Airdate: 04/01/1987

Directed By: Michael Landon

The third season of Highway is about to conclude, and they placed a rather humorous episode just before the season’s finale, like they are used to. In every season of the series, there is at least one lighter episode airing a couple of episodes before that season’s finale (the only exception is season two, which only aired extremely serious or dramatic episodes from The Torch until the conclusion).

Oddly enough, though, it’s not a heist assignment or a spoof of old western: it’s a parody of old spies and caper stories, and it boasts some car chases—exactly the kind of thing the series often claimed it wanted to avoid. Yet here it is now.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a lonely writer confront her obsession over a deceased spy.

It doesn’t sound like Highway, not the slightest.

At the beginning of the episode, Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help Birdy, a hopeless, clumsy, awkward woman who has a dull routine, no friends and no commitments besides her job as an enslaved ghost writer specialized in crime capers and spy adventures.

For some reason, she cannot even publish the stories under her own name and instead prefers to use the image of her attractive colleague from her workplace. The odd part is that everyone else besides her colleague seems unaware that she is writing the stories under that pseudonym. Even though ghostwriting actually existed back then, and publishers should be aware of it (otherwise, she’d just be a slave).

Anyway, besides her awkward job, she’s in love with the idealized image of a Mr. Roger Bolt, a deceased 1960s secret spy agent.

No reason to dwell upon his name any further.

So, the assignment begins for Jonathan and Mark with the intention of helping this woman start living in the reality.

In order to help her do something, Mark suggests she might buy Bolt’s old car, a 1964 red Aston Martin DB4 which is being auctioned nearby.

And she agrees.

And that’s where the problems begin: it turns out that the car also comes with the ghost of the deceased spy.

There are many things going on now. One, this episode is revealing something about how Heaven works in the series: apparently, when someone dies, a person (or even other living beings) can go to Heaven and live there indefinitely, or be turned into a probationary angel like Jonathan, beginning work on Earth to help other people. It’s not entirely clear whether that’s actually a good thing—if it means you are forced to work for the next two hundred years before becoming a full angel (more about it at the “On Angels And Probation” entry here).

Anyway, the relevant point here is that this can only happen if someone actually goes to Heaven. But that doesn’t always happen: if people are bad—or sold their soul to the devil—they go to Hell (exactly what was going to happen to Mark on a season two episode). And in some rare cases, if a person was somewhat bad but not beyond redemption, that person remains wandering on Earth for an indefinite amount of time, haunting places and waiting for the chance to eventually go to Heaven (or not).

And that’s what’s happening to Bolt: despite being dead, he is not worth ascending to Heaven, but he was not bad enough to deserve the other route either. So, he’s just stuck haunting his car and whoever comes to own it.

Actually, something very similar happens to probationary angels too: in Love At Second Sight, a fellow probationary angel deliberately blew his assignment—resulting in his probation being abruptly interrupted and the now former angel being doomed to stay on Earth forever (then Jonathan helped him make up for it, and he got his probation back). So, that seems to apply to dead people too (even people who are not angels).

And now, Belker is being haunted by the ghost of her fantasy lover.

If this thing didn’t sound outlandish enough, they outdid this: shortly before being killed, Bolt concealed in the car some classified documents that could should light on a big conspiracy and reveal the name of a double agent secretly working for Russia (actually, URSS by then); so now a group of Russian spies are coming after the car and her.

No way they just did that.

Apparently, the most fitting way to help her get over her spy stories and capers obsession is to get her to live into one.

It’s not going to work.

Anyway, it really seems like the Halloween Special in season two, in which Jonathan and Mark had to get a conman quit his criminal lifestyle—by helping him pull off the heist of the century.

And Mark didn’t like that. Just like he doesn’t like this.

Basically, this one aims to be a kind of a spy parody; in some ways, it is similar to a season one episode, which was meant to be a western spoof. On that episode they included a pun too: the subject of the assignment was named after Clayton Moore, the Lone Ranger; and the secret agent in this episode likely stands for actor Roger Moore and a spy agent he played for twelve years.

But there are some additional weird parts, and one is at the beginning of the episode. It starts off including a rather unusual device: Jonathan’s voice-over introducing Birdy’s monotonous life to an unknown listener (or to the audience). And then it turns out the Voice-Over was likely addressed to Mark.

It is completely unexpected and rather random. In fact, it is the first time in the whole series that Jonathan’s voice-over is featured at the beginning of an episode. On a few rare occasions, episodes had previously concluded with a voice-over explaining what happened to a character in the epilogue: the first time was in Help Wanted: Angel in season one (and Jonathan explaining the aftermath of Mark and Stella’s wedding), the second was Bless the Boys in Blue in season two (and Mark talking about quitting the job), and the third was in Sail Away in season two (Jonathan mentioning the popularity of two upcoming books).

Alternatively, some episodes conclude with a character’s voice-over repeating a line from the episode (Wally was like that, for example). However, no episode before this one had ever used Jonathan’s voice-over at the beginning, and no episode would do so again. Actually, the only episodes using a voice-over during the episode—not in the epilogue—were Basinger’s New York and The Hero, both in this season.

The weird part is that it’s really unclear whether the voice-over is addressed to Mark—as if Jonathan were explaining something to him, introducing him to the assignment—or to the audience. But neither case really works. The first option doesn’t make sense because it’s been three seasons and three years of Mark working with Jonathan (or four, depending on the measure), and Jonathan has never done anything like this before. (He has never explained the assignment to Mark beforehand, as if this particular assignment were somehow unusual.)

The second option—if the voice-over is meant for the audience—also feels weird. Again, the series had already been running for three seasons, and they had never used this kind of device before. Maybe it’s just because they really wanted to make this look like a spy story.

• Background

The setting is Los Angeles, and there are some unusually specific directions: when Birdy tries to return the car but is chased by the criminals, she tells Roger that she often dreams of being with him in Europe, and Roger mentions that they are actually on the San Bernardino Highway to Barstow—which is a real town.

Not quite there.

Actually, the town is located along the San Bernardino Highway too. Finally, there’s something accurate in the setting.

It rarely happens: generally, they use fictional names for real places (just one episode ago, the Gramercy Building was turned into the “Devonshire” one), or fictional names for fictional places (like in season one, Going Home, Going Home was set in “Twin Rivers” in Oklahoma or Plane Death in Deter).

As for the timespan, the adventure seemingly take place over a week, although the assignment itself appears to last only two days: the night they meet Belker, and then the day of the auction, which supposedly happens some time later. Either way, it’s likely that Jonathan and Mark are working to this episode concurrently to Heavy Date, in which they rented an apartment for a month (more about it at the “Background” entry of that episode). If that were the case, it means this episode is set around late February or early March 1987, which is plausible: they say that Roger Bolt died in 1968, and that he’s been dead for 20 years (roughly); also, late February is the time period this episode was produced, and many episodes of the series take place around the same time they are made—unless otherwise indicated (like The Right Thing or the Holiday Specials). It could also be set in early January of the same year, depending on when Heavy Date was set too.

• Characters

This episode earns many points in the weird way it plays with Jonathan and Mark’s interactions. Basically, Mark is the one who has the idea of convincing Belker to buy Bolt’s car. And for the entire episode, Jonathan doesn’t believe in this plan.

It’s definitely unclear whether that’s because he somehow knows the car is haunted and doesn’t want to complicate the assignment by adding another person (Roger Bolt) to help, or because he actually thinks buying the car would not help Belker in any realistic way.

Either way, he keeps glancing at Mark for that.

Cute Mark.

Except that buying the car turns out to be the best thing, as Jonathan actually explains later on when Birdy doesn’t know what to do with it.

At this point, it’s unclear how come he didn’t trust Mark in the first place. Maybe he didn’t want to give Mark credits for contributing to the assignment.

Instead, about Mark, there are a couple of weird parts too: at the beginning, he’s sitting on a bench reading a spy story in a magazine, holding it unnecessarily close to his face—apparently just to conceal it from Jonathan, who is standing on his left.

Really, Mark needs glasses.

Not Landon’s sunglasses, just reading ones.

He also seems surprisingly absorbed in the story, even though he has never previously been shown reading that sort of thing (or reading much at all, for that matter). Anyway, this episode reveals he likes spy and capers.

But he also likes the picture of the writer.

Mark, not again.

That would be the third time in the series Mark falls in love with a woman, and a blonde one. Maybe he only seeks blonde girls because they remind him of Stella; that would explain the reason he fell for Nina so easily.

But again, the episode is not really about that. Actually, Mark plays a marginal role: he only inspires Birdy to buy the car at the beginning of the episode. Then, upon learning the car is haunted by a ghost, he absconds and completely disappears for the entire second half of the assignment.

Yet again, an episode airing towards the end of the season in which Mark remains largely absent (like almost every episode this season from The Hero on, all the episodes in season two from Summit on, and all the episodes in season one from The Brightest Star, except the season finale). There has got to be a reason for it.

• Production and Setting

As for the production, this episode was written in early February and was produced during a one-week shoot the same month.

As for the setting, it takes place around Los Angeles: Belker’s apartment is in Cardiff Ave, a real place.

While Carlson Park in Culver City is where Mark is reading on a bench.

It still exists.

Glossary:

Angel Revelation: at the beginning, Mark asks Jonathan what excuse they will use to approach Belker for the assignment, mentioning all the strategies they have used before (getting the same job as the subject’s using angelic references, moving in next door, pretending to be old friends of friends).

And Jonathan replies that this time it will be different.

And he’s talking about the Angel Revelation, which Mark officially dubs the “Direct Approach”.

And they should be comfortable using it by now. Just to recap: in the first season, they used it in only once (for The Banker and the Bum show). Then, starting in the second season, they began using it more and more frequently, to the point where there is basically one revelation in every episode (more about it here).

In the fourth season, however, they will return to the original premise of the series and stop using it so often (actually, in season four it will happen just once).

Anyway, there are two weird parts to point out here: one, this episode is certainly not the first time in the series they drop this revelation to the subject of the assignment. Even though they had never shown Jonathan talking to Mark about it (on all the other angel revelations, Jonathan just did it without any prior warning). Because the way Jonathan says it makes it look like the angel revelations were something rare that he resorts to only on extreme cases. But they are not (at least after season two). And he has never been shown talking to Mark about dropping it. Again, this episode is peculiar.

The second weird thing is that Mark tells Jonathan the Angel Revelation is the best approach because the girl, as shy as she is, might only talk to an angel.

You’re not.

He probably forgot that Jonathan is an angel (a probationary one), but Mark is not. Yet.

And that is exactly what happens: the girl attacks Mark with a spray, while Jonathan simply stands there.

Blooper: there are a couple of bloopers in the episode, something the series is used to doing. When Mark is shown reading the spy story “The Krakov Caper” by the bench, the magazine he’s reading actually displays an image of an interview to Pendelton from the Air Navy instead.

The best part is that Mark is supposedly reading out loud the fictional description of the story writer. Except that’s nowhere to be found on the page. Just picture the scene: you’re holding a newspaper one inch from your face, pretending to be reading it, while you’re actually making up the lines.

This blooper is nothing new: something similar occurred in season two episode, when they showed a man reading out loud an article from a newspaper which actually contained the lines from the script he had to recite.

At least this time Mark’s line were not in the magazine, so French had to memorize them.

And there’s another one later: at the conclusion of the episode, Mark is again reading a newspaper, this time about Belker and her adventure. And they show the text, which is not about her.

It’s unclear whether they actually copied a real article from a real newspaper and just changed the headline, or if they made it all up. But they even copied it wrong: the paragraph “Future plans will,…” is printed twice.

Again, this blooper isn’t new either: that same season two episode as the Newspaper blooper from earlier had another scene with a sport news’ article written by Jonathan and Mark about the Toros; except that only the headline reported it, while everything else in that article was made of the same sentence printed over and over, about something completely unrelated to sport, for that matter.

At least they didn’t keep the same lines from that episode.

Highway Actress: there’s an old Highway actress in the episode

The clumsy, helpless Belker is played by Didi Conn, who had already appeared in the episode All That Glitters earlier in this season, where she played a clumsy, awkward woman who falls in love with the thief.

Now, two things to point out: one is that her role here is very similar to that one. In both cases she plays an idealistic, distracted, friendless woman living alone and fantasizing about meeting the man of her dreams. But maybe they are meant to be the same character. Or a reference. Or twins. Whatever.

The second thing to point out is that the earlier episode aired only three months before this one. This makes her the second shortest-spanning Highway actress to appear in two episodes of the series. Most Highway actors playing multiple characters appear in different seasons. Very rarely is some Highway actors to appear multiple times in the season. So far, the only one was Ivor Barry in season one, who played a butler in both episodes he was in. Perhaps Landon only calls the same actor twice in the same season for similar roles, and he thought Didi Conn here could play cheeky quirky roles very well.

Anyway, there are just two more Highway actors appearing twice as two different characters in the same season, and they are both in the fourth season.

Quiet Quitters: the episode concludes with Jonathan and Mark quietly leaving without saying anything. Like they do sometimes. But there is something odd about this: at the conclusion, Belker runs into a neighbor who just moved in. And he recognizes her from the newspaper, and it’s implied by their acting that they will fall in love.

Or maybe not.

It sounds like the Pilot.

Anyway, two things are odd here. First, Jonathan and Mark walk away as though the assignment were finished, but they have no real certainty that the man and Belker will actually fall in love. And it could actually wind up the same way as with Leslie in the pilot: she casually talked to a neighbor, suggesting they might fall in love, and it turned out three seasons later she’s marrying someone else.

But there’s another weird thing: if they really were meant to fall in love, that makes the whole assignment rather pointless. She literally meets a man who has just moved in, while Jonathan and Mark had nothing to do with it.

But you didn’t do a thing.

What happened in the assignment was that the agent Bolt went “upstairs” because he defended Belker against the criminals, Jonathan and Mark didn’t do anything.

Also, had they never been there in the first place, Belker would have probably met that neighbor anyway, unless the resolution of the assignment is somehow related to that man’s decision to move next door is a consequence of what happened in the assignment.

Of course, she would still have been too stuck on Roger to realize it, but it would have been an easy problem to solve. The only thing they did in this episode was just Mark suggesting she might buy a new car. Everything else just unraveled without their involvement.

Maybe that’s why Jonathan didn’t want Belker to pick Mark’s suggestion: he knew that Mark had the winning idea, so he didn’t want to give him credit for it.

This time, you’re wrong.

Friendly Jonathan: the beginning of the episode is a long Friendly Jonathan instance. As though Jonathan hadn’t had enough from the preceding episode. Basically, when Jonathan and Mark are sitting on the bench at the park and Mark is reading the magazine, Jonathan asks whether he wants to know about the next assignment. This is where Jonathan’s familiar friendliness appears again: by this point they have been working together for three years—Jonathan shouldn’t really be waiting for Mark to ask what the assignment is if he already knows it. He could simply tell him.

Mark, however, is a bit wittier this time and remarks that he no longer asks because Jonathan always remains deliberately, annoyingly mysterious about it.

He has finally learned how to dodge Jonathan’s evasiveness.

But Jonathan is a worse friend and cuts to the chase: he asks Mark whether he has ever heard of Gudonov, the woman who wrote the story that Mark had just concluded reading.

Of course: he has just done reading her story.

Now, Jonathan is probably a bad friend if he doesn’t even pay attention to his friend talking about his love for spy stories. Of course he’s aware that Mark knows her: he’s been reading her story.

Then, it’s reasonable to conclude that Jonathan is talking about her because she’s the assignment.

But it’s not.

Then why talking about her in the first place?

Jonathan later explains that Birdy is the assignment, but he’d rather fool Mark into believing something else before telling him the truth.

Another instance of the Friendly Jonathan is when they find out there’s a ghost. But Jonathan won’t say which ghost.

Despite Mark’s insistence.

Jonathan might as well just say it rather than messing around.

He could have said who’s “him” right away instead of being so volatile. And friendly.

And even scolds Mark for being scared of a dead ghost, because Jonathan is technically a ghost too.

The Stuff: in the episode, Jonathan uses the Stuff to save Belker’s dying plant. It’s an old trick: he already used it in the Pilot. And a bunch of other times. But he also uses it to tamper the auctioneer’s phone to prevent him for competing with Belker over the car. Which is weird: if he doesn’t believe that buying it would really help her, than he should participate in the auction.

Anyway, there is one odd thing about the Stuff: over the course of the episode, Jonathan feels that there’s something wrong with the car, but doesn’t what. And it’s unclear whether he used the Stuff or what. However, at the end of the episode, when Bolt disappears, Belker asks whether he’s in Heaven, and Jonathan doesn’t know it.

That’s something: he is not told whether Roger is actually “upstairs” or not, but he has faith he is, and Birdy shares that faith as well. It feels incomplete, without a clear-cut, definite response as to whether Roger is in Heaven or not, but it is fitting for Jonathan’s ideals.

Ratings: 31 million audience. 16th tie weekly TV programs, 3rd TV genre show.

The episode aired in early April 1987, which is extremely unusual. In the first and second seasons, as the shows approached their conclusion, episodes would air continuously until March. After that, reruns of earlier episodes would be shown until late April or early May, the moment they aired the final two episodes of the season. Then the series would run entirely on summer reruns until September, when the new season began.

However, this season was different: instead of keeping this episode for late April or early May alongside the season finale, they decided to air it in early April—about a month earlier than usual—right alongside the rest of the regular episodes. Likely it’s because, in the first season, they kept the last two episodes separate from the rest of the season since they were both part of the season finale, which had been divided into two parts. They did the same thing in the second season, where the last two episodes (Children’s Children and Friends) aired separately from the rest of the season. Except that, in that case, the episodes were two different, unrelated assignment (not a single one divided into two parts).

They probably realized that it didn’t make much sense to hold two episodes back for over a month if those episodes weren’t related to each other. So, for this season, they decided it would work better to keep only the actual season finale as a separate episode, while airing this one alongside the rest rather than holding it for one month with the finale. At least the audience wouldn’t have to wait two months for two random episodes. Or maybe it was because they wanted to air a special comic episode for the first day of April and thought this would be a good idea. That might also explain why it doesn’t really feel like a Highway episode—perhaps it was just Landon playing a joke on the audience. Still, it did work out: in terms of ratings, the episode was watched by around 31–32 million people. That is highly popular, both in this time of the year (ratings in early Spring usually plunge down in every show) and for this season (the ratings in its first half, especially November and December, seemed to indicate a gloomy future ahead). Instead, it managed to navigate them and get through this season.

Nevertheless, it would also be the last episode of the series to surpass 30 million viewers, or even come close to that number. The rest of the series won’t ever be this successful anymore—in ratings, at least. Anyway, now the season will begin airing some reruns for the rest of the month, which will lead all the way to the season finale. And it will be an episode covering a familiar territory.