the scene, Rainbow runs into frame yelling "Run, Run!!". He continues to run right out of frame, then a couple seconds later he runs back into frame, grabs Kitty by the hand and says, "I mean it, run", which she hears as her earphones fall off (and we hear a brief snippet of "I Ran" by A Flock of Seagulls as the headphones come off). Both characters run off screen, while the camera remains motionless, several seconds later it becomes quite apparent what they were running from.
The first scene of this first episode is iconic, not only because it shows the first meeting between Rainbow and Kitty, but also because it is repeated in different variations multiple times throughout the series, with every season premier, both Christmas specials and nine other episodes beginning with variations of this very scene. The characters involved may change, as does the exact setting of where they are sitting, what they are reading and what is chasing them, but the camera work is always identical and in most variations the running character has to come back to retrieve the oblivious sitting character. In most cases the sitting character is reading a book or comic book from series creator Oliver Kelly's personal collection.
Throughout the episode Rainbow and Kitty spend most of their time fleeing from a seemingly undefeatable opponent, frequently calling "Abby" (Jennifer Love Hewitt) on the phone to get her to look things up on the internet. While most shows use fake search engines, Abby inexplicably uses Ask Jeeves throughout the entire series and it doesn't seem like the producers even did anything to fake the results (although often the fleeting results seen on screen don't match up with anything anyone in the show is talking about). This episode marks the first occasion of the producers replaying audio snippets from Jennifer Love Hewitt's other work in order to expand upon the audio she had already recorded for the show, in this case it was simply the words "someone knows" from "I Know What You Did Last Summer". Most of these ripped lines went completely unnoticed until well after the series was off the air.
Rainbow the Mummy Hunter seemed to initially be placed in either a near future setting or a timeless setting. This idea seems to gradually phase out over the first half of season one, but it is especially strong in this first episode. It is most obvious with the cars shown on screen and in the way people dress. The cars shown on screen are a motley collection of 1950s to early 90s cars (all in nice condition) mixed in liberally with as many kit cars and customs as the producers could get extras to bring out for filming. None of the cars are ever remarked on as unusual in any way. The fashion seemed to be mostly contemporary for the younger characters, with the addition of a lot of neon colors that were certainly not in fashion at the time. Older characters often dressed in clothes more appropriate to past decades. While tennis shoes with wheels in the heels (Heelys) were worn constantly by Kitty and often seen being worn by other characters even though they didn't become popular until well after the series was over.