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, we will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Tubi and other services!
Episode 4.9 “Why Punish the Children?”
(Dir. by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 25th, 1987)
In this Thanksgiving episode, Jonathan Smith (Michael Landon) and Mark Gordon (Victor French) take on roles as history teachers in a women’s prison. It seems a compassionate social worker named Melanie Canner (Sally Spencer) has been fighting hard to improve the lives of the women on the inside and has been getting close to nowhere with prison warden Thomas Inman (Bruce French). The first positive step that Melanie has been able to secure for the inmates from the warden are these history classes. Once on the inside, we meet inmates like Maria Rojas (Tasia Valenza), a young woman who’s just about to have her first baby, and Reba Williams (Bebe Drake), a mother of five. Both women want to straighten out their lives in order to give their children a better chance in life. It soon becomes clear that Jonathan, Mark, and Melanie are on a mission to convince the warden to open up more opportunities for the women to improve their lives and spend more quality time with their kids. The warden isn’t an easy case, as he seems convinced that the women shouldn’t be given any real favors as they pay their debts to society. As you might imagine, Jonathan has a couple of divine tricks up his sleeve.
I liked this episode of HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN even if it’s not the most realistic story you’ll ever see. Each woman we meet has 100% accepted the error of their ways and are determined to be a productive member of society if they can get just one more chance. The cynical part of me has to overcome this unrealistic element of the story, and the “women in prison” movie lover in me would have enjoyed a couple of good catfights. Alas, this is HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN and director Michael Landon is not in the business of going for complete realism or providing B Movie fan service! Rather, Landon is interested in creating a world where basically good people have done wrong, honestly regret how their choices negatively impact those they love, and vow to do better for their children. This series built its five seasons on the prospect of people turning their lives around, and I’ll admit I got pretty emotional again with this one. This episode really focuses in on a mother’s love for her children, and I certainly want to believe that these women would do anything for theirs. Each mother is given a beautiful moment, at Thanksgiving no less, and the chance that they need to be the mom their children deserve. I’m getting a little misty just thinking about it as I type these words. The character of the warden is there to learn the lesson that we all need to learn, which is to try to see situations from different points of view. He gets a little angelic help in this area, which is quite heavy handed and completely in line with the show’s expectations.
Overall, I again enjoyed this episode as a nostalgic trip down memory lane with a series I grew up watching with my mom. The fact that I got a little emotional is also no surprise because the older I get the more I cry when watching movies and TV shows. The fact that I was bawling in my office while I watched the show at work could have been a little hard to explain… luckily, nobody came by during those waterworks moments.
Through the Shattered Lens 