Airdate: 09/23/1987

Directed By: Michael Landon

There goes part two of the Season Four opening episode—one that combines a dog assignment with adoption. After a somewhat peculiar first episode (which had no clear purpose or assignment, as the characters themselves acknowledge), things begin to take shape. In a very familiar way.

Especially to those who are familiar with the series.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to run a dog shelter.

In part one, Jonathan and Mark worked at a dog shelter, bringing dogs to various foster homes and elderly residents (even though the episode never actually shows these visits at the old folks, but just those to kids).

At one foster home, they met Alex, an orphan, and paired him with a stray dog they had found earlier. So, the assignment felt concluded. However, it turned out the dog isn’t a stray at all, but belongs to a family that wants him back. And Part One concluded there.

Now, unlike A Special Love in season three, there won’t be any emotional battle over ownership. Instead, Jonathan convinces the dog’s family to let Alex visit the dog from time to time.

So, Part two picks up from there, with Alex spending more time with the dog and the family.

And it is eventually revealed the real drive behind this assignment: the family, who had been trying to have a baby through a surrogate, tragically loses the child.

At the same time, Alex is adopted by a different family who does not want the dog.

Everybody can feel where this thing is leading to.

In many ways, this assignment feels unusual. In most other episodes, Jonathan and Mark are sent to help people at a turning point in their lives—someone already facing a difficult situation. For example, in Alone, another adoption story—they are assigned to help people already dealing with conflict (in that case, reconciling divorced parents for an ill child) and To Touch The Moon began when the kid already discovered he was ill while her mother accepting it. Here, by contrast, the characters are not initially experiencing any hardship. Instead, Jonathan and Mark’s presence seems almost anticipatory, as if they are there in preparation for what is about to happen (the loss of the baby).

So they are sent to assist people who have yet to face their tragedy. It almost feels as though Jonathan and Mark were given no clear guidance from their superior in part one because nothing had happened yet: rather than helping the family process a loss and become open to adoption, they are left navigating the assignment until the tragedy occurs.

Of course, they are also meant to help Alex, and in some way, they are responsible for bringing him to the dog’s family, leading to his adoption. But if this family hadn’t wanted another child—or hadn’t lost the baby—they probably wouldn’t have adopted him in the first place.

At this point, it is worth questioning whether the child’s death always meant to be part of the assignment.

The characters repeatedly suggest that both the loss of the baby and the mother’s inability to have children happen for a reason. While this is never explicitly confirmed, it does make the assignment feel as though it was about preparing the family for that.

If that were the case, it would open to a new set of possibilities: it may suggest that Jonathan and Mark get to help people who are not at decisive crossroads in their life, but also people yet to face them. It could even be implied that the dog is actually a probationary angel. Just by chance.

So, this episode was a sprawling adoption assignment. That’s what’s all about.

But it’s all for the best, eventually.

Except that dog in Bonanza.

• Background

As for the timespan, it remains unclear how long this episode spans. However, it is likely about a month—similar to part one—which suggests the full two-part episode lasts a couple of months, from August until some point in October (it has to be before the Holidays).

Anyway, there’s one curious detail about the setting which sounds like a blooper, although it isn’t really one: at the beginning, Alex is told he will be sent to a foster home on Saturday—and the night before leaving, he’s informed by the head of the house that he won’t be allowed to take the dog with him. However, that same night, all the kids go watch a very specific program.

Of course, that’s the most popular sitcom on TV right then, and it’s by NBC.

Anyway, the problem is that The Cosby Show aired on Thursdays 8:00 PM, but it can’t be if the kid is due to leave on Saturday, and that’s the next day (which means it must be Friday now). And by the time this episode is set (late Summer 1987), The Cosby Show hadn’t been sold to syndication, which means that it only aired on Thursday 8:00 on NBC, so the children here are not going to watch a repeat or some unofficial reruns or whatever.

But again, it’s not really a blooper: one explanation is that, although Alex was scheduled to arrive at the foster home on Saturday, he may have had to leave the childcare center sooner. Or maybe the program was recorded by the foster home (sounds very old, doesn’t it). Or more likely, this was just a random unnecessary deliberate reference by Landon to the most popular TV program of the time, just to appeal to network expectations.

• Characters

In the episode, Jonathan and Mark largely remain in the background. Actually, given that the entire assignment is peculiar (there’s no clear assignment until the kid is adopted), they just stay at the dog shelter until something happens—the kid runs away.

But there’s an odd moment to point out in this. At the beginning of the episode, Mark voices his opinion on surrogate parents.

Landon was wise in giving this line to Mark.

Now, the point is not talking about the statement in particular—that’s a personal matter—but rather the attitude. After all the kids they’ve helped get adopted in the series (the runaway boy in To Touch The Moon, Arnie in Alone, Todd in A Special Love), they do no seem intent on adopting anyone themselves. During For The Love Of Larry in season three, it was implied that they can adopt dogs at least. Of course, adopting a new child will change the course of the series. But it’s so weird that they help so many children get adopted, yet it never occurred to adopt one.

Helping other children but never take one.

Another curious detail appears at the start of the episode, when Mark asks if they can move on to the next assignment, but Jonathan insists there’s more.

It’s unclear whether Jonathan personally feels the assignment is incomplete or if he has received official instructions from his superior to remain. Earlier in the series, it was established that Jonathan does not decide the duration of his assignments—his superior does—so it’s possible that this extended stay was not his choice (more about it here).

However, it is also possible that he just feels there’s something missing. As though the assignment weren’t peculiar enough.

• Production And Setting

The episode was produced in early May 1987 alongside part one (they started earlier because of a strike threatening to delay TV schedule; it only lasted one day though). And it has a separate script, completed one week after the first one.

Apparently, in the original script, the episode was supposed to begin with Jonathan and Mark arguing over the assignment after discovering the dog had found a family. However, Part One ran about five minutes shorter than planned, and Landon decided to move that to the conclusion of that episode.

So, part two starts when Jonathan and Mark bring Alex to see the pup—even though in the script that was supposed to occur some ten minutes into this episode.

Of course, by moving the prologue of part two to the epilogue of Part One, which was too short otherwise, it resulted in making Part Two shorter instead. But they balanced that out by just extending the recap at the beginning of this episode. Which is over six minutes long (and a two minute introduction with the recycle from Little House), definitely more than the usual recaps in other two part episodes.

As for the setting, it’s still in Malibu, particularly the Saddlerock Ranch, where the dog lives.

And the dog shelter is in Santa Clarita, a recycle from a season three dog assignment.

Glossary:

Bag: the bags reappear. This time, both Jonathan and Mark carry one each—Jonathan takes the “convicted felon” one, while Mark carries the other.

Curiously, this is the first time in the series they are shown each carrying a bag. In Keep Smiling, Mark carried both, and in One Winged Angels, Jonathan packed for both of them.

What the bags actually contain, especially Jonathan’s, remains a mystery.

Car: Mark parks his car as though he owned the street.

The odd part is that he just started doing this in season three (in A Night To Remember) and continued in the season three finale. Maybe he feels important, with an angel.

Little House Actors, Highway Actors: there’s still Ivar from Little House (from season nine) playing the father of the dog’s family. And he’s the last new Little House Actor of the series.

And there’s still Brandon Bluhm, future Highway Actor in a new recurring role. Here, he still plays the credited “Kid No. 3” (or Brandon, when they interact with him) who has one line.

The sitting kid on the left.

At least he doesn’t comically tumble down in this episode.

Recycle: during the 1980s time-compression scene at the beginning of the episode, there’s some instances of recycling, some relentless ones.

So, one is the music, which is the same piece used in the season three finale during another time compressing moment.

Which is a slightly altered version of the episode Another Kind Of War, Another Kind Peace before that.

Second, within that same sequence, the characters attend a baseball game together, which is the very same game shown at the end of the season two baseball episode, the one the Toros wins.

Except not they blended it with the scene with the kid and his soon-to-be father.

And that stadium is in Arizona, pretty far from the Saddlerock Ranch.

The production even reuses the exact shot of the ball being hit high into the air and slowly descending.

Maybe these two episodes are set at the same time, which means it’s actually 1985, like season two. But maybe it’s just a recycle.

The Job: it’s still dog rescuers, which is supposed to be what the entire assignment is about.

Ratings: 26 million audience. 43rd tie weekly TV programs, 8th TV genre show.

Part two aired one week after part one, and—unlike what happened in season three—it did not improve on the ratings. In fact, it dropped by one full point compared to part one. This marks only the second time in the series that the second part of a two-part episode couldn’t improve on the ratings of part one (the first instance being One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade in season one, and that was justified by being early in the series).

While the effectively strong performance of part one might have suggested that the season could match the success of season three—which was notably popular—this quite unexpected decline is pointing to a weaker start for season four. Of course, it’s still very early and the season had room to recover. Nevertheless, this early sign suggested that something was off, and it didn’t bode particularly well for the episodes that followed. And the odd part is that it’s just early September: ratings this low could be justified when it’s the end of the year (like Spring, the case of the season three finale), or even later on in the season (like November and December, and almost every episode of season three airing around that time). But at the beginning of the season, it’s pretty much unprecedented in the series.

It’s also worth noting that this episode aired at the actual beginning of a new TV season, whereas part one had aired a week earlier (so, the comparison is unreliable).. Even so, this abrupt drop in viewership could indicate that the new season’s episodes might not maintain the same level of popularity the series had previously enjoyed. And it’s important to remember that the ratings of season four will play a crucial role in determining the future of the series, more than its preceding seasons.

This is somewhat surprising given the success of the dog assignment in season three, which had been that season’s most-watched show. Or maybe it’s the adoption part that turned people away, at least people who have been watching shows written by Landon for twenty years (even Bonanza had a bunch of adoption episodes in its later seasons, those in which Landon was involved the most). Maybe adoption is the covertly fourth of Landon’s Obsessions. In any case, the producers likely hoped that ratings would improve as the season progressed, like in the third season.

One last curious thing: this episode, airing at the beginning of the new TV year, was the first episode to air with Fox, essentially the first attempt to establish a new network pitting competition against CBS, ABC and NBC. That’s not a real threat now: its shows’ ratings were so irrelevant in its first year it’s extremely unlikely that it’s directly responsible for Highway’s ratings (actually, Fox didn’t even have any show airing on Wednesday), but it certainly diversified the audience more than in other years.