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 Tubi and several other services!
This week, Highway to Heaven makes a mockery of legitimate theater.
Episode 4.6 “Playing for Keeps”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 4th, 1987)
Jonathan and Mark are directing a play!
The play stars movie star Rhett Clark (Eric Douglas, the least talented son of Kirk Douglas). Rhett plays a young man who is struggling to come to terms with the impending death of his father. In the play, Rhett’s father is played by his actual father, Jackie Clark (Donald O’Connor), a old-time comedian who can’t get work anymore.
It’s not an easy rehearsal process. Rhett resents his father. Jackie wants to tell jokes. He wants to put on a dress and a wig because, according to him, all of his fans will want to see him play “Aunt Jackie.” Rhett explains that the play is not a comedy. There’s no room for Aunt Jackie. Really, explaining all of that should have been Jonathan’s job. He’s the director!
The problem with this episode is that we’re supposed to be angry at Rhett for not supporting his father’s attempts to turn the play into a vaudeville comedy but actually, Jackie’s a jerk. Rhett’s a jerk too but he’s a jerk who understands that, when you’re doing a dramatic play, the actor playing a dying man can’t suddenly get out of his hospital bed, duck into a closet, and then come out as Aunt Jackie. An actor ad-libbing dialogue and then turning the play into a comedy because he’s petulant and insecure is not the type of behavior that would be tolerated in all-volunteer community theater, much less on a professional stage. The fact that Jackie is getting paid to appear in the show makes his unprofessional conduct all the more annoying.
This episode puts on the blame on Rhett. We’re meant to see Rhett as the ungrateful son who refuses to see things from his father’s point of view. Because Rhett is being played by Eric Douglas, an actor who did not exactly have the most likable screen presence, it’s easy to blame him. I mean, everyone loves Donald O’Connor, But honestly, Jackie is the jerk here.
How big of a jerk is Jackie? On opening night, he gets mad at his son and does his Aunt Jackie schtick. Somehow, this leads to Rhett and Jackie reconciling and hugging it out while the audience applauds. Honestly, though, it should have led to Jackie being fired. If you’re not going to be professional, you have to go. This episode would have been far more touching if Jackie had been willing to put his ego aside and actually allow his son to have the spotlight for once.
This episode will definitely not be remembered as one of my favorites of the series. In the past, I’ve defended this show’s tendency to go for sentimentality over realism but this episode just pushed things a little too far.
Through the Shattered Lens 