Apple Mail—mark most recent message in thread as unread WITHOUT turning off view by thread

It’s silly that if you view messages by thread, you cannot flag or mark only the top message as unread without marking or flagging all messages in the thread. I want to bring ONLY the most recent message to my attention, not all 16, or 47–yet I still want to view all related messages too. This should not be an either/or proposal. Yes, I do want to eat my cake and have it too.