Season 1 Overview

Air date: 01/23/1985

Directed by: Michael Landon

This episode is yet another peculiar one, as it seemingly combines dream with reality. Or maybe it’s all just an illusion. Like Tommy Westphall dream. The reason will become clear in a moment, but it’s a rather subtle assignment with enormous implications.

Trademark Features:

• Assignment

The assignment this time is a very peculiar one: this episode marks the first time in the series the assignment revolves around one of the main characters (Mark in this case). There was already the episode of Help Wanted: Angel where Mark was deeply involved in the assignment, but again, that episode was a very peculiar one, and the assignment wasn’t really about him. There are going to be future episode where Jonathan is the assignment, but for now, that’s Mark, and it’s unprecedented in the series.

Another thing: this marks the only time in the series Jonathan and Mark seemingly travels back to time.

The car is always the same.

But, again, that seemingly happens: because, it’s rather unclear whether they actually went back, or if it was just a dream in Mark’s head. And the weird part is, nobody is going to mention this ever again the series. Like, nothing. Even Jonathan seems oblivious of anything, as if he doesn’t know about Mark’s own experience

Unsettling.

So, there’s another way to justify it: maybe they never traveled back in time at all, while it was just a dream. That’s a deceptively subtle Highway assignment.

• Background.

Here’s another peculiar feature: at the beginning of the episode, Mark comments on the landscape.

It’s not California, at last. They did it!

The series, marketed as “the adventures of an angel and his human friend on a cross-country mission to help others,” finally, actually crossed a state border. Just don’t get used to it—this episode is one of the very few set outside California.

It’s unclear when this episode takes place: maybe, it’s right after the previous one, considering they were on a motel in Copperopolis, and likely they moved further East now.

Instead, as for the time-span, this episode takes place in one day, as it’s just a dream, like the Christmas Special. The part set in the past, instead, seemingly occurs in 1945, or sometime during the WWII, though they never precise that.

• Characters

Many details are revealed on Mark’s background: apparently, his mother was from Oklahoma, and he used to spend summers in her home state with his grandfather, who owned a ranch there. During World War II, when Mark’s father was serving and his mother fell ill, he was sent to live with his grandfather for some time. And then he adds his biggest regret his that he that he never got the chance to tell his grandfather how much he meant to him— as he died after losing the ranch, while Mark was still a child.

One thing to point out: in the episode, nobody ever mentions Mark’s sister Leslie (met in the Pilot, as Jonathan’s first assignment). Actually, it seems like she didn’t exist back at the time when it takes place (remember, it’s WWII now), as seemingly confirmed at some point when Mark’s grandpa reveals that he had originally intended to leave the ranch to his son, but after his death in the War, now Mark is his only heir.

So, maybe this could be justified by considering that his grandpa doesn’t want a girl to be a farmer. That could be the case, considering that he doesn’t even mention his own daughter, Mark’s mom, as his heir. Actually, the writer must have felt it was probably a good premise for a show: there is going to be an episode in the fourth season precisely about that (old grumpy farmer who believes girls’ place is not in a farm), but they’ll be keeping it for that future episode.

Anyway, Leslie’s absence could just be justified by assuming she wasn’t born yet, by the time Mark’s grandpa was still alive. If that were the case, thanks to this episode it is reasonable to conclude that she must be at least 10 years younger than her brother.

• Production and Settings

Now, one thing about the title. if it sounds familiar, that’s not an illusion (unlike the assignment): there was already an episode in the second season of Little House with the same name, “Going Home“, except the words are not repeated again. Just picture the scene inside the head writers’ room. Landon says like: “We need a title for this Highway show about Mark traveling back in time and reconnecting with his grandpa.”
 And Dan Gordon (the headwriter, already went through him here) decides it must be something related to Home, so he mentions “Home Again“, but Landon reminds him there’s already a 1983 Little House show with that exact title.

Then, Gordon comes up with “There’s No Place Like Home“, and it has the same problem. Finally, somebody mentions “Going Home“.

At that point, Landon probably regretted he had already used all the possible combination of “Home” title for Little House, until Gordon has an idea: just add another Going Home, as in “Going Home, Going Home“. That’s a good idea, isn’t it. So people in the future won’t mix them up when searching for one of them. Also, who could ever confuse a show about a farmer with one about an angel. They’ve got really nothing in common.

I mean, they could’ve gone with “Again Home Again“, but maybe that was too much.

Anyway, for the setting: apparently Jonathan and Mark are in Oklahoma for this episode, so the landscape must look different compared to the usual California one — hopefully.

No, Siree: that’s still California, for that matter.

That’s right: they didn’t actually move production out of that state just for the sake of realism. I mean, come on, who are they trying to fool here. At this point, maybe, it would have been better if they had just set the whole series in California alone. But likely, they just wanted to expand their appeal by including a red state too.

Anyway, most of the production took place all over La Grange, the town in California, not the other bigger city in Georgia — because, you know, why moving production out there if Cali already has a place with the same name.

But the characters in the episode won’t admit that, and they’ll pretend they are somewhere in a fictional Oklahoma: for instance, at the beginning of the episode, Mark tells Jonathan they’re near “Twin Rives”, supposedly a town in Oklahoma.

That place doesn’t exist: it’s a random name — just like the fictional “Deter” town a few episodes ago, which was Tuolumne all the time. Like, imagine those in Oklahoma watching the episode: they’re probably tired of Hollywood productions choosing Oklahoma as a setting but then selecting a random town name that sounds “Oklahoma” enough instead of a real one.

And the fictional Oklahoma tour goes on.

Again, it is not.

That’s actually the Old La Grange Bridge, not the “Booner Bridge”, which doesn’t even exist for that matter, not in Oklahoma, California nor anywhere.

The episode was written by Dan Gordon on November 1984 and its production likely took place over the course of one week on December 1984 (shortly before Christmastime), after the previous episode, which aired earlier. They were the last episodes they produced before the holiday. Then, production took two weeks break for Christmas, and they resumed by the beginning of January of the following year.

Also, one curious thing: the younger version of Mark is credited just as “Kid”, not “Mark Jr.” or “Younger Mark” or whatever. That’s peculiar, as it might imply that the character is not really Mark as a child, but rather a random kid—and would confirm that this whole episode is just a dream, but never actually happened outside it.

• Actors’ Easter Eggs and References

During the series, there are some occasions where the characters make references to the actors’ life and career by jokingly taking distance from them. There was one instance in Help Wanted: Angel some episodes ago, and now there’s another one: at the beginning of the episode, Mark reveals that his grandpa was very sad when he lost the ranch shortly before his death.

However, Mark also confesses that, personally, he never wanted that ranch in the first place, because he’s not much of a farmer.

It may be just random, but it feels more like a subtle nod to Little House, where French actually played a farmer. And such feeling seems confirmed by Jonathan’s imperceptible smile (which wasn’t in the script, for that matter) at his friend’s line.

Of course, he knows better.

• Actor (Little House and Highway)

The character of Mark’s grandpa in this episode is played by John McLiam, and he’s a Little House Actor and a Highway Actor too.

During his career, he got the chance to work with Landon and French as actors and directors both separately and then with all of them on the same show. His first collaboration with French dates back to 1968 for Gunsmoke, in the fourteenth season episode O’Quillan, where he played the titular character. On that same episode French made a guest appearance playing the antagonist, a scornful, ruthless cowboy whose brother was killed by O’Quillan, and who seeks to make justice for it.

Then, in 1970 McLiam had one guest appearance on Bonanza, and got the chance to work with Landon on that occasion.

Some years later, he worked again with Landon and French when he made three appearances in Little House, playing a different character each episode: the first time he worked with both of them together when he appeared in the third season in 1977, during the dramatic episode where Charles and Mr. Edwards accept a dangerous job for the railroad, and McLiam played their stern employer.

The second and third time he worked with them separately: on 1978 he appeared with Landon without French in the fourth season episode “Whisper Country“, which was directed by Landon as well. Then, he played yet a different character in 1983, for the ninth season. However, on that occasion Landon was completely absent, while French was not acting but was the director on that episode.

Eventually, in 1985, he’s working with them again, one years after his last collaboration with French and six years after the one with Landon, who is also directing now.

And this won’t even be their last show: he would come back again on a third season episode of Highway, in a different role (as a fellow probationary angel). Basically, he’s one of the very few actors who made multiple appearances on Highway, and also one of the few Highway actors that had acted multiple times on Little House as well. Actually, him, Richard Bull and Eddie Quillan are the only three actors who had multiple appearances on both series.

• Highway Of Mysteries

This episode has got some mysterious stuff. One is in the very settings: the problem is that nobody actually explains what Jonathan and Mark were doing in Oklahoma in the first place. Think about it: this assignment was not planned beforehand like the previous ones. I mean, Jonathan didn’t tell Mark something like: “Okay, now we’re headed to Oklahoma for our new assignment that revolves around your grandpa“. Instead, this was more an improvised one, as the events in this episode wouldn’t have taken place if Mark hadn’t suffered that head concussion. So, either this assignment was already bound to be about Mark, and Jonathan wasn’t aware of it, or maybe, they were just crossing Oklahoma to get somewhere else for a different assignment, and this episode was just a diversion.

Now, if that were the case, that means they’d still have a pending assignment somewhere in Oklahoma or farther East. However, in the next episode they’ll be coming back to California. So, maybe this episode just adds up as an evidence concluding that the series doesn’t show every assignment Jonathan and Mark will work on. Or maybe it shows that the assignments needs to occur at a precise moment in time, and Mark’s accident made them lose the assignment they were supposed to be working on in the first place.

Also, another mystery is with Jonathan’s power: at the beginning, Jonathan asks Mark what would an Oakland cop know about Oklahoma, and Mark replies that his grandpa used to have a ranch there.

But, hold on: Jonathan, being an angel, supposedly knows everything already, and he can even read Mark’s mind. So, why does he seem so surprised to learn that Mark has roots in Oklahoma? Maybe he hadn’t unlocked his mindreading power yet. Or maybe he already knew, but had to wait for Mark to explain it for the audience’s benefit.

Then, there’s a problem with the clothes: nobody in the episode, neither Carl nor Mark Jr. comment on Jonathan’s and Mark’s appearance.

I mean, Jonathan looks the same as always, but Mark is wearing sports clothes that wouldn’t be invented for decades. Moreover, he’s wearing his usual A’s cap from a baseball team founded in 1968. But maybe Carl doesn’t know anything about sports; actually, he calls them “Bums”, just because Landon wanted to put the Bums, Bins, Drugs in this episode too. Or perhaps nobody in 1940s Oklahoma knew about Oakland’s baseball team. I mean, if you saw a man wearing a baseball cap team you’d never heard of, your first thought probably wouldn’t be, “He’s from the future.” Still, those clothes should’ve raised at least a few eyebrows.

Instead, about the characters, there’s a mystery when the episode concludes and reveals a writing on a rusty bridge.

Now, that writing is problematic, because this episode was set during WWII, and Mark can’t have made this: if we consider that he was born in 1936 (if the episode is correctly set in 1945 or around), then how could a three years old Mark ever do it. Odd enough, this part wasn’t in the script either: the episode was supposed to conclude by showing Mark getting back to the car and driving off. So, this rusty writing has no meaning at all.

• The “Stuff”

There’s a problem with Jonathan’s stuff in the episode (one of the many problems): the whole premise of the episode is Mark suffering an injury to his head that sets off the hallucination about his grandpa. And that injury comes from hitting his head on the steering wheel of the car during an accident.

Now, the problem is not that Jonathan didn’t use the “Stuff” to save his friend somehow— like, he could have halted the car as he’s used to when he annoys Mark, or at least deploy the airbag. I mean, he’s an angel, he could have done anything. But maybe he refrained from it as it all serves a higher purpose: because, again, that injury sets off the hallucination. And Jonathan couldn’t have just invaded his friend’s mind that night in a dream (like when he invaded Eddie’s dream), he had to do that when his friend was unconscious.

Glossary

Cute: this episode actually reveals he origin of the catchphrase. Apparently, it is Mark who invented it when he was a kid.

Doozy. Mark Jr. is just a doozy kid. But at least he says “cute”.

Angelic recovery. After suffering the concussion, Mark quickly recovers in just a single night, which astonishes the doctor as well.

This marks the first time in the series where Mark suffers a severe injury and recovers overnight. That’s likely part of the magic of hanging around an angel.

New “Stuff” Power. In the episode, Jonathan will have the power to correctly localize the spot where to find water.

Punchline: this episode will have Mark giving out punchlines to both his younger version and to his grandpa. First, when Carl is about to lose the ranch, Mark tells him that he used to have a grandpa who was about to lose a land as well, but fought back. So, Carl asks if the grandpa eventually won the land back, and Mark teaches his first lesson.

Which is odd. I mean, not the punchline, but rather that Mark expressively says that his grandpa used to tell him that. Basically, he’s reminding that old man (who happens to be his grandpa) of something that same old man used to say and should already know. And Carl doesn’t find that weird.

Recycle. This episode contains one recycle and, like the last one, it’s from David Rose: here, during the scene when Jonathan, Mark, Carl and Mark Jr. all strives to dig up the well from the spot Jonathan picked, Rose put an upbeat composition. However, it is a slightly modified variation of the same breezy one he used in the Pilot, for the part when Jonathan buys Leslie a bike and go to work on that.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are “assigned” to help Mark’s younger version of himself reconnect with his late grandfather in the past.

So, Jonathan and Mark are driving in Oklahoma. There, Mark reveals his grandpa Carl used to have a ranch, but he lost it when the elderly man died while Mark was still a kid, and admits his bigger regret was never being able to tell his grandpa how much he meant for him. Suddenly, his confession is cut short when he swerves off the road to avoid hitting a cow, and is knocked unconscious. So, Jonathan rushes out and flags down a passing truck.

That’s not Clyde, though.

Together, they take Mark to the local country doctor, while the storm passes.

One curious thing: in the episode, Jonathan and Mark are driving while a rainstorm is raging outside. However, in the original script it was supposed to be a dust one, which Mark asserts being very common in this part of the country (the fictional Oklahoma). Maybe they realized that a dust storm was too hard to realize artificially, and set for simple rain.

Anyway, the country doctor (who is no Kevin Hagen, though) diagnoses Mark a concussion but can’t determine its severity. So, he only advises prayer and rest until the next day.

Before he can leave, Jonathan thanks the passerby who helped them, and the man replies that in their town, folks look out for each other.

Because, you know, they rigorously follow the principals of being a small, redneck town where people trust each other like they used to. And, of course, nobody locks their doors. Jonathan must have liked this environment.

The next day, Mark wakes up. Just like that (the angelic recovery instance). As they walk out, Mark tells Jonathan he’d like to see his old grandpa’s ranch before they leave town (and go to wherever they were headed before that accident). However, he feels something’s off: the buildings are all falling apart, every car seems old.

And the radio loudly plays an old melody.

You know, like the one Mark used to listen in his car some episodes back, until Jonathan used the stuff to ruin it.

Or maybe the producers just couldn’t pay the rights for a modern station.

Anyway, Mark reasonably points out that it all feels rather spooky—but that’s not even the strangest part.

They cross an old bridge.

Like an Old California bridge pretending to be in Oklahoma, isn’t it.

And that’s why it all feels weird to Mark: he probably remembers growing up in Oklahoma but they are in California instead.

Anyway, they come across a boy and ask him how to get to the address of Mark’s old ranch. The boy, somewhat annoyed, gives them and then reveals his identity.

So, apparently, Mark and Jonathan somehow traveled back in time, and that kid is Mark when he was nine years old.

Later, they go to Mark’s old ranch and find Carl Simms, his grandpa, who is about to be evicted unless he finds a well within two days. Jonathan and Mark introduce themselves as drifters and ask Carl if he can put them up, promising to help him dig the well in return.

Oddly though, Carl doesn’t seem too eager to let them stay, contradicting Jonathan’s belief that people were more welcoming a hundred years ago (well, technically, it’s the 1940s, so more like forty years ago).

Eventually, Mark convinces Carl by quoting the punchline that actually Carl had taught him, and telling him the land is worth fighting for.

Carl is impressed. But that’s odd— I mean, you’d think a man hearing his exact own words coming from a stranger in futuristic clothes might be suspicious. But, again, Carl might be probably thinking like Charles did: “I’m just a farmer”. Or maybe he believes that every old farmers have the same values.

Old folks are all alike.

Then, Carl enters the house and Mark follows him to tell him the truth and confess how much he meant to him, but but Jonathan stops him.

You’d think he did it to prevent Carl from having them institutionalized— because, I mean, that’s what would have happened if Mark did that. No, really, a 50-year-old man telling you he’s a 12-year-old grandson. Just picture the scene: one day you have a grandson who looks like this.

And the next day somebody tells you he is that same grandson, now looking like this.

With a cap of a baseball team yet to be invented, as well.

But that’s not Jonathan’s reason. Well, probably he partly thought about that. But the reason he gives Mark is that Carl isn’t really Mark’s grandpa, but rather his young version‘s (Mark Jr.) grandpa. So, if they want Carl to understand how much he has meant for him, they’ll need to convince young Mark to reconnect with him.

That’s another way to put it.

Admit it, Jonathan, you just don’t want to go to an asylum yet.

That night, during dinner, Carl tells Mark Jr. that he had planned to give the ranch to his son (apparently, Mark had an uncle). Since his son — Mark’s uncle— died in the war, Carl now wants to pass the ranch down to the grandson. So, he asks how he feels about it, and the boy reacts angrily, punches the table, and storms out. Dismayed, Carl tells his guests to help him clear the house by the next day.

However, Mark doesn’t give up: he finds Mark Jr. hiding in the barn—where he always used to go when upset — and gently calms him down. Then, he warns him that he’ll regret the way he’s treating his grandpa unless he makes things right and helps him find water.

The next day, a ruthless banker arrives to buy the ranch. But Mark Jr. unexpectedly stands up to him and inspires Carl to do the same, and invents the Cute motto in the process. Then, Jonathan seemingly uses “The Stuff” to point the right spot for the well— inside the barn.

And Landon just shows off his new power.

Here, really a shout-out to Landon for playing it straight, and to the actors who didn’t burst out laughing.

Anyway, they all start digging together.

And here’s the recycle.

Because David Rose thought the Pilot could be good here.

Anyway, after digging up the well, they all come back home to rest.

It looks quite like Little House, isn’t it.

In the house, Grandpa Carl plays the accordion—a nice callback to Pa’s fiddle—and heads to bed.

However, he feels something’s wrong and they call the country doctor. In a desperate move, Mark Jr. runs to the well and exerts himself digging furiously, despite Jonathan’s warnings to rush back to his grandpa. Then, Jonathan looks skyward.

And the kid hits water.

It’s unclear whether Jonathan actually used the “Stuff” to have the kid find water soon, because it was the only way to make him come back to his dying grandpa, or if the kid was already about to hit water all the same. But if it was Jonathan who had to use the power to materialize water, that would be problematic: first he could have done that at the beginning, and saved them all from the labor (though Jonathan is a known enslaver by now, considering all the time he could have used the “Stuff” to help Mark in their jobs). Second, because that would undermine his credibility as diviner in the first place— I mean, he picked a spot after making a scene with that stick, but nobody found any water in it, so he had to use the power to create it.

Anyway, returning to Carl, they have one last, heartfelt confrontation: Mark Jr. thanks his grandpa for all his lessons that he will remember for the rest of his life, while Carl thanks him back for staying around in the past few days.

As they hug, the scene fades—and suddenly Mark is back in the present (1985), at the country doctor’s home. It seems it was all a dream after all.

Mark wakes up to find only one day has passed since the car accident. He doesn’t mention the dream to Jonathan, who doesn’t say anything neither, and it’s unclear whether it was a hallucination or they actually traveled back in time for a day.

And they recycle the scene at the beginning when he wakes up.

As they finally leave, they stop by the same Oklahoma fake old bridge from earlier. Mark sees a boy standing there—the exact spot where he met his younger self. He cautiously approaches, wondering if it’s still him.

You know, maybe Jonathan trapped him in that hallucination, and they are still in the past or whatever.

But no, the boy is just a random kid who glares at Mark and walks away.

One thing to notice: when Jonathan and Mark see this random kid now, they stand on his left.

If you compare this moment with that in which they met Mark Jr. in the dream, they actually stood on his right instead.

Now, this might be a minor detail, but it can also be revealing somehow, as though Mark and Jonathan’s position with respect to the kid symbolically represent their moment in time. Like, if you draw a line where the kid’s right is the past and the left is the future, they were on his right before, so in the past; now they stand on his left, so in the future — or the present. Or 1985. Or whatever.

No really, it might be just a flight if fancy, but why they would flip the kid’s position for the two scenes otherwise.

Still, Jonathan and Mark leave the kid there and drive off.

Anyway, now that the assignment is complete, it all just leads to a simple question: if this episode never actually took place, then what was the point. I mean, they didn’t change history or something. Like, Carl loses the ranch anyway and would die the same way Mark remembered he would, and Mark the kid would be sent back to Oakland to his mother, and won’t spend more time with his grandpa. The only difference is that—for a short moment, possibly right before his death—Carl knew how much he meant to his grandson. And Mark knows that he knew that. But if it was just a hallucination, did it really change anything? Or will it remain just in a memory?

Maybe that was the whole point. If Mark’s problem was a regret stemming from his memory, they just had to alter the memory to fix the problem as well. And if the journey back in time wasn’t any real, it doesn’t matter: in Mark’s memory it will be. Because, what will ever remain of his past will be a short, finite memory where two people hug in eternity. And that warm feeling — despite stemming from a fake, warped memory — it’s still there, and it’s what Mark will carry on in the present. So, they didn’t help anyone in the traditional sense. But they gave Mark closure. Even if it wasn’t real.

Anyway, this episode continued the strong run from the preceding one (which was unexpectedly successful), scoring similarly in ratings. So, the audience must have liked the unusual premise. And the ratings set forth the series to even higher ratings for the following episodes.