Which season showed sharpest decline?

[TMC]

Which season do you feel had the sharpest decline in quality from the previous season?

[TMC]

CHARLIE’S ANGELS:

Sometimes it’s not just actors leaving a series that can foretell doom, sometimes it’s when they are added. (I mean we all remember Cousin Oliver, right?) “Charlie’s Angels” was such a phenom when it began that it survived the departure of Farrah Fawcett. But when the next Angel, Kate Jackson, flew away, it was pretty much game over. First, classy Shelley Hack came in but though beautiful, she was rather bland. Hack though did, at least, fit in and interact with the other two Angels still on the series (Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd) and was depicted as a trained, former police woman. But after Hack was let go, the show’s producers recruited the late Tanya Roberts as the show’s final Angel. Though also gorgeous, Roberts’ addition didn’t seemed that thought out. First, she was not a trained police officer but was introduced as a grad of a “top modeling school.” Huh? Additionally, because both Smith and Ladd wanted to lessen their work hours, Roberts wasn’t given much time interacting with the other Angels and the teamwork aspect of the show that made it work before completely disappeared. Further still, Roberts’ character—Julie Rogers—was shown as capable a detective as both her co-workers. She could even be a little bossy. But shouldn’t the former model had deferred some to the original Angels? It all seemed weird. The Roberts season would be “Charlie’s” final season. The fault does not lie with Roberts, or with Hack, though. I maintain that by the time Kate Jackson departed the series, the bloom was decidedly off the “Angels’” rose by then; they could have hired Meryl Streep for the series and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

[AMackII]

Fifth Season: Having Tanya Roberts’ attempt to save the series in such effort nearly work out so Roberts went on do mostly other things in her career during throughout the 80s, the 90s & even into the 2000s.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by AMackII

Fifth Season: Having Tanya Roberts’ attempt to save the series in such effort nearly work out so Roberts went on do mostly other things in her career during throughout the 80s, the 90s & even into the 2000s.

‘CHARLIE’S ANGELS’ (SEASON 5): INTRODUCING TANYA ROBERTS – THE LAST ORIGINAL ANGEL

Regrettably, the suits at ABC did this on the worst possible night for Charlie’s Angels—indeed, CA‘s new night for 1980-81: Sundays, at 8pm. Big mistake. Sunday was “family night” for television in those days, when parents and kids tried to squeeze a few more hours out of the weekend before returning to work and school. And back in 1980-1981, they did that overwhelmingly by tuning into CBS, where 60 Minutes (3rd in the Nielsen’s), Archie Bunker’s Place (13th and directly against the Angels), One Day at a Time (11th), Alice (7th), The Jeffersons (6th), and Trapper John, M.D. (17th) ate up the majority of viewers. And, if there were any teen boys left out there at 8pm, they were watching CHiPs (24th) over on NBC.

Charlie’s Angels‘ ratings quickly plummeted, so much so that ABC, fearing it was hurting their popular The ABC Sunday Night Movie (24th in the Nielsen’s), hurriedly compounded their problems by moving Charlie’s Angels to Saturdays in the winter of 1981, where it continued to lose traction, even with more successful Spelling/Goldberg lead-outs The Love Boat (5th) and 17th’s Fantasy Island (to be fair…nothing was working on any of the networks at any time on Saturdays, except for those two shows). By the end of February, Charlie’s Angels was all but cancelled when episode production was halted. Four episodes were still in the can, and these were burned off in June (ironically in their old Wednesday time slot, where the show should have stayed), long after anyone still watched the show. Charlie’s Angels finished 59th out of 65 shows in the ratings, and was officially canceled, to scant media attention.

[rusty spike]

Most of us were watching just to watch or see something...

Many of the plots were just not well written. There's one involving a "hunt" on a deserted island as a plot to get Charlie to come rescue the Angels. It involves some crackpot and a team of hunters tracking the girls. And how does it end- Just stay in the shack girls. Bosley will come for you. Not much closure.

And there's one from Season 5 involving a babbling psychic lady when one of the Angels was kidnapped in Hawaii. Bosley and the other two gals are casually driving around the island as if they were looking for a parking spot at the beach. The cast appeared to be bored as if they were dying to have their show cancelled.

[Fallon97]

Originally Posted by TMC

Which season do you feel had the sharpest decline in quality from the previous season?

Actually, I don't think the first season was any better than the other seasons.