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 take on prejudice.

Episode 4.4 “The People Next Door”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 21st, 1987)

Dr. William Martin (David Spielberg) is living a double life.  His family and his neighbors know him as a white doctor who lives in a suburban community and who is a part of the homeowner’s community.  He’s told his wife and his son that his parents died before he met them.

His mother knows him as Dr. Guillermo Martinez, who works at the free clinic in the economically disadvantaged area of town.  Anna Martinez (Mariam Colon) works as a maid and has no idea that her son is married and that she’s a grandmother.

Guillermo changed his name and lied about his ethnicity so that he could get ahead as a doctor and it’s worked for him.  His best friend is Brad Bowman (John Lawlor), the real estate agent who is dedicated to making sure that only “the right people” move into the neighborhood.  But when Jonathan and Mark show up as rival real estate agents and hire Anna to help them clean up the house next door, William/Guillermo is forced to face the truth about who he is.

At the start of this episode, Jonathan tells Mark that their assignment is not only to show William the foolishness of denying his heritage but to also help William’s neighbors become more tolerant.  They definitely help out William but they don’t really seem to have much luck with the neighbors.  Brad Bowman (no relation!) is as much of a bigot at the end of the show as he was at the start.  Jonathan and Mark do arrange for a black family to move into the empty house and then Jonathan and Mark promptly leave the neighborhood.  So, I guess the responsibility for teaching everyone else tolerance is going to be on the new homeowners.  This is one of those episodes where you wish Jonathan had actually gone to extremes to make his point, instead of just arranging for people to run into each other while wandering around the neighborhood.  I know that some people would say, “Well, Brad’s just a bad person,” but wasn’t one the original themes of this show that everyone had the potential to see the light, learn the errors of their ways, and be redeemed?

While the show suggested that there was no hope for Brad to see the error of his ways, it also let Guillermo off way too easy.  His wife was surprisingly understanding about her husband lying to her for years.  And, in the end, his mother was surprisingly forgiving about him lying about the fact that she had a grandson.  Jonathan scolded him briefly but that was pretty much it.  My grandmother, who came to this country from Franco’s Spain, would not have been as forgiving.

This episode was well-intentioned but didn’t quite work.