Phil Rubinstein | 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, it’s a boxing episode.

Episode 4.3 “Fight For Your Life”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on September 30th, 1987)

I’m just going to say it. This episode is pretty bad.

The plot is simple enough. Jonathan and Mark are working as cornermen for boxer Morty “Sailor” Zadan (Michael Shaner). Morty coulda been a contendah, but instead his brother Jerry (Robert Miranda) always arranges for Morty to throw his fights. When Morty meets and trains a young fighter named Billy Ryan (Nick Garfield), he also starts an unlikely romance with Billy’s sister, Julia (Jennifer Parsons). The mob demands that Morty to fight Billy. They offer Billy money to throw the fight and Morty has to decide if he wants Billy to follow his example and become a bum.

As I said, it’s a simple plot but the execution is just terrible. Even by the admittedly generous standards of Highway to Heaven, the story and the dialogue is often corny and the performances are pretty much uniformly bad. At no point did I buy the romance between Morty and Julia. For that matter, I really didn’t buy the idea that Julia would be so excited about her younger brother pursuing a career that would mean getting beaten up every few weeks. By it’s nature, Highway to Heaven tends to be an old-fashioned show. But this episode really did feel like one of those old Warner Bros. B-movies from the 30s. Those movies, of course, hold up well as long as they star James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, or George Raft. Unfortunately, none of those folks show up in this episode. Instead, we just got Micahel Shaner portraying a boxer who seems like he’d lose a game of tic tac toe against Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

Jonathan and Mark don’t do much in this episode. They spend most of the story as just observers. That said, this episode does end with Jonathan beating up a bunch of gangsters, smiling because they don’t have the same powers that he has. Keeping in mind that most gangsters probably do deserve to get beaten up, it still didn’t feel like proper angel behavior.

This week …. it’s Halloween!

Episode 2.5 “The Devil and Jonathan Smith”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on October 30th, 1985)

It’s Halloween and Mark Gordon has got himself in some trouble.

Left alone while Jonathan helps a guy learn that gambling is never a good idea, Mark accidentally runs over a kid. The child is taken to the hospital in critical condition. Though Mark is told that the accident was not his fault, he still feels guilty and remarks to one doctor (Anthony Zerbe) that he would even give up his own soul for the child to get better. And wouldn’t you know yet — suddenly, the child gets better!

It turns out that the doctor wasn’t a doctor at all. He was Jabez Stone, a bookstore owner who works for the Devil (played, with two horns on his head, by Michael Berryman). Jabez explains that unless Mark holds up his end of the bargain, the child will die. He gives Mark a contract to sign, stating that he will give his soul to the Devil at the end of Halloween. Without Jonathan around to advise him, Mark signs the contract.

When Jonathan does finally return from his mission, he’s not happy to hear about what Mark has done. Jonathan explains that he can’t just order Jabez to destroy the contract. Instead, he’s going to have to somehow convince Jabez to give him the contract. In short, Jonathan is going to have to pull a con job. Since he’s an angel, Jonathan is not allowed to lie or steal. But there is a con artist named CJ Barabbas (Conrad Janis) who might be willing to help.

Or, CJ might be planning on tricking Jonathan into surrendering his own soul to Devil! As CJ tells Jabez, he would be willing to do anything to make sure he got a cushy office job if he should happen to end up in Hell. Is CJ planning on betraying Jonathan or is it just another part of the con?

Well, you can guess the answer. We’re only in the second season of a five-season show and, if Jonathan lost his soul, that would make the rest of the series kind of awkward. There’s never any doubt that CJ is playing a long con on Jabez and the Devil and it’s actually pretty easy to guess just how exactly he’s going to pull it off. This isn’t The Sting. It’s Highway to Heaven.

That said, this was a fun episode. Michael Berryman and Anthony Zerbe both seemed to be having a ball playing such cartoonishly evil characters and Conrad Janis was actually rather charming in the role of CJ Barabbas. Season 2 has gotten off to an uneven start but this episode was both humorous and, in its way, kind of touching. Landon and French were close friends in real life and that friendship comes through as Jonathan tries to keep Mark from spending an eternity in Hell.

Next week, Jonathan teaches a bunch of factory workers a lesson about pollution!