Donna Mitchell | 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, the third season comes to a close.

Episode 3.25 “The Gift Of Life”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on May 6th,1987)

Jonathan and Mark’s new assignment finds them working as bodyguards for a businessman named Richard Benson (Leslie Nielsen). Richard is in charge of a company that pollutes the ocean. He owns an apartment building were people people are forced to live with rats. He makes no apologies for being greedy. He has Jonathan and Mark accompany him to a parking garage so he can offer someone a bribe.

Eventually, Jonathan just comes straight out and says, “I’m angel.” Jonathan did that a lot over the course of season 3 and it always kind of bothered me. It was as if Jonathan decided he couldn’t be bothered to maintain his cover story. Richard doesn’t believe in angels, though he does accept the Bible that Jonathan gives him. Jonathan instructs him to read it before going to sleep.

That night, someone shoots Richard while he’s reading his Bible. Jonathan and Mark appear to him and give Richard a tour of all the misery that he’s caused by being greedy and selfish. Jonathan forces Richard to look at a dead seagull. Richard is then allowed to relive the past seven days of his life so that he can do some good and have a chance to get into heaven.

Wow, that sounds intense, right?

And I guess it would be, except for the fact that it’s now impossible to watch Leslie Nielsen without laughing. Before everyone rushes off to comment, I am fully aware that Nielsen spent decades as a dramatic actor before emerging as a comedy superstar. I’ve reviewed a few of his serious films here on the site. But the fact of the matter is that Nielsen’s comedy was so built around his deadpan delivery of absurd lines that even his serious performances leave you feeling as if everything’s building up to a punchline. That’s the case here. Jonathan, Mark, and Richard might be talking about environmental pollution and poverty but every scene leaves you wondering when Nielsen is going to say, “And don’t call me Shirley.”

Would the episode have worked better with someone else in the role of Richard? Yes and no. Another actor would not have left us waiting for punch lines that were destined to never come but the episode’s script would have still been incredibly heavy-handed. Richard Benson has just died and Jonathan and Mark immediately show up and start yelling at him. They make it clear that they don’t care if he goes to Hell or not. That’s not a very good attitude for an angel to have.

Fortunately, Richard gets his second chance and he manages to survive a redo of the assassination attempt. (Fortunately, he falls asleep with his Bible over his heart. The Bible is thick and strong enough to stop the bullet so I’m going to guess that Richard was given a Catholic Bible as opposed to a wimpy Protestant one.) And so, Richard goes on to be a better person and I imagine his company will end up going bankrupt as a result.

That’s it for Season 3! Season 3 had some good episodes, like Codename: Freak. It also had the worst episode of the show so far, Ghost Rider. Next week, we’ll start Season 4!

Released in 2000, Boiler Room tells the story of Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi).

Seth is only 19 years old. He’s the son of a federal judge and he’s also a college dropout. Seth is making a pretty good living for himself, running a casino out of a house near the campus. One night, a handsome 20something named Greg Weinstein (Nicky Katt) stops by and tells Seth that he could be making an even better living for himself as a broker at J.T. Marlin.

Located somewhere in Long Island, J.T. Marlin is a brokerage firm that is dominated by loud and young men. Overseen by the ruthless Jim Young (Ben Affleck, doing the glorified cameo thing), J.T. Marlin is a place where everyone owns an expensive car, an expensive watch, and where everyone brags about how much money they’ve made. The insults and slurs fly from desk to desk, as they tend to do whenever a bunch of wealthy, highly competitive guys get together. J.T. is seduced by the atmosphere, even as he watches some broker breaks down due to the pressure. He becomes friends with Chris Varick (Vin Diesel) and falls for receptionist Abbie Halpert (Nia Long), who just happens to be Greg’s ex-girlfriend. Eventually, Seth gets good at his job. Unfortunately, it turns out that his job is centered around tricking people into investing in a pyramid scheme and eventually, one of Seth’s clients, Harry (Taylor Nichols), ends up broke and without his family. The guilt-stricken Seth realizes that he has a conscience.

Like a lot of these type of movies, Boiler Room is at its best when it starts, when it’s all about tough talk, rude jokes, and obsessive competition amongst a bunch of well-dressed good-looking guys. Nicky Katt and Vin Diesel are so much fun to listen to that it’s hard not to regret that the entire film wasn’t just about them. Things become significantly less interesting once the FBI shows up and Seth decides to become a snitch. For the most part, no one like a snitch, even if they’re motivated by the purest of intentions. To make a snitch likable, he has to be a truly compelling character, like Henry Hill in Goodfellas. For the most part, audiences prefer anti-heroes who go down with the ship as opposed to the rats who jump into the first lifeboat they see. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort agrees to wear a wire but then slips his business partner a note, warning him. That’s one of the reasons why The Wolf of Wall Street is still a classic while Boiler Room has been largely forgotten. As a character, Seth just isn’t compelling enough to pull off the snitch act. Nor does he really seem clever enough to pull off what he does at the end of the film.

That said, I do enjoy Boiler Room. It’s largely due to the cast. Nicky Katt, Vin Diesel, Scott Caan, Giovanni Ribisi, they were all young, energetic, and eager to show off what they could do. While their characters competed to see who could make the most money, the actors competed to see who could steal the most scenes. The film is ultimately only so-so but that cast is unforgettable.