Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.2 “Man’s Best Friend, Part 2”

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 fourth season premiere concludes.

Episode 4.2 “Man’s Best Friend Part 2”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on September 23rd, 1987)

Picking up where last week’s episode, this episode opens with Alex (Danny Pintauro) visiting Jake the Siberian Husky at the big home that Jake shares with Jenny (Elisabeth Harnois), her grandfather (William Schallert), and her parents, Paul (Stan Ivar) and Michelle Raines (Laurie Walters).

Yay!

Alex’s attitude improves so much that it’s decided to move him into a foster home.

Uhmm….what about the Raines family?

The surrogate hired to carry Paul and Michelle’s baby loses the baby. Paul and Michelle are heartbroken.

Uhmm….hey, I think Alex needs a family….

Jenny gives Jake to Alex.

Awwww!

Alex’s foster family lives in a building that doesn’t allow pets.

Oh no!

Alex and Jake run away and, after nearly dying in the desert, they end up with the Raines family’s home.

I see where this is going….

If you guessed that Paul and Michelle announce that they’re going to adopt Alex and that Jake is going to continue to live with them on the ranch, congratulations! You could have been a Highway to Heaven writer!

This episode didn’t make me cry as much as last week’s, mostly because it was pretty easy to see where things were heading from the beginning. Even when Alex and Jake were lost in the desert, I knew they would be okay because this is Highway to Heaven. Children and their adorable dogs don’t die on this show. (Except, of course, for those two times that they did. Actually, three times, now that I think about it.) That said, I was still relieved when Jake was rescued because seriously, that dog was adorable!

This was a good conclusion to last week’s episode. Everything worked out for the best. At the end of the episode, Mark said that he understood why “they call them man’s best friend.” Michael nodded and then said, a little sadly, “Shouldn’t man’s best friend be …. man?”

You tell ’em, Hippie Angel!

You tell them.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.1 “Man’s Best Friend Part One”

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start the fourth season of Highway to Heaven. This episode features orphans and dogs! I feel the tears coming….

Episode 4.1 “Man’s Best Friend Part One”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on September 16th, 1987)

Oh, this episode made me cry and cry.

Why? Well, for a couple of reasons….

First off, Jonathan and Mark got new jobs working at a kennel. Many of the dogs at the kennel had been abandoned by their owners and Ms. Lil (Fran Ryan) took care of them all, rather than taking them to the pound. And listen, I’m not a dog person. I’m a cat person. We all know this. But seriously, those dogs were adorable!

A Siberian husky named Jake gets lost. After running across the interstate (gasp!), he finds himself alone at night. Coyotes approach. (OH NO!) Suddenly, Jonathan appears and turns into a lion, scaring the coyotes off. (*sniff* *sniff* I’m okay.)

Every few days, Lil takes the dogs down to the local orphanage — (OH MY GOD!) — and lets them play with the orphans. Jake, now a part of the kennel crew, begs young Alex (Danny Pintauro, who had a much worse experience with a dog in Cujo) to play with him. Alex is shy and introverted but Jake quickly becomes his best friend. Alex starts to come out of his shell and says that he knows he’ll never be separated from Jake. For the first time in his young life, Alex is happy.

(Oh dear.)

The local media does a story on Lil and her dogs. They take a picture of Alex and Jake. The next morning, a young girl named Jenny (Elisabeth Harnois) sees the picture and recognizes Jake. For the past month, she’s been desperately looking for Jake!

(This isn’t good….)

Jenny and her grandfather (William Schallert) pick Jake up from the kennel. Jonathan has to go to the orphanage and tell Alex that his best friend is no longer going to be visiting him.

(Sorry, give me a minute.)

Alex is depressed. Jake is depressed. Jonathan shows at Jenny’s home and asks if Alex can come and visit Jake. Jenny and grandpa say yes. (YAY!)

Suddenly, three dreaded words appear on the screen: “TO BE CONTINUED”

What!? No, there’s no need to continue. Alex and Jake have been reunited, let’s end the story here….

This episode was Highway to Heaven at its most earnest, manipulative, and effective. Not only did it feature orphans but also an adorable dog and William Schallert as a genial authority figure. There was also a subplot about Jenny’s parents trying to have another child with a surrogate and I’m sure that has something to do with that promise of “TO BE CONTINUED.”

Nothing better happen to the dog!

Horror Film Review: Cujo (dir by Lewis Teague)

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cujo is a such a depressing movie that I can barely stand to watch it.

Cujo, of course, is the 1983 film adaptation of the book by Stephen King. The book is about a dog that not only gets bit by a rabid bat but also gets possessed by the spirit of Frank Dodd, the serial killer who played a major role in The Dead Zone. The film abandons the subplot about Frank Dodd and, instead, it just deals with a rabid dog that kills a lot of people and who eventually traps Donna Trentonn (Dee Wallace) and her young son, Tad (Danny Pintauro), is a car for several days.

I have to admit that I’m really not the sort of person who should be watching a film like Cujo in the first place. When I was growing up, I was terrified of dogs. According to my family, I was bitten by one when I was just three years old, not that I have any memory of that actually happening. So, up until I was 18, I couldn’t handle being around them. Whenever I would walk home from school, I would run across the street if I heard a dog barking at me from behind a fence. If I was out with my family and I saw a dog approaching, I would hide behind the nearest big person.

I did have one good experience with a big dog when I was about ten years old. My family was up at the lake and this big, black dog started following us around and it was so friendly that I couldn’t help but relax around it. My mom was like, “See, Lisa Marie, not all dogs are bad.” We went to get lunch, leaving the dog behind. When we returned, the dog was there. He was excited to see my mom. He was excited to my aunt. He was excited to see my sisters. Then, he took one look at me and started to growl. I was frozen in fear, just standing there as the dog slowly stood up. My mom immediately stood in front of me, trying to block the dog’s view while I ran back to car. Of course, that didn’t work. The dog started barking and then took off running after me. His owners then showed up and grabbed the dog just as it was about to lunge at me and then they didn’t even bother to apologize! Instead, they told some story about how some other girl had thrown a rock at the dog and, as a result, the dog always growled at “little girls.” They acted like it was no big deal. (My aunt later told me that she had to grab my mom’s hand to keep her from slapping the dog’s owner when they tried to blame me for what happened.) For months afterwards, I had nightmares about that dog.

Fortunately, enough time has passed that I’m no longer petrified in fear of dogs though they still make pretty damn nervous. That said, Cujo, with its growling and killer dog, is exactly the type of film that’s designed to prey on my deepest fears. And yes, the movie does scare me but I have to admit that I don’t really care much about the people who get killed by Cujo. Instead …. I feel bad for Cujo. Yes, even though Cujo scares me to death and I’m not a dog person in general, this movie depresses me specifically because of what happens to the dog.

When we first see him, Cujo is happily chasing a rabbit. When he gets bitten by a rabid bat, he whimpers a little and I have to say that it breaks my heart to hear it. I mean, Cujo is just such a cute dog! And, to be honest, he seems like the type of big dog who maybe could have convinced me that not all dogs are bad. (There’s a part of me that really wishes that I could relax and love dogs as much as everyone else does.) But then he gets bitten by that bat and poor Cujo! Rabies is a terrible disease.

Cujo is a good, straight-forward horror film, one that gets the job done without all of the padding and blather that you sometimes have to deal with when it comes to Stephen King film adaptations. (Thankfully, nobody casually talks about Shawshank Prison or taking a trip to Derry or any of that other nonsense that seems to come up in most King films.) Dee Wallace gives a good performance as Donna Trenton, who is trapped in the car and desperate to save her child. King has said that he felt Wallace deserved an Oscar nomination for her performance and he’s probably right

But my God, I just cannot watch this movie without crying afterwards. I just feel so bad for that dog.