The Angels fight crime but tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace.
In the summer of 2014, for reasons far too stupid to recount here, I decided to watch every episode of Charlie’s Angels. My goal was to meticulously catalog the disgusting things Charlie said to his Angels. Unbeknownst to me, my future wife was lurking just around the corner. After meeting her, I tabled that ambitious project in favor of slightly more respectable work.
There’s probably more than one flagpole in this scene from Thin Ice.
Oh, the unexpected treasures that abound in Thin Ice, a strange little teacher-student romance that walked so A Night in Heaven (1983) could gyrate run. In this 1981 made-for-TV oddity you’ll look on, aghast, as Lillian Gish encourages her granddaughter, a high school teacher and Charlie’s Butchest Angel, to sleep with one of her students. You’ll stare in disbelief as a dead cat is placed on somebody’s doorstep, wearing a tiny bespoke noose. By the end, you’ll have no idea why anyone thought this was a good idea, but you may want to watch it again.
Joan Collins and Joanna Pacula wig out in Sweet Deception
Whoever greenlit Sweet Deception (1998) knew it was unmitigated crap. That’s how we ended up with not one but two very special guest stars: Kate Jackson (wearing the type of gaudy press-on nails favored by Linda Richman) and Joan Collins (styling wigs and giving manicures from a wheelchair). We’ll get to those two later. First we need to talk about Jack Scalia’s Southern accent, the least convincing thing in a movie full of ’em.
Joanna Pacula stars as Risa, the second Mrs. Gallagher. Her husband is Fin (Peter LaCroix), a wealthy serial philanderer we meet as he stashes millions of dollars in cash in an offshore safe deposit box. He isn’t long for this world, which is just as well because little about Fin and Risa’s pairing, or casting, makes sense. Equally nonsensically, Scalia plays Brett Newcomb, Fin’s slick Southern law partner in a San Francisco firm. He calls Risa “darlin'” about 87 times in the course of 90 minutes, sometimes while wearing a bow tie, as if lost on his way to a dinner theater production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Kate Jackson plays her embittered ex role a bit broadly.
The first Mrs. Gallagher, Kit (Kate Jackson), is also in the picture, making a scene at a soiree attended by her ex and casually greeting his new wife with an insult: “Hello, Risa. Beautiful dress. It’s a shame they didn’t have it in your size.” Jackson has very few lines altogether but might as well be in a Honeysuckle Ham catalogue with her exaggerated facial expressions and swigs of champagne that have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of Sweet Deception.
The Angels fight crime but tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace.
Recently, for reasons best left between me and the God of your choice (Bea Arthur works for me), I made a major life decision to watch all five seasons of Charlie’s Angels in its entirety.
My familiarity with Angels was so scant that I had few expectations, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the grossness of Charlie himself. Okay, sure, the show’s reputation for having an “LOL, boners” sensibility preceded it (everyone’s heard of “jiggle TV”), but who would expect a speakerphone to be pervy?
