by Tilde

Disclaimer:Much to my chagrin, the characters and situations of the television program "Charlie's Angels" are the creations and property of Spelling-Goldberg Productions (Spell-Berg ? Sounds familiar…) and Columbia Pictures Television, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

If you intend to sue me, go right ahead. I’m poor and when I do become rich enough to sue, I may just rip out your gallbladder and hit you over the head with your colostomy bag for letting the writers wreck this show.

Trying to isolate the reasons behind the roaring success of Charlie's Angels is a little like trying to analyze the human fascination for ice cream. Feminists and male-chauvinists alike have always claimed that the series was the flagship of "Jiggle TV" and the proud parent of such intellectually stimulating shows as "Baywatch." But I hardly think that the American public -- much less the world -- would watch the show for five years, find it profitable to keep the show on Asian cable channels, and re-release it in Vietnam in this the closing decade of the millennium if the show weren’t worth watching.

Many people have viewed "Charlie's Angels" as the TV equivalent of a Neanderthal -- both in terms of the way women were portrayed and the quality of the writing. On September 25, 1976, Aaron Spelling himself was quoted on TV Guide as saying : "Anyone who thinks these girls are really private detectives is nuts. On this show we’re more concerned with hairdos and gowns than the twists and turns of the plots."

This thinking is what got the show cancelled in the first place. You have to admire the actresses who went to work everyday; they not only had to tolerate the lines they were given, but also had to deliver them and make us believe that female PIs would really talk like that. (I have more to say about this in another essay -- The Fall of the Angels -- where I throw verbal molotovs at the writers and producers).

The series ran from 1976 to 1981, before and during these years you did not see women who could defend themselves from physical and emotional assault. It was rare to find a woman who did not fall grateful and quivering into a man's arms after waiting patiently for him to reach his dreams and fight off the bad guys. These weren't women, they were ferns.

Suddenly here were these fantastic looking and intelligent women who packed pistols in their purses, threw men over their shoulders, and got what they wanted without Scarlett O'Hara's wiles and nocturnal acrobatics.

Yes, they looked great in bikinis. Yes, they looked like they walked off the cover of a 70's fashion magazine. Yes, there is a stretch to be made in order to accept their situation as plausible. (i.e. "Yeah right, these girls owned property and cars and were great at every profession under the sun. Suuuuure. I'll buy that.")

Let me take these things point by point.

The "Jiggle Factor" :

In the 70's and the 90's it is necessary to use every skill or attribute you have. If you've got it, flaunt it. The Angels had it and they flaunted it every chance they got. And you know what ? It worked.

Who would suspect a woman walking her dog of being on a stake-out ? Who would think that the gorgeous blond sitting at the bar with the most pleasantly benign date (our beloved Bosley) actually carries a pistol ? What man wouldn't become chatty when a devastatingly beautiful woman asked about his work ?

Looking great was a definite plus for them, as it is for any woman. Where is it written that we should fight like men anyway ? There is no such thing as equality of the sexes, nature does not believe in equality. We are different. The men are bigger but they're easier to fool (fashion designers have been alternately covering and revealing different parts of our bodies and they still haven't figured it out). The women are physically weaker but the men just can't stop staring at us.

If I were a PI and I knew that wearing a certain shirt or dress or tight jeans would distract a target from the fact that I'm actually about to shoot off his kneecaps, I'd dress to kill too.

I'd also beat up anyone who used the word "jiggle." But that's another story....

The "Ridiculous Lifestyle" :

Who says these women owned the cars anyway ? At the beginning of the series we see Bosley chewing out Sabrina for wrecking the company cars for the nth time, and yet in the fourth season they say they own their cars. If I worked the girls as hard as Charlie did, I'd give them the cars as a bonus. Besides, private eyes from time immemorial have always been paid by the hour. Being from the best detective agency in Beverly Hills, you'd expect an hourly rate that would make Onassis pale. That hefty rate would buy them those cars if they saved or invested it correctly.

The real estate isn't that hard to explain either. Sabrina was divorced, and it's plausible that she kept the house. Kelly, who grew up being shuffled from foster home to foster home, isn't really the type who'd buy a house. She's probably renting the yellow bungalow. (Would our sensible, no-holds-barred Kelly actually paint her house a phlegm yellow)?

As for the Munroe sisters, it's possible that Jill either rented or bought her beach house. According to Scott Jonson, Jill’s house was situated at the shoreline with poles propping up most of the house so that the tide could go beneath it. Now, I only took a Geo 11 class, but I know that the foundation of that house is going to go the way of the sand in due time. (Ah well, Jill was never -- how do I put this nicely -- plagued by ideas, was she )?

Kris may have then bought the infinitely more sensible two-storey house, located far away from the unstable intertidal zone. (note from the author : I only found out about the difference between Jill and Kris’s beach house after I wrote my first fanfic : "The Star." Credit goes to trivia-hound Scott Jonson.)

There ! Are you nit-pickers satisfied ? If not, let’s have a reality check here : "IT WAS ONLY A TV SHOW! C'mon. Give it some slack already." — lather, rinse, and repeat as needed.

Those "Hidden Talents" :

First of all, let’s consider how one becomes a private eye in the first place. You simply can’t put up a sign that says "Your Name Here and Associates, Private Investigators." You have to get a license.

The pre-requisites for an investigator’s license are nothing to scoff at. What all states demand as a minimum is relevant experience. Being from the police force is NOT an automatic experience qualification, your superior officers have to give a written statement outlining the nature of your duties.

As the credits of "Charlie’s Angels" imply, policewomen in the 70’s could rarely swing an assignment as a patrol cop, let alone something that would give them experience qualification. So let’s assume the elusive Mr. Townsend "took them away from all that." That sounds pretty glamorous, doesn’t it ? The truth is he probably sent them straight to PI boot camp under Bosley (working in an accredited agency under someone else’s license till you have enough experience to go for your own license is a valid way to become qualified).

Ah, so Bosley isn’t another pretty face! He’s not the pleasantly benign, large shaggy dog that the girls keep as a liaison to Charlie. Knowing Bos, he probably made them work every boring case and sent them to take-over his shift on stake-outs at ungodly hours. Who would have thought it ?

Charlie, being a savvy business man, probably paid the girls 10% of the fee the agency charged per hour (e.g. $5 if Charlie charges $50 an hour). No wonder the girls wreck the cars and charge jewelry and clothes to Charlie every chance they get ! No wonder they make every attempt to turn Bosley’s hair prematurely gray!

Anyway, aside from the experience you had to know enough about criminal justice to pass an multiple-choice written exam. Imagine Jill’s sheer agony as she picks up a book on torts and civil law ! (I think Julie must have slept her way to getting her license and Tiff must have pulled a Jerry Maguire — show me the MONEY! I have more to say about these two Angels in my essay "Unk : casting stragedy that led to Tiff and Julie.")

So let’s not forget that the profession itself required a hefty amount of intelligence, and that’s just to become a private eye ! What about working at the top agency in the country ? The Angels had to either practice exclusively in California or get licensed in every state they planned to work in. (Screams of terror from Julie erupt when she realizes she has to take the same exam in Hawaii).

The girls also had to be smart, versatile, resourceful, discreet, and tenacious (stake-outs are NOT intellectually stimulating, I may never have had to watch a person or a house but inoculated media for Microbio gives me roughly the same amount of glamour). It certainly comes through in the show that the Angels had the skill, integrity, finely-tuned sense of empathy, quirky sense of humor, and built-in bullshit detector that would make any employer proud.

The Angels were good listeners, and they genuinely cared about people. They never slept with anyone to get clues or get ahead. They never lied or withheld information from their clients. They never resorted to illegal bugging, hacking into other people’s computers, buying information, or anything even remotely sleazy.

Since when is this something we feminists should deride ?

Just as we're embarrassed about being related to the apes, most people would rather die than acknowledge the fact that we would never have an audience that would accept and appreciate a Scully if we didn't first fall in love with Sabrina, Kelly, Jill, and Kris.

The show did the best it could and reflected the way we looked at the world then. It never tried to shove an idea we couldn't yet accept down our throats and yet it quietly changed our perceptions of our capabilities as women. "Charlie's Angels" was light, entertaining, innocent (have you seen Melrose Place lately....?!), and made us feel that life was simple. Which, if you think about it, is what good TV is supposed to do.

LITERATURE CITED :

I paraphrased Val McDermid’s "A Suitable Job for a Woman : Inside the World of Women Private Eyes" for the Hidden Talents section of this essay. There is definitely no copyright infringement intended. The research was hers, but the sarcasm was mine. I really suggest getting a copy of her book. It’s terrific and it gave me a lot of ideas for my fanfic.

* McDermid, Val. A Suitable Job for a Woman : Inside the World of Women Private Eyes. London : HarperCollins Publishers. 1995.