Airdate: 02/25/1987

Directed By: Michael Landon

There it goes: a very big drug assignment. In fact, this marks one of the most outspoken drug episodes of the series. There has already been quite a few, although they mostly combined multiple features (for instance, Plane Death was more of a mystery than a drug-focused story). Instead, this episode wants to make a statement.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to investigate on the allegation of a school student reporting that his father is hooked on drugs.

In the assignment, Jonathan and Mark work as narcs at a prestigious school, where one of the students has been recently suspended after drugs were found in his dorm.

Initially, Jonathan and Mark are contacted by the school just to lecture the students on the risks of drugs for students.

Just everyday stuff.

However, the case becomes complicated when the suspended student, David, feels compelled by Jonathan and Mark’s speech to turn in his father—a TV anchorman—claiming that he is also hooked on drugs.

Now, Jonathan and Mark must investigate to determine whether David is merely trying to deflect blame on the parents.

Or whether there is something much bigger going on.

There are some family issues to solve here.

What makes it peculiar is that, unlike most episodes in which Jonathan and Mark are fully aware of what is happening during the assignment, this time they only discover at the conclusion that the newsman is hooked as well—even though this is revealed to the audience at the beginning, just not to them. For most of the episode, Mark will go on believing that the man is innocent and his son is lying.

That goes to show you don’t know anything, and you’ve learnt nothing from your being a cop.

Even though it’s nothing new: in the episode For The Love Of Larry, he forgot all the basic lessons they taught him at the academy.

• Background

The background is much unclear on this one. The episode opens with Jonathan and Mark already working as cops, completely skipping the part where they are driving to the assignment and formally receiving it (in that way, it’s similar to The Torch in season two). Actually, they appear in the episode only when they are already lecturing students.

And Landon is always real serious about drugs.

It is never stated how long Jonathan and Mark have been working as cops, nor whether they had another assignment as cops before this one. It could be the case, though: the episode For The Love Of Larry (the cold open) earlier on in the season depicts Jonathan and Mark working undercover as cops to bust drug smugglers and pushers; it is plausible that the two episodes take place around the same time. Actually, that cold open starts by showing Mark saying that he’s looking forward to finishing the assignment.

He can’t stand any more drugs assignment.

Of course, in that episode they quit their job at the end of the cold open (when Mark believes he has the Stuff), so this episode must occur before that one. But, if that were the case, it means either this episode is set earlier in the season, or that For The Love Of Larry is set later.

So, Jonathan and Mark may have been working as cops for some time, handling drug-related cases like this one (the series doesn’t show all the assignments they work on, so maybe they have been working as cops a quite some time before this), and the episode For The Love Of Larry was the last as narcs. The complication arises if that prologue—which was added later because the episode would have been too short otherwise—is considered official canon. Because the cold open in Love And Marriage isn’t (it wasn’t included in the new DVD release of the series, restoring the episodes in the way they originally aired).

Anyway, more generally, the timeline of this season is unclear. So, this episode could take place anytime, but seemingly lasted the usual one week.

As for the setting, it’s Los Angeles: in particular, in the Oakwood neighborhood.

One peculiar detail about the setting: the episode uses the name of an existing British university for the fictional American college setting.

Curiously, this is the second time in the series that the name of a real university has been used for a fictional one (the first was Heaven On Earth).

• Characters

In the episode, Jonathan and Mark work as cops. Again: it’s the second time in the series they receive this job, the first was Bless The Boys In Blue in season one. And that’s important for Mark: as revealed in the Pilot (and then brought up again in Bless The Boys In Blue), he used to work as a cop in Oakland for fifteen years (roughly from 1964 to 1979), and then he gradually lost faith in people and turned to alcohol, which led to his suspension. Afterwards, he moved in with his sister Leslie and five years later he met Jonathan, who helped him recover from his booze problems. And they started their journey angeling around the country (or California, whatever) that led them here.

However, they do not state how he feels about it now: unlike Bless The Boys In Blue, in which the entire prologue revolved around discussing what being a cop is like, in this episode they skipped the part in which Jonathan and Mark got the job. So, there’s no time for either Jonathan or Mark to talk about what’s like being a cop, again.

Anyway, Jonathan’s attitude is weird. In the episode, he knows that David’s friend Jeff is the one who is pushing drugs at school. And he was probably informed by his superior. However, it remains unclear whether he also knows that David’s allegations are true. That’s because, for much of the episode, he doesn’t do anything about it: like, he doesn’t try to confront David’s father, nor he tells Mark about that. Rather, he seems intent on trying to bust David’s schoolmate and completely forgets all about David. It almost seems like the assignment were to bust David’s friend, while helping David and his father is just a side, parallel assignment. But there are just a couple of scenes of Jonathan trying to bust Jeff, so it’d be a weird assignment.

Anyway, there’s one moment to point out about Jonathan: at some point, he confronts the parents of David’s friend who is selling drugs around. But he won’t do anything about it, despite being a cop.

So, despite knowing who is selling the drugs, he just went there to “help him”. This is important for two reasons: one, it reveals Jonathan’s ideology, he helps people make the right decisions but cannot force them—meaning drug problems cannot be solved simply by immediately invoking his authority. The second reason is that it seemingly confirms that Jonathan and Mark are not functioning as real cops in the strict sense. Or Jonathan would have handled this differently.
Either way, this marks the second time in the series that they work as cops or narcs or federal agents, more generally. The first time was in Bless the Boys in Blue. There is also the prologue of the episode with the dog, though that was added later.

• Production and Setting

From a production standpoint, the episode was produced in January 1987 and written by David Thoreau, who had already written three shows by now: Children’s Children in season two (the one about a woman accused of mishandling funds by an arrogant journalist) and then the episode where Mark falls in love (the second time) and the episode about prom night (that very necessary assignment).

Curiously, this is the first police-centered episode by him, and it would not be the last: the rest of the episodes he wrote in the series (there are two more in the fourth season and one in the fifth) will all be “police assignments”, where Jonathan and Mark work as cops or detectives or something related to those profiles. Actually, in the fourth season, he would write an episode very similar to this one: again, Jonathan and Mark work as narcs in a high school and investigate a drug-related case. The difference is that the later episode is more about the related investigation and the attempt to bust the dealers, while this episode is about family issues and people overcoming addiction (in this way, it’s similar to The Good Doctor in season two). Perhaps Thoreau realized that the part in the episode in which Jonathan attempts to bust the student that pushed dope to Jeff and other students at school was too rushed and decided to expand on this later.

Either way, over the course of his Highway career, Thoreau only wrote episodes that either deal with people growing up and facing easy judgements (in Children’s Children, the subjects are young mothers, A Night To Remember had the most bizarre set of characters of the series) or with drugs and police investigations. Actually, this episode has both: a student growing up, a TV Newsman accused of being hooked, and Jonathan and Mark working as cops. And Oh Lucky Man is just an exception.

As for the setting, it was produced in California, where it also takes place.

That place has many problems.

Glossary:

Drugs: part of the Bums, Bins and Drugs category (the three Landon’s obsessions), and they go down all then way.

Keep that in mind, kids.

That marks the fourth assignment of the series to be entirely about drugs: the first was Plane Death (which was more of a police story), then As Difficult As ABC and The Good Doctor (which was more a family issues story, like this). Actually, there’s also For The Love Of Larry, but that’s just in the cold open.

Highway Of Mysteries: this episode has one mysterious part, underlying in the assignment. Basically, it’s unclear whether Jonathan knows about David’s father or not. He seems to know that David’s friend is pushing drugs at school, as he confronts both him and his parents on the matter, yet he doesn’t do anything with David’s father up until the conclusion of the episode. Then, when David breaks down and confesses everything, Jonathan seems to know that David’s father carries dope in the pocket. But how he could know that, it’s a mystery: they already had David’s statement that his father was hooked, so nothing has changed after that. But they do not give it much attention: up until that point, Jonathan is busy trying to bust the boy who sells dope.

It’s hard to tell how Jonathan received that info: maybe his superior confirmed him that David’s father has problems. Or maybe he already knew, yet he did nothing about it until the conclusion of the episode: up until that point, he was busy trying to bust David’s friend who is pushing dope.

That seemingly implies that the assignment is not helping David, but rather working as narcs in the school. If that were the case, it means that David’s story is just what the episode is about, but the assignment is a bigger one.

Maybe, then, it’s about working as narcs. But that would be weird too: even though they are presented as police officers, it does not seem that they can fully exercise police authority. For example, Jonathan appears to know who is dealing drugs at the school, and theoretically he could obtain a warrant and search the dealer’s house to prove it. Yet he never does. Instead, he only confronts that student’s parents, without any concrete evidence, as if they were simply going to take his word for it. If he were truly that certain, he could have pursued an arrest. Instead, as he explains to the parents, his goal is not to bust their son but to help him. As though they were going to believe him.

They are not.

That complicates the mystery.

Anyway, another mystery is at the beginning: the episode starts as Jonathan and Mark are already cops, and are lecturing the students on drugs. But how they make their speech is a mystery. Now, Jonathan is an angel, so he’s used to talk in public and drop some punchlines on potentially any subject; it’s even possible that his superior tells him what to say and how to say it, or gives him some knowledge on any subject (otherwise, it would be hard to explain how he got the job as a teacher in the season two finale and in a season three episode earlier on). However, Mark has never received superior knowledge on a subject. And his speech his an important moment, inspiring David to take action and report his father.

So, it’s unclear whether Jonathan had told Mark to talk about parents using drugs, knowing that it would shake David’s conscience, or if he didn’t—which makes the assignment just a coincidence. Unless, again, the real assignment were being a cop, and the story of David and his father is just part of it—the part the episode shows—but there’s more. And that ties back to the first mystery: how come Jonathan knows that David’s friend is the criminal, but he doesn’t know about David’s father, nor he and Mark investigate on him.

Sunday Suit: being a cop requires a new attire too. So, for the entire episode, Jonathan and Mark wear the grey Sunday Suits (like the ones in Friends, when they were teachers). Throughout the episode, Jonathan and Mark wear their Sunday suits—specifically the gray ones—not because of a special occasion, but because of their work as cops.

Anyway, if this image looks familiar, that’s because it is: that’s part of the promo of season three.

Actually, this was the only promotional image that correctly belongs to the same season as the episode does: the promo for season two comes from Wally (a season three episode), while the promo for season four is The Monster (a season two episode) and for season five it’s yet another image from Wally season three. At this point, having used Wally so often, it’s a mystery why they didn’t use it for its own season, and chose another episode instead. But at least this episode is actually from the third season.

Either the person who clipped this only watched the third season (and that one random episode of the second), or it’s all just random.

The Job: as for the job itself, it is quite strange. Jonathan and Mark are cops—specifically narcotics officers—making it the third time in then series (after Bless The Boys In Blue and the cold open in For The Love Of Larry). As the episode opens with them already working the case, it’s unclear how they got then job in the first place. It’s probably through Jonathan’s references (which can no mention he worked as a cop too), even though it’s unclear whether they also mention that Mark used to be a cop, and then got suspended. It would be hard.

Not anymore.

Ratings: 30 – 31 million audience. 32nd weekly TV programs, 9th TV genre show.

Finally, the episode aired in late February and the ratings are quite good: if taken out of context, it was quite successful, much more than other episodes earlier in then season. However, it placed unusually low in weekly programs, far below other shows that got worse ratings but aired earlier on in the season. That’s mostly because it probably aired in a week that enjoyed more popularity than usual, but this Highway was excluded from that. If it were the case, then the ratings of the next week episode will come back the normal way. Of course, if Highway can actually hold on to this high ratings.