Airdate: 10/21/1987

Directed By: Michael Landon

The season didn’t start off on the right foot, at least in terms of ratings, but it’s been two weeks now. Things could improve any moment.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help a doctor living in a racist neighborhood confront his past.

So, Jonathan and Mark work in a typical residential neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they’re trying to sell a house.

They meet the secretly racist head of the home association.

Sure, pal.

And then he’s soon called away by his housewife to answer the phone.

Who wouldn’t want to live there.

This place feels like Walnut Grove, and that woman is Caroline.

Not the best place to live, is it.

Meanwhile, they meet one of the residents, William, a doctor who lives there with his family.

Apparently, he seems like one of “the right kind of people,” forcing his wife to join a posh sports tournament just because every other wife in the neighborhood does.

However, William is hiding a secret: he’s actually Mexican, and he lied his way into the neighborhood thinking he’d have better opportunities if he pretended to be American instead.

He’s essentially “passing” as white (or whatever).

Once a week, William visits his mother, who is completely unaware of his family’s true identity—and so are his wife and son.

The situation becomes more complicated when you consider that William keeps visiting his mother but only once a week—with the excuse because he’s too busy. But if she doesn’t know about his real life, he must also be hiding details about where he lives and works: does his mother think he lives at the clinic where he works? Or does he have two separate apartments?

She probably believes he lives like a bum.

Things escalate when William’s mother is hired as a cleaning lady by Jonathan and Mark for the house they’re selling—because they already knew her identity, of course.

So, they don’t do much in this episode. The assignment is just waiting for William’s secret to inevitably be exposed and then helping him realize that turning his back on his family’s nationality is not good.

• Background

The assignment supposedly lasts a week: William is seen visiting his mother on the first day Jonathan and Mark arrive, and once his mother discovers the truth, William visits her again on her weekly day, which suggests it’s been at least one week. Of course, it could be longer, but if it were just one week, it would help balance the preceding episode, which supposedly spans months.

The setting is a very quiet neighborhood in northern Los Angeles, presumably in Agoura Hills where it’s set as well.

• Characters

At the beginning of the episode, Mark decides to play ball with Martin’s grandson Bobby.

He was probably happy, playing ball again.

That’s the third time in the series Mark teaches babseball to a kid, both other episodes were in season two (Popcorn, Peanuts And Cracker Jacks and Close Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind).

Then again, he’s the guy who gets never separated from the A’s cap.

• Highway Actors

As for the cast, the episode features several familiar actors. In detail: William, the subject of the assignment, is played by David Spielberg, in a very sensible role.

He was born in the U.S. to a Mexican mother.

Anyway, Spielberg is one of the most recurring Highway actors: he was already in The Smile In The Third Row back in season two, about a delusional theater actor who claimed to experience religious hallucinations while performing in a stage play.

In that episode, he played the playwright—he wasn’t the subject of the assignment but was part of it.

In this episode, he has a more prominent role, and this won’t be the last time we see him—he returns in an episode of season five as well.

So, with three appearances playing three different characters, he is one of the most recurring Highway actors in the series, alongside Lew Ayres and Brandon Bluhm, who also each appeared three times. (Actually, Brandon Bluhm is a bit of an exception: one of his appearances is a two-part episode, which could arguably count as four appearances, but then he plays a recurring character in the other two episodes.)

He’s not the only Highway actor here, either.

The character of Brad—his racist neighbor—is played by John Lawlor, who had already appeared back in season one in One Winged Angels, the episode in which Jonathan and Mark help a woman fall in love with a man, only for Jonathan to fall in love with her as well. And Lawlor played the awkward man they were trying to match her with in the first place.

These are two very different roles: a shy, awkward man in season one, and a conceited racist doozy here.

And there’s a third old Highway Actor from other seasons: there’s an appearance by Henry G. Sanders playing one of the potential buyers of the house Jonathan and Mark are trying to sell—actually, the only buyer shown in the episode.

And the episode never reveals whether he eventually goes through with the purchase.

His role is limited to a single scene, but he is another returning Highway actor: he previously appeared in season two’s The Last Assignment, the episode featuring fellow probationary angel Harold who couldn’t get anything right. In that episode, Sanders played a priest in one of Harold’s assignments (his “last”).

Finally, there’s Miriam Colón, who plays William’s mother.

She’s not a Highway Actress, but she had previously worked with Landon in an episode of Bonanza.

Curiously, that’s the same episode Richard Bull was in—though they didn’t meet him.

She also appeared in multiple episodes of Gunsmoke, as did French too. However, given how massive that series is—the longest-running TV series in television history—it’s difficult to keep track of all such overlaps, and they never met each other back then.

Anyway, there are quite a few familiar faces in this episode.

• Production and Setting

The episode was written by Gutierrez, one of the two writers from Little House coming back on Highway. And it was produced in early June 1987, immediately after the preceding episode.

One fun detail: in the original script, the subject of the assignment, Dr. William, was supposed to be named Robert instead. The name was changed for unknown reasons.

Maybe it didn’t sound American enough.

That figures, doesn’t it.

Or maybe they believed it was too easy to connect those two names, but “Guillermo” and “William” pass unnoticed.

But you can with that other name, can’t you.

As for the setting, the episode was shot around real neighborhoods: William and his family live in Careybrook Dr in Agoura Hills, the same place where they set Man’s Best Friend, while William’s mother lives on Allin Street, down in L.A. from there.

And that’s over one hour drive from Agoura.

So, when Jonathan and Mark drive there, it’s always a long way all the time.

Glossary:

Cute: Mark drops one at the beginning, when Jonathan isn’t supportive of his friend working out.

As usual.

Friendly Jonathan: when Jonathan is out playing and Mark is left cleaning the house.

In an old apron.

No, he came here to belittle you.

Then, Jonathan tells him that he knows he solution. And Mark reasonably deduces it’s the stuff.

But it’s not.

It turns out that he just hired a new cleaning lady. But he didn’t tell Mark anything.

Because he’s the friendly Jonathan.

Also, if hiring her was Jonathan’s idea, then it’s unclear who is paying for her. Unless he intends to use his powers.

Or maybe she offered to work with no pay, like Jonathan did in the Pilot.

Quiet Quitters: the first instance of the season. It plays out exactly as usual: Jonathan and Mark observe the characters reconciling.

Then Jonathan turns to Mark.

And Mark knows what that means.

And that means they are going to quietly walk away. And that he can’t object.

The odd part is that they drove William and his family there. So they can’t just turn around and leave them stranded there.

Friendly angel.

The job: in this episode, Jonathan and Mark are working as real estate agents.

The episode begins with them already in this role, rather than showing how they got the job.

Ratings: 24 – 25 million. 31st tie weekly TV program, 5th TV genre show.

This episode aired three weeks after the previous one, skipping two weeks of Highway. This kind of break typically happens every October due to the World Series, nothing unusual. In season one and season three, only one week was skipped, while season two skipped two weeks—and this season follows that same pattern again. Even though it wasn’t planned: in the original NBC October lineup, they were supposed to skip just one week and resume the week after it, with the episode Country Doctor set to air. However, it was also specified that the network could have replaced it with some “Baseball game” instead. And that’s what they did: so, the episode Country Doctor wound up indefinitely postponed—it would eventually air in 1988, in the second half of the season—and this episode aired as scheduled, but three weeks after its preceding one.

Usually, even a one-week break hurt the ratings of the following episode—the “one-week skip curse”—and a longer one can make that effect even worse. That’s apparent by the ratings of the one week skip in the other seasons (compare them at each season’s overview). Just to give some examples: all the episodes airing after the October World Series break in the other seasons scored much lower than their preceding episodes airing consecutively. For instance, in season one, Song Of The Wild West lost 2 rating points; in the season two, the loss was from 38 million viewers (from Bless The Boys In Blue) to 32 million (to Cindy, three weeks later) and in season three, from 32 million and 18.9 ratings (Another Kind Of War, Another Kind Of Peace) to 28 million and 16.8 ratings (That’s Our Dad). Almost any time the series interrupts the regular broadcast for a week (excluding the Christmas Holiday break), the next episode resuming it gets worse ratings than the preceding ones. So far, the only exception was Change Of Life, which aired on a one-week skip in January 1986 but actually improved on the ratings of the preceding ones (and became the most watched episode of the series). But that was really anomalous. It has become apparent by now that the one-week skip is not really beneficial for the ratings in any time of the year, October included.

However, in this case, the break may actually have helped. The first three episodes of the season were already underperforming compared to season three, and ratings dipped even further with the preceding episode, which unexpectedly became the least-watched episode of the series up to that point. This was especially surprising given that it aired early in the season, when viewership is typically higher in that time of the year. By contrast, previous “least-watched” episodes had aired later in their seasons, when ratings generally decline across all TV programs (like the season three finale).

After that, the extended break seems to have worked in the show’s favor—and maybe that’s why they decided to postpone Country Doctor and skip two weeks: this episode’s ratings rebounded to the level of the second episode of the season. That makes this the second time the series defeats the one-week skip curse (Change Of Life was the first one). While that’s still well below the numbers seen in earlier seasons, it does represent quite a large improvement, and suggests that the previous episode’s performance may have been an exception rather than a sign of irreversible decline. So, the primary goal here was simply to improve on the previous episode’s disheartening ratings—and in that sense, this episode is worth appreciating, despite still lagging behind past seasons. It shows that it may be difficult for the series to return to its former heights, but there is still a chance it won’t completely collapse in the ratings. That said, the next challenge is the Halloween episode, a period that has traditionally been difficult for the show. And when Fight For Your Life can get ratings that low this early in the year, things may go even worse in the next episode. Because, what would you want to watch an episode of Highway for that time of the year, instead of a spooky one.