Season 2 Overview

Airdate: 02/19/1986

Directed By: Michael Landon

Finally, another episode about Vietnam. It seems like there has to be one in every season—maybe it’s one of Landon’s recurring obsessions.

Complete show available here

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a man raise funds in order to establish a scholarship in honor of his late son.

The assignment is different from many other for multiple features: an elderly pilot named Timothy Sr. is attending the funeral of his son Timothy Jr. (again), who was killed during the Vietnam war and whose body was only recently carried back home.

Yet another episode where father and son have the same name, although it’s not a family issue now.

However, nobody attends the funeral (except Jonathan and Mark, because that’s the assignment), and Timothy Sr. confesses he fears his son died in vain.

That’s what they are making a Vietnam War episode for.

So, the assignment (and the episode) is actually about helping the country finally deal with the war.

In order to accomplish that purpose, Jonathan proposes launching a scholarship in Timothy’s name. It might sound like An Investment In Caring (helping some elderly folks find money to save their homes) more than a Vietnam assignment. But it is that.

• Background

The timespan of the episode is one week (as long as they wait for people to remember Timothy Jr. before Jonathan makes something about it), as most assignments, although it’s unclear when it takes place.

The setting, instead, is not California for once: the air Force Base where Timothy Sr. lives inside his plane is in Tucson, so likely most of the assignment takes place there as well. Not that they have never set an episode there before though.

• Characters

The episode makes one revelation about Jonathan, and a huge one about Mark’s life before the series. At the beginning of the assignment, when Jonathan and Mark introduce themselves to Timothy at the wake, Jonathan reveals that he knew the kid from the service.

Now, it’s rather plausible that Jonathan has never met the kid, and he’s just pretending as part of the assignment (which means that Jonathan is allowed to lie occasionally). Either way, that’s the second time in the series Jonathan mentions serving in the Vietnam War (of course, the first time was yet another Vietnam episode). So, maybe Jonathan lied both times, as part of the assignment (more details about Jonathan’s lies here), or maybe Jonathan actually served in the war, as a soldier or something (which means that angels can operate in other countries too).

Similarly to Jonathan’s weird role in the war, there’s an important aspect about Mark’s life too: in the episode The Good Doctor, he had already brought up that he was in the Army (actually, it will turn out it’s the Navy), and now he adds something more about it. When he goes to the workplace of Timothy’s classmate to talk about the scholarship, he’s asked whether he got drafted in the war.

That’s the only time in the series he ever mentions it. And it’s much relevant for his character: in the Pilot, it was revealed by Leslie (his sister) that he worked as a cop in Oakland for 15 years, then he was suspended because of his drinking and moved in with her, working various jobs for 5 years and getting fired due to his alcoholic behavior; then, Jonathan met him and Mark became an angel’s assistant for the past two years.

Anyway, what’s important to point out is that, if the Pilot takes place in early 1984, and if Leslie’s dates are not an approximation, then Mark must have become an Oakland Cop in 1964 and must have worked there until 1979, when he got fired for his drinking problem. However, the Vietnam War took place exactly on those years (the American strikes began around 1965, and the war concluded ten years later). So, either Mark was in Vietnam between 1954 (when Vietnam was divided into North and South) and 1964 (the years in which the U.S. was only partially involved), or, more likely, Mark joined the war between 1965 and 1975, while he was already working as a cop. If that were the case, then Mark’s 15 years as a cop were not consecutive; instead, he must have joined the cop before 1964. Or maybe the 15 years are just the timespan from 1964 until 1979, but the actual years as a cop are less than those.

Either way, it would be a peculiar aspect of his character: so far, it has always been implied that he had lost faith in people (before Jonathan restored it) because of his years as a cop. However, it is highly possible that his Vietnam experience contributed to that too, even though he has never talked about it. Maybe, his problems with alcohol actually stems from the war, and he started drinking only after coming back from it, when he started noticing the “bad side” of people more often. Or maybe the war only exacerbated his pessimistic attitude and drinking — eventually leading to his suspension. He has never mentioned this detail about the war, nor he’ll ever mention it again or talk about his experience, so it’s unclear whether it played a role in making him what he was in the Pilot before he met Jonathan, and to what extent. But it’s an important detail nonetheless.

• Production and Setting

Unlike many other episodes, the setting is quite different from the usual one: it was produced between California and Arizona (in an article of the San Francisco Chronicle, producer Kent McCray revealed that Arizona had a welcoming environment and the State offered some benefit to TV shows produced there). In particular, the Air Force Base where Timothy Sr. has his airplane in is the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson; so, not a fictional set (which would have been probably too expensive).

Instead, the rest of the episode is back in California; for instance, Timothy’s funeral takes place at the Rosedale Cemetery of Los Angeles, which should sound and look familiar.

That’s the same graveyard they used in the episode An Investment In Caring, where they showed Helen’s late husband is buried, alongside Paul’s late wife.

And where Jonathan and Mark sneakily spied on them at the conclusion.

Anyway, it’s weird: that episode supposedly took place in New York, or somewhere in the East Coast (more details about the background here), but this episode is in Tucson, the other coast. Maybe some other big corp (not Halstead) eventually bought the cemetery despite Helen’s effort, and they moved it away.

Instead, as for the production: the script is was completed on December 17, 1985 by Dan Gordon, and the production began in 1986, on January 6, and took one week to complete. It was the first episode of the series to be produced on the new year, after taking the usual three week break for the Christmas Holiday — while The Last Assignment was finished on December (with the exception of that scene at the motel where they watch a baseball game, which was added later). After the holiday, they had to get ready for the final rush, producing the remaining episodes consecutively — without taking a single day break — all the way until early March, when they concluded the season.

Curiously, this episode was directed by Landon, and not French, unlike As Difficult As ABC, the first episode they made after the Christmas holiday in 1985 for the first season. That’s weird, because usually (at least in the first season), they were alternating each other (French usually made one episode every two or three of Landon), and the same was happening early this season.

Now, French last directed Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind (which was produced on November) and Landon made the following three episodes. So, if they were to keep the same arrangement as in Season one, then French should have directed this episode — but he didn’t, for some reason. The odd thing is that the next episode French would direct is Children’s Children, which was made in late February. So, it’s not like he didn’t do this episode and was given the following one; rather, he just skipped one episode he was set to direct, and would make the next one almost two months from then. And, by the end of the season, French would have directed five episodes, one less than season one. Thus, it is plausible that French was originally set to direct this, but quit it for some reason, maybe schedule conflicts — besides his commitment here, he was also promoter of a boxing gym in Van Nuys, as well as drama acting teacher with his own workshop. Or maybe Landon wanted so bad to work with the actor playing Timothy Sr. that he took the duty, even though it wasn’t his turn yet.

Glossary

Angel revelation: the episode has one of the most unusual revelation of Jonathan’s identity to the subject of the assignment in the whole series. He doesn’t actually reveals his identity outright, as in other episode, but it’s implied at the conclusion, when Timothy Sr. wakes up in the hazy plane.

And Jonathan is there too.

He doesn’t look friendly.

Anyway, Jonathan explains that Timothy Sr. has one last mission, and Timothy realizes he’s dying, or something like that. But he doesn’t reveal that he’s an angel and that Timothy was his assignment (as Jonathan has always done so far). It could also be that he’s dreaming, and Jonathan got into Timothy’s dreaming too, or maybe Timothy Sr. is just having a dream about Jonathan, the man who has been helping him with the scholarship for one week now.

It’s odd that a man who has bee skeptical up until a moment ago, now believes in something, without considering he’s dreaming or something.

Either way, this marks the first episode of the series where Jonathan makes the Angel Revelation at the conclusion of the episode — rather than the beginning, when he introduces himself to the subject of the assignment. There’s just another episode in the whole series in which he does the same, keeping the revelation for the conclusion.

Highway Actor: the character of Timothy Sr. is played by Eli Wallach, an experienced stage actor.

During his long career, he had already worked with Landon in Sam’s Son, the autobiographical movie about Landon’s life as a teenager. There, Wallach played the titular Sam, who is a partly inspired by Landon’s own father.

And he’s a Highway actor too: he would appear again on Highway during an episode in the third season. Curiously, on that occasion he’ll be playing again an afflicted father who argues with everyone over his son. Also, on that episode there’s going to be his wife, Anne Jackson, a stage actress as well, who also appeared on Sam’s Son as Landon’s mother.

Friendly Jonathan: one instance, when Mark asks Jonathan to turn off the light.

And Jonathan replies as any good friend would here.

Cute, Jonathan.

The Stuff Powers: in order to make people remember Timothy and make them contribute, Jonathan uses the Stuff to invade their dreams, taking Mark with him. That’s the third time in the series Jonathan gets into someone’s head: the first time was Eddy’s dream in the Christmas Special, the second in Mark’s (likely) hallucination Going Home, Going Home; and it’s the second time Mark tags along.

He won’t, with the light on.

Anyway, the episode reveals some more details explaining how the Dream Stuff works: one is given when Mark enters into the dream of Timothy’s classmate, he explains the whole thing by implying that their dreams are shared, somehow.

That means that Mark isn’t really interrupting that man’s dream, but they are both dreaming right now.

The second detail is that, when Mark is inside the dream, he’s perfectly aware of what he has to do (he warns that man that it’s juts a dream, he knows that the door of the closet now leads to the draft board), but when he wakes up the next morning, he only complains about the light, and seems oblivious of his experience inside another man’s dream.

That already occurred in Another Song For Christmas, when he woke and said he had a dream about “whizzing around” but was unaware it was Eddy’s dream, although while inside the dream, he knew everything (like that he was the ghost of Christmas Present).

So, apparently, whenever Jonathan forces Mark to enter someone’s dream, Mark forgets everything by the next day. Maybe it’s because he’s not an angel— because just being able for a man to access someone’s dream is already stretching the rules, and Mark can’t remember anything about it (while Jonathan can). Still, it remains a mystery how Mark always seems to know exactly what to do in the dream. Maybe he temporarily becomes an angel. Or maybe Jonathan is taking advantage of him without his permission. That would make the whole episode a friendly Jonathan instance.

And you didn’t even ask for his permission before putting him into some random guy’s dream.

Anyway, much of the dreams are similar to Eddy’s one: there are doors that supposedly lead some place.

But they lead somewhere else.

And there are people slowly evaporating away.

However, there are also some differences now: the most important one is that they do not get into one person’s dream, but rather multiple dreams at the same time — or so it seems. In particular, Jonathan appears in a dream with the elderly lady, while Mark in the dream with Timothy’s classmate; but neither of them appear in the first dream, of a soldier who was saved by Timothy, but who never knew it.

And where a random kid shoots around with a fake gun.

That’s acceptable just because they are in a dream, but it really undermines the credibility of the setting.

Anyway, neither Jonathan nor Mark appear there: it’s just that kid having a dream (or experiencing a memory) of the war. But, if Jonathan caused him to have that dream (in order to make him remember Timothy and convince him to help them with the scholarship), then it means that Jonathan can manipulate other people’s dreams without necessarily being part of them. Or maybe that kid’s father (who was visited by Jonathan earlier) brought that up to his son, causing him to have a dream about the war at the same time.

But it’s likely that Jonathan can manipulate multiple drams at the same time. That’s apparent at the conclusion of the episode, when everyone gathers around the aircraft and to honor the kid.

In the episode, they only show Jonathan and Mark altering three dreams (and getting into two of them), not the dreams of those people. It can be explained by presuming that they actually entered all those people’s dreams, yet they only show two of them, or that they only entered the head of two of them (the classmate and the lady), while they only manipulated the dreams of everyone there (similarly to what they did with the fellow soldier) without actually invading it. Or maybe only those three people had that dream, and they just talked about it to the rest of them. Either way, the whole premise is quite odd: those people gather around and discover they made a dream about the same kid. If they talked about it to someone else, they would probably be seen as mad. Also, dreams usually warp memories, so how come anyone is so sure they didn’t just go crazy from guilt or suggestion: they were all told by an angel about a scholarship, and then they all dream about it—it’s surreal enough to make anyone question their sanity.

Then, it’s unclear whether Jonathan uses the Stuff on Timothy too, when he dies at the end and has a vision about driving the airplane.

Something similar occurred during To Touch The Moon, at the conclusion.

Ratings: 37 – 38 million. 11th tie Weekly programs, 3rd TV genre show.

As sad as this episode was, it still struck a hopeful tone—and probably benefited from the positive streak of the preceding ones. So far, every episode following Change Of Life settle at more than 22 ratings point, and this wasn’t any exception: it aired one week later managed to draw almost 37 million viewers — the fourth in a row to do so. Sadly, though, it would also be the last episode of the series to achieve that kind of success. From the next episode, the popularity of the season will gradually be more like the early episodes (which is good all the same).