Angels in the Wings

This was a low stakes episodes. The Angels are hired by Shani Wells (of 1968's movie musical Oliver!) to find out who's trying to scare or kill her after a studio light almost crashes down on her head during film rehearsals. Interestingly enough, this repeats the exact beat from a first season episode called "I Will be Remembered". Funny how lights keep falling from the rafters when the Angels are on the job.

Indicative of the low stakes, there are numerous shots of the Angels watching the rehearsals for this musical (called 'Sweet Misery'), watching the film shoot itself, or watching the actors record songs for the musical in a recording studio.

There's no real mystery to who was trying to injure Shani's character, we see a man up in the rafters in the opening scene. I can only gather that Edward J Lasko (the writer) was a frustrated musical theater major. He not only wrote the ep, he also wrote the songs too. At best, they're serviceable, though they all seem somewhat similar.

Gene Barry plays Shani's ex-husband with a major gambling debt, who's forced to work with his ex-wife on the musical in order to pay what he owes. They share a bratty son who hates them both. The kid's storyline was an unfortunate subplot that only served to reveal just how slight the main mystery was.

Kris Munroe is hired to play a role in the musical at Gene Barry's insistence (c'mon now!), and they share a number together. Cheryl Ladd sings her own part and does an admirable job. She even dances too. That's quite an undercover assignment, being hired to work as an actress! As far as movie musicals go, it may have looked okay for TV, but for a film it looked horribly cheap. I've no doubt Sweet Misery would have failed... miserably at the box office, even with Kris Munroe on the marquee.

The scene where they recreate a scene from an old musical where an actress fell to her death (in order for the Angels to ensnare the so-called villain) was at least well done. Turns out the guy just had a broken heart. Overall, "Angels in the Wings" attempted something different, but forgot to add suspense and mystery. As such, it's a forgettable piece of melodrama that dissolves into sappy treacle at the end.

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?