Peggy Pope | Through the Shattered Lens

Bruise Brubaker (Mr. T) spends his nights as a bouncer at a club owned by his best friend (Dennis Dugan) and his days running a center for at-risk youth. Bruise is a former Marine drill sergeant who is now determined to make Chicago a better place. He’s so cool that his name is Bruise and he even has his own theme song, which plays whenever he patrols the streets and alleys of Chicago. But when it looks like the youth center is going to get closed down unless it can quickly raise some money, Bruise faces the challenge of a lifetime when he enters a competition to prove that he’s the toughest man in the world!

Is Mr. T the toughest man in the world? I pity the fool who even has to ask.

This made-for-TV movie is exactly what you think it is. Mr. T barks out his dialogue with his signature growl but he still seems utterly sincere when he orders the kids to say in school and stop trying to mug old men in the alleys. At first, it seems like Bruise should be able to easily win the Toughest Man competition but it turns out to be tougher than he thought. There’s an extended sequences in which Bruise tries to learn how to box and it turns out that he’s no Clubber Lang. There’s also an extended subplot about some broadly-played mobsters who are hoping that can drug Bruise so he’ll lose the contest.

Probably the funniest thing about the movie is the idea that everyone in Chicago would stop what they were doing so that they could gather around the television and watch the Toughest Man contest. The second funniest thing is Dennis Farina showing up in a small role and reminding us that it takes all types of actors to make a movie.

Mr. T was never a good actor but he was a great personality and that personality is on full display here. The Toughest Man In The World will make you nostalgic for a more innocent time.

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, Jonathan and Mark are back in Los Angeles.

Episode 3.23 “Heavy Date”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on March 18th, 1987)

Jonathan and Mark’s latest assignment finds them in Los Angeles, where they share an apartment in a building that is managed by Marge Davis (Peggy Pope). Marge, a widow, is upset that her son, Gary (Patrick O’Bryan), doesn’t seem to have any direction in life. When Gary loses his job, Marge kneels down and puts her head in the oven. Uhmm …. okay. Suicide humor, that’s great, I guess.

Alice Hartman (Lorie Griffin) shows up in Los Angeles and takes an apartment in the building. Alice is seven months pregnant. Her mother has created a cover story, that Alice has gone to Europe for the summer. Instead, Alice has gone to Los Angeles so she can have the baby and give it up for adoption without her father finding out. Jonathan works his magic and manipulates Gary and Alice into falling in love. When Alice has her baby, Gary asks her to marry him and says that he wants to help her raise the baby. So, I guess the nice couple who wanted to adopt the baby are just out of luck.

This episode was a bit odd. When Alice first comes to Los Angeles, she says she’s seven months pregnant. The episode takes place over a longer period of time than usual and Alice eventually has the baby. At no point does Alice ever appear to be pregnant. She wears baggy clothes but still, there’s only so much that an extra-large sweater can conceal when you’re that pregnant. There was also a weird scene where Gary, pretending to be the baby’s biological father, lied to the adoptive parents and claimed that he was on probation and that his mother was in a mental institution. The show played it for laughs but again, the couple seemed so nice and happy about the idea of adopting that Gary’s lies just felt cruel. And, for a show that was all about an angel on a mission from God, it’s interesting that Gary’s actions went unpunished. If anything, he was rewarded for them.

(Seriously, the couple that wanted to adopt Alice baby, they were so nice! That the episode just kind of pushed them aside really didn’t feel right. I get that Jonathan and Mark’s assignment was to help Alice and Gary but Gary is kind of a jerk and Alice is kind of immature. Whose going to help the Wallaces, who sincerely wanted to give the baby a good home?)

This episode was obviously heartfelt. For once, Michael Landon is the sole credited writer so one gets the feeling that this episode’s story and message both meant a lot to him. (That said, Landon’s approach to the story makes the message come across as being less pro-family and more anti-adoption.) In the end, the main problem is that neither Gary nor Alice really seem worthy of all of the effort that Jonathan is putting into the assignment. It’s hard not to feel that maybe Jonathan and Mark needed to help everyone out and not just Alice and Gary.