This episode of Season 2 of Highway to Heaven, Close Encounters of the Heavenly Kind, is okay but not great. The old folks are likable, the little boy is cute, and everything turns out perfectly in the end. I gave it another star because we laughed so hard at the moment with the twenty-dollar bill.
However, for some reason this episode didn't tug on my heartstrings or make me cry once, unlike almost every other episode of this show.
I feel like maybe the storyline of this one was a little bit weak. A social worker is trying very hard to take a little boy, whose mother has just died, away from his grandfather, who is his only living relative. Why? The social worker claims that he can't keep his grandson because he is a widower and because he doesn't have a job. That's rubbish. He is a kind and loving grandfather and they seem to have a nice house to live in in a nice neighborhood. The foster care system is much too overburdened to be worrying about cases like this.
Also, I feel an opportunity was lost to create emotion in the viewer by never mentioning the boys' dead parents after the first minute of the show, right after the mother's funeral. Adam seems to get over his mom's death super fast, which is a bit unrealistic.
Of course, it's difficult to create a compelling and believable storyline in a mere 45 minutes. But still, I think this episode was a bit weak compared to others in this series. The writing just wasn't as good as usual.