Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.18 “We Have Forever: Part Two”

Posted on October 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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’s episode is massively confusing.

Episode 4.18 “We Have Forever: Part Two”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 17th, 1988)

Picking up from last week, an embittered Jonathan is no longer an angel. Instead, he’s a mortal man who can’t get a job because he doesn’t have any references. (The idea is that Jonathan can’t explain that he’s spent the last 40 years working for God. But, over the past four and a half seasons, he’s had numerous jobs where he helped people out. Couldn’t he have listed some of those people are references?) However, Jonathan is happy because he’s fallen in love with Jennifer (Leann Hunley), the woman that he saved from drowning last week.

Meanwhile, Mark is actually making an effort to help people by working at the camp for the blind where he and Jonathan worked earlier in the season. (Actually, why couldn’t Jonathan ask for a job at the camp? The more I think about it, Jonathan not being able to get a job makes less and less sense.)

Jennifer, however, has a secret of her own. At the end of the episode, she leaves Jonathan a note, in which she explains that she’s actually Joan, Jonathan’s late wife. Jonathan was upset because he felt God was keeping him from seeing Joan in Heaven. Instead, it turns out that Joan — like Jonathan — has been assigned to work on Earth as an angel. So, the two months that Jonathan spent with Jennifer was actually God giving Jonathan a chance to spend time with Joan but, for some reason, no one told Jonathan that was what was happening so Jonathan got mad and walked out on God. But then, Jonathan changes his mind after learning that Joan is Jennifer but instead of asking to work with Joan/Jennifer, Jonathan goes back to working with Mark.

Seriously, I’m having a hard time following some of the logic here.

That said, despite all the lapses in logic, this episode still made me cry. Admittedly, I’ve been feeling under the weather today so maybe that’s why I was so emotionally susceptible to this episode. Or maybe it’s just the fact that Highway to Heaven is such an overwhelmingly earnest and sincere show that even the episodes that shouldn’t work somehow do. All I know is that I was sobbing by the end of this episode.

The important thing is that, at the end of the episode, Jonathan and Mark have a new assignment and drive off. Wait, I thought Mark had a job. Way to abandon all those blind children, Mark!

Perhaps it’s best not to think too hard about this episode and just accept it for being the tear jerker that it was.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 4.17 “We Have Forever: Part One”

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Jonathan loses his powers.

Episode 4.17 “We Have Forever: Part One”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 10th, 1988)

When Jonathan’s former wife (Dorothy McGuire) dies, Jonathan assumes that God will release him of his duties and bring him to Heaven to be with her. Instead, Jonathan is told that he is still needed on Earth and that he has an assignment. Jonathan gets upset and uses some language that one doesn’t always expect to hear from an angel. God responds with thunder and lightning.

Long story short, Jonathan loses his angelic powers. He becomes a human again. But since Jonathan died 40 years ago, shouldn’t taking away his powers cause him to drop dead on the spot? I’m a bit confused on how this works but then again, it’s also pretty obvious that God is trying to teach him a lesson as opposed to just punishing him.

Jonathan runs away from Mark, refusing to speak to him. He sees a movie theater that is showing Heaven Can Wait and he proceeds to throw beer bottles at the marquee until all of the letters have fallen. Jonathan ends up in jail but Mark manages to track him down and gets him released. Jonathan borrows some money from Mark so that he can go get drunk.

Later, walking along the beach, Jonathan sees a young woman named Jennifer (Leann Hunley) who looks just like his wife did when they first got married. Jennifer attempts to commit suicide by walking into the ocean. Jonathan saves her life. It turns out that Jennifer is suicidal because her boyfriend dumped her. Jonathan tells her that her boyfriend isn’t going to care that she killed herself. In fact, he’ll probably brag about it to all of his friends.

Long story short, it’s obvious that Jonathan and Jennifer are falling in love. Meanwhile, Mark is looking for some way to occupy himself and considers accepting a job at the camp for the blind that he and Jonathan visited earlier in the season. Finally, this is a two-parter so we’ll see how everything works out next week!

I will say that this was a nice change-of-pace for the series. Seeing Jonathan finally get mad after four seasons of doing whatever he was assigned to do was interesting and Michael Landon’s anger and sadness felt very real. Victor French also did a good job of portraying Mark’s sadness over not being able to help his best friend. This was an episode where Highway to Heaven‘s unabashedly earnest and emotional approach really paid off.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 3.21 “Parents’ Day”

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 3.3 “For The Love Of Larry”

Posted on November 21, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.