Angels in the Wings

Hired to protect an actress making a movie the Angels find themselves in the midst of a family squabble.

Gene Barry and Shanni Wallis are the bickering couple. They're making the sort of musicals that were no longer being made in the late 1970s. They ought to be in a "Star Wars" five-and-dime knockoff.

What makes this episode silly is the male star's insistence that Kris co-star. In a big movie. With no experience. But she played the role in "summer stock"(!) In college I was part of a stage version of Rodgers and Hart's "The Boys from Syracuse"; if they made a movie of it I could hardly hope to be cast. That's just not the way Hollywood operates.

Cheryl Ladd was a singer (I believe she was one of the singing voices in the old cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats"). But Kris is a young woman who went to the San Francisco Police Academy.

I thought that episode was ridiculous when Kelly, another Police Academy recruit, snagged a job as a Vegas showgirl. But this defies belief and I have a very broad suspension of disbelief.

Also, it has an embarrassing role for old hand Nehemiah Persoff. He must have needed the money.

But . . . Dear me, Kris is soooo beautiful I'll forgive her anything. And I like a nice change of pace. If it had been a funny episode it would be different, but I think it's meant to be touching.

It's a beautiful episode with a nice musical number with a former cop singing her heart out. Having been in amateur dramatics I love backstage stories. But the only mystery here is how a total amateur gets a big movie role without sleeping with the guy.

Of course, at that time of the '70s that movie didn't have a chance at the box office, anyway, so why not?