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, the highway leads to Hollywood!
Episode 1.9 “Catch a Falling Star”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on Nov. 14, 1984)
In this rather slight episode, Daniel Davis plays movie star Lance Gaylord. Lance is both producing and starring in a western and he’s so dedicated to the film that he rarely sees his two children, Brock (Bobby Jacoby) and Karen (Emily Moultrie). His son has been acting out and Lance thinks that it’s just because the kid is a brat and he’s upset about his parents getting divorced. The truth, of course, is that Brock just wants his father’s attention.
Jonathan and Mark show up on the set of Lance’s movie and explain that they’ve been sent over by the Darwin Agency. (An angel who works for the Darwin Agency? Take that, secular humanism!) Lance tells Jonathan and Mark to keep an eye on his kids while he’s shooting his movie.
The problem is an obvious one. How can Jonathan get Lance to spend more time with his children, especially his angry son? Well, maybe the child star who is appearing in the movie could come down with the chicken pox. And then, maybe with Jonathan’s encouragement, Brock could try out for the role. At first, Lance angrily says that he will not even allow his son to audition but when Brock runs away from home and Jonathan yells at him for not being there for his son, Lance realizes the errors of his ways. When Brock returns home, he gets his audition and he gets the role. He also finally gets to go fishing with his dad.
Probably the most interesting thing about this episode is how little actually happens. It really doesn’t take much for Lance to see the errors of his ways. He just needs Jonathan to yell at him for a minute or two. The whole thing epitomizes the feel-good blandness that the show was known for. In the end, Lance isn’t a bad father. He just needed to be reminded to do what was right. Myself, I’m more concerned with the fact that Lance’s film looks way too old-fashioned to be a hit, even in the 80s. As soon as I saw Lance dressed up like a cowboy, I thought to myself, “Oh, this movie is going to be such a flop that careers are going to end.” Hopefully, Lance is keeping productions costs down or he might never work in Hollywood again.
This episode’s big scene actually doesn’t have anything to do with Lance or his children. Instead, it comes when Jonathan and Mark go to a grocery store and end up getting confronted by a junkie (Dennis A. Pratt) with a gun. With the junkie attempts to shoot Jonathan, Jonathan snatches the bullet out of the air. At the police drag him away, the junkie shouts that he’s never going to drugs again. Obviously, Jonathan and Mark were changing lives everywhere!
Next week, Jonathan and Mark help out on another film set!
Brian Kelly (Christian Slater) is a California skater with a rebellious attitude and an adopted Vietnamese brother named Vinh (Art Chudabala). When the movie starts, all Brian cares about is not selling out and finding empty pools to skate. He even hires an airplane to fly him and his friends over Orange County so they can get a bird’s-eye view of the layout. Vinh is more worried about his job with the Vietnamese Anti-Community Relief Fund. The fund has been set up to send medical supplies to Vietnam but, when Vinh comes across a discrepancy in the shipping records, he realizes that something else is going on. When Vinh turns up dead in a hotel room, everyone else may believe that it is suicide but Brian knows that his brother was murdered. With the help of his fellow skaters and a sympathetic cop (Steven Bauer), Brian sets out to bring his brother’s killers to justice.
Through the Shattered Lens 