Airdate: 11/19/1986

Directed by: Michael Landon

A new episode of Highway, now back the usual way. After a “special” one hour and ten minutes episode, the series follows coming back to its original length. Again, no idea about the reason they made a longer episode.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a young kid get settled in college.

For this assignment, Jonathan and Mark help Christopher, a twelve-year-old boy enrolled in a college, be accepted by his older peers. Because everybody is aware of how hard it is for a kid to be accepted in a group of teenagers.

And that is particularly difficult if you’re the only twelve year old actor in a college where every student is played by adult actors.

He is Jeffrey Davis, who was actually 12 years old, and his roommate is Gary Hershberger, who was ten years older like basically all the other actors.

However, this is not going to be a show in which the kid is always right because he’s a kid and he’s in college.

Instead, they show him for who he is, just a kid with little experience on socializing and college life, and making mistakes as well.

And choosing questionable nickname for his classes.

Not a family friendly word.

In this episode, Jonathan works as a college teacher—specifically, teaching a computer class for Christopher—while Mark is the dorm’s door monitor where Christopher is staying. This makes it one of the few assignments in which they have two different jobs (like As Difficult as ABC or The Smile in the Third Row and Change of Life). It’s also the second time in the series that Jonathan is a teacher, although this time it’s at a college.

• Background

The episode takes place in California, like most of the series, but the indications are somewhat unclear. The only real place is La Porte, which is mentioned as place where Christopher’s family resides.

Instead, the college Chris is attending, “Western State”, is fictional.

However, there’s one quite odd reference: at one point, Jonathan mentions that he has to go to Clearview.

Now, that is also a fictional place—unless he was referring to the Clearview Retirement House, the same place where Love At Second Sight took place a couple of episodes earlier.

Considering that it’s a fictional place, it would be weird they used the same fictional name twice in the series. So, if Jonathan was actually referring to that retirement home, it might suggest that the two episodes are set at the same time, with Jonathan and Mark working on both simultaneously. This would be plausible, as it has already been suggested that some episodes in the series take place concurrently (more details about it here). Actually, in Love At second Sight, Jonathan and Mark did not have to remain at the retirement facility full-time, since Mark was only the trainer. It is therefore possible that he mostly stayed at the dorm in this episode, and only occasionally worked at that facility. The same applies to Jonathan, who apparently teaches only computer classes in this episode; he may have stayed primarily at the facility and gone to the college only when his class was scheduled then.

Anyway, if that’s the case, and considering that the present episode begins in September, then it means that Love At Second Sight would also be set around the same time, although it’s unclear which one of these episodes began earlier. At the conclusion of Love At Second Sight, they all left because they had a new assignment, so maybe this episode began earlier.

As for the timespan, it’s unclear. The odd part is that the episode concludes without any scene of Jonathan and Mark driving to the next assignment, as they usually do at the end of an episode. This is particularly strange because Jonathan is supposedly a teacher there for a full term, not a temporary replacement as in the second season. That makes it even harder to determine how long the assignment is meant to last—whether it has concluded the moment Christopher and his roommate became friends, and now Jonathan and Mark are moving on, or whether they are supposed to stay there longer because they were hired for a longer period and can’t simply leave. Unless, of course, they were hired for a couple of weeks. They should specify in the references of each job they get that they quit a job after ten days.

• Characters

As for the characters, at the beginning of the episode, while they’re heading to the dorm, it’s revealed that Mark never attended college before.

That’s likely not because Mark was born in the 1930s—when fewer people went to college—but rather because, as confirmed in later seasons, he served in the army right after graduating, and then became a cop. Also, he doesn’t need that if an angel can give him the powers.

As for Jonathan, for most of the episode he wears his grey Sunday Suit, with one exception: the moment he takes Chris home, he has the pinky one.

That’s what he wore in For The Love Of Larry, during the cold open.

Now, considering that they produced that cold open at some point later (upon realizing the episode would have been too short otherwise), and that the only episodes in the series in which he wears that pinky are these two, it’s plausible that the cold open was produced in one day at the same time as this episode.

That would be supported by the dates: this episode was produced roughly three weeks after that one, during this time they completed For The Love Of Larry and realized it was only thirty five minutes long, so Landon quickly improvised that additional, random prologue and McCray (the producer) slipped its production in while making this episode, similarly to what he’d do he did for Love And Marriage cold open two years later.

• Production and Setting

This episode was written by Vince R. Gutierrez, in his second script for Highway (the first episode was the baseball assignment one season ago). He was sound editor for the series, and occasionally writer, for every Landon’s series (Little House and Highway, and Father Murphy, the one nobody watched); actually, Gutierrez and Cooper are the only writers from Little House that came back for Highway too.

Anyway, the episode was produced on early August 1986, right after That’s Our Dad (the last show directed by French in his career). So, production occurred before Love And Marriage and Love At Second Sight, but for some reason this was delayed and aired later.

Instead, as for the setting, the fictional “Western State” school is actually the Occidental College, which was probably closed in the summer, by the time they needed it.

That’s there.

Glossary:

Blooper: the episode has a couple of bloopers, one left visible and the second one from the production. So, the visible one is at the beginning: when Christopher is walking around the cafeteria tables looking for a place to sit, he’s rejected by his roommate.

So, he turns toward Jonathan and Mark, who offer him a seat. The blooper isn’t that professors would never invite a kid to eat with them (or that no kid would accept). The real issue is that, at the exact moment he turns around, a shadow suddenly appears over Christopher’s roommate—likely caused by someone from the production standing too close to the set.

And it moves by as it follows Christopher around.

This kind of shadow blooper is actually recurrent in the series, haunting Landon from Bonanza. Maybe it’s the same shadow too.

Anyway, there’s also another blooper, although it’s not in the actual episode: during the scene in which Chris learns he did not make it into the fraternity, Jonathan and Mark are having lunch and were supposed to look stern and serious at each other.

As revealed in a Behind The Scene on the DVD, that proved to be very hard: for some reason, French just started laughing and couldn’t pull himself together anymore. And Landon seemingly inflamed it by making faces at him.

He’s getting there.

He intercepts Landon’s face.

He’s gone.

Far gone.

So, they tried it again, multiple times.

He tries to keep a straight face.

Then, he turns to Landon on his left.

And he just can’t help it.

So professional of them.

This part is just like five seconds long in the final episode, and it gives an idea of the kind of work behind every second of the show.

Being an actor is so hard.

Bag: In the episode, Jonathan is shown carrying a bag that’s different from his usual one—it’s a new color.

Christopher also has a bag, but in yet another color.

This suggests that the bag seen in the second-season episode The Monster was actually Mark’s, even though his character wasn’t the only one shown with it. Or perhaps the production finally had the budget to buy new bags instead of recycling Mark’s for every character.

Car: when Jonathan offers Christopher to take him to his parents, he’s shown driving. But he he didn’t specify he was gonna take Mark’s car.

Surely he didn’t even ask for his friend’s permission.

And Mark isn’t there either.

Maybe it’s because he has to work at the dorm, or at Clearview, or both.

Sunday Suits: for the entire episode, Jonathan wears his professor Sunday Suit, which is the same one he had in the season two finale.

It seems like he’ll use the same one each time he teaches at school.

References: early in the episode, there’s a very random reference to another episode in the series. Upon discovering that he’ll be working as a door monitor for some unruly doozy students, Mark shows his reluctance, and Jonathan tries to calm him down.

But Mark reveals he knows Jonathan better than that — after almost three years of experience.

He’s talking about the episode Change of Life, in which he traded body with Linda Blackwell, an actress, to learn what it was like to be a woman—a famous, fictional one.

That episode had aired on January of the same year as this episode, so more than ten months earlier, and then had its rerun on September — the last episode of the second season to have a rerun before starting the new one.

It’s a very random reference, because this episode has nothing to do with that one, and there are so many assignments Jonathan and Mark have worked on together that there’s no particular reason for Mark to mention that one. He could have talked about one of the many times Jonathan put him in someone else’s dreams, or that time he almost got killed while on a drug raid because Jonathan wouldn’t give him the Stuff, or that other time they were working as cops and he almost got killed (again), because Jonathan had no Stuff.

But, of all the assignments, they decided to make reference to that one: of course, Change of Life is the most-watched episode of the entire series— the only episode to surpass 40 million viewers—so the writer wanted to make reference to an episode the audiences likely remembered well. Because, if he had talked about the episode Mark fell in love with Stella, nobody would have known that (it’s the least watched episode of both season one and two). Or maybe it’s simply because Change Of Life was the only episode the writer had seen and wanted to reference it, to impress Landon showing he had carefully studied the series.

Curiously, that’s the first time in the series they make reference to that episode: they would mention it during the cold open of Love And Marriage; actually, the episode Love And Marriage had already aired one week before this, but that specific prologue was produced and added at some point later, in 1988, when the season went to syndication (more details about it here). So by the time this episode aired, that was the first reference to Change Of Life in the series.

Friendly Jonathan: at the beginning of the episode, Jonathan displays his friendliness when Mark tells him the last time he tried to trust him was on Change Of Life, instead of trying to reassure him, Jonathan teases him more about the time Mark was a woman.

Shout: when Christopher is hanging around the dorm, the song “Shout!” plays out. It’s the second time in the series there’s an episode with that: it has already played in A Song For Jason, during a costume party. So, it seems like someone in this series really listens to a real tune, not 1922 ones like Mark.

Water: after two seasons, the series is back dumping water on people. More specifically, on Mark.

But, this time, they go farther: it’s not water anymore.

That’s like in Hotel Of Dreams in season one.

The series really thinks that kids find it amusing to see people all wet and drenched. Except only the adults are laughing at this.

But, this time, they go farther: it’s not water anymore.

The job: for the assignment, Jonathan is a professor, while Mark is a door monitor.

That’s the second time in the series Jonathan teaches school.

Curiously, Jonathan should be teaching computer classes even though he can’t possibly know much about them (remember, he died in 1948, as revealed in Keep Smiling). Maybe the college doesn’t check references, the way Jonathan likes. Or perhaps the Stuff also gives him superior knowledge—but that wouldn’t be fair, since Mark doesn’t get that benefit.

Ratings: 24 – 25 million audience. 41st Weekly TV programs, 13th TV genre show.

The episode aired in November 1986, one week after the 90-minute special, but it was far from successful. It became the least-watched episode of the series so far, a record that has been held by Help Wanted: Angel for two years. And that episode comes from early season one, when the series was still gearing up.

Also, this episode lost more than four ratings points (some eight million in the audience) compared to its preceding one, making it the largest ratings drop between two weekly consecutive episodes of the entire series. Actually, there’s going to be an ever larger drop by this season finale, but on that occasion that episode aired one month after its predecessor (the steepest drops occur when there is a one-week break and the episode airs two weeks later); so, even though they are chronologically consecutive episodes, the season finale aired three weeks later. But that was not the case here: this episode aired one week after its predecessor, as usual. And what’s especially striking is how severely the ratings declined compared to the rest of the series, which has never been dipped so much.

Also, the ratings that week of November 1986 remained largely the same for other TV programs; it’s not that it was a peculiar week and most shows suffered a loss: it’s just this Highway which was unexpectedly low. At this point, either several TV series airing that week suddenly became more popular and took Highway’s usual slot (although it’s extremely unusual that would occur in just a single week), or the drop may (at least partly) stem from the quality of Love And Marriage one week ago. Maybe the audience had assumed that it was going to be some kind of special episode, given its unusual 90-minute length, only to find that it was actually a fairly diluted assignment. So, they might have felt put off and chose to watch something else the following week. Or maybe this episodes’ promos, a young kid in an adult college, just didn’t impress the audience.

Either way, this was certainly not positive for the future of the season. Now, only the ratings of the following episode next week can reveal whether the season was going to follow this episode’s ratings (making Highway’s future pretty bleak), or whether this episode was just an unexpected exception.