Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.2 “Fathers and Sons”

Posted on July 10, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Daily Motion.

This week, Dr. Craig’s son returns home.

Episode 4.2 “Fathers and Sons”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on September 25th, 1985)

In this episode, we discover what Dr. Westphall did after he left St. Eligius. After checking Tommy into a special school for autistic children, Westphall went to Africa and volunteered his time at a clinic. Now that he’s returned to Boston, he wants St. Eligius and its residents to follow his example. In fact, he’s requiring it. He wants to set up a free clinic. He wants to set up a charity. He tells the residents that they will now be required to volunteer in the community. He’s planning on shaking things up. Auschlander tells Westphall that not all of his plans are practical. Westphall says that he doesn’t care.

Westphall also proceeds to move back into his old house and he retrieves Tommy from the school. (Tommy responds by hitting Westphall.) It’s actually pretty easy to see what’s happening here. At the end of the previous season, Westphall was determined to move on with his life. He was going to leave his depressing house. He was going to admit that he couldn’t raise Tommy by himself. However, now that he’s returned to Boston, Westphall is returning to his old life while expecting St. Eligius to change. Westphall is channeling his personal frustrations into the hospital. I don’t think this is going to go well.

Speaking of change, Luther is training to become a paramedic. In this episode, he rides around in an ambulance with two bickering paramedics who are also a couple (played by Adam Arkin and Melanie Chartoff). This storyline allowed the action to move beyond the confines at the hospital and, at times, it almost played like a parody of a more traditional medical show. Luther becomes a stand-in for the viewer, watching as the domestic drama unfolds in between medical emergencies.

The majority of the episode revolves around Dr. Craig, who is not happy that his son, Stephen (Scott Paulin), is visiting with his very pregnant wife, Yvonne (Suzanne Lederer). When we last saw Stephen, he was a hotshot Ivy League medical student with a bright future ahead of him. Then he got busted for drug possession and Dr. Craig stopped speaking about him. In this episode, we learn that Stephen is now a student at Ohio State. Stephen claims that he’s no longer on drugs but it’s obvious that Dr. Craig is never going to be able to forgive Stephen for letting him down. That said, Dr. Craig does soften a bit when he talks to Yvonne and she lets him feel the baby kicking.

At the end of the episode, Stephen is driving down a street in Boston. He’s just had dinner with his parents. Yvonne is in the passenger’s seat. A quick shot of Stephen’s eyes reveal that he’s high on something. Yvonne screams as Stephen crashes the car. Yikes! That’s a frightening way to end things!

This was a good episode. It appears that, with the start of season four, the showrunners finally figured out that Dr. Craig was the most interesting character on the show. William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett are both excellent in this episode.

I just hope the baby will be okay.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 5.8 “Goodbye, Mr. Zelinka”

Posted on February 19, 2026 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, it’s time for yet another student protest.

Episode 5.8 “Goodbye, Mr. Zelinka”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on June 23rd, 1989)

The students at Lincoln High are upset to learn that beloved English teacher Mr. Zelinka (Lew Ayres) is going to have to retire because he’s reached the mandatory age of 70. The school’s new maintenance workers — Jonathan Smith and Mark Gordon — suggest that they should all conduct a walk-out to demand that Zelinka be allowed to keep his job. The evil school board president (James Karen) says that Zelinka can stay if he takes and passes an exam. However, the exam is rigged for Zelinka to fail. Jonathan uses “the stuff” to make sure that Zelinka not only passes but that he also gets the highest score ever. In the past, Jonathan always refused to use “the stuff” to help people cheat. Instead, Jonathan would have shown the school board president the error of his ways. But, for this episode, Jonathan rigs the rigged exam and the villain is left in power so that he can presumably continue to make Mr. Zelinka’s life miserable.

I did not like this episode. Yeah, it’s heart was in the right place but the entire school walking about in support of Mr, Zelinka just felt kind of silly. I mean, did every student at the school have Mr. Zelinka for English? What did everyone’s parents think about the protest? If Mr. Zelinka had been a compelling character, may be I would have felt differently but Mr. Zelinka was instead a pretty passive character and I have to admit that I wondered about all the other good teachers who had been forced to retire at 70. Why didn’t Jonathan show up to help any of them out? What made Mr. Zelinka so special? It didn’t help that Lew Ayres was 80 years old when he played Mr. Zelinka and that he looked and sounded even older. The obviously frail Ayres comes across as someone who maybe does need to retire.

I’ve sat through a lot of Highway to Heaven episodes about clean-cut teenagers walking out of class so that they can protest injustice. Highway to Heaven was a very earnest show and that was one of the things that made it likable. But, by the fifth season, Highway to Heaven‘s formula was a bit less effective than it had been in the past. This is an episode just just seems to be going through the motions. This is also the rare Highway to Heaven episode in which I wanted someone to tell Jonathan and Mark to just mind their own business.

Insomnia File No. 18: Only The Strong (dir by Sheldon Lettich)

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were suffering from insomnia at one in the morning and you turned over to one of the Cinemax stations, you could have watched the 1993 film, Only The Strong.

Only The Strong is an example of a film genre that is a personal favorite of mine. This is one of those films where a dedicated but unorthodox teacher returns to his old high school and saves a bunch of troubled teenagers by teaching them how to beat the crap out of each other. (For another example, check out The Principal.) It’s hard for me to explain why I always enjoy these films. I’m always tempted to say it’s because there’s a part of me that would love to be a teacher but, honestly, that answer is way too easy. Add to that, if I was a teacher, I doubt I’d be one of the “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” teachers that tend to show up in these films. It seems like that would be a lot of effort.

In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” type of teacher. I get the feeling that these teachers might not actually exist. Maybe that’s why I like these films. For someone, like me, who went to a very nice but somewhat boring high school in the suburbs, a film like Only The Strong is the ultimate fantasy of what high school was like.

Anyway, in Only The Strong, Mark Dacascos plays Louis Stevens. Louis was a troubled teenager but, luckily, he took a sociology class taught by Mr. Kerrigan (Geoffrey Lewis). Kerrigan taught Louis that there was something more to life than just selling drugs and getting into fights. After he graduated, Louis joined the Green Berets and spent four years living in the jungles Brazil. In Brazil, he learned capoeira, a type of martial art that combines dance, acrobatics, and kick boxing. In fact, Louis got so good at capoeira that, when he is recalled to the states, a village wiseman gives him a special instrument, a musical bow called a berimbau.

Louis returns to his old high school and visits Mr. Kerrigan. He discovers that Kerrigan has been beaten down by life and is no longer the inspiring teacher that he once was. He also discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Dianna (Stacey Travis), is now a teacher and she’s dating another teacher, Hector Cervantes (John Fionte). Hector assumes that Louis worked for the CIA in Brazil and accuses him of organizing death squads.

Annoyed by what has happened to his old high school, Louis starts to leave. However, before walking out, he uses capoeira to beat up a Jamaican drug dealer. Everyone is so impressed that Louis is soon working for the high school, teaching 12 of the school’s worst students both capoeira and self-discipline…

(To be honest, as I watched the movie last night, none of the 12 students really seemed to be that dangerous to me. It was difficult to imagine the majority of them ever committing a felony, though I could visualize more than a few of them waiting in line at Starbucks. Then I remembered that this movie was made in 1993 and perhaps it was easier to scare audiences back then.)

It doesn’t take long for Louis to start to make a difference. In fact, it only takes a four-minute training montage. Soon, those 12 students are being respectful and thinking about the future. Donavon (Ryan Bollman) is even remixing capoeira music and acting so worshipful towards Louis that you just know that he’s going to end up getting killed towards the end of the film, in order to provide Louis with the proper motivation to go out and kick some ass. Unfortunately, the local Brazilian drug lord is not happy about Louis’s influence (especially after Louis encourages the drug lord’s cousin to spend his weekend camping instead of stripping cars). Needless to say, it all leads to a violent showdown. It also all leads to one of those inspiring graduation ceremonies that always tend to pop up in movies like this.

Anyway, Only The Strong is one of those films that currently has a 0% rating at the Rotten Tomatoes but I thought it was kind of fun in its own stupid way. (It probably helps to be half-asleep when you watch it.) Even if you don’t buy into the film’s argument that it could be used to save an inner city high school, capoeira is a lot of fun to watch and Mark Dacascos has an appealing smile, which serves to set him apart from a lot of the other actors that starred in actions films in the 1990s. Only The Strong is silly but fun, making it a good film to watch at one in the morning.