Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 3.5 “That’s Our Dad”

Posted on December 12, 2024 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 Freevee and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark are in Hollywood …. again!

Episode 3.5 “That’s Our Dad”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on October 29th, 1986)

Two orphans, Sarah (Kelley Parker) and Joey (R.J. Williams), are upset because they’re about to be split up. A family wants to adopt Sarah but they don’t feel like bringing along her best friend, Joey. Joey and Sarah wish that they could live with Bill Cassidy (Ned Beatty), the star of America’s favorite sitcom, That’s My Dad!

Sarah and Joey run away from the orphanage and end up at the studio at the exact same time that Bill is holding auditions to find a new co-star for That’s My Dad. Sarah and Joey tell Bill about their tragic backgrounds and how they each lost their parents. Bill, thinking that the kids are doing audition pieces, is so impressed that he tells his producer that he wants the kids to be hired immediately. The kids think that this mean they’re being adopted! Yay!

Unfortunately, Bill is a bitter man who, in private, doesn’t behave like the perfect father that he plays on television. Adopt two kids? Why would Bill want to do that!? Fortunately, Jonathan and Mark just happen to be installing a new security system at Bill’s home. Jonathan helps Bill to see that, even though he’s bitter, he could still redeem himself by adopting two random children. The end result is an episode that pretty much epitome of Highway To Heaven, shamelessly sentimental but heartfelt enough to be effective.

This was not Ned Beatty’s first appearance on Highway to Heaven. During the first season, he played two roles in The Banker and the Bum. Beatty does a pretty good job in this episode, playing Bill Cassidy as someone who can be unpleasant but not so unpleasant that his later change of heart doesn’t feel credible. From the first minute we meet Bill, we know he’s going to turn out to be not such a bad guy, if just because that’s what always happens on Highway to Heaven. On this show, even the most unlikable of characters usually achieve some sort of redemption. The main theme is the no one is bad as they originally seem. That’s actually a pretty sweet message when you think about it.

Highway to Heaven did quite a few shows about show business. I’ve read that Michael Landon was something of a workaholic and, as a result, he later felt that he missed out on spending time with his children. Certainly, that would explain why almost every Hollywood episode of Highway to Heaven seems to feature an actor or director who needs to learn to make time for the people in their lives.

Speaking of making time for the people in your life, it’s the holidays. This is going to be my final Highway to Heaven review for 2024. These reviews will return on January 2nd!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.21 “The Torch”

Posted on October 17, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, its the most shocking episode of Highway to Heaven yet!

Episode 2.21 “The Torch”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on March 12th, 1986)

Everett Salomon (Herschel Bernardi) is a Holocaust survivor who has become wealthy and successful in the United States. In poor health and in need of a heart transplant, Everett spends most of his time giving speeches about his experiences in the concentration camp. He is disturbed by the rise in Holocaust denialism and has dedicated his remaining years to battling the scourge of Neo-Nazism. In a disturbing scene that brings to mind the horrible images of the October 7 attacks, a Nazi named Cal (Robert O’Reilly) sneaks onto Everett’s property in the middle of the night and murders his dog.

Cal is a follower of Jan Baldt (Paul Koslo), a Neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier who has turned his basement into a shooting range so that he and his buddies can fire their guns at pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Moshe Dayan. Jan is consumed by hate and he’s teaching that hate to his young son, Rolf (played by a very, very young Mark-Paul Gosselaar). While Jan rants about conspiracies and bankers, Rolf cleans the guns in the basement.

At a Nazi rally, Jan’s speech is interrupted by Everett’s son, Joseph (David Kaufman). Cal proceeds to make his way through the crowd and ends up shooting Joseph dead. When Everett hears the news, he has a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital by two paramedics, Jonathan Smith and Mark Gordon. Meanwhile, while Jan and Cal celebrate in their basement, Rolf picks up a submachine gun and, not realizing it’s loaded, pulls the trigger and guns both men down.

Everett finally gets the heart transplant that he’s needed ever since he was first liberated from the camps. Unfortunately, that heart comes from Jan Baldt. At first, Everett refuses to accept the heart but then the ghosts of his parents and of Joseph appear to him and tell him that he has to continue to live and let people know the truth about what happened in the camps.

Later, Everett leaves the hospital and tells the reporters waiting outside that he will never be silent.

This seems to be one of the episodes of Highway to Heaven that anyone who has ever watched the show remembers. Because the show is usually rather gentle and non-violent, this episode can be a rather jarring viewing experience. The first time I saw it, the only thing that stunned me more than Joseph’s death was the subsequent deaths of Jan and Cal. The episode ends on an uplifting note but I always find myself wondering what happened to Rolf. Without his father around to brainwash him, will Rolf be able to learn something other than hate? Or is it too late for him? Is Rolf damned to follow in his father’s footsteps?

With the current rise of anti-Semitism, this episode still feels incredibly relevant. There’s really not much difference between Jan Baldt’s rants and the stuff currently being spewed by Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Brianna Joy Gray. This episode reminds us that “never again” has to be more than just a catch phrase.

Back to School Part II #18: Not My Kid (dir by Michael Tuchner)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Not My Kid, a made-for-television from 1985, opens with 15 year-old Susan Bower (Viveka Davis) in a car with her friends. They’re drunk. They’re stoned. They’re laughing. And soon, they’re screaming as the driver loses control and the car ends up getting overturned! (I’ve had that happen before. It wasn’t fun but I survived with only a few cuts and bruises.) Susan isn’t seriously hurt but, at the hospital, it’s discovered that she has alcohol and drugs in her bloodstream.

“NOT MY KID!” her father, surgeon Frank Bower (George Segal), declares.

“NOT MY KID!” her mother, Helen Bower (Stockard Channing, totally wasted in a thinly written role), agrees.

“Totally your kid!” her younger sister, Kelly (Christa Denton), says before then revealing where Susan hides her drugs. This leads to Kelly getting beaten up by Susan and her drug addict boyfriend, Ricky (Tate Fuckin’ Donavon, decades before playing a hostage in Argo.).

Anyway, neither Frank nor Helen want to admit that Susan has a drug problem so instead, they go to see a smug family counselor who tells them that they are both being too hard on their daughter and that they need to just let Susan be Susan. That sounds like a good (and easy) plan but then Susan runs away and disappears for two days. After she’s finally found, stoned and hiding out in the family’s boat, her parents finally decide to send her to rehab.

The rehab is run by Dr. Royce. Dr. Royce is played by Andrew Robinson and it took me a while to recognize him as being the same actor who played the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry. Perhaps that explains why Dr. Royce came across as being such a creepy character. As I watched this movie, I kept waiting for the big reveal where Dr. Royce would turn out to be a murderer or something. That never happened, of course. In the world of Not My Kid, the harsh and confrontational Dr. Royce is the only thing keeping the entire teenage population for shooting up heroin.

The majority of the film takes place at the rehab and it gets annoying pretty quickly. This is one of those places where everything is done as a group activity. Whenever someone says something, everyone in the group replies with, “We love you, so-and-so.” When Susan doesn’t act properly ashamed of herself, the group gangs up on her. “You’re a phony!” someone says. “You’re full of crap!” another person adds. “We love you, Susan,” the group chants.

AGCK! Seriously, the rehab scenes totally freaked me out because it came across less like therapy and more like brainwashing. I spent the entire movie waiting for Susan to escape and when she did, I was happy for her. She may have been a self-destructive drug addict but at least wasn’t a mindless zombie like everyone else in the movie! But then she ended up getting caught by her father and taken back to the rehab.

Meanwhile, her parents are going through therapy as well. Again, it’s all group therapy. When Frank tries to talk about how Susan’s behavior makes him feel, someone says, “You’re a phony!’ Another person adds, “You’re full of crap!” And the group chants, “We love you, Frank.” Okay, to be honest, I’m taking some dramatic license with the dialogue here but hopefully, you get the general idea.

I mean, seriously — I understand that I was supposed to be like, “Yay rehab!” while watching the movie but the rehab came across more like some sort of creepy cult. It reminded me of both a Canadian film called, Ticket To Heaven and a Texas film called Split Image. As I watched Not My Kid, I kept waiting for James Woods to show up as a cult deprogrammer.

Anyway, don’t worry. Everything turns out well in the end. This was a made-for-TV movie, after all. Not My Kid is way too heavy-handed for its own good and it lacks a certain self-awareness. On a more positive note, George Segal does a good job in the role of Frank.

You can watch Not My Kid below!