Not a regular episode. Instead, considering the first half of the second season is concluded, it’s time to discuss an important aspect of the series: the assignment. It’s a very important feature of each episode, and after almost two seasons it is finally possible to give specific indication. The assignments have already been defined in the Glossary and the Guidelines and Map, and they remain valid throughout the whole series; here’s something more specific.

Assignments: the very definition of assignment is never given in the series. Apparently, it’s the task that Jonathan’s superior gives him to carry out in each episode. However, it remains unclear whether Jonathan receives detailed, direct orders outlining what to do each time, or if he’s only given general directions—such as where to go or who to talk to—and then left to figure out the rest on his own. Or maybe it’s both.

Neither is clear the way Jonathan receives the assignment: occasionally, he’s shown looking at the sky, but only early in the first season.

He does the same thing in case he has to talk to his superior.

However, in the fourth season it’s revealed he has a radio in his jacket, which allows him to be in touch with other angels whose job is finding the proper angel to handle an assignment (likely, those receive instruction from their superior to do that).

Also, it’s unclear whether the assignments are determined in advance, or if they are improvised; for instance, in Bless The Boys In Blue it seems like the assignment partly stems from Mark telling Jonathan about what’s like to be a cop, and then their superior made it an assignment. That might imply that, if Mark had never disclosed his opinion, maybe they wouldn’t have had any assignment in the first place — at least the cop part, not the man who killed a kid.

Every assignment is different, but there are some recurring features:

• Bums, the subject of the episode is some homeless (as in The Banker And The Bum or Wally);
• Doozy, the assignment revolves around helping some annoying kid (for example, The Brightest Star);
• Drugs: the assignment is about dope, medical prescriptions and other “stuff” (like in Plane Death or The Good Doctor);
• Bins, the assignment revolves around pollution (like Gift Of Life);
• Illness, the subject of the assignment is a character suffering from some illness, and Jonathan and Mark need to support the character or the family (as in To Touch The Moon);
• Family Issue, the assignment is about helping some family that is facing some problems and is drifting apart for some reason (for instance, in The Secret and One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade) or, alternatively, about reconciling parents and children (as in Cindy) and, sometimes, grandparents too (Going Home, Going Home);
• Love assignment, the purpose is to get two people fall in love (like in A Match Made In Heaven and One Winged Angels);
• Old Folks, the subjects of the assignment are some elderly people, and the assignment somehow revolves around being old (for instance, in The Right Thing);

The most recurring ones are the Bums, Bins and Drugs (also knows as the Three Landon’s obsessions, as they are featured in almost any episode of the series, mostly presented in drastic ways). Most episodes feature “bums” walking around the characters or just randomly appearing in the background (even when they are not the subject of the assignment); same with “bins“, that always surround the characters, particularly when they are walking downtown (even though pollution is not the subject of the episode). Instead, the “drugs” assignments are featured all through the series, most of the time drugs play a central role in the episode (unlike bins or bums, that are often featured in the background when they are not the subject of the episode), and they are often described as the most urgent problem the country is facing right now (by then); similarly, pollution is considered one of the most serious, impending issue, but there are not as many episodes about it as drugs ones. The “Bums” are never described in the drastic ways of Drugs and pollution, yet they are prominently feature in the series on multiple episodes.

Of course, some assignment may combine multiple features (like A Child Of God, both an illness and a Family Issue assignment, or the Season one finale, which had almost all of them).

For most assignments, Jonathan and Mark are required to take a job in order to get to the person they have to help. In those occasions, they might be hired without references by proving they are adequate enough for the job. That’s likely because they are following Jonathan’s preaching in the Pilot that references are worthless.

Most of the times, however, they are required some, and Jonathan uses his powers to fake some references (one instance here). It’s unclear whether the references are somewhat truthful to the characters’ biography or if they are completely made up (for instance, in Bless The Boys In Blue, where they take Mark’s old job, they might have mentioned he used to be a cop). However, it’s likely they use fake references, or they’d have to mention each time that Mark was suspended from the force due to his alcoholism. That would make it harder to get hired for anything.

On some rare occasion, the job is the actual assignment, and getting to work is the only task they have (for instance, in the episode Hotel Of Dreams). Again, it’s unclear if, on those instances, they are actually told what to do after getting the job (in the case of Hotel Of Dreams, that there are two characters that have to fall in love, and there’s a doozy kid that needs to be straightened out).

However, on most occasions, the assignment is related to a person Jonathan and Mark have to help in some way, and the job they might work on is just the way to get to that person (basically, in any episode). In those cases, the assignment might involve one person, or more than one. Usually, when multiple subjects are involved, the assignment might be about a person’s problem that somehow involves other people (like in The Brightest Star), or be about people with disparate problems — and Jonathan and Mark approach the task in many ways: sometimes, Jonathan handles the bigger assignment and Mark the smaller one (as in the first season episode One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade, but the reverse does happen too). Otherwise, they can work on the assignment equally (as in A Song For Jason in Season 2).

Of course, on most episodes they give different contribution to an assignment (as in The Monster, where Mark never interacts with the subject of the episode), but at least they are both there. Instead, very rarely, there are episodes where the assignment is carried out entirely by either Jonathan or Mark without one another; that’s mostly because one of them is sent away for some reasons (the assignment in The Secret is entirely worked on by Mark, while Jonathan is summoned in Heaven for using the Stuff against the superior’s will).

In many episodes they do not personally know who they are assigned to help, but there are some episodes revolving around somebody they already know, whether it’s a friend (Mark’s colleague in Plane Death) or a relative, for example, Mark’s cousin in A Match Made In Heaven or Jonathan’s wife in Keep Smiling (at least the one he had before his probation).

There are some rare cases where the assignment is partially or entirely about either Jonathan or Mark (in season 1, the episode Help Wanted: Angel was partially about Mark, and Going Home, Going Home was entirely about him), even though Mark discussed in One Winged Angels that every assignment is actually in part about them too, as they learn just as much as those they help out each assignment.

There are also some episodes where Jonathan and Mark do not receive official assignment. On those occasions, the episode stems from their own initiative to do something about a personal matter (as in here) or it’s their own improvisation, as in the Halloween Special of Season 2, where Mark sells his soul to the Jonathan’s enemy and the “assignment” is to help him take it back (yet another example of assignment in part revolving around one of the protagonists). Actually, the Halloween Special has both an official assignment of helping somebody and the improvised one.

In some episodes, Jonathan and Mark receive the assignments right away (as it happens here), or the episode even begins with them already working on it (as in here), while on other instances, the assignment comes later (one example is Plane Death in season 1).

Assignments Background: it’s unclear how long Jonathan and Mark work on most assignments, but it is possible to work that out by considering the total list of episodes, and the span of four to five years of the whole series. Thanks to that method, it can be suggested that most episodes last 10 days to two weeks, and there are some 3 to four days of downtime between the conclusion of one episode and the beginning of another one. There are some exceptions, of course: the two part episodes are usually longer in spanning than single parts, while the holiday specials are the shortest one (both the Christmas Special of season 1 and 3 and the Halloween Special of season 2 and 4 span a single day).

There are other exceptions: the episode Help Wanted: Angel takes almost two months (one of the longest of the series), and the season 2 episode A Song For Jason at least 2 weeks, while The Banker And The Bum and Bless The Boys In Blue one day.

Also, the assignments are not shown in a chronological order. For instance, The Right Thing is set on March 1984 even though it had been 1985 by some episodes then. However, generally, most assignments from the second season until the fourth one take place around the same time the episode is scheduled to air too. It could also be proposed the series do not show every assignments Jonathan and Mark deal with in their career. That is apparent especially in Going Home, Going Home, which begins in Oklahoma even though the characters were in California.

It is possible that both cases are true: the series do not show every assignment of the series, and the shown one do not follow a chronological order. Another example can be found in Hotel Of Dreams, beginning with Mark complaining he’s been waiting 3 days for an assignment, even though the episode before it concluded with Jonathan telling Mark they had to leave because they had a new assignment (unless waiting three days were part of the assignment too).

Assignments Schedule: this part remains unclear in the series. It’s likely that, in the series, Jonathan and Mark can’t work on an assignment as long as they want to, but rather as long as their superior orders them. That’s apparent in the episode A Match Made In Heaven, where at some point they tell Diane (one of the subject of the assignment) they can’t help her anymore because they have been called to do another job, even though that was the moment she needed them the most. That implies that the span of the assignment is determined by their superior, and they might be interrupted if another assignment pops up.

Also, they never state whether Jonathan and Mark only work on a single assignment at the time, or if there are some simultaneous episodes. It’s likely the case, as supported by the events of A Match Made In Heaven, in which, at some point, Jonathan and Mark disappear for an indefinite amount of time (which is as long as it takes to Scotty and Diane to get together) and then come back at the conclusion. So, it could be assumed they went working on another assignment during that time away. However, this idea is never really confirmed, and there aren’t many references between episodes either. Again, as they never confirm it, there’s not way to know if that’s the case.

Assignment Setting: many assignments are set in the same place they were produced (almost always California or Arizona, the two places production went to the most). In very rare cases, the assignment begins in a place and move to a different one (as in season 2 episode Heaven On Earth, or season three episode Man To Man, set around the country).

Then, some episodes produced in California may take place somewhere else (Going Home, Going Home is set in Oklahoma, while The Smile In the Third Row and in New York), while the episodes produced in Arizona are also set there.

Either way, the episodes set out of California are here.

Sometimes production moved as far as Tucson (for the Pilot, the stadium used in one episode of season two and a few more instances).

True Story Assignments: most of the episodes in the series are fictional. However, there are exceptions: in some cases, the assignments is taken from a book (as in the Christmas Special of season 1, and in parts Cindy in season 2) or another series (like A Child Of God, inspired by a Bonanza show); other episodes, instead, are inspired by the writers’ personal experiences, or they are loosely based on real people’s stories. Even when an assignment is entirely fictional, there may still be either references to the actors’ personal life by taking distance from it, as in Help Wanted: Angel (the complete list of episode with those is here) or, in other cases, draw from some personal experience. For example, one of the three Landon’s obsessions are drugs: out of all the problems they deal with in the series, drugs are considered the most urgent threat to the country, and presented in drastic ways. That will be revealed in many episodes of the series starting from Plane Death in season 1, with a punchline at the conclusion. It will be further emphasized in the third season episode “For The Love Of Larry“, where Jonathan (or Landon, in this case) will tell Mark that every great nation has been destroyed by inner problems rather than outer enemies, and drugs are leading the country to its extinction.

Such drastic view likely stems from Landon’s personal experience: as revealed to the press during the 1984 conference to talk about the series (reported by some newspapers, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer), he confessed that one of his daughter had struggled with drugs and, after that problem he explained that: “There is not a place I go to where I do not get involved with those kids“; then, he added that he gets involved with “Not only children, but with the pathetic old people that nobody cares to watch on Television“. Basically, he’s talking about drugs assignments (like Plane Death) and old folks assignments (like The Right Thing, which he personally wrote too).

But there are some other episodes inspired by a true story. In some cases, the assignment is set in a real context but it has fictional characters (as here, which uses the “Toros” in a fictional episode, or The Torch, which mentioned a real supremacist movement but changed the names of those involved in it). Otherwise, the assignment is not just set in a real context, but it is directly inspired by true stories or events. In the first two seasons of the series, there are only two episodes based on a true story (more will come later). The first one is A Match Made In Heaven, about the actor James Troesh and his marriage to Theresa Troesh, his wife. The episode was also written by the couple, after receiving encouragement by French, and James Troesh even played the protagonist Scotty (at the “Production and Setting” entry of that episode here there’s more about the matter).

The second episode based on a true story is A Song For Jason, which is set in the real Camp Good Times in California, a camp specifically suited for children with serious illness (more details at the “Background” part here). Moreover, some of the characters (including the titular Jason) are inspired by the kids that the writer Dan Gordon met while visiting the Camp to make research on it — while other characters of the episode are played by the ill kid that were attending the camp back then, or by kids who actually suffered from the illness (more details about the titular character of the episode at the entry “Production and Setting” of Part 1, while at the same entry of Part 2 there’s more about the rest of the kids there).

This place will now remain open for any additional material.