Montana Smoyer | 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, we start the fourth season of Highway to Heaven. This episode features orphans and dogs! I feel the tears coming….

Episode 4.1 “Man’s Best Friend Part One”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on September 16th, 1987)

Oh, this episode made me cry and cry.

Why? Well, for a couple of reasons….

First off, Jonathan and Mark got new jobs working at a kennel. Many of the dogs at the kennel had been abandoned by their owners and Ms. Lil (Fran Ryan) took care of them all, rather than taking them to the pound. And listen, I’m not a dog person. I’m a cat person. We all know this. But seriously, those dogs were adorable!

A Siberian husky named Jake gets lost. After running across the interstate (gasp!), he finds himself alone at night. Coyotes approach. (OH NO!) Suddenly, Jonathan appears and turns into a lion, scaring the coyotes off. (*sniff* *sniff* I’m okay.)

Every few days, Lil takes the dogs down to the local orphanage — (OH MY GOD!) — and lets them play with the orphans. Jake, now a part of the kennel crew, begs young Alex (Danny Pintauro, who had a much worse experience with a dog in Cujo) to play with him. Alex is shy and introverted but Jake quickly becomes his best friend. Alex starts to come out of his shell and says that he knows he’ll never be separated from Jake. For the first time in his young life, Alex is happy.

(Oh dear.)

The local media does a story on Lil and her dogs. They take a picture of Alex and Jake. The next morning, a young girl named Jenny (Elisabeth Harnois) sees the picture and recognizes Jake. For the past month, she’s been desperately looking for Jake!

(This isn’t good….)

Jenny and her grandfather (William Schallert) pick Jake up from the kennel. Jonathan has to go to the orphanage and tell Alex that his best friend is no longer going to be visiting him.

(Sorry, give me a minute.)

Alex is depressed. Jake is depressed. Jonathan shows at Jenny’s home and asks if Alex can come and visit Jake. Jenny and grandpa say yes. (YAY!)

Suddenly, three dreaded words appear on the screen: “TO BE CONTINUED”

What!? No, there’s no need to continue. Alex and Jake have been reunited, let’s end the story here….

This episode was Highway to Heaven at its most earnest, manipulative, and effective. Not only did it feature orphans but also an adorable dog and William Schallert as a genial authority figure. There was also a subplot about Jenny’s parents trying to have another child with a surrogate and I’m sure that has something to do with that promise of “TO BE CONTINUED.”

Nothing better happen to the dog!

This episode features a very good boy.

Episode 3.3 “For the Love of Larry”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 8th, 1986)

At the start of this episode, we find Jonathan and Mark on a dangerous assignment. They’re in the city and apparently, they’re working as undercover cops and trying to catch a local drug dealer. At least, I assume that the people working with Jonathan and Mark were supposed to be cops. None of them were in uniform so I guess they have just as easily been a neighborhood vigilante group. As Jonathan and Mark prepare to confront the dealer, Jonathan says that the scourge of drugs is the greatest threat that American will ever face.

It’s a heavy assignment but it doesn’t really seem like a Highway to Heaven sort of assignment. Usually, Mark and Jonathan are specifically assigned to help someone. This time, though, it appears that they’ve just been assigned to help the cops do their job. Jonathan and Mark don’t really do anything that any other cop couldn’t have done. Mark gets excited when the dealer tries to shoot him because he’s convinced that God is causing the bullets to miss him. Only after the dealer is captured does Jonathan reveal that God didn’t do Mark any favors. Mark just got lucky.

Mark’s earned a break! He and Jonathan drive off to another one of those small towns that always seem to show up on this show. They rent a cabin for a few days. However, Mark’s attempts at relaxation are continually interrupted by a dog. First, the dog runs in front of the car. Then, the dog somehow shows up at the cabin. Even though Mark took the dog to a shelter, the dog somehow managed to get out and track Mark down.

Eventually, Mark and Jonathan figure out that they need to follow the dog. The dog leads off the main road, to an overturned car that is hidden away in the woods. A father and a son, both badly injured but still alive, are in the car. Jonathan and Mark are able to rescue them but then they notice that the dog is in the back seat and was apparently killed in the crash.

The camera pans up to the sky and gets lost in the clouds. Suddenly, the dog’s ghostly form appears and seems to actually wink at the audience, letting us know that the dog may have died but his spirit stayed on Earth long enough to rescue his owners. (The Larry of the title is the son of the dog’s owner.)

Did this episode make me cry? You better believe this episode made me cry! I’m not even a dog person and I was still sobbing at the end of this episode. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s an earnest sincerity at the heart of this show that makes it effective even when it should be silly. Having the dog appear in the clouds is the type of thing that a lot of shows probably would have screwed up. In lesser hands, it would have been too heavy-handed and overly sentimental to work. But, on this show, it does work. It helps that the dog was cute.

This was a simple episode but sometimes, it’s the simple episodes that work the best.