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, it’s time for yet another student protest.

Episode 5.8 “Goodbye, Mr. Zelinka”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on June 23rd, 1989)

The students at Lincoln High are upset to learn that beloved English teacher Mr. Zelinka (Lew Ayres) is going to have to retire because he’s reached the mandatory age of 70.  The school’s new maintenance workers — Jonathan Smith and Mark Gordon — suggest that they should all conduct a walk-out to demand that Zelinka be allowed to keep his job.  The evil school board president (James Karen) says that Zelinka can stay if he takes and passes an exam.  However, the exam is rigged for Zelinka to fail.  Jonathan uses “the stuff” to make sure that Zelinka not only passes but that he also gets the highest score ever.  In the past, Jonathan always refused to use “the stuff” to help people cheat.  Instead, Jonathan would have shown the school board president the error of his ways.  But, for this episode, Jonathan rigs the rigged exam and the villain is left in power so that he can presumably continue to make Mr. Zelinka’s life miserable.

I did not like this episode.  Yeah, it’s heart was in the right place but the entire school walking about in support of Mr, Zelinka just felt kind of silly.  I mean, did every student at the school have Mr. Zelinka for English?  What did everyone’s parents think about the protest?  If Mr. Zelinka had been a compelling character, may be I would have felt differently but  Mr. Zelinka was instead a pretty passive character and I have to admit that I wondered about all the other good teachers who had been forced to retire at 70.  Why didn’t Jonathan show up to help any of them out?  What made Mr. Zelinka so special?  It didn’t help that Lew Ayres was 80 years old when he played Mr. Zelinka and that he looked and sounded even older.  The obviously frail Ayres comes across as someone who maybe does need to retire.

I’ve sat through a lot of Highway to Heaven episodes about clean-cut teenagers walking out of class so that they can protest injustice.  Highway to Heaven was a very earnest show and that was one of the things that made it likable.  But, by the fifth season, Highway to Heaven‘s formula was a bit less effective than it had been in the past.  This is an episode just just seems to be going through the motions.  This is also the rare Highway to Heaven episode in which I wanted someone to tell Jonathan and Mark to just mind their own business.