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Charlie’s Angeles: Series Premiere

By Scott Root · August 29, 2011

For the segment of the population champing at the bit to get more from the scribes of such screen gems as Herbie Fully Loaded (Alfred Gough), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Miles Millar) and ChArLiE’s AnGeLs: MOAR TITS AND GUNS! (Note: the fact-checking department was unable to find such a movie), you are in luck! Then, of course, there’s the rest of us.

Normally, these reviews try to be sparse on spoilers. Trying instead to shade moments and emotions that arise from the actual process of watching the show, all without divulging the moments themselves. It will be impossible, in the case of this show, to fully discuss it without divulging some “key” plot points. Consider this your spoiler warning.

The series starts out as most action stories. The Angels rescue a girl who was part of a human trafficking ring. They celebrate their minor victory, but then decide they’re too tired to go clubbing. Then one of them dies. Yes, that is literally the first ten minutes of this show. It’s almost as if the creators are screaming at us “LOOK AT HOW EDGY WE ARE! NOTHING IS SACRED IN THIS WORLD.” Except for the part where the deceased was in none of the marketing. She obviously wasn’t going to last through the episode. There was a concerted effort to really make her look like part of the team (little Charlie intro and all), and as soon as we start to care about her, she’s gone. What was the point?

So you wanted to avoid all the annoying exposition. This wasn’t really the way to do it. The opening sequence comes across as a jumbled mess. There are these girls running around. Now one of them is shooting up a beach. Then they’re all kidnapping a girl from an apartment, or was it a hotel room? It was an example of perfectly unclear camera work, boring story, and wooden dialogue. All of this was supposed to be the opening scene that blows the audience’s mind and causes them to fall in love with the show. Except that this love-fest is destroyed with sloppy camera work and by killing off one of the characters so soon, leaving the audience with nothing to invest in for the rest of the episode.

And so, we’re left with the kind of forced multi-cultural match-ups that made the late 90s so unbearable. Abby (Rachel Taylor), the WASPy thief, Eve (Minka Kelly), the hot Latina car booster, and Kate (Annie Ilonzeh), the African-American muscle, are teamed up to fight unnamed villains. Hacker and resident Don Juan, Bosely (Ramón Rodríguez), rounds out their modern-day Robin Hood group. Of course, the always unseen “Charlie” acts as their “mastermind.” They’re both fashionable AND have an incredibly specific set of skills. In fact, if this show tried to make some comment on female empowerment through sexual prowess, it would have a perfect trifecta of F’s: Faux-feminism, Forced multiculturalism, and “Fun.”

Oh wait, I almost forgot about the part where the incredibly intelligent femme fatale has an insatiable sexual appetite. The Angels try to take her captive for some incomprehensible MacGuffin (she’s a human computer or something.) They come up with an over-elaborate plan to make her poop her pants, but when she fails to poop her pants; it’s Don Juan, errr Bosley, to the rescue. Since she needs penis so much, he easily seduces her by reciting numbers and having a van (a strategy I’ve tried too many times to count without success). Now, I’m pretty sure that the comment that is trying to be made is something like “Women can like sex just as much as men.” There’s an idea out there that this is a pro-feminist stance. However, if the answer to any problem in your pilot episode is a man’s penis, you are inherently making an anti-feminist show. The point of the scene was to give Bosley more than the ultimate hacker stereotype; that much is obvious. However, making a woman need penis so much that she drops all of her important duties is… is… you can’t do that. It’s counter to the show you were trying to make at the beginning.

Honestly, it’s time for the Charlie’s Angels franchise to die a quick and painless death before someone does more damage to it. It’s a keen idea and it had its place, but it ultimately doesn’t work anymore. We’ve seen plenty of female empowerment shows, and they keep getting stronger. In a post-Buffy/Veronica Mars/Ally McBeal/Murphy Brown/30 Rock/don’t-yell-at-me-if-I-forgot-your-favorite, there’s no place on TV for this show. Some shows are on TV simply because one aspect is done better than any show: the action, the special effects, the acting, the writing, the directing, and the list goes on. Charlie’s Angels isn’t the best in any of these fields. It’s barely second-rate. Ultimately, rather than continuing to damage the reputation of a great franchise, the whole concept of Charlie’s Angels should be shelved for 10-15 years until someone comes up with a truly unique and innovate way to use what has become a cliché.