Alan Fudge | Through the Shattered Lens

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 another courtroom drama on Highway to Heaven.

Episode 4.15 “Time In A Bottle”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on January 20th, 1988)

A homeless man who goes by the name of Humphrey Bogart (Henry Bal) is arrested for trying to steal a bottle of cheap wine from a liquor store. The hard-nosed assistant D.A. (Robin Strasser) charges him with a felony. Jonathan and Mark recruit Humphrey’s friend, Matthew (John Rubinstein), to defend him in court. Matthew may be homeless but he’s also a lawyer!

It turns out that a corrupt city councilman (Alan Fudge) wants to crack down on the homeless because he wants to turn the homeless district into a commercial area. If you already guessed that this episode ends with Matthew leading a march of homeless people into a city council meeting while they chant “We will be heard,” then you’ve obviously seen quite a few episodes of Highway to Heaven.

Highway to Heaven frequently did stories about the homeless and I really can’t criticize the show for that. This was an issue that Michael Landon obviously cared a lot about and the show was usually so earnest and sincere that you could overlook just how heavy-handed it often was. The homeless people on Highway to Heaven are always a lot more clean-cut and polite than the ones that I used to yell at me when I worked in downtown Dallas. On Highway to Heaven, the homeless are always funny and philosophical and they have wonderful lessons to teach everyone. In Dallas, they come up to your car window while you’re stuck in traffic. In order to visit my aunt when she was dying at Medical City last month, I had to endure being shouted at and occasionally threatened by all sorts of people. By the end of it, I was running red lights because paying a fine was less annoying than having that guy whole lived at the Forest/Central intersection calling me the C-word while I was waiting for the light to change.

(That’s not say that the homeless should not be treated with compassion or helped because they certainly should. I’m just saying that this habit that some people have of idealizing and infantilizing anyone living on the streets is, in many ways, as destructive as just ignoring the problem.)

As for this episode, it was a bit too preachy for its own good. And I know what you’re going to say. “It’s Highway to Heaven, it’s always preachy.” That’s true to an extent but the first three seasons were also a bit less self-righteous than the fourth season has been. The first three seasons featured characters who were often misguided but who were also capable of being redeemed. In the past, this episode would have been about the city councilman seeing the error of his ways. This season, though, the city councilman is just evil because he is. It’s a far more heavy-handed approach to take and, as a result, far less effective.

This is another episode where one impassioned speech manages to change everyone’s mind. If only things were as simple in the real world.

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1974’s The Chadwick Family! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Who are the Chadwicks?

They’re a family living in San Francisco. They claim to be an average middle class family but, as has apparently been typical of television since its very first broadcast day, they live in a way that can only be explained by having a good deal of wealth.

Consider this: Patriarch Ned Chadwick (Fred MacMurray) is a prominent newspaper columnist who writes so well that a mere column from him can settle a potential labor strike. A national magazine has noticed the power of Ned’s words and they’ve offered him a job. They want to turn him into a national figure. The only catch is that he and his wife (Kathleen Maguire) would have to leave their beloved San Francisco and move to Chicago. There’s no ocean in Chicago, as Ned puts it. Sure, it would mean more money but who needs money when you’re a fabulously wealthy couple pretending to be middle class?

Moving would also mean leaving behind their children, all of whom have dramas of their own to deal with. Tim (Stephen Nathan) is a college student, struggling to make the grade. Lisa (Jane Actman) is engaged to Lee (Frank Michael Liu) and, for some reason, decides that it would be a good idea to tell her future mother-in-law that her desire for a long engagement is “bad chop suey.” (Lee’s family is Chinese.) Eileen (Lara Parker) is pregnant and her husband worries this will sabotage their support for “zero population growth.” And Joan (Darleen Carr) is having to deal with the fact that her charismatic and fun-loving husband, Duffy (a young Barry Bostwick), is seriously ill and might even die before he can finish teaching Ned how to play the bagpipes. Like all middle class people, Duffy owns his own airplane.

This is one of those movies that was obviously meant to serve as a pilot for a weekly television series and it’s easy to imagine Ned handing out wisdom to his kids on a weekly basis as they tried to navigate their way through the 70s. Fred MacMurray gives off a nice grandfatherly vibe as Ned, so much so that it’s hard to believe that he’s the same actor who brought to life memorable heels in Double Indemnity, The Caine Mutiny, and The Apartment. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is not as memorable as MacMurray, largely because their roles are underwritten and their characters never feel like more than caricatures. Barry Bostwick acts up a storm as Duffy but the fact that he’s listed as being a “special guest star” in the opening credits pretty much gives away his fate from the start. As for Lisa, I usually like any character who shares my name but how much sympathy can you have for someone dumb enough to use a phrase like “bad chop suey” while speaking to her Chinese future in-laws. Indeed, it was kind of weird how everyone in the family seemed to be totally comfortable with making jokes about Lee being Chinese and speaking with an accent. One has to wonder how Lee felt about that.

Anyway, as far as I know, The Chadwick Family has no further adventures but their sole outing will live forever thanks to YouTube.