Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, season 2 comes to an end!

Episode 2.24 “Friends”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on May 7th, 1986)

Jonathan and Mark have a new assignment.  They’re going to be working as substitute teachers.

“I don’t want to be a teacher!” Mark says.

It’s actually kind of interesting that Mark is never happy with any of the assignments that he and Jonathan are given.  It seems like almost every assignment involves making him do something that he doesn’t want to do and also humiliating him in the process.  In this episode, Mark not only has to be a teacher but he ends up teaching Sex Education.  We don’t actually see Mark teaching the class.  In fact, Mark is actually barely in this episode.  But we certainly do hear Mark complaining about having to do it.

This episode finds Jonathan reaching out to two troubled students.  Jack Mason (Darren Dalton) is only going to school because he likes playing on the baseball team and he’d like to win the state championship before his senior year ends.  Otherwise, Jack doesn’t care about his grades or even graduating.  He tells Jonathan that his father dropped out of school and he’s doing just fine.  Jack even suggests that he personally might drop out as soon as baseball season ends.

(Jack is apparently a good baseball player but he never mentions any desire to play professionally.  That would truly make him unique amongst high school jocks.  It would also suggest that Jack is realistic enough to realize how difficult it is to make it as a professional athlete.  Jonathan gives Jack a hard time about his attitude but Jack might be smarter than he seems.)

Because Jack is failing Algebra, Jonathan arranges for Jack to have a tutor.  Jonathan selects Jenny Bates (Judy Carmen) for the job.  Jenny is a lonely girl who is good at Algebra and insecure about being overweight.  She desperately just wants to have a friend but hardly anyone at the school is willing to talk to her.  Will she be able to help Jack improve his grades?  Will Jack finally realize that his father is struggling due to his lack of a high school diploma?  Will Jack’s bitchy girlfriend (Alexandra Powers) invite Judy to a party just so she can trick Judy into putting on a bathing suit so that she can be humiliated in front of everyone?  Will the episode end with Jack on the way to graduating and Judy finally having made a friend?  This is Highway to Heaven so I think you know the answer to all those questions.

“If I can pass Algebra,” Jack tells Judy, ‘you can lose weight!”

Now, that’s definitely not something that you would hear on a network television program today.  Not in today’s age of body positivity.  That said, let’s be honest.  Being overweight is not necessarily healthy and, just as no one should be ridiculed for being on the heavy side, no one should be shamed for trying to lose weight if that’s what they want (or need) to do.

This episode was a bit on the predictable side, but that’s actually one of the things that people tend to like about shows like Highway to Heaven.  Judy Carmen gave a poignant performance as Jenny.  Darren Dalton played Jack as being a bit of an arrogant knucklehead and that made all of the scenes in which Jonathan yelled at him feel extremely satisfying.  (I should note that I recently rewatched the original Red Dawn so I spent this entire episode thinking about how Dalton betrayed The Wolverines to the Russians.)  This episode featured Jonathan at his most stern and it was an interesting change-of-pace from the gentle technique that Jonathan usually uses during his missions.

With this episode, the second season ends.  It was a good season, overall.  The show can be corny and a bit mawkish but it’s all so earnest and sincere that it’s often impossible not to be somewhat moved by it.  Next week, we start season three!