Airdate: 02/18/1987

Directed By: Michael Landon

Now that the third season is drawing to a conclusion, the producers evidently felt it was the right time to make a very dramatic episode—centered on the Vietnam War, again. As it’s become apparent by now, in every season of Highway there’s at least one Vietnam episode (the same way in each season there’s at least one Holiday Special). But there has already been one: the third season is actually the only season to feature two Vietnam War episodes. While season four has none (but don’t worry: they’ll come back in season five). And this episode is unusual: in some ways, it’s the most traditional of the Vietnam installments, yet in some other ways, it also contains several peculiar features that makes it unique.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to support a Vietnam War veteran who is being denied aid for his health problems.

It appears to be a the most familiar of the Vietnam-war shows: a soldier, Joe, lost an arm and a leg in the war, frequently dreams of his experience in the army, and has booze problems. But he constantly tries to pull himself together and get by every time.

However, one day he starts suffering from a dental infection.

When he is denied government assistance to pay for dental cares he couldn’t possibly afford in any other way, his life gradually crumbles down around him, the drinking gets worse and his behavior is increasingly deranged and nervous. But he won’t admit it.

While his wife is completely oblivious of what’s going on.

So, Jonathan and Mark must help him in some way.

One of the episode’s most distinctive aspects lies in the assignment. Here, Jonathan and Mark do not have to help Joe in some sort of battle against the government that won’t support him.

Unlike the Washington episode—in which Mark’s niece could not obtain necessary medicine due to government incompetence, and Jonathan and Mark traveled all the way to Washington and confronted senators directly—this assignment does not revolve around solving Joe’s problem with the Veteran’s assistance. They do not become advocates for veterans going through the same thing (like they’ll do in a season five episode), nor they seek assistance from someone who is more competent to fight this thing (like when they enlisted Scotty’s help in The Monster) or attempt to prove the system is wrong (like they did in the Washington episode, again).

Then why don’t you do something about it? You’re the angel.

Now, they just acknowledge there’s something wrong, but the assignment is a more personal one.

Their role is just to be there for him, and emotionally support him to confront his resentment and despair.

That makes the episode feels more realistic, and considerably more serious.

Another unusual feature is the perspective: typically, episodes are told through Jonathan and Mark’s point of view alongside that of the person they are helping. Rarely is an episode presented almost entirely through the subject’s perspective (that occurred only twice so far). And this episode is not exclusively told from Joe’s perspective, but the vast majority of it is. Actually, it goes so far as to have his voice-over all through the episode, discussing his thought or his feelings.

It’s the second time in the series an episode has a voice-over from a character who is not Jonathan or Mark: the first time was earlier this season (in an episode that was told exclusively from the subject’s perspective instead). Even though there are some other episodes that will have a voice-over by the assignment’s subject, they won’t be prominently told that way, unlike these two episodes.

There is really something peculiar going on.

Even the structure of the opening departs from tradition. Up to this point, every episode had begun in the same way: they show the opening (Jonathan wandering along the highway, Mark picking him up, the familiar “Little House” recycled theme playing) and the episode’s title appears immediately after the opening, underscored by a brief piece of David Rose’s music (usually taken from a set of tunes that are recycled over and over in the series).

In some occasion, the credits and the title of the show are not shown immediately after the opening, but they are delayed until after the prologue. However, that’s only the case for those episodes having a “cold open” added at some point later (the episode was done without it, Landon realized it was too short and wrote a new, random scene completely unrelated to the rest of the episode to insert at the beginning). Only in those cases, the credits play after the cold open (which is usually ten minutes long) but that’s because that prologue, or cold open, wasn’t meant to be in the episode in the first place (so far, that occurred twice in the series, both times this season). And then, when the cold open is done, the title is displayed immediately with a piece from Rose selected randomly and everything comes back the same (again, that’s because the episode was supposed to open without the cold open, it’s just that the credits were delayed ten minutes into it).

Here, however, the pattern changes. Immediately after the usual opening, instead of displaying the title and actors’ credits, the episode cuts to a Vietnam War sequence, with soldiers firing guns and running across a field (as though it were a cold open).

The subject of the assignment then awakens—it was only a nightmare, supposedly the moment Joe lost his limbs. So, Joe moves to another room to take medication.

Only three minutes into the episode does the title finally appear, but presented in a stark, unsettling silence, without any music from Rose.

That choice signals this will be a different and more somber episode.

Anyway, it’s a Vietnam episode, the fourth so far. And it tries to combine classical features and more innovative ones.

• Background

This assignment is one of the shortest in the series, it seemingly lasts one day. At the beginning of the episode, Jonathan and Mark are unemployed, and they just go to the dentist and take an appointment for that same afternoon.

However, immediately after that, Jonathan is shown working at Joe’s workplace, as his colleague, and they seem friends.

Then, Jonathan and Joe and Mark go to the dentists, and the same night they go out drinking. The following day, Jonathan prevents Joe from stealing the money, and Joe goes back home. And Jonathan and Mark spy on him as he reconciles with his wife.

It’s not nice spying on people.

Then, Mark concludes that the assignment is done and they can move on.

But on what grounds he makes this assumption, it’s unclear. Because of the assignment’s weird subject (they only have to support Joe emotionally, not solving his problems), there’s no clear way to determine whether the assignment is over or not. And it’s hard to imagine that Joe’s problems have been solved in a single day. Unless their superior told them (more about it here).

Either way, they drive off without even showing Jonathan quitting his job. And it’s harder to imagine that he worked literally two days before moving on.

• Characters

This episode is puzzling for the characters. Given that Joe is basically the protagonist, for most of the times they stay behind. And there are few references to their past: the only one is when Joe invites them for a drink together, and they accept. Even though none of them drink, really.

Then why did you go there in the first place.

Of course, some casual drinking is allowed, but Mark is not shown doing that either. And Jonathan as angel won’t drink at all. Again, this episode is weird.

But then, when Joe gets drunk and goes to his car, Jonathan has to do something.

This series is against driving while drunk, you can’t ever forget that.

One of the few scenes in which they actually discuss about the assignment is at the conclusion: finally, Mark confesses he’s puzzled by the assignment, believing that Joe only snapped once because of his denied care, but he has no problems otherwise.

He is confused about this assignment, like everyone watching this episode is too.

Then, Mark compares Joe to John Wayne, at least the way his wife described him, and Jonathan has to remarks something.

This remark is a lie. Not that John Wayne is not a human, but that Jonathan is: he’s an angel. He seemingly forgot about that.

Also, one curious thing: in his career, French actually worked with John Wayne once, in the 1970 picture Rio Lobo, Wayne as the protagonist and French as the antagonist (one of the many in that movie). So, he already knows that.

• Production and Setting

Unlike what the title suggests, this episode is unrelated to the short-lived 1966 sitcom of the same name, with French and Mulligan (the western spoof). It’s a weird coincidence: this episode is the third one with something apparently related to that (Basinger’s New York had Mulligan, while A Night To Remember shares the same title of one episode from that).

As for production details, the episode was filmed in early January 1987, either as the the second or the first installment produced in the new year after the customary three-week Christmas break (it’s unclear whether this episode before this was made in January too).

It was written by Michael Landon himself rather than by one of the highwaymen, despite its many unconventional elements.

As for the setting: most of the episode was filmed in Culver City rather than Los Angeles. Some parts might look familiar: in particular, the scene in which Joe goes drinking all alone at the beginning of the episode was shot at “Ed’s”, the same place used in the Halloween Special in season two (where Mark and Jonathan meet the conman) and then in Love And Marriage earlier this season (where that guy went drinking after being abandoned at the altar).

And that’s in Culver City.

Anyway, the exception is the final scene—when the veteran apologizes to his wife—that was shot in Los Angeles instead.

Glossary:

Car: at the beginning, Jonathan rushes on Mark’s car and parks it next to the dentist.

That’s most certainly not a parking spot. But maybe angels get special treatment. Something similar occurred in A Night To Remember, when they parked the car right in front of the school. And it was not a parking spot either.

Anyway, before that, Jonathan makes a drastic Joey Chitwood stunt with the car. Even though it’s a recycled one.

Friendly Jonathan: there’s one friendly Jonathan instance at the beginning of the episode, when Jonathan orders Mark to take an appointment with a doctor, without specifying it’s part of the assignment.

No, Mark: you’re not the assignment.

There have already been too many episodes where Mark was the subject of the assignment (Heaven On Earth, Oh Lucky Man), so they are done with him. Even though Jonathan should have specified that taking the appointment was part of the assignment, and not something random.

Actors (Little House Actors, Highway Actors): it’s an episode with some familiar faces to the audience from Little House and Highway, and to Landon and French too. More in details, there’s one actress that already knew Landon by Little House, then one actor who knew French by their shared western shows, and one actress who knew them both from this series.

So, Joe’s wife is played by Anne Curry, and she was known to Landon as a Little House actress by then.

Before this, she had previously appeared on Little House in an eighth-season episode in which a black doctor arrives in town with his wife but nobody accepts him. In that earlier role, she portrayed a woman who allowed the doctor to help deliver her baby, despite her husband’s racism.

Curiously, that episode was written by Gutierrez, who is one of the two Little House writers that also wrote something for Highway (the other is Cooper).

Then, for the part of Joe—similarly to what they did with James Troesh as Scotty—they cast a truly physically impaired actor.

He is played by James Stacy, a prominent actor in the 1970s who began his career in Westerns.

Before this series, he had already collaborated with French on a couple of shows: one is in 1968, when they both made a guest appearance in a ninety minutes episode of Gunsmoke season thirteen; on that occasion, Tracy played a prominent role in the episode, a gunman hunting for a baron who killed his family—and French played a background character, a drunken, raging farmer (he wasn’t the antagonist of the episode, but a bad character all the same). However, French only appeared in two scenes in the entire episode, none of which is with Tracy, and maybe they didn’t meet each other.

Instead, one year later, they actually collaborated in an episode of Lancer, a western TV series by CBS about the daily adventures of a rancher and his grown-up sons (if that sounds familiar, it was released in a time when Bonanza was winning in the ratings against Gunsmoke, and someone at CBS wanted to make up for it). It was not much popular though: it only ran two seasons and was then cancelled on account of its ratings.

Anyway, in that series, the youngest son, “Johnny”, is played by Tracy, appearing in all its episodes. And French made one guest appearance in 1969, in a late season one episode where Lancer is trying to open a school in town. There, French played the antagonist: a hillbilly who doesn’t believe in schooling and wants to prevent his son from having it.

That time he was a downright antagonist (like he almost always was in his career before meeting Landon, for that matter)

Anyway, in 1973, the promising career of James Tracy was tragically interrupted when he had a motorcycle accident with his girlfriend: she died in the impact, he survived but lost his left arm and leg. After that, he struggled to find new roles, mostly because he could only get to play characters with a similar impairment: before this Highway, he had already played a Vietnam War veteran who lost an arm and leg in the war a number of times, including a 1977 “Movie Of The Week“, and a similar part in Cagney And Lacey one year before this. It would be one of the last role of his career though: after this episode, he stopped working for three years, then he appeared on Wiseguy and eventually retired from acting in 1991 and died about twenty five years later.

So, this episode had one actor known by Landon, another known by French, and then there’s one for them both, even though just in one scene: the character informing Joe that a stranger had payed for his bill (which enrages Joe like Scotty at the end of One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade) is played by Eve Brent, who had already appeared in The Monster, as the landlady Mark rents the apartment from (again, it’s just one scene). She’s going to come back in the fifth season as well. On that occasion, she’ll actually have a much more prominent role, as part of the assignment.

“KA” news: the channel is back. In the season two episode The Torch, they introduced a fictional TV network that everybody watches for the news. It was also used in Children’s Children by the end of season two and For The Love Of Larry earlier in this season.

And now it’s shown again.

A further confirmation everyone watches the same news channel in this series.

Recycle: there’s one recycle at the beginning of the episode, preceding the opening credits. During the nightmare in which Joe supposedly relives the moment he lost his limbs in the war, the production decided to threw in some old stuff. One of the dream’s scene, in which a kid tries to ridiculously pretend to fire a fake gun, is a recycle.

This kid’s sandyman.

That’s the same scene from To Bind the Wounds (the season two’s Vietnam episode), including the hazy atmosphere and the sound. And, on that occasion, it was used in a dream as well.

Perhaps it indicates that Joe fought in the same platoon as Timmy from that episode. Or that everybody who fought in Vietnam dream about the same war scene, just like everyone watches the same channel. Or maybe that soldier is an angel just like Jonathan who enjoys invading other people’s dream and make them have nightmare about the war.

In fact, this footage will be recycled yet again in another Vietnam-themed episode of season five. So, it might be the case. That episode will also recycle sequences from Joe’s dream here, though.

At the beginning of the episode, there’s another recycle: the Joey Chitwood stunt comes from the conclusion of The Last Assignment. That also creates a blooper: while Jonathan and Mark are in the car discussing the nuclear weapons news, the street on Mark’s window is different from the one shown the moment the car turns around.

And that’s because the stunt comes from a different episode, so the two scenes were shot in two different moments.

Sunday Suit: Jonathan wears his grey suit as part of his job at the bank.

It seems like it’s the suit for his teaching and his banking.

The Stuff: there is also an unusual element involving Jonathan’s powers. At some point, Joe is harassed by a group of thugs, and Jonathan intervenes.

So, he uses his otherworldly strength to drive them away, grabbing one by the neck and pushing him.

That’s an old power: he already did the same thing in the Pilot (when he saved Mark from those thugs) and in Change Of Life (when an actress was being harassed by a fellow actor). However, there’s something peculiar: when the thugs get on the run, Mark attempts to chase them but Jonathan stops him. Then, Mark reasonably objects that letting them get away isn’t fair, but Jonathan mysteriously explains that the men have already made choices —and that nothing can be done to save them.

Won’t you help him?

It remains unclear whether Jonathan learned this through divine insight or was informed by his superior. That wouldn’t be the first time Jonathan unlocks the “seeing the future” power: he used it on Love And Marriage on Mark, but only in the cold open (which is not part of the series). Either way, it is quite peculiar that Jonathan can sometimes know the earthly future of certain individuals, since such knowledge would seemingly simplify many of his assignments.

Even though every assignment may, in some way, stem from knowing what will happen to the characters involved if Jonathan doesn’t help them. For example, if he’s told he has to help a man in a retirement home, it’s because he knows that otherwise that man would have no hope.

However, now he goes one step too far: Jonathan doesn’t just know what is going to happen in the future (that guy will “reach the end” of the road he chose), but he won’t do nothing about it. That sounds like a threat (it certainly seems that the road won’t lead that thug anywhere good), but if Jonathan knows that, he should be a nice angel and actively try to prevent that—his job being helping people (supposedly). So, this line implies that he knows what’s going to happen, and that some people can’t be saved, or Jonathan would have tried to prevent that guy from reaching the end of the road, even if it weren’t his assignment (in some episodes Jonathan acted out of his own will). So, maybe Jonathan can only try to help those who have a chance, or at least that he thinks they have; otherwise, he’d try to save this guy as well. Something similar was already suggested in Alone, when Jonathan told Arnie that only special people can see angels (implying that there’s some sort of hierarchy in this world). Otherwise, a second way to see it would be tying it to Jonathan’s ideology: he can only help those at a crossroad in their life, and that man already went down the wrong road.

Or maybe it just means those people work with Jonathan’s enemy, and he can’t save them. Although he saved Mark (but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mark is treated better than anybody else just because he’s the friend of an angel).

Or maybe he just implied those guys had drug problems, and Landon wanted to remind the audience of the dangers of that.

This man is so serious about it.

The Job: for the second time in the series Jonathan and Mark work separately. Jonathan takes a job at the bank alongside Joe, while Mark remains unemployed. It is the only time in the series that Jonathan alone takes on a job for an assignment without Mark’s direct involvement. In fact, Mark plays a relatively minor role in this case; his main contribution comes when he tries to warn Joe about his excessive drinking, probably drawing on his own past booze problems. Then, he just goes to the dentist.

Anyway, because the assignment was an odd one, it’s hard to determine how long Jonathan was employed at the bank.

It won’t be long.

Ratings: 31 – 32 million audience. 19th weekly TV programs, 4th TV genre show

In any case, this episode aired in February, and the ratings slightly improved compared to the preceding one. Even though it became the least watched Vietnam show of the four aired so far.

They are almost exactly the same as those in the second half of season one. By now, the season has definitely improved on the ratings of its earlier episodes, but it’s also clear that there’s no certainty each week.