Season 2 episode 10
Marks Note:
Can Sonny build a trucking empire with two loads of peaches? Why not? An old pal claims his fortune began with two loads of strawberries. Thus begins Sonny’s foray into entrepreneurship.
The seed money is borrowed from a loan shark, the peaches are bought and loaded – but where are the two drivers Sonny hired to drive the second rig he rented? They’re late of course. This father and son, Strother (“failure to communicate”) Martin, and Jeff (Taxi) Conaway are big trouble. Oh, they mean well, and they are nice guys, but they screw up every mile from Georgia to Winnipeg.
It burns Sonny, but his conscience would never let him abandon someone in need, no matter how much he threatens that he will – and Will won’t let him anyway. So, it’s delays, repairs, extra expenses, and a fight with drug dealers before the peaches finally make it to market. Will the fruit bring in enough dough to kick-start Sonny’s empire, or barely enough to payoff the loan shark? No spoilers here. You’ll just have to watch the episode.
Barry’s Bits:
It took me a very long time before I could eat peaches again after filming “Long Way To Nowhere.” I loved peaches before and I love peaches now, but after working with all those peaches…. after they sat in the truck…. in the heat…. well you know what happens to old peaches. And if you’ve ever smelled rotting fruit…. and multiply it by a trailer load…. you can understand why I was put off peaches for a while.
There were a couple of other things that bothered me about the episode. I don’t feel like we lived up to our usual high standards. There are two particular moments that we had to leave in the episode that I’m sorry about. I won’t tell you what they are, but if anyone guesses, I’ll cop to them. I’m hoping that because they are errors in filmmaking technique most viewers won’t notice.
I’m very satisfied with everything else about “Long Way To Nowhere.” The two guest-stars were wonderful to work with. Strother Martin was an experienced pro and had appeared in a vast number of television shows and feature films. Jeff Conaway, playing his son, was a relative newcomer, but he had so impressed us with his performance in season one’s “Landslide”, we brought him back for another go-round. All four actors had a wonderful rapport and Strother and Jeff had a real bond that translated on screen.
So despite the warts I see in the episode, the important aspects of any story; humanity, emotion, sympathy, character, are strong in “Long Way To Nowhere.”
