This was more enjoyable than it had any right to be. If the people responsible for Burt Reynolds movie career during the '70s decided to write and direct a Charlie's Angels episode, "Angels go Trucking" would be it.
The Angels are hired by Maggie Brill, played by Joanne Linville, best known for playing a Romulan commander on Star Trek, to investigate who stole her load of pharmaceuticals worth a million dollars.
While Kelly goes undercover as a truck stop waitress, Kris and Angel newcomer Tiffany become lady truckers after practicing in an empty lot. Some high standards there.
Kelly and Tiffany are given an identical pharmaceutical load with instructions to deliver it along the same route in which the first cargo load was stolen.
Along the way we meet Royce Applegate as Bingo, Mickey Jones as Bo Mackey, and James Crittenden as Bobby Lee, standard issue rednecks who got a ton of similar roles throughout the 70s and 80s.
The Angels put on the best country western accent they could muster, which at this point in the series is old hand for someone like Cheryl Ladd, who breaks out her southern drawl every chance she gets. It's mostly played for fun, being one of those plots that doesn't bear up under any type of scrutiny.
One sub-plot revolves around a stranded motorist who Kris and Tiffany help out. For some reason he's running bootleg moonshine (which he calls white lightning). Seeing how this was the 1970s and not during the prohibition era, you wonder why he'd go to all the hassle.
Another strange aspect was the pharma cargo. It was small enough where they could run it in a large van instead of using an 18-wheeler. No matter, there's hardly ever been a CA episode that didn't have at least two or three nitpicks.
This being only the second episode featuring Shelley Hack as Tiffany Welles, I was pleasantly surprised by the chemistry she displayed acting alongside Cheryl Ladd. They seemed very sisterly together and made for a fun duo.
Some of the episode was shot on location in Valencia California, which oddly enough was supposed to be doubling for Oklahoma, which is hilarious when you think about it. But when you populate Valencia with some Bingos, Bobby Lees, and Bo Mackeys, it all seems to work.
