Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.12 “The Good Doctor”

Posted on June 27, 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!

It’s time to get back on that highway!

Episode 2.12 “The Good Doctor”

(Dir by William Claxton, originally aired on December 18th, 1985)

This week, Mark is super-excited about Jonathan’s new assignment. They’re going to be working, as equipment managers, for a pro football team! Mark’s excited because he loves football and he can’t wait to meet his favorite player of all time, a banged-up, aging guy named Alex Carpenter (Ray Young).

Jonathan, however, is concerned that everyone is on drugs. Alex is in almost constant agony from his injuries and he’s gotten hooked on the pain pills that are provided to him by the team doctor, Dr. Dan Hickey (Michael Constantine). Dan is hooked on pills himself, along with being an alcoholic. Dan is such an addict that he doesn’t even realize that his son, medical student Neal (William Kirby Cullen), is now abusing drugs himself. Everyone’s an addict and everyone’s in denial.

When Alex gets cut from the team, he is also cut off from his main supplier and soon, he’s tearing up his house while searching for any leftover pills. (Jonathan appears and loudly encourages him to destroy his entire office while searching, presumably so Alex can see how out-of-control his addiction is.) When Neal takes too many pills before his next exam, he ends up in the hospital. And Dan is finally forced to admit that he hasn’t been a good doctor.

Does this episode end at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, attended by all three of the addicts? You better believe it!

This was pretty much a typical Highway to Heaven episode. This message was earnest and heartfelt but the direction and the script totally embraced the episode’s already heightened melodrama. It wasn’t enough for Alex to get upset over not being able to find his pills. Instead, he had to furiously toss everything around his office (and even break a window) while Jonathan shouted, “WHERE ARE THE PILLS, ALEX!? WHERE ARE THEY!?” It wasn’t enough for Dan to overprescribe pills. He also had to be so drunk that he didn’t even notice when Jonathan materialized in his office. And, of course, Neal had to OD because there was no way we were going to end this episode without someone being rushed to the hospital. It was all a bit predictable but the show wasn’t incorrect when it came to discussing the dangers of abusing even prescription medication. If the show aired today, the enemy would be fentanyl. Since it was made in 1985, the enemy is instead just generic pain pills.

As often was the case with this series, the acting was a mixed bag but Michael Constantine was certainly effective as the “good doctor,” wandering through his day in a haze of pills and alcohol. And Michael Landon delivered his denunciation of drugs with a quiet fury that let you know that he meant every word of it.

Next week, Jonathan and Mark help a young man who is living alone.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.9 “The Secret”

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Jonathan’s in trouble and so is the audience.

Episode 2.9 “The Secret”

(Directed by William Claxton, originally aired on November 27th, 1985)

This is an odd episode.

While heading to visit yet another one of Mark’s former cop buddies, Jonathan stops the car at a country store. He spots a young man being bullied by three rednecks. Jonathan politely asks the rednecks to back off. When the main redneck tries to attack Jonathan, Jonathan responds by punching the guy out.

UH-OH, JONATHAN’S BROKEN A RULE! He immediately gets summoned back to Heaven for a disciplinary hearing and, as a result, he’s not in the majority of this episode.

I’m going to assume that Landon had something else going on that caused him to skip out on the majority of this episode. (This was also the first episode of the series to be directed by someone either than Landon or Victor French.) Still, having Jonathan throw a punch seems out-of-character. Over the course of the first two seasons, Jonathan has dealt with a lot of bullies and usually, he just uses his powers to make their car break down or to make them trip over a branch. The Boss has never had a problem with that so you have to wonder why Jonathan didn’t just make the bully’s car radiator start to overheat or something. As well, it seems like Jonathan was acting in self-defense and to protect the guy who was being bullied.

Anyway, the important thing is that Mark has to visit his friend on his own. Wes Fowler (Barry Jenner) has been married to Carol Fowler (Linda Miller) for nearly 18 years. When they first married, Carol told Wes that she couldn’t have children and, as a result, they decided to adopt a young girl that they named Heather. Shortly after adopting Heather, Carol did get pregnant and gave birth to Shelley. Having recently turned 18, Heather (played by Leslie Bega) is now curious about who her birth mother was. A little research leads to her discovering that her birth mother is …. CAROL!

Carol explains that Heather’s father was an ex-boyfriend who left town as soon as he discovered that Carol was pregnant. When Carol married Wes, she wanted to adopt the daughter she abandoned so she lied about not being able to get pregnant so that Wes would agree to the adoption. When Wes finds out about this, he gets angry and, along with Shelley (played by a young Shannen Doherty), he moves out of the house.

Can Mark put this family back together again? Of course, he can. And you better believe Jonathan returns to Earth during the show’s final moments. This is Highway to Heaven, after all.

This episode felt off to me. Some of it was the absence of Jonathan. Some of it was the fact that, even when working solo, Mark didn’t really do that much other than stand in a corner and observe. Both the soap opera dramatic and the performances were so over-the-top that they were impossible to take seriously. This almost felt like a parody of Highway to Heaven as opposed to an actual episode.

Oh well. So much for this episode. Hopefully, next week’s episode, which apparently involves a man being mistaken for a monster, will be a bit better. We’ll find out soon!

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone 3.12 “The Jungle”

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Along with starting each day of October with a horror film here at the Shattered Lens, we’re going to end each day with a horror-themed television show.

While I had previously caught a few episodes of the Twilight Zone during one of the annual holiday marathons on SyFy, I didn’t truly appreciate the show until I first exchanged e-mails with my friend in Australia, Mark. Among other things, Mark expressed a very eloquent appreciation for The Twilight Zone and that inspired me to watch quite a few episodes that have been uploaded to YouTube and Hulu. Along with being an essential piece of television history, the best episodes of the Twilight Zone remain watchable and entertaining 50 years after they were first broadcast.

Considering the esteemed place that the Twilight Zone continues to occupy in American culture, it seems appropriate to feature it during Horror Month here at the Shattered Lens.

The Jungle, which first aired on December 1st, 1961, is a personal favorite of mine. A businessman returns to New York from Africa. While in Africa, he upset a local witch doctor. Though the businessman, at first, laughs off the possibility that he may be cursed, it soon turns out that he’s wrong. There’s a lesson to this episode and here it is: Don’t piss off a witch doctor.

When I first saw this episode, the final scene caused me to have nightmares!

(By the way, I’m embedding this episode from Hulu. Sadly, you will have to deal with commercials. However, it’s really a great episode!)

(It has also come to my attention that some browsers do not work with embedded Hulu vidoes. Seriously, the internet is so frustrating! If the embedded video is not appearing on your browser, you should be able to watch this episode on Hulu. Here’s the link — http://www.hulu.com/watch/440777. I apologize for the inconvenience but still, it is a really good episode!)

Horror On TV: The Twilight Zone 3.12 “The Jungle”

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Along with starting each day of October with a horror film here at the Shattered Lens, we’re going to end each day with a horror-themed television show.

While I had previously caught a few episodes of the Twilight Zone during one of the annual holiday marathons on SyFy, I didn’t truly appreciate the show until I first exchanged e-mails with my friend in Australia, Mark. Among other things, Mark expressed a very eloquent appreciation for The Twilight Zone and that inspired me to watch quite a few episodes that have been uploaded to YouTube. Along with being an essential piece of television history, the best episodes of the Twilight Zone remain watchable and entertaining 50 years after they were first broadcast.

Considering the esteemed place that the Twilight Zone continues to occupy in American culture, it seems appropriate to feature it during Horror Month here at the Shattered Lens.

The episode below is called The Jungle and it first aired on December 1st, 1961. It was written by Charles Beaumont and directed by William Claxton. John Dehner plays an engineer who, having recently returned from overseeing a project in Africa, foolishly believes that he’ll be safe from a tribal curse just because he’s in New York. This is an effectively creepy 23 minutes of television and the ending is a classic.