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, Jonathan encourages an elderly man not to give up.

Episode 1.23 “The Right Thing”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on March 27th, 1985)

Elderly Harry Haynes (Lew Ayres) lives with his son (Michael Durrell), his daughter-in-law (Marcia Rodd), and his grandson, Matt (Matthew Labyorteaux).  When Harry wets the bed one too many times, his daughter-in-law demands that he be moved to a nursing home.  (I suppose it’s a sign of the time that, too modern ears, that may sound like the set up for a tasteless joke but it’s actually how the episode begins and Lew Ayres does such a good job portraying Harry’s shame and panic that your heart just breaks for him.)  Harry isn’t happy about going to the nursing home and he’s on the verge of giving up on life.  Fortunately, the new orderly is Jonathan Smith and Harry is the week’s mission.  Jonathan isn’t just in the nursing home to pass out magazines and books.  He’s also there to encourage Harry not to give up hope.

This episode is the epitome of what most people would probably come up with if they were asked to describe a typical episode of Highway to Heaven.  It’s sentimental, emotional, and so achingly sincere that it’s hard not to get caught up in it, regardless of how heavy-handed and occasionally simplistic the storytelling may be.  With Jonathan’s encouragement, Harry starts to run with his grandson.  Harry and Matt enters a grandparent/grandson relay race together.  Harry’s son says that, if Harry wins, he’ll be allowed to move back home.  Harry does win  but it turns out that no one told his daughter-in-law about the deal.  To the show’s credit, Harry’s daughter-in-law is not monster.  She’s just exhausted from having to take care of the house, her teenage son, and an elderly man.  Harry realizes that it wouldn’t be fair to her for him to move back in so, instead, he announces that he’s going to travel and see as much of the world as he can in the time he has left.

There was nothing subtle about the plot of this episode but Lew Ayres gives a sensitive and honest performance as Harry and Matthew Labyorteaux matches him as Harry’s grandson.  (Lew Ayres was an excellent actor whose career began in the early days of Hollywood.  He starred in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on The Western Front but his own pacifist beliefs led to him being temporarily blacklisted when he registered as a conscientious objector.  He later made a comeback, appearing in films like Johnny Belinda and Advise and Consent but never receiving an Oscar nomination, due to the controversy over his beliefs.)  This is a sweet episode, even if it is perhaps a bit simplistic with its message that old age can be held off by simply not giving up.  Sad to say but aging is going to get us all eventually.