ANGELS
A Television History
That
became the main problem for the ladies who played the Angels.
After only one season Farrah Fawcett left the show supposedly
because the producers refused to expand her character's abilities
beyond bikini modeling and she wanted to embark upon a film career.
Her replacement, Cheryl Ladd who played her sister, saved the
show after Fawcett's departure with her unbridled willingness
to proudly parade in a two-piece but after the third year Charlie's
Angels sank. Kate Jackson, for whom the show was originally tailored,
was fired because she wouldn't stop bitching about how bad the
scripts were. She's been quoted as saying that "the scripts
were so light if you let go of them they'd float to the ceiling."
Though she was fired it was released to the press that she had
left the show to pursue a film career. Her replacement Shelley
Hack who was, ironically enough, a model for Charley perfume ads
turned out to be a dismal bomb as the sophisticated intellectual.
She was also fired after only one season and this time openly
to the press. The last Angel was Tanya Roberts who was decent
enough to look at but not a strong enough personality to pull
the show away from its looming demise. The public had just simply
lost interest. Jaclyn Smith had already announced that she would
be leaving the show when the news came that the series had been
cancelled. The befitting title of the final episode was "Let
Our Angel Live" but, alas, this was not to be. On June 24,
1981 the final episode was aired.
After 109 episodes Charlie's Angels was over but it has left a lasting impression on America's psyche. The series was an innovative attempt to vaguely exploit the women's movement that instead became an icon of cult programming. The success of the show prevented women from being safely placed into non-sexual reverse stereotypes which, at the time, was an unlikely but seeming possibility of the more radical side of women's lib. It catapulted four unknown women to fame and fortune. And it opened the TV market up to shows that had dual appeal for men and women whereas before virtually all female oriented programming was daytime and the much more serious business of prime time had been devoted to male viewers, even though more than half of the audience were women.
Overall, I'd say you have to look upon Charlie's Angels as a sign of the times. In a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate nation the Angels offered something different, something unique and fantastical. Hell, even in the jaded TV world of the nineties you can't beat the family entertainment value of a bikini clad girl with a gun.
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