- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind The Scenes of The Waltons".
Today, I'm going to speak about
the next episode from Season 4 "The Breakdown".
When Jason reaches a crisis point in his life.
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Early in the episode, a number of members of the family
are woken up when there is noise in the upstairs hallway.
This turns out to be Jason leaving very early
for his job with Bobby Bigelow.
He plays a morning show,
"The Sunrise Gospel Singers Program".
But what was interesting to me was
yet another configuration of the upstairs bedrooms.
As I've mentioned the parents' room
doubled as the girls' room
so whenever all four bedrooms had to be accounted for
it was a little trickier and different directors
chose different things to try and configure this.
In this case, you see Mama open her door and look out,
but you don't see exactly where that is
relative to where the boys' room is.
Now, as she moves towards Jason,
she seems to be coming from the direction of the stairs
coming up from downstairs,
which is the direction that John-Boy's room is.
However, John-Boy comes out of his room
and then Elizabeth comes out of the girls' room
and she seems to come from the direction of the girls' room.
So in this case, they are implying that the parents' bedroom
is sort of next to John-Boy's bedroom,
which is sort of where the door is to the attic.
So just a different little configuration,
'cause John then comes out of there too.
So, just interesting to me how different directors
chose to sort of try and pretend like
where this extra non-existent bedroom actually was.
As Jason is playing on the radio
with Bobby Bigelow and his band,
the family listens to the radio at home.
♪ God's celestial shores ♪
♪ I'll fly away ♪
♪ I'll fly ♪
Jason is finding that he is stretched too thin.
Bobby Bigelow is putting all kinds
of responsibility on Jason,
because Jason is competent and takes care of these things.
They have bibles they need to sign and send out.
They have fan mail that he wants Jason taking care of.
He wants Jason there to help set up for shows they're doing.
So it's double duty,
because they do this morning radio show,
which is very early, and then they end up with gigs
that they are playing at night at, much to Mama's dismay,
honky tonks or bars or things like that.
So they're sort of traveling around
and playing different venues like that.
So it means that Jason is really
burning the candle at both ends
and where during the day he should be at the conservatory
and he should be focusing on
his various different assignments with his professor there.
He's torn, because he doesn't have time to do all that
plus all the things that Bobby wants.
And Mama just wants him to come home and sleep
and take care of himself.
And everyone is saying Jason needs to make choices,
but he doesn't know which way to go,
because he wants all of it.
At one of the dances that Bobby Bigelow's band
is playing at we see square dancers.
Now, in this case,
because it seems to be very well choreographed
and nobody has dialogue,
my best estimation would be that they
brought in a group of actual square dancers
so somebody didn't have to,
because nobody's calling this square dance.
So, I think that they brought in a group of people
that actually danced this together before
and that way they serve as the dancers
and sort of background extras,
but they don't have to take the time
to teach a dance to them.
The character of Betsy reappears in this episode.
We saw her in the episode "The Song",
when Ben and Jason both had a crush on the character
that Erin Moran played.
Betsy is flirting with everyone.
She thinks Bobby Bigelow is just dreamy,
but she has a boyfriend and when he
sees Jason talking with Betsy
he kind of gets in Jason's face about it.
And then he goes after Betsy at one point
and Jason steps in,
because the boyfriend is being
really physically aggressive with her.
So Jason steps in to protect her, gets punched in the face,
and then gets in just a little scuffle with the boyfriend.
Gut punches him, sheriff steps in
and takes the boyfriend away,
but Jason is left with a black eye
and a very grateful Betsy.
Then they give Betsy a ride home
and Jason walks her to the door
and then she finds out that her Papa Daddy is not home.
And so, she plays it up and says,
"I'm scared to be home alone."
Because what if the boyfriend,
I can't remember the boyfriend's name,
Ralph, there you go.
Ralph, the boyfriend, Ralph, what if he comes back?
And so she talks Jason into helping stay to protect her,
but of course, he has to sleep on the porch.
Mama has stayed up, because Jason didn't come home.
So she's very worried.
She has sent John-Boy and John out looking for Jason.
They don't find him.
And then Bobby Bigelow comes to pick up Jason
for the morning show and mentions
that the last place he saw him was at Betsy's house.
So now, John and Grandpa are teasing Jason
about having stayed at Betsy's.
Jason's not in the mood for this.
And he says, yeah, he slept on the swing
and do they have to tell Mama?
And he basically tells Mama that he slept at a friend's.
Jason is feeling a sense of competition with John-Boy,
that into his mind, John-Boy has always been
able to do it all and accomplish it all
and get everything right.
And Jason feels like he is always, by comparison,
been falling short in everybody's eyes.
So, he's feeling very dissatisfied
and disgruntled and angry with everybody.
And when Mama's saying, no, he has to stay home.
And Jason's like, no, I have to go.
And Betsy shows up at the door, wants to meet the family.
And Jason finally having hit that last straw
collapses in exhaustion.
A beautiful scene between Jason and Olivia
where they talk about life and Olivia talks about Jason
when he was little and how determined he was to do things
and how she always wanted to try and protect him.
But that John helped her and told her
that she couldn't always follow him
and pick him up and protect him from everything.
And that she had to learn to sort of let him go
as he was learning to walk and take his falls and stuff.
And that she realizes that she needs to do that with him now
as he is becoming an adult.
He's 18, she can't run his life.
And Jason also realizes that
he needs to make choices, better choices for his life
and organize it better so that
he can actually accomplish more
and not just collapse from exhaustion.
Once he's had some time to rest and be more himself,
Jason has a conversation with Bobby Bigelow,
played by actor Mayf Nutter.
Mayf did any number of episodes
during the course of the series as Bobby Bigelow
and with the Haystack Gang.
And Mayf in real life is a singer, songwriter and musician.
So everything that you saw Mayf doing as Bobby Bigelow
was really him playing and singing.
So ultimately, Jason has a conversation with Bobby
and they clear the air and Bobby agrees
that there needs to be more shared responsibility
from the members of the band and stuff
and that Jason can't take it all on himself.
And then, he has a similar conversation with Betsy
about if they're gonna try this relationship
that it needs to be give and take
and that it can't be all on her side
and she can't have all her expectations
that Jason will always be there and give her time.
And she professes to be totally fine with all of that.
And so theoretically, they're going to
they're gonna see where this goes.
We didn't really see that relationship develop.
So clearly it was a one and done in terms of an episode
and Jason sometime when we didn't see it
he and Betsy parted ways.
We just never see it on screen.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of "Behind The Scenes of The Waltons"
about the episode, "The Breakdown".
I'll be back with more "Behind The Scenes of The Waltons".
More Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.