Season 2 Overview

Airdate: 12/18/1985

Directed By: Wiliam F. Claxton

There it goes, the episode that concludes the first half of the second season. But, unlike what the audience might have anticipated, it’s not a Christmas Special, but a sports one, at least in part. Actually, this was the only season in the whole series that skipped a Christmas Special, odd enough for a supposedly “religious” series, or for any 1980s series, for that matter. Maybe it’s because they realized the first season special didn’t have ratings high enough to justify a new one; or maybe it’s because they had already used Landon’s very best story for that season one episode, and they didn’t know what to make the special about then.

In the second half of the season, there’s actually going to be the episode The Last Assignment set during the 1985 Christmas Holiday, so it’s not really a season without any. However, that setting likely stems from the production of that episode (which took place during the holiday), but it wasn’t intended to be a Christmas episode.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both a football player and his doctor’s family that are secretly hooked on medical prescriptions.

As it’s apparent from the assignment, it’s set in a football context, so maybe it’s yet another sport story about players chasing their dreams of becoming champions.

It’s going to be nothing about football.

It’s actually about helping a famous football player (fictional, of course) recover from his problems with medical prescriptions supplied by his doctor.

And then it turns out the doctor and his son are both hooked on the same prescriptions.

And alcohol, too.

So, they used the football setting to deal with one of the three Landon’s obsessions; in detail, it’s drugs (and some family issue too, but that’s not an obsession). In that way, it’s similar to the episode As difficult As ABC, which used the basketball setting to actually deal with a different matter (which, on that occasion, was dope too). But now, it’s football — because that’s way more popular in the country.

Anyway, after half of the second season, there’s the first show entirely about Drugs — the only one in the season like that, but there’s going to be more later in the series. I mean, Landon couldn’t leave it at that, as important as it is to him (remember that his own daughter suffered from it). Also, that’s just one of the three Landon’s obsession.

• Background

The timespan of the episode is unclear, although seemingly it’s a couple of weeks (by the guidelines of the series), just like any usual assignment. Also, considering they are hired for before any official match, it’s likely set around September, possibly after helping the Toros out (they spent the summer there, supposedly).

Instead, the setting remains the usual California one. So, this time, they didn’t go all the way to Tucson to find the right team to help, because why doing that with the many problems of California they still have to work on.

• Characters

There’s something to point out here about Mark. At the beginning of the episode, he tells Jonathan he’s looking forward to working on the assignment because it’s about football, and he’s fond of the sport.

That’s the first time in the series he mentions that. So, baseball is not the only thing he likes, apparently. Also, he mentions that he had started playing in High School all the way to “the service”, and that implies he served in the army he served in the army. That will be confirmed in one episode of the third and another in the fifth season, when he reveals he served three years in the navy before his career as cop (more details on this will come in later seasons).

Also, at the beginning of the episode, he adds that, of all the assignments they have ever had, it’s going to be the best yet.

Two things to notice here: one, he is judging the assignment before even working on it. That means he has learnt nothing from the first season, and never judging people or things beforehand. Also, in the third season there is going to be an episode in which he reveals that the best assignment he and Jonathan had worked so far by then is A Match Made In Heaven, which is a further way to show that his judging beforehand was wrong (again, something he should have learnt to avoid by the first season).

But there’s another problem: early in the season during A Song For Jason Part 2 he told those kids that the week at the camp was the best of his life; and now he just forgot about them for some football assignment.

Also, when he visits a football player’s house, Mark is attracted by some trophies.

He had already shown his attraction to trophies in One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade Part 1, when he looked over Deke’s room as if he were totally comfortable in someone else’s house.

• Production and Setting

The episode was produced for one week by September (chronologically after the Halloween Special), basically more than three months before its airing. It’s unclear why they held it so long, also because they aired it on December, like the Christmas Special on season 1. As if a drug assignment made for a good Christmas story.

Anyway it was written by Rift Fournier, in his only episode of the series (he’s a highwayman basically). Much oddly too, it’s the second episode of the series not directed by neither Landon nor French, but rather by William F. Claxton (the first episode as such was The Secret, and it was by Claxton too). But, unlike that first time, Jonathan and Mark will be working together now. Also, it’s been four episodes now that Landon didn’t direct (as Claxton was behind The Secret and French on The Monster); the episodes weren’t produced in that order, so Landon didn’t take any holiday (The Secret dated back to late August, yet it aired in late November), but it’s unusual, considering that he directed over 90 episodes (the most).

Instead, as for the setting, it’s California as usual. In particular, it’s an episode about a football team but, unlike the other sport episode about baseball (in which the production actually used the Toros), here it’s the Cougars, a fictional team.

It was actually the California Lutheran College, now University, for that matter.

Glossary

BBD: it’s a drugs assignment.

They are not talking about the angelic “Stuff”; because the doctor is not an angel (yet).

Highway Lifetime Actors: the character of Neal, the doctor’s son, is played by William Cullen, in his last role of his career.

He had a recurring role in the TV series How The West Was Won alongside James Arness (who played multiple times with French on Gunsmoke in the late 1960s and early 1970s too, for that matter). After concluding with that character in 1979, he made some guest appearances, like this role in Highway, and then, at the age of 33, he seemingly retired from acting and has now become a real estate agent — like many of Landon’s children (just a coincidence).

Highwayman: the episode was written by Rift Fournier, the first Highwayman of the season. Apparently, he was a TV writer very active in the 1970s and 1980s too, writing for many TV series, including Hell Town, which aired on NBC at the 9:00 pm timeslot (immediately after Highway) every Wednesday; of course, NBC decided to place a series titled “Hell Town” after this — certainly they did it on purpose. Actually, on that series, Fournier wrote the episode that aired one week before this Highway one — again, they did it on purpose. So, maybe NBC put him on Highway because he was already working for the network at the time.

Anyway, in 2007 he quit his TV career to become a teacher at the Lindenwood Univeristy (apparently, a good yet strict one) and remained there until his death in 2013 after a serious illness. So, this will be the only episode of Highway by him, and he decided to make a drugs assignment — likely just to impress Landon, as it often happens with the Highwaymen of the show.

References: this episode has one of the two most outspoken references to Little House in the whole series (the second one is in the fifth season). There has already been some in other episodes in the first season: for instance, through some painting (in To Touch The Moon), or Mark’s lines (Going Home, Going Home), or a doozy actress playing a wealthy girl and another actress playing a peasant one “with all the good lines” (in The Brightest Star); there has already been some in the second season, like Jonathan saying his friend will teach him how to spit in A Song For Jason Part 1, and more (the episodes making references to Little House and other shows are here). But they have always been more like nods or Easter Eggs or something; instead, now they make an open, direct reference. When Carpenter has an accident on the field and is taken to the hospital, a mysterious man brings him a present.

With those plastic flowers, no.

Why would anybody carry flowers like that.

Why did you put your flowers up to cover your face anyway.

Now, the reference is not that the flowers have been collected from the fake flowers Simi Valley California Hill pretending to be Minnesota from the opening of Little House (at least, that’s just one reference) but rather that Carpenter doesn’t recognize Mark with those. And, besides the odd reason for Mark to cover his face with the flowers, when he shows his face Carpenter makes a startling comment on him.

He can’t have said that.

Now, just to give some context: Merlin Olsen was a 1970s football player who became an actor after retiring from the sport — and in 1977 Landon called him to play the role of Jonathan Garvey on Little House, from the fourth season until 1980, when Olsen left the series to be protagonist on Father Murphy (another TV series created by Landon, but basically nobody watched that one). However, on Little House, the peculiar feature is that he wasn’t a recurring character from the book like many; rather, Landon called him when French abandoned the series to be on Carter Country (as it’s already been mentioned here), even though French was already set to keep on playing the character in the fourth season as well. So, Landon decided to abruptly cut out French and his character’s family from the series and created Olsen’s character as a surrogate version of the character French used to play (basically replacing him), with both characters having similar traits and living in the same house.

Actually, at the beginning of the fourth season, they introduced Olsen’s character just like that, implying he has always been on the series as the only family friend, as French and his family never existed in the first place. And there are some weird theories about the two characters that are never shown in the same episode, so only one of them can exist at the same time. Anyway, what matters for this episode is that they are basically telling French that he looks like the actor that took his role on Little House 8 years earlier. Even though he couldn’t tell it because Mark was hiding behind the flowers and the beard, and that’s just an excuse for putting this reference.

That was so random, very likely it’s just because the writer (the highwayman, of course) wanted to show off that he made some research on Landon’s career to impress him.

Unless it were an improvisation by the actor, and he caught off guard everybody.

Even though nobody gets it, except Jonathan, who is the only one laughing at this.

But the most important thing is that, if Carpenter is making a direct reference to Little House, it implies that series exists and the characters know it. That’s something that would be further confirmed in the second direct reference to Little House, that will occur in the fifth season.

It’s weird, because on that second reference in the fifth season Mark is going to make it, so he has to know that series. Yet he doesn’t seem to get it now. Or he’s deliberately ignoring it.

Punchline: when Mark reads Jonathan an interview about the player, who seemingly recovered from his injury, Jonathan warns him that, while talking to journalist, people make it seem like it’s all great and hide their true feelings.

That’s quite a bold statement, and addresses a problem with current American journalism, where everything tends to be staged to make it seem like everything’s perfect, likely with the purpose of showing how ideal the life of an actor is to the audience. I mean, when was the last time in an American TV interview where an actor opens up about something personal, or sheds a tear. Rare, if not impossible. And that’s partly what both Landon and French called out in their interviews, stating that it’s the whole Hollywood system that hides the people’s real feeling behind their public image, and that creates deviations of a person’s life. For instance, by the time he presented Highway to the press (as revealed by The Tampa Tribune article on that), Landon was attacked by a journalist who believed an actor like him didn’t know anything about life of “real people” (an idea that in part stems from interviews where actors are forced to hide their true feelings as a form of protection, exactly what people like that journalist would tell them).

When it comes to acting, French discussed the destructive consequences of such view in The Brightest Star episode, and in multiple interviews, where he reportedly felt uncomfortable whenever somebody recognized him on the street and told him he was more important because he’s a famous actor, while other people are “just” people.

The Job: now, it’s assistant equipment manager, likely taken out of Jonathan’s special references.

Jonathan wouldn’t like what Mark thinks about equipment manager here.

Curiously, Mark is taken as sportswriter.

Actually, just a couple of episodes back, Mark was actually a sportswriter. Maybe Carpenter recognized him from the fictional Tucson Tribune, but he never read any of his article, or he’d know that they are actually about the government (more details at the “Blooper” entry of that episode). This series is really mocking journalists in many way.

They only write the same thing, which is what the readers want to.

The “Stuff” Powers: Jonathan uses it only once, when someone calls him on the phone, and he already knows who that is, and smiles when Mark asks how he could know that.

Friendly Jonathan: there’s one instance at the conclusion. As they are driving back at night, Jonathan tells Mark he has a feeling something is wrong and wants to go another way.

Now, it’s unclear what Jonathan means when he says that, whether he’s using the Stuff or the superior is telling him what to do (the last time he said something like that was to warn Mark on Halloween night, and he was right). However, why he’s forcing his friend to come with him that late at night just for a feeling, instead of taking Mark’s car and go there without him. Because Jonathan might be an angel, but Mark isn’t (at least, yet) and he has some needs like sleeping after a demanding job.

Mark is so tired he forgot that Jonathan doesn’t have to sleep, but that’s precisely the point.

Of course, juts like on the Halloween night, Jonathan was right this time too, as, the doctor was driving drunk and had an accident. But the problem is that he didn’t need Mark for that: he could have used Mark’s car without him and go find the doctor, or he could have even used the power to vanish and instantly locate the doctor (something similar will actually happen in the fourth season). Instead, he didn’t, and he just had to force his worn out friend to come with him, and even let him do the driving, potentially causing another accident.

That goes for Mark, too.

Ratings: 36 million audience. 5th Weekly programs, 1st TV genre show.

This episode aired on December 18, just one week before Christmas; it was the last new episode that aired in 1985, and then the series took some two weeks break and resumed airing the second half of the season by January of the following year (exactly as they did on December 1984 on Season 1). Usually, on this time of the year there’s a Christmas Special (that was the case in season 1, and it will also be in the future seasons). But, for some reasons, Highway didn’t have a Christmas Special in the second season (the only season to skip it), so they made this instead — an episode about drugs that was produced three months earlier. Not really the kind of Christmas episode people wanted to see — but maybe they did put it off because The Monster was even less about Christmas than this assignment.

Yet, people didn’t really care about Christmas episode in a Christian show, and this episode scored not as high as The Monster Part 2 (but that was quite obvious, considering that’s currently the most watched episode of the series so far) yet kept up with very impressive ratings, even ranking first as the most watched show of the week (although it’s largely because the two TV shows that almost always got ahead didn’t air that week). Those ratings made this episode both the most watched sport related one and the most watched show about drugs of the entire series. So, maybe it was a good move to skip Christmas that year.

Actually, they didn’t completely forget about it: one week later, exactly on Christmas Day 1985, they aired back the Christmas Special of Season 1, and, odd enough, the second time the ratings even improved on its original airing one year earlier. That’s a further confirmation of how the series, despite the ratings of the first half of the first season, was experiencing a sudden, greater popularity now.