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!

Today, season 4 comes to a close with an episode about two football teams, one struggling and one not.  Care to guess which team is going to win the big game?

Episode 4.24 “The Whole Nine Yards”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on April 27th, 1988)

Charlie DuBoise (Dinah Lacey) is a twelve year-old girl who wants to play football.  Vince Diller (Beau Starr) is the chauvinistic coach who refuses to allow Charlie to join his team, despite the fact that she can catch and she’s even faster then his son, quarterback Ricky Diller (Chad Allen).  Instead, Charlie joins another team, the 0-5 Minnows.  Who is the new coach of the Minnows?  Mark Gordon, of course!

Ricky has a hard time accepting that a girl beat him in a race and, when Charlie approaches him in a totally 80s arcade, a fight breaks out.  Luckily, Jonathan is there to break it up.  Ricky apologizes to Charlie while Charlie has a gigantic wad of Kleenex stuck up her nose.  The scene goes on for a while and Charlie never removes the Kleenex.  It was awkward to watch.  Seriously, that’s what nampons are for.

Eventually, Ricky gets sick of Vince and his win-at-all-costs mentality.  Ricky talks back to his father and gets kicked off the team.  Ricky joins the Minnows and he and Charlie defeat Vince’s team in the big game.  Vince comes to realize that the game should be about fun and Ricky and Charlie go to the school dance together.

And so ends season 4 of Highway to Heaven.  Shows about girls who want to play football are always weird to me because I’m a girl and I can’t ever think of circumstances in which I would want to play football.  But I do think that if Charlie wants to get a head start on getting the concussions that will ruin her adult life, she should certainly be allowed to do so.  The main problem with this episode was that Vince was such an ogre and such a terrible father that the show’s happy ending felt false.  His son joined another team and destroyed Vince’s undefeated record.  The episode ends with Vince saying he’s proud of his son but Vince has been such a monster that his words sound hollow.  I’m kind of worried about what’s going to happen when Ricky goes home.  Instead of putting together a football game, Jonathan and Mark should have been calling Child Protective Services.

This is my final episode of Highway to Heaven for 2025.  Retro Television Reviews will be taking a break for the holidays but this feature will return!  On January 8th, 2026, we’ll start our look at the final season of Highway to Heaven.