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, Jonathan and Mark are once again teaching high school.

Episode 5.6 “The Source”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on June 9th, 1989)

This week, Jonathan and Mark are back in high school …. again!

This time, Mark is teaching sex ed.  (Ha ha, the Boss sure does love embarrassing Mark!)  Meanwhile, Jonathan is the faculty advisor to the school newspaper.  When a school bus crashes, two enterprising student journalists — Doug (Scott Fults) and Colin (Andy Lauer) — decide that they’re going to get to the bottom of what happened.  All the evidence shows that it was just a freak accident and that bus driver Larry Nichols (Dack Rambo) is not to blame.  However, a student on the bus named Ellen (Kim Walker) tells Doug and Colin that, before the crash, Larry was flirting with her and not watching the road.  After Doug and Colin agree to protect Ellen’s identity, they write a story about Larry, the adult bus driver who was too busy flirting with an underage girl to take that curve.

Doug and Colin think that they’re going to win a Pulitzer but Jonathan says, “Hold on, we can’t publish this!”  However, the school’s principal (Alan Fudge) disagrees because Colin just happens to be his son.  The story is published and Larry loses his job.  Doug and Colin are feeling pretty proud of themselves but then they just happen to come across Ellen’s notebook in the school’s copy room.  (Jonathan, using “the Stuff,” switched out his notebook for Ellen’s.)  Doug and Colin read the notebook and discover that Ellen has a crush on Larry and that Ellen lied about him flirting with her.

Doug and Colin retract the story and learn a lesson about journalistic responsibility.  Ellen, even though Colin and Doug continue to protect her identity, leaves with Jonathan so that she can apologize to Larry face-to-face.  (We don’t actually see the apology.  I have a feeling that it probably didn’t go well.)  As the episode ends, two women look at the newspaper and agree that, retraction or no retraction, Larry was definitely guilty.  We then hear Jonathan’s voice telling us that the first amendment is too important to be abused.

That’s an important message and a timely one.  Watching this episode, it was hard not to consider that, for the past few weeks, people in this country have been arguing about whether or not the first amendment applies more to a self-employed YouTuber who stormed a church service or the people in the church who were worshipping at the time.  There’s a lot of earnest sincerity to be found in this episode of Highway to Heaven but, that said, the execution is pretty heavy-handed.  Even by the standards of this show, there’s not much subtlety to be found here.

An even bigger problem is that this episode can’t seem to decide whether Ellen is meant to be a shy teenager who made a mistake or a full-blown sociopath.  I think this episode would have worked better if Colin and Doug heard rumors that they reported as fact as opposed to Ellen just flat-out lying to them.  Once Ellen lies, it’s hard not to feel that the focus should be less on Colin and Doug learning a lesson and more on Ellen getting some sort of psychiatric help.

This episode was typical of season 5.  It was sincere but just a bit too on-the-nose.