Airdate: 12/17/1986

Directed By: Michael Landon

Even though Basinger’s Los Angeles would be more like it.

The Christmas season has begun, and Highway was prepared this year. After producing a Christmas Special in the first season (that was essentially a recycle of one of Landon’s childhood obsessions), and then skipping a Christmas episode altogether in the second season (airing instead an episode centered on one of Landon’s new obsessions), the producers decided to combine both. So, they set to make a Christmas special for the third season—this time without recycling old ideas, and still being inspired by yet another of Landon’s obsessions: bums. If they included bins too, this episode would have it all.

It doesn’t exactly sound like a welcoming Christmas episode, but that’s it.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a pessimistic journalist never lose faith in people.

For this Christmas, Jonathan and Mark go all the way to New York to meet Basinger, a journalist who has become much disdainful and lonely and gloomy following the death of his wife, and who struggles to finish his yearly Christmas special article. Because even newspapers make Christmas Specials, like on TV.

So, Jonathan and Mark and Basinger decide to go on a trip around New York on Christmas Eve, to document what they experience and help Basinger write about that.

Apparently “Basinger’s Culver City” didn’t sound as good.

Because, New York is different this time of the year. On Christmas Eve, anything can happen: like visiting a shelter for homeless and discovering that somewhere in New York there’s guy named Joseph who is married to a pregnant woman named Mary, and that they are looking for a warm place.

So, if they had other names, they would be unimportant.

The premise resembles A Christmas Carol: a man has a problem, and Jonathan and Mark take him on a journey meant to teach him kindness during the Christmas season. It’s likely the writers had that story in mind when developing the episode. As though there weren’t much else to build a Christmas Special around.

However, the episode introduces some new elements. First, the subject of the assignment, Basinger, is not a truly bad person that Jonathan and Mark need to turn around (like Eddy was in season one), but rather just a hopeless and disillusioned man. Second, this episode has multiple characters, all of whom play an equally important role in the assignment. Except Jonathan and Mark, they are left in the background this time. That’s because the assignment is entirely and peculiarly told through the perspective of its subjects (Basinger and the people he meets in New York), rather than the usual way. Similarly to An Investment In Caring in season one, Jonathan and Mark will mostly stay in the background, and will be depicted as two outsiders barging into someone’s life. It’s definitely a very peculiar approach.

Actually, this episode goes so far as to feature Basinger’s voice-over during the journey: it’s the first episode in the series with a voice-over of a “guest character”, not Jonathan or Mark (as though the episodes with their voice-over weren’t many either). There’s just one other episode in the entire series with a voice-over from an external character: it will be later on this same season.

Anyway, it’s the third Holiday Special of the series, after the season one Christmas Special and the season two’s Halloween one. There would be one episode of season two set around Christmastime, but it doesn’t really revolve around the holiday.

• Background

As the title suggests, Jonathan and Mark decided to spend the 1986 Christmas in New York; exactly: they are out of Los Angeles (only fictionally though).

Or rather, what it’s like in a Los Angeles Set.

This marks only the second time in the series that Jonathan and Mark are in that city (the first time being The Smile in the Third Row). However, how they got there is unclear.

It is possible they traveled there following the events of the previous episode, which takes place in December and ends with the characters ready to go somewhere far from Los Angeles, but this is never confirmed.

The episode entirely takes place on the night of Christmas Eve, presumably in 1986 (the year it aired), which implies that Jonathan is forcing Mark to work during the holidays instead of celebrating with Leslie—who had recently returned to the series—and her family. After all, angels do not get holidays, not even on Christmas.

• Characters

One of the most important feature of the episode is in the characters: the assignment is told entirely from the perspective of the journalist Basinger, rather than the usual one. So far, it has become clear that most episodes are told either from the perspectives of both Jonathan and Mark, or from a combined, neutral perspective that includes the subject of the assignment too. An example of this is the season one Christmas special, which was told from Eddy’s perspective (showing for instance what he was doing before meeting Jonathan and Mark) and also cutting to Jonathan and Mark at the motel, where Mark is reading A Christmas Carol. And that was basically the same for almost all the episodes.

However, on very rare occasions, there are some episodes told exclusively through the perspective of the subject, with Jonathan and Mark remaining in the background.

This doesn’t mean that Jonathan and Mark play a lesser role: rather, they are observed only through the eyes of other characters, and appear as two strangers who enter someone’s life and solve a problem—a more realistic approach—not as the angel and his human partner the audience has been familiar with for over a year.

In these episodes, they are not shown driving and arguing about topics loosely related to the assignment at the beginning, and they are not shown discussing strategies or devising plans when things go wrong either (like in Love and a Marriage, when there was a scene where they discussed the divorce of Mark’s former colleague at the motel). Instead, now, they simply intrude into the subject’s life as outsiders, and fix it.

For example, in this episode, it’s never explained how Jonathan and Mark got to New York in the first place: they simply appear for the first time when sneakily walk up to Basinger in a dark alley and introduce themselves.

They must have looked like thugs to him. Jed is like: “I don’t have no money”

There is no explanation of when or how they arrived in New York, nor is there a scene in which Jonathan explains to Mark that Basinger is their new assignment.

Also, another feature of episodes with this very distinctive approach is that Jonathan and Mark have almost no lines: for example, Mark in particular speaks less than ten times in the episode.

And that’s one line.

Anyway, so far, only one episode has used this approach: it was An Investment in Caring from season one. This episode is the second in the series to do so. There will be a few more episodes like this in later seasons, but they remain extremely rare and unusual.

Actually, given this peculiar choice, the episode is more similar to A Christmas Carol—which is told entirely from its protagonist’s point of view—than the season one Christmas special is, which prominently featured Jonathan and Mark as well. And that episode was supposed to be inspired by the Christmas Carol, not like this.

• Actors (Little House Actors, Highway Actor).

As for the actors, the episode features some familiar faces for Landon, French, and the audience as well. The titular character, Basinger, is played by Richard Mulligan, who had met them on some prior collaborations.

Early in his career, in 1966, Mulligan worked with French on the sitcom The Hero, depicting the everyday life of a clumsy western actor.

There, Mulligan played the protagonist. And it was the his first role as the principal character.

Instead, French portrayed his neighbor, a recurring character—his first recurring role ever in his career, and the first for which he received official recurring credit, with his name appearing in the opening titles.

An important role for both their careers.

However, in case no one has ever heard of it, don’t worry: it was quite unsuccessful in the ratings and was canceled after just three months and less than twenty episodes—without even completing its first season. After that, both actors moved on—French went to Gunsmoke, while Mulligan appeared in several other television series.

One curious thing: Richard Mulligan is not the only one in his family whom French has worked with in his career; Mulligan’s older brother was a director, and in 1972 he made the horror The Other with French in a supporting role. It was when French was in his mustache period.

Anyway, in 1971, Mulligan (the actor), worked with Landon for the first time, in two Bonanza episodes (one in season twelve and one in season thirteen) as a guest character. The second time was in a very dramatic role: an emotional shaken father who kidnaps a kid after the death of his own.

Later, in 1976, he was with Landon again for Little House on the Prairie, appearing in one episode of the second season as a soldier hooked on drugs (before Highway, of course). Not a very gentle role either.

That was one of Landon’s early attempts to address drugs (one of his Highway’s three obsessions) on a show.

Still, if that episode doesn’t ring any bell, that’s not unusual (again): it belonged to the second season—the one nobody watched. Coincidentally, although French was part of that season, he did not appear in that particular episode.

Anyway, after that show, Mulligan played a recurring role in the sitcom Soap that kept him busy for four years, while Landon and French continued Little House and then moved to Highway, of course.

Now, ten years older, Mulligan returns to work with Landon, and with French as well, for this Highway. That’s quite a coincidence: in 1966, he worked with French alone; five years later (1971), with Landon alone for Bonanza, and then in 1976 for Little House too. And now, 1986, ten years after his last collaboration with Landon and 20 years after the one with French on The Hero, there they are, all the three of them together on the same show. And this time around, Mulligan is the guest, while French is the protagonist—the reverse of their roles twenty years earlier. While Landon remained the protagonist, like he’s almost always been. Also, it’s yet for another very tragic, bleak role for Mulligan (who spent much of is career on sitcoms like Soap, not on these unflinching roles). He probably had the face for afflicted characters— or that’s what Landon must have thought, at least.

Curiously, Basinger’s name is Jed, the same name of Mulligan’s character in The Hero 20 years earlier.

It almost feels like his career led up to this moment.

But this coincidence would not repeat in the next ten years: French died in 1989, just three years after this episode—and Landon in 1991, while Mulligan passed away later, in 2000; he was already older than both of them by the time of their deaths.

Anyway, he’s not the only familiar actor in this episode, though: one of the bum is played by Eddie Quillian, who is a Little House actor as well.

He had appeared in multiple episodes of Little House, each time playing a different guest character. His last appearance was in season nine for the Orangutan episode.

Precisely.

But, unlike Mulligan who just has one appearance in this series, Quillan is also a Highway actor: he had already appeared in the Pilot as Clyde, the driver who refuses to help Jonathan without getting a reward, which leads Jonathan to drop the very first punchline of the series.

Actually, Quillan was the first character ever to appear in the series, after Landon walking down the Highway.

Quite an old timer.

This Highway role as a bum would be one of the last of his career: after this episode, he made one guest appearance in another series the following year and then retired from acting at the age of 80, dying three years later, in 1990 (the year between French and Landon’s death).

• Production And Setting

As for the setting, of course, they didn’t actually move the production to New York: that’s just Los Angeles, again. They seem to think they can fool the audience simply by showing yellow cabs and a few random skyscrapers.

Anyway, it’s the second episode of the series to take place in New York (the first one was The Smile In The Third Row) and again, it’s actually a Culver City set instead.

They tried to cover it by featuring plenty of screen-projected driving scenes. During which nobody, not even the driver, will ever have the seatbelts on.

That’s probably the most accurate New York feature of the episode.

As for the production, it took place between late October and early November 1986, marking the conclusion of the first half of the season. But, unlike season one, they didn’t take a three weeks holiday before getting to the second half of the season: rather, they started right away.

It was directed by Landon, the first of his great undertaking: from now on, he will direct every remaining episode of the series (the second half of this season, and the entire fourth and fifth seasons). He was in for it.

Also, one curious thing: according to Susan McCray (casting director of the series), this episode is tied with Wally (airing a few weeks from now) as the best of Highway. Perhaps she liked the actors.

Glossary:

Angel Revelation: unlike An Investment In Caring (the first episode told exclusively through the perspective of “external characters”), this time there’s an angel revelation to Basinger. Actually, of all those rare episodes featuring this same approach, this was the only one with an angel revelation.

A couple of things to point out: of all the Angel Revelations so far, this marks only the third time in which Jonathan does the angel revelation with Mark there too; the first time it happened was in The Banker And The Bum (which was also the first Angel Revelation of the series) and the second was in Change Of Life (because Mark was the subject of that assignment). Usually, Jonathan dropped the revelation while he is alone with the subject of the assignment, and Mark almost always remains oblivious of that (of course, in some cases he must have realized that other characters knew the truth, like in Summit, but he is not shown in the precise moment).

The odd part is that, in the rare cases Jonathan does the angel revelation with Mark (except for The Banker And The Bum), they are first shown talking about it: during those episodes, they discuss the best way to approach the assignment, and then they convene that making the revelation is the right approach. Instead, because of the peculiar perspective of this episode (which leaves them in the background as “outsiders”), they are never shown talking about it now. Which makes this moment feel so random.

Neither in The Banker And The Bum they discuss it prior making the revelation, but on that case it was more peculiar (that was also the first angel revelation of the series). Instead, now, it’s more like there’s a missing part.

Another thing: like most angel revelations so far, Jonathan is not believed right away (in some cases, it’s unclear whether he’s believed at all, like The Banker And The Bum, again), and the characters to whom the truth has been revealed usually laugh at him (probably the same way Tartikoff reacted when Landon first wrote the Pilot).

That man is still like that.

However, in this episode, they add something peculiar: every time Basinger mocks Jonathan for being an angel, Mark will obnoxiously echo the revelation, as though it were obvious. Except Mark struggled to believe it when he was first told in the Pilot too.

And you believed him right away when Jonathan first told you.

Bums: the center of this episode. For this year’s Christmas Special, they decided to go for an episode about one of Landon’s three obsessions for the series.

It’s the third episode of the series to be almost entirely about bums (there was The Banker And The Bum in season one and Alone in season two), and they are more prominent than ever before.

Christmas Special: it’s the third season’s Holidays Special episode.

Cute: after the angelic revelation, Basinger doesn’t believe it. There’s nothing wrong with that: it isn’t the first time Jonathan has done this in the series, nor is it unusual for someone not to believe him. What is unusual, though, is that Mark decides to play along, and Jonathan gets irritated a little.

Two things to point out here: one, Mark shouldn’t be so cool about it, because Jed is his assignment too.

Second, it’s a rare instance of Reverse Cute: it’s the fifth time in the entire series that Jonathan uses that catchphrase—the first in One Winged Angels, the second in The Right Thing, the third in Friends and the fourth earlier this season. It will happen twice in the next season.

Highway Of Mysteries: this entire episode is a long mystery, in many ways. As for the background, they never explain how Jonathan and Mark moved from Los Angeles to New York (even though that’s the least problematic feature: the previous episode concluded one week before Christmas, and they had plenty on time to go there by car)

More importantly, there are so many odd things the characters do: for example, the entire assignment feels very random, they never explain who Joseph and Mary are nor why they’re supposedly so special. Because, really, the entire chase behind them is driven by the general attitude (especially Basinger’s) that having two random people with those names on Christmas Eve is something to write about. As though it were a coincidence. Of course, maybe Basinger wants to use them just as a pretext to write about being bums in New York. But everybody treats them like they were special just because of their name.

The man who first informed them of Joseph and Mary is confused too.

He must be puzzled by the quality of what newspapers write about.

Then, it remains unclear whether the entire episode were a string of coincidences or not: in order to find these Joseph and Mary (or whoever they are), Jonathan wants to follow the cab driver’s suggestion to head toward a bright star. And they eventually find them like this. But it’s unclear how that was possible, if Jonathan used the Stuff and knew where Joseph and Mary were and knew that the cab driver would have led them there, or if he actually guided him (or Joseph and Mary) there, or if he wasn’t aware of anything and just went along; while Mark said nothing.

Also, there are several other parts where the characters act very oddly: for instance, after realizing that chasing a Star was the wrong lead, for some reasons Jonathan enters a church to speak to his superior, and then reports the other fellas that he has just been informed Mary is still somewhere.

That just doesn’t make sense. It implies that, if Jonathan has to communicate to his superior, he has to get into a church; except he has never done that before in the series. Now, the way Jonathan talks to his superior is unexplained in the series, just like the way he receives the assignments (it’s implied that he hears a voice telling him where to go, or that he feels when he has an assignment; more about it here). However, it also seems that, in case he had to urgently talk, he simply looks at the sky and just says what he has to. At least that’s what he has done multiple times in the series (like Sail Away or the season one finale).

Even though he looks at rooftops.

And that was the way other angels were shown doing in the series (as in Love At Second Sight, for instance).

Of course, there are other instances (like The Last Assignment) where angels do go to the church to talk to the superior (again, there’s no rule about it, and it’s a mystery). Maybe they were implying that the superior only talks to Jonathan in a church during an assignment, but not before. However, for this particular episode, there’s no way that his superior had to wait for Jonathan to go to a church to give him relevant leads for the assignment.

Anyway, the biggest mystery is probably the conclusion.

The part feels so off: Basinger is walking past the bums he met over the course of the episode, and yet he completely ignores them. As though they didn’t exist. Most importantly, who are these bums: like, the guy drumming on the wall is the same bum lined up for a bed at the shelter where Basinger took Jonathan and Mark earlier. And he had told Basinger that he was next in line and wouldn’t want to give it up for anything. But now, apparently, he’s there—and somehow he has walked all the way to Basinger’s workplace (even though, mind, Basinger had to move on Barney’s cab for the entire episode). And Basinger pays no attention to him. It’s as though that bum were invisible or something. Maybe he died at some point while waiting and is now a ghost that nobody can see or something. Or maybe he never existed in the first place, and he was just some hallucination. As though this entire episode were just Basinger’s hallucination.

But then, what about the shepherd, how is also the one that had offered Joseph and Mary a shelter earlier: is he dead too, has he ever existed, or was he a real character turned to an angel. It’s all unclear, except that Basinger acts as though they weren’t there.

Perhaps that was the point: showing that there are bums lying all around, that people walk by them without noticing— the same way Basinger does here.

Either way, Basinger walks straight toward a man dressed up as Santa Claus. And Basinger is totally cool about it. That’s not the first Santa in the series: in the season one Christmas Special, at the beginning, Jonathan found him on the street, and acted as though they were old pals.

Perhaps they are the same person. And maybe he is Santa Claus: he was in Los Angeles in season one, and moved out to New York this season.

More likely, though, they are not, and he’s not even the real Santa: the next season’s Christmas Special is going to have a character that might be Santa, and he’s not the same. But it’s left unclear. And it could be that there are multiple Santa Claus all around the world. Or that Santa Claus is an angel too. Or maybe that Santa is just a bum, completely unrelated to other Santas of the series.

Or maybe he was just intended to be a reference to the season one Christmas Special. It could be anything.

This episode was so weird.

Recycle: there’s one. As this episode is set in New York, there are multiple cabs and streets all around.

And, of course, it’s a recycle from The Smile In The Third Row, having the same scene.

Because that episode was set in New York too. They couldn’t waste anything.

References: this episode shares many similar features to the season one’s Christmas Special, and references it too. In particular, besides the “Christmas Carol” resemblances (both episodes are about Jonathan and Mark guiding a man who lost his faith on a journey on Christmas Eve), and the “Santa Claus mystery”, there are some more direct references: for instance, the episode opens with the Carol Of The Bells while showing a random Christmas Tree, just to remind the audience that it’s Christmas and not Halloween, for example.

And season one’s Christmas Special opened and closed exactly the same way: showing a Christmas Tree.

On that occasion, there was the Carol Of The Bells again, but in a later scene (which was deleted in syndication and only remained in the DVD version).

Curiously, the “Carol Of The Bells” will be featured at the beginning of the next season’s Christmas Special as well. As though it were a classic. Or Landon were obsessed over it.

The “Stuff” Power: it seems that Jonathan could use the Stuff to teleport around New York and be one step ahead of Basinger each time. But that’s the only certain time: for the rest of the episode, he doesn’t explain much. For instance, at the beginning, he pulls some money out of his coat to buy food, and it remains unclear whether he materialized it with the Stuff or it’s just the money earned working in the past few episodes (even though he only worked one week).

Also, it seems that he used the Stuff to secretly guide Barney the driver to Joseph and Mary’s park. Or maybe he knew (by reading Barney’s mind) that Barney would have led them there, so he just followed him along. Or maybe he secretly guided Joseph and Mary to the park.

And Mulligan seems he’s about to laugh at him.

Or maybe it was all just a coincidence.

Ratings: 32 million audience. 18th tie weekly TV programs, 4th TV genre show.

This Christmas special aired during the 1986 holiday season and was the final episode of the series to air that year. It was definitely popular—far more than the first-season Christmas special. Of all the Christmas Specials of the series, it remained the most-watched one. And that is particularly remarkable by considering the large loss the series had suffered for some episodes now. It seems like the second half of the season can recover, and score at least like season one did two years ago.