Highway To Heaven Cast: A Dolphin Song For Lee Part 2

Airdate: 03/23/1988

Directed By: Michael Landon

It all leads to this: one of the final two-part episodes of the series. Actually, it’s effectively the last: season five has a ninety-minute episode which aired the same night.

It’s also the last episode of the series with that word in its title. It has been the most frequently used word in the series—more than “love”; weird from this kind of TV series, isn’t it.

Disclaimer: no dolphins were harmed in the making of this episode. Those who watched it, however, were probably blown away.

Guide:

• Assignment
• Background
• Characters
• Production and Setting

Glossary:

• Blooper
• Bins, illness
• Highway Actors
• References
• Sunday Suits
• The “Stuff” Power
• The Job
• Ratings

Complete show available here.

Assignment: Jonathan and Mark are assigned to help the family of an ill girl.

The same as part one: it’s about Lee, an ill girl, and her family struggling to cope with everything that comes with it.

And it is almost entirely handled by Mark, who received the Stuff after complaining that his treatment was unfair—which was true, for that matter.

So Part One concluded with Mark helping Lee successfully raise enough money for a potentially life-saving operation. She entered remission, the family was pulled together, and everything turned out fine for everybody.

Part Two initially begins as the story of a girl facing what seems to be a typical concern for an American teenager growing up in the 1980s: advocating for sea animals and fighting contamination.

Essentially, it turns to a bin assignment. Now that she’s not ill anymore.

Maybe that’s where the assignment is really going.

Just when you think you know where it’s heading, Highway prepares to strike harder than ever.

• Background

At the beginning of the episode Lee’s mother worries about her being out on a boat trying to save the dolphin.

That is a surprisingly long time. And it’s rather problematic for many reasons: one, Lee’s father told Mark in Part 1 that the “Save the Dolphin” campaign was two months away. But now another four months have passed—presumably by the time of her operation, which occurred at the end of Part One. Perhaps there were multiple campaigns. No big deal.

Even so, this makes the episode difficult to place within the season’s chronology: assuming Season Four does begin in summer 1987 and lasts as long as the first two seasons (and probably Season Three as well, with a single exception), then this episode would span approximately five months. It can’t possibly be Christmas (there’s already a Christmas Special in season four). And it can’t be before Christmas (there were already Man’s Best Friend and other episodes in the summer).

More plausibly, the episode begins at some point in 1988, perhaps January or February, and continues until May or June. In that case, it occupies nearly the entire period that the second half of a season would normally cover.

The problem is Jonathan and Jennifer’s assignment: in We Have Forever, after the death of his wife, Jonathan suffered a breakdown and spent two months recovering with another woman, unaware that she was actually an angel. And during that same period, Mark was working at a summer camp. If that episode takes place before this one, then it must occur in early 1988, and this assignment has to begin after February 1988 at least.

To complicate matters further, this assignment isn’t concurrent with anything else: the series has suggested that some episodes can take place at the same time (for example, A Match Made In Heaven; more about it here). However, in this case Mark has the Stuff, and he doesn’t have it in any other episode of this season. (He will in season five, but that’s different and doesn’t count). So, either Jonathan and Mark have worked on many other assignments concurrent with this and Jonathan had the Stuff as usual (suggesting that Mark received it only for this assignment) or, more likely, this assignment kept them busy for over four months and they haven’t worked on anything else beside this.

Again, that means this episode takes place between February and June 1988 at least. And that seems too long. At this point, the only way to reconcile everything may be to alter the underlying assumption: perhaps Season Four doesn’t take place over the course of a single year, unlike the previous seasons. In fact, considering that Season Five has a shorter run and does not seem tied to a specific year-long period, it is possible that Seasons Four and Five are concurrent, at least some of their episodes. If that were the case, this season Four could then extend at least into late 1988, perhaps even longer.

Besides, they never show explain what happens after part one: were the Save-The-Dolphin campaign to take place four months from Lee’s operation, then it means that Part Two doesn’t begin right after Part One. (Which is possible, if Lee needs time to learn how to be a diver for the rescue). But then, it’s unclear what Jonathan and Mark have been up to for the whole time.

Like messing around with the Stuff.

What it all boils down to is that Lee’s assignment would take place sometime during 1988, possibly in the Spring and continuing into the summer—and some episodes (the remaining of the season, or those airing before this but set after this) are concurrent with season five.

• Characters

As for the characters, this episode continues being Mark’s assignment. Which means he has the Stuff, and he won’t suffer from any pesky human needs while Jonathan does.

And keep in mind that, if Mark has the stuff and the episode really spanned over five months, it means that he hasn’t been sleeping or eating or drinking that long. No idea how he spends his sleepless nights (Jonathan used to read or stare out at the ceiling).

But there’s one important point here, about the Stuff and Jonathan: when Lee’s brother runs away and nobody can find him, he volunteers to search for him despite not possessing the Stuff. And as he drives, he asks his superior for assistance.

And he’s is immediately told where the boy has gone.

After looking at the car’s top.

Hold on: throughout the series, Mark repeatedly lacked access to the Stuff up to this episode. And if locating Lee’s brother only required supernatural knowledge, Mark could have used the Stuff himself and simply told Jonathan where to go before Jonathan ever left to search for him.

Unless this part implies that Mark is not doing a good job on the assignment and that, if Jonathan had not received help by his superior to assist him, he might have completely blown it. Which is exactly what’s happening, for that matter: Lee’s illness has returned, the family is drifting apart, and her brother runs away.

He clearly needed more help.

He’s an angel, but you wouldn’t believe that.

But that leads to one of Jonathan’s most personal moments in the entire series. After bringing the kid back, Mark breaks down and asks Jonathan something.

Nothing will prepare you for it.

This is awful hard.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Jonathan was once a mortal man before becoming an angel: he was married, had a daughter, but was struck by a fatal lung disease attributed to his smoking and died at 31, and then began his probationary service.

That’s what he does when he can’t sleep.

• Production and Setting

From a production standpoint, this episode was filmed around the same time as Part One, late January to the second half of February 1988, and also marked the final episode written by Dan Gordon for the series. And probably a very personal one (his brother passed away from cancer during Highway’s run). Again, this is no place to speculate about Gordon’s personal life and his relationship with his brother; rather, the episode feels remarkable in its depiction of what it’s like living alongside someone with a serious disease.

It was originally written on July 1987 as a single installment. However, through new drafts it was eventually expanded into a two-part show. And it effectively became the last: in season five, there’s a longer installment but it aired in a single night, while this episode originally aired in two separate weeks as almost every other two-part episode of the series.

Anyway, there are some differences between the script and the actual episode. Just like Part One, the roles of Lee’s siblings were expanded: in the script, her sister has one line (when she welcomes Lee back home) and had no interactions with either Jonathan or Mark the whole episode. And her brother has nothing.

Then, the entire scene at the Senate in which Lee gives a speech to promote a bill against killing dolphins was added later. By contrast, in the script Lee asked Mark to go swimming with the dolphin she has saved immediately after receiving the news that she was no longer in remission—without everything that happens between those two scenes (including Mark asking Jonathan that burning question).

When it then became a longer installment, there were some scenes that were added to script and actually produced, but then omitted in the episode. For example, in the original script, the first scene after Lee’s recovery was supposed to begin like this:

Motel Room, night; Jonathan carries a “bag of food” inside, complains about the heap of food he’s eating and misses having the stuff. Meanwhile, inside the room, he finds Mark reading a magazine about dolphins and water contamination. So Mark explains to him what “ghost nets” are, how they kill many fish every year, and eventually gets the idea to enlist Lee as diver for the Save The Dolphin Campaign when she’ll be out of the hospital. Then, Lee gets out of the hospital, and they are waiting for her at her home.

Two things to notice: one, it included yet another recurring joke of hungry Jonathan (there were plenty in the script but they removed almost all of them from the show). And then, it suggests how Mark spends his sleepless nights now that he’s been having the Stuff for months.

Anyway, this scene was actually shot (on February 16, the last day, alongside the scene in which Jonathan and Mark are hired as Lee’s caseworker at the beginning of Part One), although it was eventually left out. And the episode starts with Lee going out of the hospital and finding out about Mark’s idea already.

But they never talk about ghost nets in the show.

Then, when they find out that Bobby is gone, they split up: Jonathan goes out and Mark says he’ll stay with Lee; but the episode only shows how Jonathan finds him. Once he’s found him, he brings him back and Mark tells Jonathan what he has been up to in the meantime, without showing it.

As for the setting, there is some notable set recycling: the capitol building where Lee attempts to call the special committee is actually the Los Angeles City Hall, with the exteriors already been used in The Torch in season two for the Nazi rally part.

The interiors are not new either: they were previously used in the Season Three episode that supposedly took place in Washington.

Once again, Los Angeles is standing in for the nation’s capital.

Likewise, the room where Lee addresses the Senate is not a new one.

It’s the very same room used at the end of Time In A Bottle, the episode about a drunken attorney fighting a lawyer whose bum friend committed suicide—one of the few assignments Jonathan and Mark had to quit before concluding.

It may count as recycle, but that episode was also meant to take place in a government building. So it’s possible that they weren’t trying to hide it.

The problem is that it’s not the State Capitol, as it should.

Anyway, the production would return to this same location yet again in Season Five. Of course, Landon had a thing for using the old sets across his series, ain’t that right.

Lastly, the hospital where Lee received her treatment is the West Hills one.

It’s the same hospital where Mark’s fisherman friend was treated in a late Season Three episode. (At least the exterior is).

That may suggest that both stories occur in the same town. That was L.A. of course.

But the interior is different.

Glossary:

Blooper: There’s one, although it’s not like Part One. The scene when Lee wants to swim with her dolphin and the animal refuses to leave the tank, she walks away sobbing and enters a room. And she remains there for over forty seconds while Mark uses the Stuff to convince the dolphin to swim with her.

Yet the moment he sees the dolphin, he calls for her.

And she instantly emerges from the doorway, as if she had been standing right behind it the entire time waiting for Mark to call the dolphin.

There is another partial blooper in the same scene when Lee is riding the dolphin. It becomes fairly obvious that it is no longer her in the wide shots featuring the dolphin. This is especially noticeable by the hairstyle: Lee’s actress keeps her hair down over her forehead.

While her double’s hair is swept back.

Something similar happened in A Match Made In Heaven in season one, where Margie Impert was shown driving a van even though she was clearly replaced by a stuntman in the moments before it crashed into another car.

Bins: it partially turns into a bin assignment (one of Landon’s three obsessions).

But the illness is always there.

Highway Actors: The actors are still the same, including the three Highway ones.

So, Lee’s father is played by Richard Greene, who will come back in season five; Lee’s sister is Natalie Gregory from A Child Of God, season one (she played the daughter of a dying woman, and now she’s the sister).

And Lee’s brother is played by Josh Williams from Amazing Man, season four (he’s one of the few Highway Actors to appear twice in the same season).

But Lee’s mother and Lee are not coming back.

References: this was a weird, random one unrelated to this series, or its actors, or Little House or anything similar. The Weeping poem that Lee wrote and that Mark reads during her elegy on the boat at the conclusion of the episode is a partially reworked version of an existing funeral elegy whose authorship has been long disputed. Some verses remained the same, but Lee’s version incorporates religion and a sprinkle of conservationism just to include Landon’s obsession, bins and contamination.

And people cry feeling sorry for themselves rather than for the dying person who is going to Heaven; by now, everybody knows it.

Maybe Landon didn’t want to recycle that line again, for the fourth time in his career. So Gordon went for this poem instead.

Anyway, it could count as a recycle (the episode doesn’t acknowledge the inspiration from the poem, which may sound like it’s copying it) but they kept most of the verses intact, as to make it clear it’s still the same. Even though Lee took credit of it by signing it with her name.

Besides, it’s not impossible that Lee had heard of that elegy at some point in her life and just decided to use it.

Sunday Suits: like Part One, these are everywhere.

Actually, at the end of the episode they don’t have them anymore, when Lee is at the marine park to swim with her dolphin. And Mark doesn’t have his A’s Cap the whole episode. Not even in Part One. Except the beginning. It seems like every time there’s a very serious episode, Mark puts his cap off (he didn’t have it in Help Wanted: Angel or in most of Heaven On Earth).

It clearly indicates there was something peculiar going on here.

The “Stuff” Power: Mark continues using the Stuff on this show. But he doesn’t mess around with Jonathan anymore—things are too serious to do that.

Anyway, he still uses the mind-reading power on the doctor to find out about Lee’s remission.

And he seemingly communicate with the dolphin who refused to let the girl on a swim.

Unless he manipulated the dolphin’s will and forced him to jump out of the water and help Lee. The same way he manipulated the reporter in Part One.

He’s enslaving toward a dolphin.

The bossy attitude goes with the Stuff.

Anyway, that’s not a new power: even Jonathan spoke with horses in season one.

But there are some unused power: it seems that he never deploys the power of the direct influence on people’s will (he prominently showed it on Part One). Although he could have used that when they were trying to convince the senators to call a special session for Lee, and save them some time and effort.

For some reason, he doesn’t, and just try to talk each senator into it. With little success.

Also, in the original script of the episode (when it was still a single part show), he would unlock a new power with the Stuff: upon learning that Lee’s no longer in remission, there was supposed to be a scene set at the in which Mark feels discouraged and believes the whole assignment was pointless if she were going to die anyway, despite their help. So Jonathan would try to comfort him by saying doctors are wrong and miracles happen, but Mark drops a remarkable line: he says he has the Stuff and he’s sure Lee has no chance by now. That means that he can actually use the Stuff to know when someone is going to die or not.

Hold on there: it’s a huge power. It’s not entirely unprecedented: in A Song Of Songs in season three, Jonathan and Mark helped a man who was at the hospital and feared he might die, but Jonathan reassured him that he was going to be alright.

However, in that case it remained unclear whether Jonathan had used the Stuff to know that, or if his superior had informed him instead.

The script for Lee, though, clearly indicates that Mark is aware of that thanks to the Stuff. (Or at least that Mark is convinced he knows it). But this power would raise many issues: for example, would that mean that he can tell when every person is going to die, or just those who are ill (as Lee in this case); can he use this power anytime or just to know when a subject of his assignment is dying.

Besides, there would be some problems with what happened in the series: earlier this season, there was an episode in which two drug pushers knocked Mark unconscious and he wound up in a hospital, with Jonathan standing by his bedside and crying for him and the doctors being hopeless.

But if the Stuff has that power, he could have used it to determine whether there were some chances or not.

Unless this power can only be used when a person’s condition surely has no chances, but it cannot tell whether someone who is just injured can recover.

Anyway, this motel scene was scrapped. So Mark only uses the Stuff on the dolphin and the doctor. And went the old way trying to convince the senators.

And then he probably loses the powers. Although this part is not shown: the episode doesn’t conclude with Jonathan and Mark moving on to the next assignment, so there’s no way to tell when he realizes that he doesn’t have the stuff anymore. (By the next episode, he won’t have it already).

There’s plenty of time to be an angel.

The job: they are still working as special social workers for Lee’s family. And probably someone else.

And this time, dolphin-rescuers. Just to save fish in the ocean from ghost nets.

Remember, always save the dolphins.

Ratings: 23 – 24 million audience. 32nd weekly TV program, 8th TV genre show.

This episode aired in late March 1988 at 9:00 p.m., a new time slot for the series. Earlier that month, the network had decided to launch a new television series, Aaron’s Way, on what had been Highway’s usual slot for the last four years. As a result, Highway was moved to 9:00 p.m. beginning with last week’s episode. It remained on 9:00 p. for the remainder of the season. Perhaps this happened because the season was not performing as strongly as its predecessors and the network was considering replacing the show with the new series for the 1988-89 television season. (Which didn’t happen). Or maybe the network believed the new show would provide a stronger lead-in and help improve Highway’s ratings. (Didn’t happen, either). Or maybe that the scheduling change was unrelated to Highway and was just the only slot available.

Either way, the move did not prove especially successful. The episode actually dropped below Part One, making it the third time in the series that the second part of a two-part episode scored worse in ratings than its Part One (the other cases are One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade in October 1984 in season one and Man’s Best Friend in September 1987 this same season). The decline was small—unlike those other two episodes that suffered the same loss—but it nevertheless suggested that the series was not enjoying the same level of popularity it had in previous seasons. Besides, those other Part Two episodes both started with better ratings by Part One, while A Dolphin Song For Lee one week ago became the least-watched part one of any two part show in the series. And this part two couldn’t match it.

And now that this season is coming to an end, the future looks grim. After the end of Season 1, Highway was renewed for three additional seasons, making its future stable through Season 4. Now, however, negotiations would have to begin for any further renewal, and the ratings for Season 4 hardly support the prospect of another season. Besides, there are some very important contextual problems: by the time this episode aired, the writers guild had already called a strike (it occurred in early March) and it had been going for over three weeks. That means that the production of any TV programs—including Highway, of course—had to be halted until things were settled. If the strike were to last too long, there would be solid chances a fifth season wouldn’t be ready by Fall (even though no other TV series would be ready by Fall, in that case; and that would lead to more problems for the industry). Meanwhile, it’s almost spring, which is the time of reruns—and the 1987 summer marked a record as the lowest-scoring TV season ever recorded (according to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, at least). And 1987 is also the year a fourth network entered TV, (it was Fox), and cable channels were growing in popularity. So, the TV landscaping was mutating, the 1980s are almost through, it’s a time of changes for everybody on TV.

After its airing, the network won’t begin rerunning the season throughout April and May before returning with the final two episodes (the way they did in season one and two, when the last two episodes were held back and aired together after the spring rerun period, after a month-long break following the rest of the season.) They’d rather do like in Season three, when only the season finale was saved for early May, while its immediate preceding episode aired in early April alongside the rest of the season.

Despite the dipped ratings of the season three finale, they decided to adopt the same strategy here. So, this episode will be followed by another one next week, and then the season will take a break for a month before the finale. What will become of the series after that, it’s still too early to tell.