Airdate: 11/18/1987

Directed by: Michael Landon

This episode is particularly important for its characters: it introduces several unsuspecting new recurring characters while also expanding on established ones. And then it’s about Summer Camps, very special places in this series.

This setting feels slightly familiar—and in some ways it is—but it also brings something new.

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to work as counselors at a summer camp for blind children.

Early on, Mark receives a letter from Caz, an old friend from the police force he hasn’t heard from in years.

Yet again.

That makes it two random lost colleagues in two consecutive episodes.

Anyway, Caz is now the head of a summer camp for blind children, and the camp needs counselors.

Unlike many episodes, this one doesn’t revolve around a single, clearly defined objective. Instead, the job itself is the assignment, and they must help everyone connected to it: like Hotel of Dreams (season one), where Jonathan worked as a hotel bellboy; Bless the Boys in Blue (season two), where they were police officers; and A Song for Jason, when the job was a summer camp, like in here.

There are some characters playing a relevant part, though: Frank, the founder and seemingly only blind counselor, who is preparing for an operation that may restore his sight.

Then Scott, a boy who still has his sight but suffers from a disease that will soon take it away, so he must begin preparing for life as a blind person.

And Jerry, a shy blind kid who takes to Mark and simply needs a friend.

Meanwhile, Caz—Mark’s old friend and the camp’s director—is not actually the assignment, despite initially appearing to be.

Most importantly, many of these characters will return later in the series. In particular, Frank, Caz, and Jerry all reappear: Frank and Jerry return together in the fifth season, while Caz appears again later in this season and once more in the next (though on that third time he’ll be played by a different actor).

• Background

The episode takes place at a summer camp.

And like A Song For Jason, it is partially based on an existing one.

The “Junior Blind” was a foundation and a summer camp for blind children. It was founded in 1953, in an old building in L.A. to accommodate blind and deaf children But it gradually expanded and in 1958 moved to an actual camp in Malibu and kept operating for almost fifty years.

Although in the episode they changed its name to Laurelbrook instead.

But the episode was shot there, so it’s the same camp.

This marks one of the few episodes of the series to be grounded in a real setting, just like A Special Love in season three or A Song For Jason before it.

However, A Song For Jason was also based on a true story—the titular character was inspired by a real kid who attended the camp—while the characters and the assignment in this episode are completely fictional. (A distinction between episodes based on a true story and episodes with a real setting is here, at the “True Story” entry).

Only Frank’s character is partly based on Tom Sullivan, the actor playing him, but the part about him getting his sight back and being happily unmarried are totally made up.

Anyway, it’s supposed to be a summer camp, so the episode must be set in the summer. However, it can’t be it: Man’s Best Friend already spanned three months in 1987, and it’s hard to believe theese two episodes take place concurrently. But then, it can’t be 1988 either, for it would contradict what happens in some later episodes: in We Have Forever later this season, they will come back to this camp. So, the only way to fit this episode in the series is assuming that season five concludes in summer 1989 and that We Have Forever takes place in fall 1988, and that season four and five take place concurrently. That way, this episode takes place in Summer 1988, and it would work. Otherwise, the second way is assuming that it’s a summer camp but it’s not summer, and it’s actually Fall; that means it still takes place in 1987, alongside the rest of the season.

Either way, it’s important to keep in mind that the fifth season had a troubled production, so most episodes later in this season and basically all the episodes of the next will have contradicting, unreliable dates.

Instead, the timespan is probably one week.

• Characters

This episode introduces three new recurring characters in the series, basically a replacement to Scotty and Diane and Leslie (they all quit after season three). So, it may be useful to get to familiar with them from here.

The first one is Caz, the old colleague of Mark’s. Apparently, they used to work together as cops—he’s yet another lost friend—and then Caz quit the force upon learning that his daughter had R.P. (as he reveals in the episode).

So, he met Frank and decided to help blind children, and became the head of this Summer Camp.

And he that has been keeping him too busy to attend the funerals of his dead colleagues (Charlie in Plane Death and Gary in Amazing Man).

The second character is Frank, the athletic cheerful founder of the camp. In this episode, some details are given about him—for example, he’s been blind all his life and but that never stopped him from playing all kinds of sports (just like Tom Sullivan, the actor playing him), that he’s unmarried and likes it that way (unlike Sullivan), and that he’s only looking forward to getting his sight.

But he won’t.

Finally, the last recurring character is Jerry, a blind kid attending the camp. There isn’t much about him: he’s timid and quiet, his parents barely stop by, and Mark becomes his only friend.

It’s unclear how this happened, and how they were introduced to each other: in the first scene they are shown together it seems like they are already friends.

But that’s the way it is.

And that’s it: no new recurring character will ever be introduced in the series anymore. Now the group is complete: Frank and Caz and Jerry, along with Leslie (Mark’s sister), Scotty and Diane (the Heaven match) and Jane (Jonathan’s wife) are the only recurring Highway characters—although Leslie, Scotty, and Diane do not appear again after this point, while Jane comes back later on this season. In a way, the third season closed the first part of the series, and the fourth season marks a shift, moving away from earlier characters and introducing new, ongoing characters.

Anyway, this episode adds many new stuff about Mark too. One is his new friendship: yet another convenient reappearance of someone from his police days.

However, this time there’s a reasonable explanation: this Caz left the police force before Mark, and this means they had already lost contact before Mark’s struggles with alcoholism.

Unlike other friends who walked out on Mark the moment he needed them most.

Actually, it seems this friend may not even know about Mark’s past difficulties, as they hadn’t been in touch for years—back when staying connected required sending letters which you received after months. Even though there’s a problem with this: if they had lost contact years earlier, and Mark has been moving around the country with Jonathan for the past four years without a permanent address, then how could this Caz know where to find him. That was justified in the earlier seasons by having the random lost friend contact Leslie, and then she’d reach out to Mark. But now, they say Mark actually received a letter.

Anyway, there are a couple of weird things to point out about Mark’s behavior: in this episode, he seemingly forgets everything he’s been through before. For example, at some point, he decides to introduce Jerry to a horse.

Except that he should hate it.

It was revealed in the season one finale that Mark hates horses. And that became a recurring joke over the course of the episode.

Actually, the idea that he hates horses will be confirmed in another episode later in this season.

The weird part is that he tells Jerry that there’s nothing to fear once he gets to know horses better, and that was exactly what Jonathan told Mark back in season one: that he only disliked horses because he didn’t know them and you fear what you don’t know.

So, his attitude here is just an anomaly.

You should be the one being afraid.

Maybe he does have a problem with memory—like he had in Heaven On Earth, when he goes on a roller coaster even though in the first season he said he didn’t like them. And in Oh Lucky Man, when he fell in love with Nina saying she’s the best woman he has ever met in his life, completely overlooking his marriage with Stella in season one; and he even described Nina the same way he described Stella, down to the exact same lines.

But hating horses is not the only thing he forgets in this episode: when he learns they’ll be working at a summer camp, he immediately and makes a fuss over kids.

Mark could really use a rewatch of the early seasons.

It is exactly the same thing he said in A Song for Jason, where he made almost the exact same complaint: Summer Camps are places for doozy spoiled kids and he can’t stand them. And then he fell in love with the job.

So, by this point in the series, Mark should have learned he shouldn’t judge people without knowing them, that kids are not all doozy and that he likes being a summer camp counselor. Maybe this season has simply erased the previous three, and everybody is starting anew. That explains the introduction of three new recurring characters.

Anyway, just like in A Song For Jason, he is wrong: the camp is for blind children, and he quickly learns to love the job. Actually, this assignment turns out to be a very important one: later in the season (episode We Have Forever), Mark is temporarily let go by Jonathan—and for the time he spends alone, he decides to come back to this very camp. Of all the places he could have chosen, he returns here. That suggests this assignment was of much more importance than others; it could even imply that, after the series ends—once Jonathan eventually completes his probation, ascends to Heaven, and is reunited with his wife—Mark will choose to permanently work at a summer camp, likely this one. It had already been implied that being a counselor was especially meaningful to him in A Song for Jason, when he loudly declared he had spent the best week of his life there and wanted to return every year.

But again, given how Mark behaves in this episode, as if it were his first time at a camp and he likes horses, there’s the chance he has forgotten about that too.

Still, this episode confirms he likes the job, and perhaps he’ll settle into it.

That’s not official: the series finale doesn’t conclude with Jonathan ending his probation, and there’s no way to know what happens to the characters after the series. But at some point, Jonathan will have to finish his probation and leave, and Mark will need to learn how to live alone—considering he’s never left Jonathan alone for more than a week. Unless Mark dies and becomes an angel before Jonathan concludes his probation. In that case, he obviously wouldn’t return to the camp.

But if Jonathan carries out his probation and Mark is not dead, it then becomes reasonable to assume that he would set to become a counselor for the rest of life without Jonathan, either here or at Camp Good Times or someplace else. Or maybe he’ll just forget all about it like he did with the horse and the camp and will become an erratic alcoholic cop.

Anyway, there’s something noteworthy about Jonathan and this assignment. When Mark asks Caz why he contacted him after so many years, Caz admits it feels strange, but that he felt the need to.

But wait—that’s actually a significant point. Up until now, it’s always been implied that Jonathan and Mark’s superior either doesn’t interfere directly with people or simply can’t manipulate them. Yet if Mark’s friend felt almost compelled to reach out, that suggests some subtle intervention was at play. And if that’s true, it opens up a broader possibility: perhaps, at times, their superior has been quietly guiding events all along.
That could reframe several moments in the series. For example, all the instances where Mark is suddenly contacted by long-lost friends may not be a coincidence—with their superior arranging things for them.

The same idea could apply to their employment, when they land a job thanks to Jonathan’s magical references: perhaps their hiring sometimes comes from a subtler influence—employers feeling an unexplainable inclination to trust or hire them. Still, the final decision would remain with the individuals involved; otherwise, there would be little purpose in sending angels like Jonathan to help people make meaningful choices.

Instead what’s curious about Jonathan’s character is about his passions: when Frank asks him what he knows about Scott’s disease, Jonathan replies that he only knows what he has read about it.

That’s what he does when Mark is asleep.

Anyway, he’s probably lying: if he can use the Stuff to get access to superior knowledge—which he does when he becomes a teacher, just to name one—then he should know more about it. Unless he wasn’t allowed to use it this time for some reason. It’s also unclear whether Jonathan is aware of his superior’s interference in the episode.

Still, he doesn’t lie to Caz when he tells him that he can be of help thanks to his prior experience.

He means his daughter from another series.

He’s either talking about Scotty and his related episodes, or Mary from Little House.

Actually, Mary is more plausible: Scotty was quadriplegic but not blind, so it’s not really the same thing. Unless Jonathan were generalizing here. In that case, it would be inaccurate and quite offensive too.

Otherwise, he may be implying that he had worked with blind people at some point before the Pilot, or maybe in some of those episodes the series skips (more about it here). But the most likely explanation is that he’s referring to his daughter from a life in which he was a Minnesota farmer and people trusted each other and didn’t lock doors.

• Highway Actors

As for the cast, the three recurring characters of this episode are all becoming Highway actors except one, who already is a Highway actor from this season.

Anyway, the first new Highway actor is Tom Sullivan playing Frank, and he’s really blind almost from birth.

He discussed multiple times that he never felt discouraged by his condition, playing instruments and participating into many activities, and in the early 1970s he dropped out of college to pursue a career as actor instead.

As reported in a Tampa Tribune article dated 1988, he met Landon through the owner of their drivers’ company, which was the same for both, and this episode started his career as screenwriter besides the acting. Actually, by the time he made this episode he had already written a couple of books (in 1975 he published his autobiography If You Could See What I Can Hear, which was turned into a movie in 1982, though without his involvement). However, he had no experience in TV shows before.

After this episode, Sullivan kept writing for a bunch of TV series (including for another Highway episode, the one in the fifth season when Frank comes back), and continued acting after the series ended. His final acting role came in 1999 with Touched by an Angel, the overtly religious successor to Highway to Heaven (more about it here). After that, he probably realized he got into the wrong series with angels and stepped away from acting permanently. Though he kept working on his activism, music and some books, including one he wrote alongside with Betty White about his guide dog—whom White later adopted—as well as other books on guide dogs helping people. (Basically like Highway dogs).

The second Highway actor is Andy Romano, who played Mark’s old friend and colleague. He would appear again later in this season (though without Frank or Jerry) and would return in season five with Frank and Jerry. However, that time, he’ll be played by a different actor—the only replacement in the entire series.

He kept on working for almost ten years after Highway, and then he retired from acting in the late 1990s and passed away some years later.

Finally, this episode also has an old Highway actor: the character of Jerry is played by Brandon Bluhm, who is not the first time he stops by in the series.

He had already appeared in the first episode this season, as one of the kids at the foster home. Though he didn’t have a name (he was only credited “Boy No. 3) and only had two lines the entire two-part episode and appeared in a few scenes, including an improvised moment where a dog runs off the leash and he falls down chasing him.

Maybe that’s precisely the reason they called him back: Landon was so impressed by the way Bluhm handled it, stood up and kept playing the character.

Anyway, he’s one of the few Highway Actor to appear twice in the same seasons (as Ivor Barry in season one and Didi Conn in season three), and he’ll also reprise this role as Jerry in the fifth season, in the same episode as Sullivan did. Then, when Highway ended, Bluhm continued acting for a few years before retiring in the early 1990s to later become a singer and horror writer. That seems to be shared by many former child actors for Landon: the actor who played Jason in the season two Summer Camp episode also became a horror director, like Landon’s son did too.

• Production And Setting

As for the setting, the episode was filmed up in the Santa Monica Mountains at the real Camp for the Junior Blind, which was located on the Mulholland Highway back then off Kanan Road (before being destroyed by a fire).

And some of the children attending the camp that year were featured in the episode. Though there were few of them, as this episode was shot in October and not in the summer (unlike A Song For Jason, for example).

Also, if the backdrop feels familiar, that’s because the camp is up the Santa Monica Mountains near the Calamigos Ranch, the same place where they shot A Song For Jason in season two.

Actually, it’s just a twenty-minute drive from here.

But the Santa Monica Mountains’ landscape is basically the same all around.

That’s not the only familiar place: as the production schedule reports, the beach where Frank goes jogging and rock climbing is Westward Beach, a little South East from the camp.

And that’s exactly the same spot where they shot A Father’s Faith in season three, and Keep Smiling and The Secret in season two. Landon certainly liked that.

Also, the beach is actually ten miles from the Camp. So, not really something you can easily walk to.

Anyway, the production of the episode took place in late October 1987 for about one week, and the script was written that summer.

A couple of curious things about it: one, in the original script, the title of the episode was supposed to be “All The Colors Of The Night”, but they changed the last word with “Heart” in later drafts.

Then, the episode was written by Tom Sullivan, who plays Frank too. And this episode of Highway marked the beginning of his career as a TV writer.

It’s the second time in the series that one of the writers also plays a character in the episode; the first instance was in A Match Made in Heaven, written by James Troesh who also played Scotty. And Frank becomes a recurring character, like Scotty; and Sullivan based the character on his own life, like Troesh did. And A Match Made In Heaven was the first script by Troesh in his career, as this was for Sullivan’s career. Perhaps Frank is meant to take Scotty’s role for the new Highway seasons now that Scotty concluded his drive in this Highway.

One curious anecdote about the production: in a documentary tribute to Landon dated 1991 after his death, Sullivan talked about this episode and revealed that he had to do all the activities his character does without a stunt double, as Landon joked that Sullivan wanted equality and refused to give him one.

That includes all the rock climbing—and the scene where he shoots hoops.

Actually, in the same interview, Sullivan revealed that shooting basketball wasn’t originally part of the script, but when he told Landon that he was able to play, everyone insisted on adding a scene where Frank shoots hoops; so, he did that too.

Although it wasn’t that easy.

In the documentary, Sullivan recalled that, before filming, the production allowed him to practice shooting the ball to make sure they didn’t waste time, and he made several successful shots during rehearsal. However, when they began rolling, he couldn’t make the shot at all, so Landon started teasing him by calling out loud the name of the actors he could have hired to replace Sullivan for this. Apparently, Sullivan managed to nail the shot when Landon called out Marlee Matlin, and that’s what they used in the episode.

It seems they wanted to make the scene look easier than it actually was.

Glossary:

Cute: it’s dropped by Jonathan on Frank when he makes a joke on being insulted for being called a blind referee for a baseball game.

That’s one of the rare instances of Jonathan using Mark’s catchphrase.

Friendly Jonathan: at the beginning of the episode, Jonathan tells Mark that they have no assignment and are free to see Mark’s old friend.

But that turns out to be a lie. And Jonathan probably knew this.

From Little House: there’s one curious detail about Mark that may be seen as a reference to Little House, or to his actor. Or both.

Apparently, his unofficial surname from now on is “Bear,” or at least that’s how his new friend Jerry addresses him.

But it’s not entirely new for French to be called like that: there was already an episode of Little House in season nine in which his character falls in love with a blind girl who compliments his beard, and Mr. Edwards (the character French plays there) dismisses her by saying he looks like a bear.

And the odd part is that the girl in Little House is also blind like Jerry in this episode.

This bear thing sounds like an indirect reference to that Little House episode. Or maybe producers really thought that French looked like one.

Actually, there may be another explanation: in an interview to his children, his son Victor Allen French Jr. told that he used to work as stand-in for his father during Little House season nine and for the entire Highway from season one, even making occasional Easter Egg appearances (like in the Halloween Special in Season two). And due to his look—which resembled his father so much—and their same name, Landon reportedly nicknamed him Bear to distinguish between the two, and then everybody on set began calling him like that. (It was further confirmed in the documentary on Love At Second Sight).

And now that same name is being applied to his father’s character in the series.

Perhaps Mark’s nickname Bear was an inside joke, or a reference to Little House, or a self-reference, or whatever.

Real Score: the titular song playing at the conclusion of the episode was written and sung by Sullivan, and composed specifically for the series. It’s the second time someone writes a song for a Highway episode, the first being in A Song For Jason. These two episodes really do share many features.

The Job: they work as Camp Counselor, the second time in the series.

Of course, he’s going to love it.

Ratings: 23 million audience. 37th tie weekly TV program, 7th tie TV genre show

When this episode aired in November, it lost a great deal compared to its predecessor, but still remains above some of the earlier episodes of the season: that’s positive, suggesting the season was holding onto its audience and wouldn’t drop below the Halloween special—which remains the least-watched episode of the entire series. That said, the season still wasn’t especially popular, particularly when compared to the second season this same time of the year, which is already not a time when the series scores its best ratings.