Jeffrey Concklin | 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, Jonathan and Mark are speech therapists.

Episode 5.11 “The Inner Limits”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on July 21st, 1989)

George (Tim Choate) has spent years speechless and paralyzed. However, after George’s brother, Paul (Joseph Culp), has a chance meeting with speech therapist Jonathan Smith, it is discovered that George is actually a genius who can communicate through blinking and who hopes to write a book. Paul goes from wanting to move out of his childhood home and into an apartment with his girlfriend, Jessica (Lorie Griffin) to feeling like he has a duty to spend the rest of his life helping his mother (Julianna McCarthy) take care of George.

I’ve been crying a lot this year. I lost my Dad in 2024. Exactly one year later, I lost the aunt who helped to raise me when I was a child. I didn’t really get a chance to mourn my Dad because I immediately became one of my aunt’s caregivers. I thought that if I couldn’t save my Dad from Parkinson’s, I could at least save my aunt from Alzheimer’s. After my aunt passed, I threw myself into the holidays and I dealt with my emotions by buying lots of presents for other people. It’s only now, in the light of 2026, that it’s all truly hitting me. I cry very easily right now and I cried while watching this episode. There’s a sincerity and earnestness to Highway to Heaven that gets to me, despite how corny the show could sometimes be.

That said, this episode had the same flaws as most of season 5’s episodes. Jonathan and Mark were only in a few scenes and the majority of the episode was carried by Joseph Culp and Julianna McCarthy, both of whom tended to overact during their big emotional scenes. Culp eventually won me over but McCarthy’s performance was so theatrical and over-the-top that it really did take you out of the story.

That said, I did cry. Would I have cried if I wasn’t currently in mourning? I think I would have, actually. The final shot of a young boy reading George’s book while sitting in a wheelchair earned those tears. We never really know how many people we help, do we?

This week, Jonathan and Mark help out a vet.

Episode 5.7 “The Squeaky Wheel”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on June 16th, 1989)

Jonathan and Mark attempt to turn Wayne Secret (Robert David Hall) into a disability activist. Having lost his legs in Vietnam, Wayne wants to live a quiet life with his wife (Deborah Benson) but, while staying at a recently renovated hotel, he is woken up by a fire alarm. With the the elevators not working and no ramps, Wayne is forced to depend on the kindness of a stranger who carries him down a flight of stairs. The fire turns out to be a false alarm but the experience leads to Wayne protesting the fact that the hotel is not wheelchair accessible.

The owner of the hotel not only agrees to make changes to the building but he also offers Wayne a job. Things are looking up for Wayne! But, when a gang of young men harass him and his wife at a drive-in movie, Wayne snaps. He buys an Uzi and then heads down to their clubhouse to take them out. Luckily, Jonathan appears and talks Wayne out of becoming a mass murderer. Wayne goes on to receive a “man of the year” award while Jonathan beats up the leader of the gang.

This episode felt very familiar. In the past, this episode would have featured Mark’s brother-in-law, Scotty. Instead, it features Wayne, who is not a particularly compelling character. I think that this episode would have worked if it had just focused on Wayne advocating for wheelchair accessible buildings. I also think it would have worked if it had just focused on Wayne’s anger to the gang and his struggle to let go of his bitterness over his war experiences. Unfortunately, trying to cram both those storylines into one 45-minute show led to the whole thing feeling half-baked.

There was one poignant scene in this episode. It opened with Mark and Jonathan visiting the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mark got excited when he came across Michael Landon’s star. “Never heard of him,” Jonathan shrugged. “I forget you’ve been dead for forty years,” Mark replies. It captured Jonathan and Mark’s friendship, which was always been one of the more underrated aspects of Highway to Heaven. That said, it was also a bit of a sad scene as the episode itself aired a day after the death of Victor French and Landon himself would pass away nearly two years later.