Angels Without Wings

While composing some of this blog post in my head I had something of an epiphany. Every new show I have reviewed so far this season has had a female lead. In fact, looking at the all the news shows that are airing, the number of lead female characters this year is somewhat astounding. And that? Is AWESOME. Now, the fact that almost all of them are white and straight? Well, hopefully we will get there soon. But still, yay girls!

Unfortunately, that's kind of where the good news in this post ends. Because the "new" Charlie's Angels is just kind of meh. Basically there's nothing here we haven't seen before. I assume most of you know the premise, but just in case some people in our reading audience are functionally leotarded (copyright Dan Savage) here's my take on the basic plot:

A rich enigmatic old dude owns a detective agency. Because he is a giant perv, he only hires hot women with troubled pasts (and legal troubles) because they are presumably more desperate and have skills such as lock-picking, running away from bad guys in heels, and applying lip gloss while hot-wiring a car. They, along with their office manager Bosley, bring justice to the masses--but only those masses who have enough money to pay their exorbitant fees.

You know the drill: hot ladies, kicking ass, bad puns, lots of fake laughs, and jiggling. I guess this latest iteration of the show has tried to make the plots a bit darker--the first episode involves human traficing, child murder and abuse, and gangs; there's some other stuff too but I won't give away the specific plot "twists"...even though they are kind of obvious.

I appreciate the effort to make this show different from the original, but honestly, I think the only way to make Charlie's Angels successful is to embrace the camp. The Drew Barrymore movies did that and were mostly successful, but this new show...I don't know. It pretty much committed the cardinal sin of an action/adventure show. It was boring. Trust me, these angels are not soaring any time soon.

Well, they've got the fake laughing and hair tossing down--now if they could only work on developing personalities.

Oh, and this is the new Bosley. That's pretty much the only creative decision on the show I can get behind. If you know what I mean *eyebrow wiggle*