Appreciating Charlie's Angels

Who's your favorite Angel or Angelic trio?

  • Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson)

    Votes: 8 22.2%
  • Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett)

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith)

    Votes: 12 33.3%
  • Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd)

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack)

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Season 1 trio (Sabrina, Jill, and Kelly)

    Votes: 12 33.3%
  • Seasons 2 and 3 trio (Sabrina, Kelly, and Kris)

    Votes: 15 41.7%
  • Season 4 trio (Kelly, Kris, and Tiffany)

    Votes: 3 8.3%
  • Season 5 trio (Kelly, Kris, and Julie)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    36

ClassyCo

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I am a fan of many classic and camp television shows, several of which I've watched for years. Recently, I've gotten into Charlie's Angels all over again. I started watching the show back in 2009 (or maybe 2010, I can't exactly remember), and I have all five seasons on DVD. Hopefully, other Soap Chatters will share my interest in this cheesy seventies P.I. drama.

I will go into more detail later about each season and/or angelic crime-fighting trio.

But, in the mean time, who's your favorite Angel? If you don't have a favorite Angel, who's your favorite trio? Do you have a favorite episode, or favorite guest star, perhaps?

My favorite Angel and/or actress on the show is Farrah Fawcett as Jill Munroe, and my favorite episode is "Angels in Chains".

The poll has been set to where each voter can submit two answers, just in case you may have a favorite Angel as well as a favorite Angelic trio you may want to vote for. Likewise, you may have two favorite Angels or two favorite Angelic trios.
 
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ClassyCo

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Nothing to say about this show? I know this thread is about a year old now, but no one ever replied, so let's try to kick-start it, shall we?
 

Snarky Oracle!

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I know Kate Jackson was a neurotic mess, but I still found Sabrina the most likeable character because she seemed the most earthbound angel. And I confess to preferring the first Kate/Farrah/Jaclyn trio because they seemed a nice counterbalance to each other, three equal corners to a triangle somehow. And then the Kate/Cheryl/Jaclyn trio from S2 and S3 was acceptable, even though Farrah's sparkle was a necessary note and hard to replace.

Jaclyn always seemed to be trying to be alluring and enigmatic, while Farrah really was all bouncy hair and shiny teeth. Cheryl was the better actress of the bunch, obviously, and yet I always got a wee sleazy vibe off of her.

And who the hell signed off on Shelley Hack and Tanya Roberts?? Obviously the wrong type for the show.... I'm still convinced somebody thought the Hack tie-in to the Charlie perfume was a cute reason enough to hire her. Hack was supposed to be the uptown angel, one supposes, while Tanya Roberts was the retarded slut angel.

Interestingly, since we have a POLICE WOMAN thread at work here (by pretty much me alone) when ABC told Aaron Spelling that they thought CHARLIE'S ANGELS sounded like the worst idea for a show they'd ever heard, Spelling told them "it will be like POLICE WOMAN times three" -- and while the two shows would clearly have a different tone, it was a selling point because PW had hit #1 in the ratings that previous summer. And that argument in part helped make the sale, the CA pilot hitting #1 when it aired in Spring 1976, the series then greenlighted for that fall... A year later, Aaron, a POLICE WOMAN fan, called Cheryl Ladd's agent as soon as seeing her on an episode just after Farrah announced to great tumult that she was leaving ANGELS; Spelling came up with the idea that Farrah's little sister adored by the other angels would help minimize audience resentment of the new blonde. And it worked -- the Nielsen ratings actually ticked up after Cheryl replaced Farrah, the media controversy over Fawcett leaving undoubtedly helping.

Who knew Blake Carrington had his own team of sexy crimefighters? And did this cause problems between he and Krystle?



And speaking of sexy, media watchdog groups would cite ANGELS as the most irresponsibly sexual show on TV year after year -- despite the program's prim lack of any sexual content whatsoever. The girls may have warn bikinis twice during the series' entire run.
 
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Seaviewer

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I still found Sabrina the most likeable character because she seemed the most earthbound angel.

Farrah really was all bouncy hair and shiny teeth. Cheryl was the better actress of the bunch,
Reasons enough to back up my choices of Sabrina and the Sabrina/Kelly/Kris team.
still convinced somebody thought the Hack tie-in to the Charlie perfume was a cute reason enough to hire her.
There was a lot made of that at the time. I did grow to like Tiffany over the course of the season and was quite put off when she was dumped with the flimsiest explanation to date that she had "gone back east for a while", although the news of Sabrina's sudden marriage and pregnancy had seemed rather implausible. At least Jill was racing cars.
 

tommie

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I dunno
Tiffany never really had a shot - not just from the writers, but from Hack herself. Apparently they offered her acting lessons which she refused to take, hence her pretty much being sidelined.

I did enjoy Julie because it was obviously over at that point, so why not just go along with it?
 

Top Jimmy

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My favorite angel was Cheryl Ladd. I think Farrah was a bit overrated, although there's no denying the impact she made in such a short time and the chemistry between her and Kate and Jaclyn. "Angels in Chains" is a classic. Who can forget the strip scene where Jaclyn asks the butch Max (call me Maxine),"How long has it been since you've been sprayed?" and when the other butch guard slams into Sabrina, and says "I'll be watching you sweetcakes, I'll be watching you real hard!"

Some of my other favorite episodes include "The Seance," featuring Kelly's childhood nemesis Beamish, "Angels at Sea," "Dancing in the Dark," "Angel on My Mind," "Mother Goose is Running for his Life," and "Angel Hunt." It's hard to pick just one favorite, but if I had to choose, I would pick "Angels in Springtime." It has a little bit of everything, a mysterious murder, the scary Zora, the creepy Dr. Slavin hitting on Kelly, lesbian subtexts everywhere. It's very funny. An honorable mention goes to "Angels on the Line," with the creepy phone killer/tranny Margo trying to kill Kelly because she had such a perfect, pretty face. Here's a great compilation of fight scenes I found on Youtube.

 

Ginuwine97

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Jaclyn always seemed to be trying to be alluring and enigmatic, while Farrah really was all bouncy hair and shiny teeth. Cheryl was the better actress of the bunch, obviously, and yet I always got a wee sleazy vibe off of her.

Cheryl/Kris was very wholesome and sweet. How could you get a "sleazy vibe" from her?
 

Ginuwine97

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I like all the Angels but my favorite was/is Kelly.

And I liked all the Seasons/Angels teams but my favorite trio is Sabrina, Kelly and Kris. And my favorite seasons are 2 and 3.
 

ChrisSumner

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I've seen this show many times, but haven't watched it in a few years. With the new movie (which looks good) coming later this year I decided to do a full rewatch: the original series, the two previous movies and the terrible and horribly cast/written reboot series. With the new film what interests me is that the new creative team seems to be taking them more seriously. It seems funny, but I like that they've described it more as in the vein of Mission Impossible and less slapstick.

With the original I'm in season two now. Re-watching I can see a stark difference in seasons one and two. I felt like season one was more of a serious mystery/detective show with comedy when necessary, but season two the stories are a lot more light hearted. In terms of Angels, I love the original trio and while I LOVE Kris, I preferred her with Tiffany or Julie than I did with the trio with Sabrina. I don't think the chemistry completely worked with those three although the show was still very good.

I've always been a fan of Shelley Hack and even followed her career post-Angels which actually wasn't too bad. I think she was gorgeous and a good replacement for Sabrina, but the writers didn't give her a shot. I feel like her firing and hearing how poorly she was treated on set is sad because it was still a Top 20 show and I don't think she's the reason things declined. I personally would've kept her on and I think they would've been successful. She had a two hour first episode and it was centered entirely around Kris. Season 4 had the writing style where each episode was centered around one angel. Because of that it was midseason before you even got to really know Tiffany and when we did I feel like those episodes were good. Compare that to Kris or Julie and it's no wonder people didn't like Tiffany. Everybody is going to tune in to meet the new angel, but if she hardly appears what do you expect people to think?
 

Seaviewer

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I agree with you about Tiffany. Sabrina was my favourite and I resented the way Kate Jackson had been fired but by the time the season ended I had grown quite fond of her - and then they fired her, too. :(
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Instead of Hack and Roberts, they should have had a delicious black angel for the last two seasons.
 

Toni

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There only was a delicious black angel...
...and had her own show!

upload_2019-6-15_20-6-12.jpeg


But if they had gone for Pam Grier,
imagine where the ratings would have gone!​
 

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Charlie's Angels was the very first series I watched. My favorite back then was beautiful Jaclyn Smith, and I used to have a glitzy poster of the season 4 angels in my room. Kate Jackson would be a close second, as she was the most interesting character of the bunch.

I have read somewhere that the season 4 order of episodes had been changed during the original broadcast, and Tiffany originally would have had a centric episode early in the season, which probably did not help to get to know Shelley Hack's character better back then. I did not see her in Charlie's Angels, but I recently saw her first episode and had a good laugh when Afton Cooper's real life sister Judy Landers was in that episode, playing some goofy blonde that was mistaken for Tiffany at first right?

I have not seen any episodes with Tanya Roberts either, only remember the actress for being in some bad Tarzan movie, Sheena or Sheba?

Anyway, guess it's time for a rewatch at some point. It's been a quite a while since I have originally seen it, but I enjoyed watching it a lot.
 
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Barbara Fan

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I wasnt allowed to watch Charlies Angels back in the day as my dad said it was "American rubbish"

And when i protested would quote me the often heard "when you pay the license fee you can watch whatever you want!!"

I quote that back at him to this day! lol

His work took him away from home from time to time so so a few

jacklyn Smith was my fav, at school the girls called kate jackson the ugly angel, and most girls for a while aimed for Farrah fawcett flick of their hair
I went for the Pam Ewing look instead!
 

Grant Jennings

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I imagine Nolan Miller was as skilled at tact and diplomacy as he was at fashion or else he would not have had such a long career yet when asked about Kate Jackson, he didn't hold back. Miller said Jackson was an unprofessional, temperamental diva (I'm not quoting him, but that's the gist of it). I understand many in Hollywood shared this opinion.

Yes, as bizarre as it sounds the producers actually thought casting the model featured in the ads for "Charlie" perfume would be a good way to generate publicity for the series (as if it suffered from lack of publicity). I understand their desire to find someone to replace Kate Jackson as "the smart angel" but wouldn't acting ability be a prerequisite? Hack was supposedly so bad at simple line-readings that they gave many of her lines to Jaclyn Smith instead. Despite this, Martin Scorsese cast her in "The King of Comedy". I enjoyed her in "Vanities" (a stage play aired on HBO) and "Jack and Mike". I find it ironic that someone not up to the task of acting on "Charlie's Angels" is, in real life, extremely intelligent and accomplished.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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I imagine Nolan Miller was as skilled at tact and diplomacy as he was at fashion or else he would not have had such a long career yet when asked about Kate Jackson, he didn't hold back. Miller said Jackson was an unprofessional, temperamental diva (I'm not quoting him, but that's the gist of it). I understand many in Hollywood shared this opinion.
Nolan did say, while holding Linda Evans' hand on DONAHUE (I believe), that Kate comes off on screen as being so sweet and cute, and that "she's not." And in a later interview, said that Kate was so neurotic that once, during a period in which they were barely speaking to each other, Kate came up to him and asked him if he wanted to join a group of them who were going to Paris for the weekend.

Even Jaclyn Smith, a good buddy with Kate, admitted Jackson can sometimes be "a bully."

But Miller doesn't always hold his tongue entirely regarding others: he said they were all glad to see Pamela Bellwood go (I'm sure she was complaining left-and-right about the writing), and then Nolan made noises about Diahann Carroll wanting to be "the first black bitch on television" which seemed to suggest he thought she'd succeeded.

And yet, when asked about Joan -- and Joan and Linda -- he's careful to not openly criticize Joan (for reasons of her stature) even though he as closer personally to Linda.
Grant Grant said:
Yes, as bizarre as it sounds the producers actually thought casting the model featured in the ads for "Charlie" perfume would be a good way to generate publicity for the series (as if it suffered from lack of publicity). I understand their desire to find someone to replace Kate Jackson as "the smart angel" but wouldn't acting ability be a prerequisite? Hack was supposedly so bad at simple line-readings that they gave many of her lines to Jaclyn Smith instead. Despite this, Martin Scorsese cast her in "The King of Comedy". I enjoyed her in "Vanities" (a stage play aired on HBO) and "Jack and Mike". I find it ironic that someone not up to the task of acting on "Charlie's Angels" is, in real life, extremely intelligent and accomplished.
And she had a pre-cameo in ANNIE HALL!

Hack's acting may be like Victoria's on DALLAS: during the first four years, she was very hit-and-miss, especially after she cut her hair into that shag and started playing Pam as Mrs.GoodyTwoShoes. Her elocution suffered badly... But after she went to visit and threaten Roger the photographer, she rarely made a thespianic misstep.
 
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