Airdate: 11/05/1986

Directed By: Michael Landon

This episode is both unusual and yet not that much different from other assignments. It is already the fourth episode of the season with that word in the title, because Landon realized he hadn’t used it much earlier and had to make up for it. But the word assignment is important here.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help an elderly couple fall in love despite the interference of a fellow angel.

Basically, they took an old folks assignment and a love one, throwing in another angel too.

An elderly woman, Laura, is convinced by her daughter to go to an elderly care facility to cope with the death of her husband (sounds like an old assignment).

One curious detail: the character Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help is called Laura: for the first time in years, a character with that name. There’s nothing wrong with it, but since this episode aired three years after Little House, hearing the actors pronounce that name again after so long definitely feels strange.

Anyway, the assignment is for Jonathan and Mark to work at the facility and help the elderly woman Laura settle in — again, nothing they hadn’t done before.

But it’s not that easy: on the job, they meet a fellow angel, Ted, who has also been given an assignment there.

And he has to help Roy, another resident of the same community, who is similarly struggling to settle in.

Then, Jonathan and Ted have an idea: combine their two assignments and make Laura and Roy fall in love.

However, Jonathan doesn’t know that Laura, his assignment, is actually is Ted’s wife when he was still a man.

And he is unwilling to let her fall in love with someone else.

So, he’ll try to deliberately blow the assignment by hanging out with Laura.

Now, the whole idea behind the assignment is odd. The unusual part is that Jonathan and Mark could have handled the work alone: it’s not the first time they’ve had to bring two people together, and they’ve done that before without any help. But now, they have to deal with another angel, who wasn’t certainly sent there to help them, as he’s going to do anything he can to prevent his wife from marrying another man.

So, considering that Jonathan had the idea of matching Laura with Roy (not his superior), there are two possible explanations: one, that Laura and Roy aren’t supposed to fall in love, because if they had been supposed to, then Jonathan and Mark could have handled the assignment alone, and there would have been no use in assigning Jonathan to Laura and sending Ted, another angel, to take care of Roy instead. Unless the superior thought it would be easier for an old man like Roy to befriend another old man, so Ted Simpson was sent there.

Otherwise, considering how Ted feels about the situation, this may imply that Ted himself is the real assignment. In that case, the superior sent him there on purpose, and turned him into Jonathan’s assignment. That would make it a double assignment: helping a woman get over the death of her husband by falling in love with another man, and helping an angel carry out his own assignment in the process, learning to let his wife move on from him.

Either way, this is the third time Jonathan and Mark meet another angel: once was in Help Wanted: Angel in season 1, and the second in The Last Assignment in season 2. There would also be For The Love Of Larry, but it’s unclear whether the dog is a real probationary angel or if the mission of rescuing the family was just an exception.

• Background

As for the setting, the episode takes place at the Clearview Retirement Center, which is a fictional location.

The time span of the episode is about three days: Laura moves in on the first day; she meets Roy the next day and they go on a date; and by the fourth day she falls in love with Ted, unaware that he is actually her late husband.

As for the date, it is most likely 1986, roughly around the time the episode was produced. This is revealed when Jonathan and Ted go into the future to see what happens if Ted does not carry out the assignment as intended, and they show Laura’s grave.

Later, they also peek at Roy’s future, showing he has become passive and unresponsive, and Jonathan explains that this happens within a year, which further supports the idea that the episode is set in late 1986, and the final part in the future is one year later.

Now, the timespan is likely a week (which is reasonable). One curious thing: the episode concludes with Ted announcing he has an assignment.

And Jonathan replies he and Mark has one as well.

However, this ending contradicts the next episode, which begins with Mark telling Jonathan how glad he is that they don’t have a new assignment because they are going to a wedding (which, of course, eventually becomes their new assignment, but they don’t know that yet).

So, it’s another confirmation that the episodes within the same season are not told in strict chronological order, or that the series won’t show all the assignments Jonathan and Mark work on, and there was another assignment between these two episodes (more examples of missing or misplaced episodes are Hotel of Dreams and Going Home, Going Home).

Or that Jonathan lied, which isn’t new either.

• Characters

The episode introduces an angel as Jonathan’s old friend.

It’s the third time Jonathan and Mark encounter another angel during an assignment, and he seems to be an old friend of Jonathan’s—likely one of those off-screen friends that Jonathan occasionally brings up when convenient (like that random guy on a wheelchair in A Match Made In Heaven).

Curiously, when they meet Ted, he is not even formally introduced to Mark, nor does Ted question why Jonathan is working with a human. Actually, when Mark speaks to him, Ted completely ignores him and just turns to Jonathan.

No, that’s Mark Gordon.

As if angels having human partners is common, even though that wasn’t the case, or Mark wouldn’t have had to beg Jonathan to work together at the end of the pilot. Unless that created a precedent, and thanks to Jonathan and Mark, now angels won’t be forced to be alone in their job.

Now, one curious thing: at the beginning of the episode, there’s a country ball, and Jonathan and Mark decide to use fitting clothes for that.

Looks familiar.

Those clothes are the same cowboy ones they had in season one for Song Of the Wild West (the episode where Jonathan uses the Stuff to gamble back a saloon).

Those clothes must be pretty old. Maybe that’s what Jonathan keeps in his mysterious bag.

Anyway, after that, Mark’s contribution to the assignment becomes non-existent, and he disappears for the rest of the episode. Actually, there’s one curious aspect: Mark’s supposed to work as the athletic director of the facility, probably explaining the reason he disappears while Jonathan is angeling with Laura and Ted and the rest; but, at the beginning of the episode, he says Mark who is sitting on a chair that he has to stand up because they have to go meet the assignment.

So selfish.

It’s unclear why Jonathan says “My assignment”, as he usually says “we” or “our” when talking with Mark about their new assignments. Maybe that implies that the assignment is really divided in two parts (being athletic director and matching two elderly folks), so Mark only takes one and Jonathan the other part. Or maybe Jonathan knows that Mark’s contribution to the assignment will be so irrelevant that he’s tired of talking plurals if eh always handles things alone. Even though, usually, the assignments where Mark disappears or largely remains in the background are the episodes airing by the end of the season.

However, Jonathan’s role in the assignment is odd as well: after introducing Ted to Laura, he completely disappears for the rest of the episode, until Ted has already compromised himself by professing his love to her, and he takes him in the future. But he could have done something to prevent that—unless he entered Ted’s mind, and their glimpse of the future wasn’t actually the superior’s idea but Jonathan’s.

In any case, whether Mark is going to be important in this assignment or not (and he won’t, again), there’s no reason for Jonathan to have him stand up to meet Laura, if she is not Mark’s assignment (or he would have said “our”).

• Angels And Probation

Important: the general definition of probation is in the guidelines, while the relevant clues and details about its meaning and implications are here, under the entry of each episode.

The introduction of a new angel is peculiar for many reasons. It’s unclear how long Ted has been on probation, but it can’t be that long because he seems unaware of some important rules: for instance, when he realized his wife is Jonathan’s assignment, he gets mad because she didn’t recognize him.

If Ted doesn’t know the rules of his probation, maybe it’s because he hasn’t been an angle that long. And Jonathan has to fill him in.

Although he was probably reminding the audience.

It had already been explained in Help Wanted: Angel by Petros Hadiar that, when people become angels, both their appearance and name change so that nobody on Earth will recognize them.

So, Ted was given an elderly body.

While Arthur (Jonathan) was given Michael Landon’s body.

Also, that’s the second time in the series in which Jonathan is assigned to help a fellow probationary angel (The Last Assignment is the first one). That means that angels can help each other. And he really does seem to be a good angel if he’s assigned to help both humans and his colleagues. But Jonathan himself was also helped by another angel in season 1, and not any angel: that was as Petros Hadiar (St. Peter), so he learned from a master.

Anyway, the curious part is that Petros Hadiar wasn’t a probationary angel, and it was possible to conclude that, maybe, what happens when an angel completes the probation is getting to help and supervise the work of probationary angels. However, after receiving that help, now Jonathan, who is still on probation (whatever that means) has to help a fellow angel, and it’s the second time he’s assgned to help a fellow angel. At this point, it’s unclear what Petros Hadiar was there for, if angels on probation can help each other out. But maybe Jonathan is somehow special. And that’s the reason he was allowed to take an alcoholic ex-cop as friend.

There’s another important detail: when Ted learns that Laura has died shortly after he was removed from the assignment, he feels reassured, believing they will meet in Heaven.

But Jonathan dismisses this, explaining that Ted will not be able to go to Heaven because of how he handled the assignment.

This implies that angels—at least probationary ones—are not guaranteed a place in Heaven. Actually, if they misbehave during their probation, or they blow an assignment (the way Ted this here), they may never be allowed to go there at all. That means at any moment, then, Jonathan himself could lose his chance to enter Heaven if he won’t complete his probation successfully.

It’s a big claim, and contradicts what Mark says in the Halloween special of season two: after making a deal with the Devil and being told by Jonathan to calm down, Mark replied that it was easy for Jonathan to say because was already supposed to go “up there”. Apparently, that assumption is incorrect.

What remains unclear, though, is what happens to angels who blow their assignment, as Ted does here. Because, Jonathan only mysteriously says that only Laura is in Heaven, and then takes Ted on a journey through time to show him the consequences of his actions (like he did with Eddy on the Christmas Special). But that doesn’t explain what will happen later: like, is Ted now forced to continue working assignments until he makes up for it, or is he doomed to wander the Earth for eternity?

Anyway, one curious thing: it’s the second time in the series that an angel is assigned to help his own widow (Jonathan had already done this in Keep Smiling with Jane). It seems like their superior likes this approach. Or maybe part of the training for probationary angels is to help a friend or relative they personally knew, to see if they can handle it as well as helping strangers.

This ties into the show’s explanation of angels: they are not superior beings, but rather humans who became angels after their death. The process is unclear, though.

For instance, the series never explains the requirements to become an angel in the first place—whether it involves leading a good life or something else. It’s also unclear whether there is any difference in Heaven between angels and not. Also, the revelation by Jonathan that Laura is in Heaven while it’s unclear what is going to happen to Ted is much important as it reveals something more about Heaven hierarchy in the series.

So, if Laura is now in Heaven while Ted is stuck on Earth to pay the consequences of his actions, then it means that people, after death, can ascend to Heaven directly, without necesseraly having wings. That’s important because many people believe the probation has to do with earning wings (more details about it here). But Jonathan says he has to earn his wings to become a “real” angel, only in the Halloween Special.

Anyway, the purpose of the wings is vague, since he can fly even without them. And if wings were necessary to ascend to Heaven, that would imply that not everyone can go there, since only angels have wings (and probationary angels have to earn them somehow). Unless everyone becomes an angel after dying: someone goes straight as angel while other are probationary angels. In that case, it means that people like Laura, who has died and is now in Heaven, has led an upright life while people like Jonathan who are “probationary” angel have misbehaved in their life and now have to earn their wings if they want to go to Heaven as well.

But he never asked to be an angel.

Or maybe some people go directly to Heaven, while others are turned into angels and must serve a probationary period first—which would imply that becoming an angel is a reward, but actually delays going to Heaven, making it undesirable.

Alternatively, there may be multiple roles in Heaven (as becomes apparent in a fourth-season episode), so perhaps everyone has to work after death, either as an angel or in some other capacity.

• Actors (Little House actors, Highway actors)

There are many familiar actors from Little House and Highway appear. In particular, there’s one Little House actor making his first appearance on this series here, one Highway actor the audience should be familiar with from season one, and another Highway actor from season one who is also a Little House actor. Basically, who had it all.

So, the actor who had it all is John McLiam, who plays the fellow probationary angel Ted here.

And he has multiple credits with Landon and French both as actors and directors, both together and separately: he had met and already worked with French in 1968 in one episode of Gunsmoke, then with Landon in 1970 for one Bonanza, and then with them both in one episode of Little House during season three, playing the employer of a coal mine.

After that, he was in one season four episode of Little House directed by Landon (and without neither him nor French as actor), then in one season nine episode of Little House directed by French (and without neither him nor Landon as actors).

Eventually, he came to Highway, where he appeared in the season one episode Going Home, Going Home (the weird time-travel assignment in which Mark helps his grandfather), where McLiam played Mark’s grandfather, an Oklahoma farmer.

He’s really an old-timer, as Mark correctly pointed out.

Then, there’s a Highway actress: the character of Winnie, the pushy elderly woman at the retirement center.

She is Peggy Doyle, who was in the episode A Divine Madness (the family issue one about a lunatic believing to be King Arthur), where she appeared in the final confrontation portraying the highly professional judge who presides over a kangaroo court and lets her her dog interfere with the hearing— because she took her dog to her workplace.

It seems like eventually someone realized she wasn’t adequate for that job and placed her in early retirement instead.

An now, her character has a dog, again—possibly related to the same one she brought to work and that interrupted the trial.

The third actor is a Little House one: the character of Roy, who should be Ted’s assignment (unless Ted were the actual assignment) is Harvey Vernon, who is an old acquaintance of French from Little House and even before that.

He first worked with French in 1977 on Carter Country, the sitcom for which French temporarily left Little House; there, Vernon had a recurring role and French was the protagonist, a police chief, and Vernon had a recurring role as one of his deputies.

They appeared together in almost every episode from 1977 until 1979, when it was cancelled after two seasons.

Then, four years later after that series, they worked together again on Little House, when Vernon made one guest-appearance in Bless All the Dear Children, one of the three final movies of the series (the one that was delayed by a year and wound up airing after the series finale). There, French served as both actor and director, while Landon was absent.

Now, almost ten years after Carter Country and just a few years after that Little House special, Vernon and French are together once more—this time under Landon’s direction.

So, plenty of all timer in this Highway.

• Production and Setting

The episode was produced over Leisure World in Los Angeles, which is a community for retired people. and which served as the fictional “Clearview” center. Curiously, some of the background characters and extra were actual residents of the center.

Apparently, the then director of the center decided to shoot a behind-the-scenes documentary of this episode, which is one of the few documentary about the series that can be found nowadays.

In terms of production, it took place on late August 1986 (as revealed in the behind the scenes) over the course of a week, as was typical for the series: three days at Leisure World and the rest in a studio set. For some reason, the episode was actually produced after the following three episodes, but it aired earlier.

Anyway, it was written by writer James Kearns, who also wrote another episode in the fourth season and left Highway then. And that makes it a Highwayman, the second one this season.

Curiously, the original script featured a different opening. It was going to be something like this:

Jonathan and Mark driving to the assignment. Mark jokes on what kind of activities they can operate as they’ll work at a retirement center, while Jonathan struggles to find the exact location of Clearview on a map and eventually tells Mark to stop at a gas station so they can ask for directions. Then, as Mark is filling the car, Jonathan approaches a man to ask for directions and discovers that the man is Ted Simpson, a fellow angel, who tells him he’s also headed to Clearview for an assignment and offers to let them follow him.

Now, this section has a lot of problems. First, it makes no sense for Jonathan to ask for directions, let alone struggling with a map to guide him. He’s an angel—he already knows everything; actually, throughout every episode so far, it’s always Mark who gets lost, while Jonathan calmly points out that Mark took the wrong road (or abruptly halts the car with the Stuff), even when Mark is convinced he’s right. And every time, Mark is wrong. So introducing a scene in which Jonathan gets lost and has to consult a map simply doesn’t work within the established logic of the show. If Mark would have been the one with the map, it’d be hard to believe (as Jonathan always knows the directions), but at least it could have been justified somehow.

The second issue is about the car, and it’s just as problematic: while Jonathan is asking for directions and finds another angel, the scripts reports that Mark is filling the tank of the car. But Jonathan has powers, so there’s no believable reason for the car to run out of gas. If that were to happen, he could instantly refill (actually, something along those lines was even planned for a deleted scene in To Touch the Moon in the first season).

It’s so obvious this episode was written by some highwaymen, or someone who had never actually watched the series or had no specific idea of what it was about except that it has “an angel and his human friend helping people around California”, so he wrote an episode about that completely overlooking the details.

But someone must have realized this opening was problematic, so they removed this entire sequence where they get lost and stop at a gas station. Instead, they wrote a new beginning with Jonathan and Mark already in Clearview. The way they meet Ted Simpson was also changed: rather than encountering him at a gas station, they simply bump into him. While the lines of the dialogue between Jonathan and Mark where they break down all the activities offered by Clearview were then used in the new introduction, but were given to Laura’s daughter.

Sure, as soon as you get old you’ll be sent there too.

Glossary

The Angel and Mark: when Jonathan introduces them both to Laura.

Also, there’s a friendly Jonathan instance included: when he forces Mark to stand up and meet Laura, even though he says “My assignment”, as if Mark weren’t supposed to help him now.

He’s like: “Are you saying you don’t wanna work with me”.

Highway Of Mysteries: Much of the assignment itself is a mystery. Especially in the premise: at the beginning, Jonathan discusses his own assignment and explains Ted that Laura needs to meet someone to help her process the death of her husband.

And then, it is actually Ted’s idea to merge his assignment with Jonathan’s and have Roy meet Laura—not something ordered by their superior.

However, when Ted realizes that Laura is actually Jonathan’s assignment, he balks at the idea of pairing her with Roy and even asks his superior why it has to be this way.

It doesn’t, actually.

Now, two things to notice: one, Ted is yet another angel who talks to his superior by looking up, even though there’s a ceiling. It has already been established that, occasionally, Jonathan glances up at the sky to talk to his superiror (as he does in The Last Assignment), and he does that even when there’s a ceiling. Maybe it’s something they teach in Heaven to probationary angels.

Then, the most important thing is that Roy is right: the superior never assigned him to make Roy fall in love with someone in order to feel better. He was simply told to help Roy live a “richer, fuller life”— as he puts it. And Jonathan decided to pair him off with Laura, but he could just pair her with someone else.

It was actually Ted’s idea, though.

Unless they were implying that his superior changed the orders later on. But they could have simply fixed Roy up with someone else.

But it doesn’t even have to be a love assignment: Jonathan only says that Laura needs to find somebody to “bring her out”, not necessarily a lover. So, Ted has no reason to be so worried about losing her, unless he didn’t want his wife to have any friends either.

There’s also another mystery: at the conclusion of the episode, after solving the assignment, a mysterious phone rings and Ted picks up and talks to someone.

Now, it’s unclear who he’s talking to right now: it could be suggested that it’s the superior giving him a new assignment, but that would be problematic for multiple reasons. One, it’d be weird that the superior would use a phone to call his angels (the same way it’d be weird for angels to glance up when talking to the superior, but whatever). Also, more importantly, it’s unclear whether probationary angels have actually seen their superior (that’s what they implied here, at least). Of course, it’s likely that angels can hear their superior (it would be hard to figure out a way the can get the assignment otherwise). But it’s still weird.

Then, it could be possible Ted is actually talking with the subject of his next assignment. But, again, it’s a mystery.

The episode concludes with Jonathan telling Mark that they have a new assignment. There are two things worth pointing out here. First, if the episode really spans only about a week, then Jonathan and Mark worked at the retirement center for a very short time before leaving. It’s hard to imagine anyone hiring two random people who stay for less than a week before moving on.

The Stuff Powers: some older uses of Jonathan’s powers reappear. At the beginning, when Jonathan convinces Laura to go to the ball, he materialize a proper gown for her—something he had already done before in the season one Hotel of Dreams, when he provided Cinderella with her gown for the ball.

Cinderella has grown older in the last two years.

And there are also the powers of disappearing, as seen in the Christmas special in season one.

Although, this time, Jonathan brings Mark along too.

The Job: they are hired as creation and athletic directors of the facility.

One curious thing: if the episode really spans only about a week, then Jonathan and Mark worked at the retirement center for a very short time before leaving. It’s hard to imagine anyone hiring two random people who stay for less than a week before moving on. The same way it’s hard Jonathan might ever impress any future employer anymore if he keeps quitting his jobs after one week, even though he makes the references up.

But just for one week.

Ratings: 33 million audience. 13th Weekly TV programs, 2nd TV genre show.

This episode aired in early November 1986 and scored some impressive ratings, largely improved on the ratings of the previous episode (which aired after a one week skip though), and got roughly at the same ratings of the second season at the same point.

It seems like the show is actually holding up better than season one, and there’s still a chance for improvement. It’s almost impossible to get to the same ratings as season two (and it won’t happen), but at least getting near them is a thing. And certainly, compared to the ratings of the first episode this season, it’s getting much more popular.