The second season of Highway To Heaven ran from September 1985 until May 1986, exactly like the first season.

Overview

Highway To Heaven is a TV series about an angel on probation, Jonathan Smith (played by Michael Landon), sent to Earth to help various people at a crossroad in their life. In his assignments, he’s helped by Mark Gordon (played by Victor French), an reformed alcoholic ex-cop from Oakland (the Pilot), who resolved to join too.

• Opening

The opening for each episode has remained exactly the same. Unlike what occurred for Little House, where David Rose slightly altered the music each season, for the first two seasons of Highway they got stuck with the same opening credit: there’s the sky, Landon in a convicted felony coat drudging alone on a California Highway and suddenly turning around (these scenes were extracted from the Pilot). Now, French is driving his car, the landscape is different (they made it in Arizona), he pulls over Landon getting into the car, they smile at each other and they drive away.

And, just like in the first season, the score used for the opening is a recycle from a Little House episode, “Marvin’s Garden”, which aired on January 1983 (one year before this series began, to be specific).

That’s not the only recycle from Little House on this series, for that matter. But it’s one of the most pervasive recycles, as it plays in every show.

Episodes List:

*indicates the stand-out of the season

**indicates the stand-out of the series

Episodes	Assignments
**A Song For Jason (Part 1 and Part 2)	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to work at a Summer Camp for children with cancer and help them in their daily problems.
**Bless The Boys In Blue	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to work as cops for one day.
Cindy	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help an aspiring actress reconcile with her estranged father.
The Devil And Jonathan Smith	Jonathan and Mark are “assigned” to help a conman repent for his actions and use his knowledge to save Mark from damnation.
Birds Of A Feather	Jonathan and Mark are “assigned” to expose the corruption of a local factory which secretly contaminates the environment, putting the community’s health at risk.
Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a struggling baseball team win the league while giving support to the local neighborhood.
The Smile In The Third Row	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a famous stage actor experiencing mysterious visions.
The Secret	Mark is “assigned” to help his friend’s family who is drifting apart confronting a secret which involves one of them.
The Monster (Part 1 and Part 2)	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both a quadriplegic lawyer and a disfigured sculptor fulfill their aspirations.
The Good Doctor	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both a football player and his doctor’s family that are secretly hooked on medical prescriptions.
Alone	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both a homeless kid and an ill one fulfill their wish of having a family.
Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help an elderly man obtain custody of his grandson after the death of the kid’s parents.
Change Of Life	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a famous actress and Mark to live for one day in each other’s life.
Keep Smiling	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help Jonathan’s wife get through her loneliness.
The Last Assignment	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help an old probationary angel carry out his various assignments to conclude his lengthy probation.
To Bind The Wounds	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a man raise funds in order to establish a scholarship in honor of his late son.
*Heaven On Earth	Jonathan is “assigned” to help Mark come to terms with his guilt over an accident.
Summit	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help an elderly lady find her missing son.
The Torch	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a Jewish activist deal with a group of terrorists.
Sail Away	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both an elderly writer and his grandson find a subject to write about in their upcoming books.
Children’s Children	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help the head of a home for young mothers deal with some pernicious allegations that could ruin her career.
Friends	Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help both a shy girl and a hot-headed baseball player learn to be friends of one another

Disclaimer: the “*” and “**” episodes are the only personal opinion in the Highway To Heaven Cast, which is meant to be informative (hopefully) and, in that light, those episodes only serve as “guide” to the most outstanding episodes. The choice of “*” shows (the best of the season) is made by considering the quality level of most episodes in the season, and singling out those episodes that stand out the most above that. Same procedure with the “**” episodes, chosen by taking the episodes that stand out the most compared to the rest of the episodes in the series, not just of a specific season. The “**” episodes are thus both the best of the season and also among the very best of the series.

Distinction: the number of “*” episodes is not arbitrary, but rather determined by the quantity of episodes that are way better compared to the rest. For this reason, they do not indicate nor signify in any way the quality of a season as a whole: for instance, in a season with many good episode and plenty of very good episodes, all those very good episodes will be * ones, while another season with mostly very good episodes and a single great episode, only that episode will be a * one, yet that doesn’t indicate the first season of the example is better just because it has more * episodes.

Instead, a season with multiple ** episodes is likely a great season as well.

• Season Details

The timespan of this season covers roughly one year. It begins immediately after the conclusion of Season One—presumably in June 1985 with A Song For Jason—and likely continues until sometime in Spring 1986 or later. The exact endpoint is unclear, because the season finale appears to take place in Spring 1986 but concludes before May, while Season Three begins in June 1986 with its first episode.

So, there are three possible ways to justify this: one is that the second season concludes around May, the finale Friends taking place chronologically as the last episode, and the there are two months between the conclusion of the second season and the beginning of the third season. A second way is to consider that the season finale isn’t chronologically the last episode, and there might be some other episodes that aired earlier in the second season but took place at its conclusion. And the third way is exactly the same, but with the third season: its first episode isn’t chronologically the first one to take place, but there’s something on that season that’s set earlier. In that case, the episode Friends is chronologically the last of the season. In any case, Season Two likely spans somewhere between nine months and a full year.

The second season mostly plays out the same way as the first one: the episodes usually begin with Jonathan and Mark driving to their next assignment, then finding the subject of the assignment and taking on a job to approach the subject. So, they work through the assignment and then the episodes conclude with them driving off toward their next. Most episodes took place in California (instead, the list here includes all the episode set somewhere else).

This time, unlike the first season, Jonathan frequently reveals his identity (the “angel revelation“, in the series sometimes defined by Mark as “direct approach“) to the subject of the assignment. In the first season, it just occurred once (episode The Banker And The Bum, excluding the Pilot to Mark), while in the second season it happens on nine episodes. The last revelation of the season is in Summit, but there will be more in the next.

In the season, they explained new aspects of Jonathan’s background: it’s been revealed he was a man, Arthur, and was married to a woman, Jane, before his death and the beginning of his probation, which he has been on for 40 years (episode Keep Smiling); they also revealed new details about the length of a probation for an angel (episode The Last Assignment) and about the rules of The “Stuff” (episodes The Secret and The Last Assignment again).

And they mentioned his wings, the first time in the series (episode The Devil And Jonathan Smith).

Occasionally, the assignment revolves partially or entirely around one of the two protagonists: in particular, Mark was the subject of the assignment in Change Of Life (alongside a woman) and Heaven On Earth (which was exclusively about him). However, on most of the episodes the assignment was about someone else.

Characters: during the season, they met some friends and fellow angels. In particular, Mark found an old colleague who saved his life when they used to work as cops (episode The Secret); that’s the second time in the series Mark introduces one of his real friend to Jonathan (the first time was Plane Death in season one).

Instead, Jonathan found his old wife (episode Keep Smiling), a fellow probationary angel (episode The Last Assignment), and his sworn enemy (The Devil And Jonathan Smith); both his wife (played by Dorthy McGuire) and his enemy will come back again for the fourth season.

As for the old recurring characters, they found Scotty (played by James Troesh) and Diane (played by Margie Impert), in their third and second appearance. Scotty is a quadriplegic attorney introduced in the first season episode One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade, while Diane is Mark’s cousin whom Scotty fell in love with when she was introduced in the first season episode A Match Made In Heaven (based on a true story). Then, they got married and were ready to live their life. Now, they were back (episode The Monster), and with some problems in their domestic life.

But it all worked out fine thanks to Jonathan and Mark, and they will all come back in season three.

Most episodes are fictional assignments or are based on a book (as Cindy, which is a modern take on Cinderella). However, there are three episodes partially or entirely based on a true story: the episode Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks uses a real context (with the image of the Toros, a baseball team) for a fictional assignment; similarly, the episode The Torch makes reference to real events and is supposedly set in a real context (it’s about The Order supremacist movement), but it changes the names of the characters and tells a fictional assignment involving a Jewish activist.

Instead, the only episode of the season completely based on a true story is A Song For Jason: it takes place at the real Camp Good Times, and tells the real story of Jason Haddock and Curtis Shafer, two kids the series headwriter met while making research on the camp for the show (more details at the “Background” and “Production and Setting” entries here).

Season Features: the following is a list of trope and features of the season, with an episode as example. Further explanations at the Glossary and Guidelines, as well as The Assignments list.

• Highway Actors: there are some Highway actors who will return in a future season but have appeared for the first time in the season, including Eli Wallach (To Bind The Wounds), Robin Riker (A Song For Jason) and David Spielberg (The Smile In The Third Row), while highway actors who had already appeared in the first season and made their second appearance this season are Margaret Wheeler (Bless The Boys In Blue) and Lew Ayres (Sail Away); notably, Ayers and Spielberg are the most recurring Highway actors of the series.
• Highway Lifetime: the actors who retired from their acting career after making one episode of Highway (actors like Margie Impert and Lew Ayres are not yet Highway Lifetime, because their last appearance on Highway will be in another season); this season, they are William Cullen (The Good Doctor), Harold J. Stone (Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind), Mary Ann Chinn (The Torch) and Georgia Schmidt (The Last Assignment).
• Highwaymen: episodes written by someone who only contributed to that episode, and then left the series (so, episodes that are not written by Landon, Gordon, Gutierrez or any other recurring writer); this season, there are two episodes written by Highwaymen, The Good Doctor and Heaven On Earth.

Other features:

–Angel Revelation: when Jonathan reveals his identity to the subject of the subject of the assignment (there are multiple instances this season);

–Cute: a recurring catchphrase dropped by Mark when Jonathan annoys him; occasionally, Jonathan drops a cute too (Friends is the only episode this season with such instance).

–Landon’s Sunglasses: episodes in which Jonathan wears sunglasses that likely belonged to Landon too; there are two episodes with those: Bless The Boys In Blue (with the oversized ones) and Keep Smiling (with those goofy ones). There is no other episode in the series in which Jonathan will ever wear any kind of sunglasses anymore.

–Highway Of Mysteries: the episodes with unexplained, mysterious features; the list is here (for example, whether the kid supposed to survive in the Halloween Special, or where Heaven On Earth takes place).

–References: episodes making reference to another series (most of the times to Little House On The Prairie) or to the actor’s life (either French or Landon’s, or both). Some examples can be found in A Song For Jason and The Good Doctor, both making references to Little House (the episodes containing any feature pertaining to Little House are here), or in the Halloween Special, which makes a reference to French and Landon’s personal life by jokingly taking distance from it.

Recycles: episode with a recycled feature (whether a line, an entire scene or just a musical composition) taken from a different episode; for example, the very opening of each episode features the recycle composition from Little House season nine. The episodes with at least one recycle (except the opening, because that’s in every episode) are here.

This season, the episodes with the most recycles are Heaven On Earth (one from Birds Of A Feather and from Help Wanted: Angel) and Sail Away (one from A Match Made In Heaven, then from Help Wanted: Angel and a third one from Little House too).

Instead, there are two episodes (both from season one) whose features have been recycled the most this season: one is Catch A Falling Star, that was recycled in Birds Of A Feather in one scene, Change Of Life in a composition by David Rose, and Cindy for both a scene and a composition. The second episode (from season one as well) is Help Wanted: Angel in one scene (the flying seagull) recycled in The Secret, the opening in Heaven On Earth and a piece in the soundtrack by David Rose in Sail Away; in general, Help Wanted: Angel is the most recycled episode of the series so far (there was already one recycle from it by a season one episode), and it will become the most recycled episode of the series by its conclusion. Curiously, it’s also the least watched episode of both the first and second season.

Epilogue: there are two episodes in the season concluding with either Jonathan or Mark’s voice explaining the audience what followed the assignment. The episodes are Sail Away with Jonathan’s Voice (the second time in the series) and Bless The Boys In Blue with Mark, the only episode of the series with his voice at the conclusion.

Instead, the episodes with at least one blooper can be found here.

Production

The second season of Highway To Heaven was produced over late 1985 and early 1986 to air on NBC at the same time.

• Background

Thanks to the ratings achieved by the first season (particularly in its second half), it was announced in March 1985 that Highway would be renewed for at least three additional seasons (for a total of four in the original plan). Production of the new season began immediately, but this time with several changes to the premise behind the series.

In the first season, most episodes followed a relatively “realistic” approach: the series focused on a probationary angel and his human friend helping people, with Jonathan serving primarily as the “catalyst that brings people together” (as Landon described the character in a 1984 interview with the Tampa Tribune). In many cases, Jonathan’s being an angel was almost irrelevant to the assignment — Landon even explained in the same interview that one of the reasons for making Jonathan an angel was simply to give him more freedom to take on any job needed for the assignment without having to justify it each time.

However, in the second season, they changed the approach: Jonathan’s powers were given a more prominent role, and the assignments increasingly became more “unrealistic” or fantastical. The new approach emphasizing the “angelic” part of the premise rather than the “assignments” one is exemplified by the large amount of “Angel Revelation“: in season one, with the exclusion of the Pilot, there was just one episode in which Jonathan revealed his identity to the subject of the assignment (The Banker And The Bum), while this season he does that in eight episodes. Also, in this season they explored more of Jonathan’s character, revealing parts of his background that remained largely, deliberately mysterious in season one.

And the ratings effectively improved under this new approach, so maybe it was a good choice for the network, at least.

• Schedule

The second season was ordered for 24 episodes as well, including a Holiday Special for Halloween (not for Christmas, the only season without any episode then). The season began its production on July 1985 with the first episode, A Song For Jason, and concluded on early March 1986 with the season finale. Just like in the first season, the producers offered Landon a deal that gave him the entire budget of the season beforehand, and allowed him to freely choose how to distribute it across each episode and for the crew. So, if the season finished underbudget by the end of the production, Landon could have kept the difference for himself, otherwise he would have had to pay with his own money for any exceeding costs. Apparently, this season was completed underbudget and on schedule. According to Landon’s collaborators (Kent McCray is one), instead of keeping the saved difference, Landon decided to equally give the money to the crew members as a raise by the end of the year. At least he did that for a good reason, and not like Melvin Rich and Honest Eddy in the series.

Just like the first season, most episodes were produced in California (almost always L.A.) even though the assignment is supposedly set elsewhere. And, just like the first season, the only exception to California were in Arizona, where they produced Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks (using a local baseball team), Heaven On Earth (only the second part) and To Bind The Wounds (only the military air force base).

More details on the schedule: similarly to season one, production began in the summer—though this time they started about two weeks earlier. Each episode typically took one week to ten days to complete, and they produced the episodes consecutively, without taking a single day off between the end of one and the start of the next. So, they completed the first five episodes, up through Cindy, before taking a two-week break in August and resuming later that month. Then, they produced all the episodes of the first half of the season until early November, and paused for one week before starting with the second half later. So, on early November, they began Alone and continued until The Last Assignment on December, when they stopped for three weeks during the Christmas Holidays. Finally, in early January, they resumed production at the same pace of one show for one week, each week, until concluding the season in early March, roughly two weeks before the first season one year earlier.

So, they largely kept the same schedule as in season one: the beginning is in summer, the episodes are produced consecutively with no days off between them, a three week break to take during the first half of the season before November, and an additional three week break in late December, for Christmas. However, there are also some differences: one is that they started two weeks earlier, the second is that they managed to conclude most episodes in just one week (on season one it took 10 days on multiple occasions). Then, instead of taking the three week break in early November after the conclusion of the first half (as they did on season one), they took them separately: two week break in August after just five episodes, and only one week later.

By keeping this pace (starting two weeks in advance) and cutting out two days of production from most episodes, and skipping one week break, they managed to conclude earlier.

Here’s a full breakdown of the chronological production for each episode of the second season.

Important: if the exact date is reported, then it uses as reference the production schedule of each episode, while those with “between” or “early” are approximation considering the production order of the other episodes (not the airing one).

Episode:	By:	Production Schedule:
A Song For Jason	Landon	1985, early July to July 29
Bless The Boys In Blue	French	1985, July 31 to August 7
Cindy	Landon	1985, August 8 to 15
The Secret	Claxton	1985, August 26 to 30
Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks	Landon	1985, September 3 to 10
The Devil And Jonathan Smith	Landon	1985, September 11 to 20
The Good Doctor	Claxton	1985, September 23 to 30
Birds Of A Feather	Landon	1985, October 1 to 8
The Smile In The Third Row	Landon	1985, October 9 to 16
The Monster	French	1985, October 17 to November 1
Alone	Landon	1985, early November to November 10
Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind	French	1985, November 11 to 19
Keep Smiling	Landon	1985, November 21 to December 2
Change Of Life	Landon	1985, December 3 to 10
The Last Assignment	Landon	1985, December 11 to 18
To Bind The Wounds	Landon	1986, January 6 to 14
Heaven On Earth	Landon	1986, January 15 to 22
Summit	Gordon	1986, late January
The Torch	Landon	1986, late January to early February
Sail Away	Landon	1986, early February to February 19
Children’s Children	French	1986, February 20 to 27
Friends	Landon	1986, February 28 to March 7

The shortest span between the conclusion of the production and the airing of the episode is Heaven On Earth, that aired on February 26, approximately one month later. In the first season, the shortest span was just of three weeks.

As it’s apparent by the schedule, the episodes from the first half of the season aired in a different order, while the episodes from the second half only have one exception (Change Of Life preceded Keep Smiling). Apparently, Landon and French kept a similar deal made in season one, where French would direct one episode every two of Landon. However, unlike season one where they helmed all the episodes without anyone else, for this season they brought more collaborators: there are two episodes by William F. Claxton, director of multiple Little House episodes, and there’s one by Dan Gordon, the series headwriter, who occasionally directed some episodes too. This season had more directors than any other of the series. Also, French directed one episode less than he did on season one (it’s unclear whether he had some conflicts or if it was always meant to be that way).

Instead, here’s a full breakdown of the scripts, when available:

• Cindy, June 28, 1985;
• The Good Doctor, September 12, 1985;
• To Bind The Wounds, December 17, 1985;
• Heaven On Earth, January 6, 1986;
• Summit, January 7, 1986;
• Sail Away, January 23, 1986;
• Children’s Children, February 7, 1986;
• Friends, February 25, 1986.

Most episodes were written by Landon or Dan Gordon (the series headwriter). The script for Heaven On Earth was originally written for the first season, but it remained unproduced then and was eventually used in the second season instead.

Anyway, in the first page of each script it’s reported the “Story No.” that supposedly indicates the order in which they were ordered by the production. The last script of the season is Friends, which is marked in the first page as “Story No. 64”, while season one concluded with the Story No. 34 in The Right Thing. So, that means they wrote 30 scripts for this season, and seven of them remained unproduced; adding the 9 excluded scripts from season one (already counting out Heaven On Earth, which was eventually produced this season), it means there are 16 screenplays for Highway that have been written but never produced in these two seasons.

Airings and Ratings

Complete season available here. Important: the available season is the syndicated version that was edited from the original, 1985 one. So, in each episode there’s at least one scene that has been deleted from the original broadcast, which is available on DVD in its unedited version.

Also, the official promotional image used in the syndicated version for this season is not featured in any of its episodes.

Actually, it comes from a season three episode (“Wally“). It’s quite a common practice to promote a season of a TV series using an image taken from a different season.

Anyway, the second season of Highway to Heaven aired on NBC from September 18, 1985 to May 7, 1986, every Wednesday evening, 8:00 timeslot. The airing of the season remained the same as season one: after the conclusion of season one on May 1985, they aired its reruns for the entire Summer. This second season started on September and aired one episode each week, on Wednesday, until December 18, when they stopped for two weeks during the Christmas Holidays upon concluding the first half with The Good Doctor. Then, they resumed on January 8, 1986 with Alone and kept the same schedule as the first half until March, when they officially start airing the rerun of the season for a couple of weeks. So, on late April and early May, the last two new episodes aired, and then they kept on airing rerun all the way until September, when they began the third season.

The only exception in the first half of the season are Bless The Boys In Blue (October 2) and Cindy (October 23), which were three weeks away because NBC aired the MLB baseball games those two weeks. Curiously, they also temporarily interrupted the first season after three episodes back on October 1984 to air the Baseball World Series, yet on that occasion they just skipped one week, not two weeks.

Instead, in the second half of the season (January 8), the only exceptions were between Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind on January 15 and Change Of Life on January 29, as on the week of January 22 the second episode of the special “Missing” aired; curiously, the third episode of that special documentary series would air on Wednesday 23, but on the 10:00 timeslot, not the 8:00 one. It’s unclear why they had it steal the timeslot usually reserved to Highway on January, but then moved it up two hours later on April. The odd part is that the first episode of that three-part special aired on April 1985 (one year before the remaining two), still on the 10:00 timeslot.

Anyway, between The Torch (March 12) and Sail Away (April 2) there’s another two week break: on the first one they aired a Bob Hope Special, while on the second week they aired a rerun of A Song For Jason, the first official rerun of the second season. Finally, after Sail Away, they kept on airing rerun for the rest of April until April 30, when they aired Children’s Children and, the next week, the season finale.

Here’s the official order of rerun for the second season.

1985 (during the two week break for the Christmas Holiday):

• December 25: Another Song For Christmas (season one episode).

In early 1986 (before the season finale):

• March 23, A Song For Jason (both Part 1 and Part 2 the same night).
• April 9, Bless The Boys In Blue;
• April 16, Cindy;
• April 23, Going Home, Going Home (season one episode).

In 1986 Summer (after the season two finale):

• May; The Monster (only Part 1), Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks, Birds Of A Feather.
• June; The Devil And Jonathan Smith, The Secret, Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind, The Smile In The Third Row.
• July; Alone, The Last Assignment, Summit, Heaven On Earth, The Good Doctor.
• August; Friends, Children’s Children, one week skip (airing of a special tribute to a Vietnam War veteran), Sail Away.
• September; To Bind The Wounds, Keep Smiling, Change Of Life.

So, as it’s apparent from the schedule, they aired all the episodes of the second season twice (original airing plus rerun), with the only exception of The Monster Part 2, which aired on December 11 and never had its rerun this season. That’s very weird, because they actually aired Part One on May, but they never followed it with Part Two instead. Those in the audience who watched it then are still waiting now.

Included in the rerun of this season, they also recycled the season one Christmas Special (which originally aired on December 1984) for the 1985 Christmas too; likely it’s because this season mysteriously lacked a Christmas Special (and they didn’t feel like recycling a Little House special, again). Odd enough, this second time it aired right on Christmas Day, and it improved on the ratings compared to its first airing one year earlier — it’s extremely rare to a have an episode scoring better in rerun than in the original premiere. Alongside the Christmas Special, there’s also Going Home, Going Home from season one, the only episode of that season that didn’t have a rerun from spring to September 1985 (the year of season one’s rerun). For some reason it aired this May, during the rerun of the second season — and, odd enough, it was the highest scoring rerun of the 1986 year.

Despite the huge success of the second season in its original airing, its reruns were far less successful than the first season’s ones: that’s further exemplified by Going Home, Going Home (the only episode from season one to air this year) which scored better than any other season two rerun. Also, the last rerun in season one of September 1985 before starting the second season was The Banker And The Bum, which had some 29 million in audience, while the last rerun in the second season was Change Of Life (which is also the most successful episode of the series), that lost some 5 million in audience. They kept the most watched episode of the season as the last, and it didn’t work out as well.

But the rerun of the first season were unusually popular for any TV series at the time, and they successfully built up the audience to the second season.

• Ratings

The season two of Highway To Heaven was extremely popular in ratings. Unlike the first season (which struggled in the first half and vastly recovered in its second), this new season was a greater success right from the beginning, and it largely maintained the same popularity throughout the airing. And, similarly to the first season, the episodes airing from January to May (the second half) even increased the already impressive score of the first one, the months of January and February (from Alone to Heaven On Earth) enjoying the greatest popularity.

So, the first half of the season, from A Song For Jason to The Good Doctor, scored mostly around 20 ratings points (roughly 34 million people), while in the second half it improved to 20.8 ratings point (35 to 36 million). The audience in the second season of Highway spans from 29 million (the season finale, the least watched episode) to 40 million (Change Of Life, the most successful one). Also, Change Of Life remains the most popular episode of the entire series.

Here is the complete ratings of the second season of the series. To give some context: usually, there are around 55 to 65 TV programs airing each week (“Weekly TV program“), and 25 of them are TV drama or procedural (“Weekly TV Show“, as reported here).

Episode	Audience	Weekly TV Program	Weekly TV Show
1985	1985	1985	1985
A Song For Jason Part 1	32 million	6th	1st
A Song For Jason Part 2	36 million	14th	3rd
Bless The Boys In Blue	38 million	8th	2nd
Cindy	32 million	18th	5th
The Devil And Jonathan Smith	33 million	16th tie	3rd
Birds Of A Feather	34 million	17th	3rd
Popcorn, Peanuts And Crackerjacks	33 million	21st	3rd
The Smile In The Third Row	35 million	15th	3rd
The Secret	35 million	14th	3rd
The Monster Part 1	36 million	10th	2nd
The Monster Part 2	39 million	8th	3rd
The Good Doctor	36 million	5th	1st
1986	1986	1986	1986
Alone	39 million	11th	3rd
Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind	34 million	19th	3rd
Change Of Life	40 million	5th	1st
Keep Smiling	38 million	6th	2nd
The Last Assignment	37 million	8th	2nd
To Bind The Wounds	37 – 38 million	11th	3rd
Heaven On Earth	33 – 34 million	16th	2nd
Summit	35 – 36 million	12th	3rd
The Torch	35 – 36 million	11th	2nd
Sail Away	31 million	19th	4th
Children’s Children	32 million	15th	3rd
Friends	29 million	16th	2nd

Figures according to the reports of both the Tampa Tribune as well as here, the same used at the “ratings” entry in each episode.

Disclaimer: the “TV show” category only considers shows classified as Highway (so, “drama” show). That’s because, during those years, the most successful programs were sitcoms, followed by soaps and talk shows, and then by drama. As such, it would be unfair to evaluate the ratings of Highway taken out of context, without realizing how successful it was being that kind of show released during that specific moment. For this reason, the category of Weekly TV genre shows (or “drama”) excludes programs like The Cosby Show, Falcon Crest and Knots Landing (they are still counted as “TV programs); instead, it will include popular drama such as Miami Vice and Riptide. Also, consider that the TV genre show category encompasses procedural, crime and investigative series, which were the most popular genre of Drama back then.

Thanks to the ratings, the second season of Highway To Heaven placed ahead of many of those TV series at the time: it ranked as the 12th most watched TV programs from September to December, and 12th again from January to April in the second half. The actual rating is unclear though: by counting each episode, it should be some 20.6 (approximately 35 million), but the newspaper reports 20.1 instead. Either way, its ranking by the end of the 1985 and 1986 TV year wouldn’t be altered: the series placed 12th as the most watched TV program of the year, and 3rd in TV genre shows.

Just to make a comparison, the first season concluded its first half 27th in TV program, the second 15th and by the end of the year it placed 19th in TV programs and 6th in TV show. Also, the most watched episode of the first season (the Pilot), earned 20.6 ratings, which was surpassed by 13 episodes this season. Instead, the least watched episode of this season, the finale, scored higher than half the episode of the first season, and if it aired in that first season, it wouldn’t have brought down the ratings.

By the end of the 1985 – 1986 TV year, NBC (which placed second most popular network during season one), would eventually win CBS and become the most watched network of the year, for the first time in 20 years. And, if Tartikoff openly pointed out Highway To Heaven and The Cosby Show during the first season as as the show that gave the largest contribution to the achievement that year (“I put my money down on Landon and Cosby”, according to the New York Times), now that both series largely increased in ratings, it’s basically the same. There were certainly other series that played an important role (mostly sitcoms), but with its ratings, Highway was just as impactful. Which makes the first complain about the series sound very outdated now.