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 Freevee and several other services!

This week, Ned Beatty is not one but two characters!

Episode 1.20 “The Banker and the Bum”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 27th, 1985)

Wally the Waver (Ned Beatty) is an eccentric but beloved homeless man who usually spends his time sitting in and sleeping in a park.  He smiles and waves at passing people and sometimes, he’ll get a newspaper out of the trash and read up on the upcoming mayoral election.  What Wally does not know is that he only has 24 hours to live and that Jonathan and Mark have been sent to grant him his last wish.

Wally’s wish is that local businessman and politician J. Melvin Rich (also played by Ned Beatty) could discover what it’s like to struggle from day-to-day.  Melvin is running for mayor and a huge part of his platform calls for bulldozing the park and turning the land over to developers.  Jonathan grants his wish.  Suddenly, Melvin is in Wally’s body and Wally is in Melvin’s body.  While Melvin learns what its like to not have a place to sleep or a guaranteed nightly meal, Wally makes it a point to be kind to Melvin’s servants and his wife (Eve Roberts).  Wally also attends a mayoral debate (as Melvin) and announces that everyone should vote for Melvin’s opponent.

Melvin, needless to say, is not happy about any of this but his experiences getting kicked out of various establishments and being told that there’s no room for him at the shelter leads to Melvin starting to sympathize a bit with the plight with the underprivileged.  Then, as night falls, he once again switches bodies with Wally.  Now in his right body, Melvin discovers that he’s now considered to be a hero for endorsing his opponent and his previously estranged wife loves him again.  Wally, meanwhile, dies peacefully in the park, secure in the knowledge that he has saved it from being destroyed.  A jump forward reveals that Melvin goes on to become a beloved philanthropist who protects the park that Wally called home.

If this episode proves anything, it’s that Ned Beatty was a national treasure.  The story is heavy-handed and a lot of the humor is a bit too cartoonish for its own good.  Naming the greedy businessman J. Melvin Rich is a choice that is a bit too cutesy to really work.  Actually, Wally the Waver is concept that is almost too cutesy to work.  But Beatty makes both characters work, playing up Wally’s gentle eccentricity and Melvin’s genuine happiness at discovering that he’s suddenly a well-liked man.  This is an episode that would have been way too silly if not for Ned Beatty’s presence keeping things grounded.  Just as Melvin saves the park, Beatty saves the story.