Laura Bastianelli | 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, dreams continue to come true in Springwood, Ohio. Freddy continues to show up in very short host segments because I guess he doesn’t have anything better to do. And I continue to find ways to pad out my reviews for a show that there’s really not much to be said about. It happens. Some shows are interesting and take chances and other shows just recycle the same thing over and over again. Anyway, let’s get to it….

Episode 1.17 “Love Stinks”

(Dir by John Lafia, originally aired on February 26th, 1989)

Adam (John Washington) is a high school jock who has a chance to join the White Sox and who has a girlfriend named Laura (Tamara Glyn). When his parents go out of town, Adam throws a house party. The party goes wrong when he finds himself unable to say the words “I love you,” to Laura. Laura leaves him and Adam has a one-night stand with Loni (Susanna Savee). Soon, Adam finds himself drifting in-and-out of a dream state. He sees Laura chopping him up with meat cleaver. He sees his parents come home and he notices that his father is missing a finger. Loni ruins his interview with the baseball scout. It’s all because Adam can’t say “I love you,” but suddenly, Adam wakes up in bed and hears the party still going on downstairs and realizes it was all a dream. He runs downstairs and grabs Laura and says, “I love you!” Except, Laura now looks like Loni. And when his parents show up and say they brought someone to meet him, it turns out to be Loni except Loni now looks like Laura.

Meanwhile, Adam’s slacker friend Max (Georg Olden) gets a job at Mr. Cheesy Pizza. He’s working for his hated uncle, Ralph (Jeffery Combs). When Max’s girlfriend disappears, Max is horrified to discover that she’s become a part of the special sauce that Ralph uses to make the pizza’s so memorable. Don’t worry, it’s all just a dream. Except, in the waking world, the pizza oven explodes and kills Ralph. Max apparently decides to take a lesson from his dream and makes tasty use of Ralph’s remains.

By the admittedly low standards of Freddy’s Nightmares, this episode wasn’t that bad. Though the first story was incoherent, it still captured the feeling of being scared of commitment. The second story was predictable but at least it featured Jeffrey Combs doing his sociopathic nerd thing. This episode held my interest. That said, almost every episode pretty much has the exact same “It was just a dream” plot twist. At this point, it’s no longer a shock when someone suddenly opens their eyes and breathes a sigh of relief. Even Freddy seems kind of bored with it all.

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, Mark and Jonathan become narcs!

Episode 3.21 “Parents’ Day”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 25th, 1987)

Robert Culp plays one of the worst characters ever in this week’s episode of Highway to Heaven.

Culp plays Ronald James, a news anchor who is known for his fiery anti-drug editorials. His teenage son, David (Lance Wilson-White), is a student at an exclusive boarding school. When a joint is found in David’s dorm room, Ronald comes down hard on his son. Ronald says David should be ashamed of himself. Ronald says that David has brought dishonor to the family. Ronald grounds David for four weeks.

After attending an anti-drug lecture delivered by newly hired narcotics detective Mark Gordon, David decides to call the police and tell them about the cocaine that is hidden in his family’s garage. The cocaine belongs to Ronald but, when Ronald is confronted by the police, he announces that it must belong to David. When it becomes obvious that Ronald’s job is at risk, he tells David to take the blame. David says he’ll do it if Ronald promises to stop using. Ronald agrees.

David takes the blame….

….and Ronald keeps on using!

Seriously, what a scumbag!

While Ronald is disappointing everyone, Jonathan — who is also working as a narcotics detective — pressures the local boarding school drug dealer, Brad Dietrich (Bill Calvert), to stop dealing. Brad laughs off Jonathan’s threat. Come back with a warrant, Brad says. Then Brad’s girlfriend overdoses on the cocaine that Brad gave her.

Finally, after David nearly drinks himself to death, Ronald goes on the news and admits that he’s a drug addict. He then says that parents have to step up and do a better job. That’s fine, Ronald, but you know what? YOU’RE A DRUG ADDICT WHO FRAMED YOUR OWN SON! You don’t get to be a moral authority!

As you can probably guess, there was not a subtle moment to be found in this episode. On the one hand, the message was obviously heartfelt. That’s kind of a given when it comes to Highway to Heaven. With every episode, it’s obvious that Michael Landon was sincerely trying to make the world a better place. On the other hand, this episode was so heavy-handed that it sometimes verged on camp. Culp was very believable as someone who was totally coked up. The kid playing his son, on the other hand, was considerably less convincing. It also doesn’t help that there’s a massive hole in the middle of the plot. If the police were really unsure about who had brought the cocaine into Ronald’s house, they could have just drug-tested both Ronald and David to see who was snorting. As well, seen from a modern perspective, it’s hard to really buy into the show’s argument that parents and children should be constantly calling the police on each other. Today we know that the attempt at a zero tolerance war on drugs made the situation even worse. This episode’s suggestion that snitching on loved ones is the answer reminded me of the worst excesses of the COVID era.

As I mentioned earlier, the episode ends with Ronald making an impassioned plea to parents to get serious about teenage drug use. Hopefully, he was arrested as soon as the cameras were turned off.