"Once upon a time there were three little girls who went to the police academy - two in Los Angeles, the other in San Francisco - and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me. My name is Charlie." - John Forsythe as Charlie Townsend in the "Charlie's Angels" Opening Credits
Charlie's Angels: Season 2 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
In the fall of 1977, Charlie's Angels returned to ABC for its second season of campy fun centering on the exploits of a trio of beautiful private investigators working at Townsend Investigations, an agency run by the mysterious Charlie (voice of Dynasty's John Forsythe) and his hapless go-between, John Bosley (David Doyle). As in the previous season, Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) is the smart, down-to-earth Angel and Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith) is the glamorous one, but this time the series would have to make do without its breakout star Farrah Fawcett-Majors as toothy, braless Jill Munroe. Fawcett-Majors had walked off of the show claiming that she wanted to devote more time to her marriage to The Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors. (A few years later she would walk out on Majors claiming that she wanted to devote more time to his best friend, Ryan O'Neal.)
In the first episode of the season, the two part Hawaii-set "Angels in Paradise," the writers explain Jill's absence with their usual ridiculous aplomb - she quit the detective biz in order to become a racecar driver in Europe. Jill's place on the team is quickly filled by her kid sister, Kris (Cheryl Ladd), who Charlie has imported from the San Francisco PD. Viewers who worry that the show might lose some of its kitsch value with this cast shake-up can relax. Ladd is given a quick induction into the world of the Angels: barely twenty minutes into the episode, she is already wearing a bikini the size of a gum wrapper. Shortly thereafter she romps on a nude beach with (horror of horrors) Three's Company's Norman Fell. By the time Sabrina seeks investigative advice on the Hawaiian underworld from singer Don Ho, it is perfectly clear that this Jill-less season will be Charlie's Angels business as usual.
Both "Angels in Paradise" and the next case, "Angels on Ice," were originally broadcast as two hour TV movies (although in this set they are divided into two hour long episodes apiece). "Ice" is sort of like what Ice Castles would have been if Lynn-Holly Johnson had been kidnapped by Arab terrorists wearing Nixon and Carter Halloween masks. Phil Silvers (The Phil Silvers Show) plays the owner of an Ice Capades-like show who hires the Angels to investigate the disappearance of his show's stars. Gilligan's Island's Jim Backus also guests as the ice show's handyman. This episode is so campy it even asks us to believe that all of its male skater characters are perfectly straight, including the swishy "artistic director" who natters on about how he is unable to sleep at night until he lays out a perfect outfit for the next day.
The camp crown, however, has to go to the season's third episode, "Pretty Angels All in a Row." In Freebairn, Iowa, someone is trying to scare off the competitors in the Miss Chrysanthemum Festival Pageant. When a deadly spider is placed on the pillow of the contestant from Sierra Leone (?!), the pageant's organizer turns to the Angels for help. (Apparently there are no other private investigators between Iowa and Los Angeles. Of course, if the bad guys were truly serious, all of the contestants would have been dead by the time the pageant official made it back to Iowa after hiring the Angels, but I digress.) Charlie seems to accept this moronic case simply so that the Angels will have to participate in the pageant, blowing off their concerns with the following none too convincing retort: "A tarantula deliberately placed on the pillow of a young woman? If that young woman had a weak heart, she'd be dead, and someone would have gotten away with murder." Huh?
In the first season, the series at least gave lip service to being a serious crime drama. Having failed at that, this episode seems to aim for pure comedy. With the pageant's idiotic ragtime theme song (seemingly with three lyrics for every musical note), Kris' talent competition magic act that she apparently snagged from the back of a comic book, and Kelly's terrible interpretive dance and Rainman-esque Hemmingway inspired interview answer, this episode is often howlingly funny. That a beauty pageant in Iowa can attract entrants from as far away as Sweden and Sierra Leone yet still has only eleven entrants - and two of them are Angels - is in itself a source of great amusement.
The season's biggest guest star is Sammy Davis, Jr., who appears as himself (along with his wife, Altovise), in the imaginatively titled "Sammy Davis, Jr. Kidnap Caper." In it, Sammy hires the Angels after he is the victim of several unsuccessful kidnapping attempts. (Cagney & Lacey lug Martin Kove plays one of the kidnappers. It what just might be some sort of cheesecake record, he spends the entire episode without a shirt). A cigarette-puffing Sammy hosts a charity fashion show (filled with dresses that appear to made out of old tablecloths) and a celebrity lookalike contest. Sammy, of course, gets to play both himself and the winner of the lookalike contest - a Huggy Bear-like mack daddy who owns a chain of liquor stores called H&B Boozeaterias. Even someone with a glass eye can see where this is going - the kidnappers take fake Sammy by accident. The Angels are such incompetent detectives that when they pursue the kidnappers and fake Sammy in a high speed car chase, they let real Sammy drive the car! This is wrong on so many levels that the mind reels. The episode ends with the worst split screen shot committed to film since The Patty Duke Show went off of the air.
Throughout the season, the writers cheerfully ignore good investigative techniques in favor of more hair tossing and attractive fashions. Yes, the mysteries often make Scooby-Doo look complex, but none of us really tune in to Charlie's Angels for the cases. Instead, we watch BECAUSE of the goofy plotlines, cheeseball dialogue, weird characters, and story devices lifted from exploitation films. From "Angels in the Backfield"'s locker room catfight between Kelly and a butch female football player (ending with Kelly giving the chick a cold shower) to "Circus of Terror"'s James Darren as a caftan wearing gypsy circus owner (not to mention the midget who falls in love with "Bosley John Bosley"), Charlie's Angels is irresistible.
What is truly incredible about this season is how easily the series survives the loss of Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Ladd is a fresh, funny addition to the cast. Mention the name Charlie's Angels and most people will immediately think about Fawcett-Majors' iconic swimsuit poster of the mid-'70s. Her loss would seem like a show-killer, but the series' tone remains so intact that viewers will be left wondering "Farrah who?"
The twenty-six episodes that make up season two are divided onto six discs. The packaging and design of this season (down to the way the set is named) has been totally changed from the first season. Neat-freaks may be upset by the fact that this release will not match the original in any way, shape, or form when placed next to the original in their DVD collection. The rest of us will simply remain thrilled that the second season made it to DVD at all. The discs are housed in translucent plastic compartments that are attached to each other book-style by a strip of clear binding tape. A cardboard cover features pictures of the cast in fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. This "book" then slides into a cardboard outer sleeve. A flyer included with the set lists the episode titles, original airdates, and brief episode descriptions. Unfortunately, the flyer is no held in place by anything, so it has a tendency to fall out whenever the "book" is handled.
The menus are much more simplistic this time around. They are static and generic, but not unobjectionable. Viewers can choose to play all of the episodes found on the discs or can pick from individual episodes. Unlike the first season, Columbia/TriStar has also included chapter stops within the episodes.
