Jonathan “Fudge” Leonard | 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!

David Phillips (Gary Coleman) is a teenager who sets fires when he gets upset. He has many reasons to be upset. His parents (Ron O’Neal and Cicely Tyson) are getting divorced and are constantly fighting. His teachers at school are always getting on his back. He has to take care of his younger siblings and his dog. He can’t even get the bigger kids in school to let him play basketball with them. At first, David just plays with his lighter but, after he accidentally sets his mother’s coat on fire, David discovers that he likes to watch things burn. David and his mother both claim it’s just coincidence that David is always nearby whenever a fire breaks out but Fire Chief Walker (Yaphet Kotto) knows what’s really going on. After David nearly burns down his house, Walker tries to reach him before it’s too late.

This isn’t really meant to be a horror film but it’s shot like one, with plenty of scenes of Gary Coleman staring at a burning fire with a possessed-look in his eyes. The movie tries to make David sympathetic but the scene where he threatens his own dog with a lighter suggests that David has more problems than just his parents splitting up. This was Gary Coleman’s first dramatic role. I think it may have also been his only dramatic role. It’s not that he’s not convincing as a really angry kid. It’s just that he’s Gary Coleman so, no matter how much the movie tries, it still comes across as being a special episode of Diff’rent Strokes where Arnold becomes a pyromaniac. Coleman tries to play up the drama of the situation but it’s hard not to laugh whenever he looks shocked at one of the fires that he has just started. Every scene seems like it should end with Conrad Bain showing up with the cops.

For years, this movie was next to impossible to find but finally, someone found an old VHS tape in their garage and uploaded the movie to both YouTube and the Internet Archive, ensuring the world will never forget the time that Gary Coleman played with fire.

One final note: the director is better known for eventually becoming business partners with notorious Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss.