Charlie’s Angels (2011)

Charlie’s Angels was a campy, “girl power” TV show that suspiciously started airing during second-wave feminism in the mid-70’s. The series was really an ode to the decade, as well as an attempt to break-down the double standard that women couldn’t be action heroes. It was a pioneer for TV shows with female protagonists like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena. Regardless, the premise was pretty basic: some old dude (probably a perv) named Charlie  hires three under-appreciated, gorgeous, female police officers to do spy work for him.

Of course, when third-wave feminism struck in the 90’s, this series was due for a reboot. It took ’em till 2011 apparently. In some ways, this reboot is better. Here, the three ladies are convicts given new leases on life instead of run-of-the-mill police officers. And Bosley is actually attractive…well, more attractive than Bill Murray anyway. Given this information, I wondered why this show was cancelled so abruptly. It could have been a fun TV show to watch every week with a sexy cast and new adventures. So, I decided to take a look.

I only had enough strength to watch the pilot. Why, you ask? You’ll see.

The story begins with Charlie introducing our heroines. One of the girls is a cat burglar, another is a court-marshaled Marine, and the third is a corrupt cop. That’s really all the character we get. Then, the girls have to go save a potential sex-slave. The writers just throw us into the action. I could complain about this now, but trust me, it gets much worse.

Can you guess which is which? Do you care?

They spend the first seven minutes saving this girl. After that, they go on an exposition dump about some Pajaro guy who’s running from the law or whatever. Then, not even ten minutes in, Marine-lady goes to her car and it explodes killing her. I’m dead serious (pun completely intended). The cat-burglar and corrupt-cop wanted to get drinks, but Marine-lady wanted to go home for the night before dying. Not even a “whoops-turned-out-I-wasn’t-really-dead” death, it was an end-of-life death.

It’s not the fact that her character died ten minutes in. It’s the fact that her death becomes the motivation for the rest of the characters to find her murderer. The fact that the Angels start crying and the sad music starts playing after her car explodes. They’re using pathos to tug on our heartstrings, when there aren’t an strings to tug. On a scale of 1-10, my sadness would have to be a 2, about as sad as I am when I have to eat burnt toast. We barely knew her, and we’re supposed to care.

Beyond that,  the pacing is a little too quick. We’re told that the Angels had a sisterly bond, but we never see any of this. Then, the two girls meet up with their prime suspect on a house-boat, they confront her, then they all end up getting shot at from a helicopter, then the three of them team up and become the new Charlie’s Angels, all in the space of six minutes. Also, the third wheel, played by that chick from The Roommate, is clearly only there because she’s hot. In other words, her acting ability is sub-par.

This show could have been a popular spy-drama a la Chuck, if the writers took some Ritalin. The characters should have been more fleshed-out and the action could have been less often. Maybe the Marine-lady could have died in a later episode to really throw the audience off. But the show is cancelled and good riddance. Now if only…