Season 2 Overview

Airdate: 04/02/1986

Directed By: Michael Landon

Even the second season of Highway is about to conclude, and just like in the first season at this same point, they’ve included an episode about family issue and elderly people, and with the same actor too.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both an elderly writer and his grandson find a subject to write about in their upcoming books.

It’s a double assignment, but a peculiar one: it sounds like an elderly folk and family issue assignment too. Basically, an aging writer, Frank, quit writing many years earlier — and is resented by his his grandson Todd for his his lack of passion.

But then Todd, an equally fictional writer too, keeps on writing books he despises just because he’s forced to by his editor — and Frank equally resents him for his lack of courage.

So, Jonathan and Mark need to help them both write the best book of their careers (and maybe help them strengthen their relationship and Todd’s one with his wife too, or it wouldn’t be a family issue assignment). But, in order to do that, they take them to the island Frank spent his childhood in.

And where Frank’s late girlfriend spies on him before each commercial break.

Or maybe it’s just Jonathan playing with his head.

• Background

The island where the assignment takes place is never specified: at the beginning, upon showing Jonathan and Mark working at the bay, there’s a sign indicating three different destinations.

Now, “Cliffside Island” is a general, random, fictional name (like the “Parkview Retirement House” in season 1). Then, “Bayshore Cove” is both a “mobile RV park” in Tarpon Spring, Florida (it doesn’t sound like an island), and a real place in Winnipeg, Canada, which could be possible (even by assuming Jonathan and Mark moved to another state), yet, again, it’s not an island. So, they are both equally unlikely.

Instead, “Stony Pointe” is both a neighborhood in Virginia and an equally implausible town of New York. It seems none of them is the right place.

But the episode was produced in California, so they are likely there.

Anyway, the timespan of the assignment is unclear: at the beginning of the episode, Todd reveals while talking to his wife that they are planning to move to the island for one month.

However, it’s unclear and quite unlikely they are actually going to stay that long, or at least that Jonathan and Mark will work with them for that long. That’s especially because the assignment concludes quite unexpectedly, when Frank mysteriously disappears after writing the book. So, it’s more likely that it takes one week or ten days, as usual.

• Characters

The episode has some peculiar reaction by Jonathan and Mark in their approach to the assignment. For instance, right at the start, Jonathan is reading a book by Frank, probably to get familiar with him.

Now, the problem is not that Jonathan has just discovered a passion for reading (similarly to the way he discovered to be particularly sensible to antisemitism one episode ago), but rather what he does next: he looks up at the sky, seemingly to talk to his superior.

Because he usually doesn’t, right.

Now, besides this whole ridiculous idea that Jonathan has to look up at the sky and talk out loud to his superior (making him look like some lunatic, as in The Last Assignment), instead of just doing it telepathically (as it is implied he does every time he receives an assignment), this moment is unnecessary.

The problem is that Jonathan has never done that before: sometimes, when he receives an assignment, he looks up at the sky the moment he receives, but he doesn’t make any comment about it. Instead, now, he has to specify that he’ll do his best for this assignment, even though he has never specified that before. So, either this assignment is particularly difficult, or Jonathan has never done his best.

And that’s why after 40 years you’re still on probation.

Instead, Mark’s character is essentially left in the background, interacts just once with Todd and Frank, and then completely disappears for the rest of the episode. So, his character is essentially useless—except for driving the boat.

And where did he learn how to do that is a mystery.

Anyway, Mark’s little contribution to the assignment is basically the same as every episode written by Lan O’Kun (again, that man writes like a highwayman, who doesn’t know what to do with him).

However, there’s a part in which Mark’s behavior is weird: he’s mostly left in the background because he’s supposedly repairing the boat that took Frank and Todd to the island, and that Jonathan warns him must be sealed well because it’s going to rain soon — yet it never seems to.

So, Jonathan gets mad.

A probationary angel, actually.

The odd part is that Mark should have learnt that by now: in the first season, Jonathan warned Mark to be cautious in the relationship with Stella on Help Wanted: Angel and when eventually they broke up, Mark admitted that taught him he’d better listen to an angel the next time.

But there’s another odd part: when Jonathan leaves, Mark shouts him all the way out.

But this shouldn’t be new by now either: Jonathan even told Mark in the Pilot that he often makes mistake (specifically when pointing out making a gift to Leslie as one), but he’s allowed to make them in order to learn. Also, that was the same lesson Mark taught Jonathan in One Winged Angels, when Jonathan used the Stuff against his assignment and Mark pointed out that, as a probationary angel, he can make mistakes too.

The idea that Jonathan can make mistkaes is even more apparent in The Secret (or he couldn’t have fought the thugs) and The Last Assignment (or Harold wouldn’t be allowed to use the Stuff).

So, there’s no need to remark that “even an angel can make mistake”; unless here they were implying about angelic knowledge (here, that Jonathan believes it’s going to rain), and not angelic behavior.

• Production and Setting

The episode was written on January 1986, although some parts were changed in the new version dated two weeks later, and it was produced in early February, likely for eight days.

Ads for the setting: the episode was produced in Morro Bay, a seaside town which is used as the fictional, mysterious island.

Curiously, Morro Bay it’s just a coastal town, not an island. So, when at the beginning of the episode the characters sail away to get there, Mark probably turned the boat around, and they didn’t go anywhere.

Glossary

Highway actor: in the episode, the character of Frank is played by Lew Ayres, who should ring a bell. He had already appeared in the season 1 episode The Right Thing, about a grandpa competing in a race with his grandson after being placed in an elderly care facility. He was quite an unusual figure in Hollywood (more details about him here, at the “Actors” entry). Before Highway, he had already appeared in Little House for a season nine episode (with French and without Landon), where he played a senior townsfolk running for mayor.

Then, in 1985 he made that episode about the grandpa sent to an elderly care facility in the first season of Highway.

And one year later he’s back for season two.

And both times in an family issue episode playing a grandpa put on a care facility by his family (although now it’s by his grandson, who is not played by Matthew Laborteaux anymore). And both episodes airing on March, at the end of their corresponding season. At least, the first time he was directed by French, while now he works under Landon as director.

That would not be the last time: Ayres will appear again in one episode of the fifth season, which is going to be (again) an old folks assignment, but without any family issue then. Maybe Landon thought Ayres looked good as an old folk struggling with problems related to his age. Or maybe Landon was impressed by his long, peculiar career.

Anyway, with three appearances on three different episodes, Ayers is the most recurring Highway Actor of the entire series (alongside David Spielberg); and each time playing an important role in the assignment too.

Recycle: the episode has a very unusual triple recycle by David Rose, both from two different episodes in the first season of Highway, combined with one from the eight season of Little House, all at the same time. At the conclusion of the episode, when Frank and Todd are separately reading each other’s manuscripts (Todd with his wife while Frank alone at his home), David Rose decides to set the two scenes apart by playing a different score each time they jump from grandpa reading to grandson doing the same, intercepted with a mellow sound to indicate they are moving from one character to another.

The odd part is that the compositions (the one playing while Frank reads and the one that abruptly plays for Todd) are both recycles: the score that plays while the grandpa is reading at his home (which is also played all over the episode when he has the hallucinations) is the the same one of A Match Made In Heaven, used in the time-compressing scene when Scotty and Diane are at the beach.

It’s been slightly altered, but it’s pretty much the same.

Instead, the composition that plays while the grandson is reading the book by the fireplace is the same one used at the conclusion of Help Wanted: Angel, during Mark and Stella’s wedding by the beach. And curiously, that same score had already been recycled in One Winged Angels too.

The producers must have liked it.

He’s moved by that composition too.

However, they are not the only recycle: that melody that plays when fading from grandpa to grandson and back is the same one of the Christmas special episode of Little House in the eight season — the episode where the characters gather around and each one sharing the best Christmas of their life, with a flashback playing to show it; and that music was used each time someone concluded the flashback, to come back to present.

So, this episode has a triple recycle (the only episode of the series to have this in the same scene), all of them by Rose. Because he had no reason to create three different scores when he could recycle old ones from his long career. And, of course, he chose to recycle from Help Wanted: Angel again (the third time he used a music from that episode). He probably realized that’s the episode where he did best — and was likely much annoyed by its ratings (the least watched episode of both the first and second seasons).

Also, this was the fourth episode of the series to recycle from Help Wanted: Angel and the fifth time a feature from that episode is recycled again (considering that One Winged Angels recycled two different compositions from there). And it won’t be the last either (it’s the most recycled episode of the entire series). Considering that episode is the least watched of the series (so far), the only reasonable explanation is that they were annoyed by the ratings that didn’t match the effort they put in there, so they just recycled it all over, maybe thinking that nobody remembered that.

Friendly Jonathan: there’s one moment at the beginning, when Mark tries to fix the boat while Jonathan sits reading a book.

Now, it would already be much friendly of Jonathan to read the book instead of helping his friend: he could have read the book any moment (like at night, when Mark is asleep), yet he probably ordered his friend to fix the boat while he immediately sat there. But Jonathan is even more of a friend when he asks Mark to try again.

And the angel is right.

Cute.

Highway Of Mysteries: there’s one about Frank’s house. Basically, Jonathan shows it to him, there seems to be nothing wrong.

However, the moment the grandson and his wife see it, the house turns out to be a wreck.

Jonathan is playing with your mind.

Now, Jonathan explains Mark the reason behind it.

But problem that Frank later invites Jonathan and Mark to have dinner there.

In that wreck?

And Jonathan even accepts it.

Now, it’s already hard to believe that Mark would come along too, knowing how the place really looks like, yet the problem is that now it looks as Frank sees it.

Maybe Jonathan used his power to temporarily make it look that way because It’s implausible that the house looks that way only to Frank, while Mark are just pretending there’s nothing wrong. Unless Jonathan is manipulating his friend’s mine too, and making him believe the house looks like Frank remembers it. That’s plausible: Jonathan has already messed up with Mark’s mind on multiple occasions (as in Going Home, Going Home and To Bind The Wounds).

The “Stuff” Power: it’s unclear exactly when Jonathan uses it for the assignment. In some instances, he clearly pulls a few tricks—like when Frank’s grandson burns his manuscript, and Jonathan materializes it so Frank can still read it.

And Jonathan creates a new one so the grandpa can read it.

However, some moments in the episode remain unclear. For instance, when Jonathan is arguing with Mark over the looming storm, then Jonathan walks away as Mark laughs off, and it suddenly starts raining.

That seemingly implies that Jonathan made it rain. Although manipulating the weather seems like too powerful of a feat for any angel.

Then there’s the matter of Frank seeing his late girlfriend.

It’s unclear whether these were just visions or hallucinations, or if Jonathan was using the Stuff to make them happen on him. It could be the case, since the visions ultimately motivate Frank to start writing again, which was the reason of the assignment. But it could also be, as Mark says, that Frank is simply going crazy. Maybe he was just a crazy old man all along.

The Job: they work as sailors, and similarly to The Torch (which was also written by Lan O’Kun), the episode begins as they are already on the job. So, it’s unclear how they got it in the first place, nor whose boat is that.

Epilogue: in the episode, there’s a final voice-over by Jonathan explaining that both Grandpa and Grandson’s book will be eventually published (which is basically another way to show off he successfully concluded the assignment).

And it wasn’t even supposed to be that way: apparently, in the script dated January, the episode was supposed to conclude with “a couple” shown while “discussing the exceeding merits of the book which one of them has read” (as the script put it), while Jonathan observes the couple and then glances up and faintly smiles, without saying anything. However, for some reason, they altered the ending to this instead, Jonathan’s voice explaining the books’ great popularity — which just means people bought them, but that doesn’t even imply these books are actually good too. In that case, the whole assignment would just turn out to be useless.

Anyway, that’s the third time in the series an episode concludes with a voice revealing the consequences of the assignment: the other episodes are Help Wanted: Angel (with Jonathan) and Bless The Boys In Blue, although on that one there was Mark’s voice.

Ratings: 31 million audience. 19th weekly TV programs, 4th TV genre show.

This aired on April 1986, skipping two weeks from its preceding episode. But that was not improvised: when the season is approaching the conclusion, the networks begin airing the rerun of the season and scatter the last new episodes every once in a while, usually until May (that’s the same thing they did on Season 1). So, one week after The Torch, they aired a random Bob Hope special and then, the last week of March, they officially started the rerun of this season, beginning with A Song for Jason (airing both part the same night).

Then, in early April, they put this. So, during the Spring, the programs begin losing ratings, and combining it with a two week skip (which is usually harmful for the rating), the week it aired this episode suffered a little: actually, it ranks as the least-watched episode of the season up to that point. However, this is still a strong number—especially when compared to Season One, in which fewer than ten episodes reached those ratings. And it’s also good, considering the ratings during that time.