Shark Bytes

Casting Tanya was a fatal mistake that doomed the show altogether. She was sexy but unattractive and cheap-looking. All the other 5 angels before her were beautiful and sophisticated. Tanya was like the poor older cousin they hired as a housemaid.

Kate Jackson leaving killed it. This was a show about sex and she was it. Hands down.Sure, the rest of them were all hotties and the subject of many guys dreams but Kate was the one you wanted to take home and show to mom and dad.

farrah was with out question the best angel of them all.. she put the show on the map, i have met jackyln smith before and let me tell you she is as down to earth in real life as she is in the show.. i sell her line of furniture
in my design center and we had the chance to talk alittle she is great-- it jumped shark when kate left..

I remember being very excited to see who the "New Angel" was going to be everytime one of them left. I liked all of the angels.

The casting of Shelley Hack was a mistake. Shelley had such an uppercrust,old money, my- ancestors- came-over-on-the-Mayflower, stiff upper lip look that she was woefully out of place on a tongue-in-cheek jiggle show like Charlie's Angels. She was lovely, but her classic good looks were a victim of that fad of the 70's, the hot rollers flip and frizz 'do ironically popularized by the departed angel, Faucett. Farrah was naturally attractive and seemed down-to-earth, hence her universal appeal. Jaclyn Smith was the most beautiful, but she was like a remote
southern belle. Kate was a tomboy, intellegent, quirky and unique, and that's why the producers didn't appreciate her. Sex sells. As for Miss Roberts, she was stunning and her dark red hair made her stand out, but her squeaky voice made her better suited to comedy roles like her character on "That 70's Show." Cheryl Ladd was and is beautiful and a class act. However, I think losing Farrah and Kate dealt the fatal blows to this series.

Farrah leaving and Cheyl Ladd joining the cast,was the single best thing to ever happen to this show.Period.

Ah, yes, I remember this show! I used to call it 'Chuck's Chicks'. A mostly harmless piece of fluff that was a thinly disguised attempt at very-soft porn in the '70s. Take three luscious looking women, put them in a position to overpower men, and you have what amounts to three versions of Emma Peel 'lite'.

As an adolescent youth, I enjoyed watching the gals in action, although now that I'm older, it's obvious just how cheesy the plots were and how obviously choreographed the 'action' was.

But it served its purpose at the time; draw in a mostly male audience and keep them happy for at least a couple of seasons. This show was probably more popular than the producers originally imagined (and probably more popular than it deserved to be, really).

I think Hal made a nice post below, however I must disagree with him when he says the scripts were mostly believable. Just my opinion of course, but I thought the entire premise was quite silly even back when I was a youth of a lad (no pun intended, Cheryl!). This show was obviously intended as farcical cheesecake. And the idea of working that closely for a man (Charlie) who never even shows his face to his employees is just a bit unrealistic, dontcha think? But then, how many television shows aren't unrealistic in many ways? Precious few, to be sure.

I don't know if Chuck's Chicks ever really JTS, as I stopped watching it after the first couple of seasons (and after I had discovered REAL girls....). As such, I don't remember anything about the acting ability of Shelley Hack, but I do know that Tanya Roberts couldn't act her way into many high school plays. I know because I saw her on a James Bond movie and she stunk to high heaven. Lack of talent was never a liability for this show, nor was it even a prerequisite. If the gal was eye candy, give her a script and a screen test!!

I will say that Charlie's Angels most likely did JTS at one point, if only because the premise was so weak and the acting wasn't exactly on a level with Masterpiece Theater.... or even The New Zoo Review, for that matter!

Peace.

Charlie's Angels never really jumped the shark, but rather just ran it's course after the first three seasons. However, the actresses were given a five year contract when the series began, so it was mandatory the show carry on for two more seasons after it's initial popularity waned. The show was a phenomenon during the first season, and very well done during the second and third seasons. When Shelley Hack was hired to replace Kate Jackson, she was very beautiful and a talented actress. Just look at the publicity shots taken of Jaclyn, Cheryl and Shelley on google images and all three of them are totally beautiful and very glamorous looking. Tiffany was the classy Angel, as where Sabrina had been a more serious, less glamorous Angel. As for bringing in Tanya Roberts to complete the final season of the series, that was a bad idea, but we can speculate that bringing in a younger gal who had not been a police officer previously as the other women had was an angle they decided to try and it did not come off as well as they thought it might. As for scripts, most of them were believable although definite emphasis was placed on the looks of the cast. Comparing the scripts to other popular detective shows of the era, such as The Rockford Files with James Garner, can be done easily enough, though he stumbled into most of his cases rather than have an unseen millionaire playboy give him assignments over a speaker phone.

I made fun of this show when it was first on, but now I watch it whenever I can. It's so different to see women dressing and acting like LADIES, not drunks or skanks.

Cheryl is okay, but Farrah was kind of the big deal on ths show, so I voted that when she left the show jumped.

Charlie's Angels. A show that made such an impact on popular culture and all of our lives. What went wrong?
Everyone is quick to point the finger at Shelley Hack and Tanya Roberts.
1. Poor scripts and lack of deeper characterisation is what resulted in Farrah's departure (include the pressure put on her from a very jealous and insecure Lee Majors whose star was setting whilst Farrah's was rising.
2. Poor scripts and lack of leeway resulted in Kate's departure - losing Kramer Vs Kramer to Meryl Streep. Bear in mind that Kate was the original star of the show who had to take a back seat first to Farrah and then to Cheryl Ladd.
3. Cheryl Ladd was introduced as Kris Munroe (Jill's sister) so we had linkage and continuity. Shelley and Tanya were introduced without this. How different would the team have been if Tiffany Welles had been introduced as Sabrina's cousin from Boston. Tiffany could have met Kelly and Kris at Sabrina's wedding, with Sabrina organising Tiffany as her replacement with Charlie.
4. The main problem with Series 4 was the lack of team orientated episodes. Three for the Money, Angel Hunt, Home Sweet Homes, Toni's Boys are all stand outs. Sheely Hack does excel in Angels On Campus, Nips and Tucks and especially in the season finale One Love Two Angels. It is Tiffany who becomes group leader in the final episodes reuniting Kelly and Kris as a team. When given the right material Shelley did work well. Shelley did bring class and elegance to what was becoming a tired show.
5. Ratings. Charlies Angels finished 4th at the end of series 2, 12th at the end of series 3 (dropping 8 places) and 20th for series 4 (dropping another 8 places) Notice the gradual pattern of declione. Series 5 finished 47th (dropping 27 places!!!!)
6. Tanya Roberts! Perhaps introducing her as an undercover cop from New York (where Angel In Hiding was set) would have been more realistic. The model turned detective strategy never really worked. Introducing her with a link to original angel Kelly Garrett would have been better. They could have grown up in the same orphanage.
7. Series 5 could have opened with Smith, Ladd and Hack investigating New York, meeting Roberts, with Smith departing at the end of the 5 Hawaiian Epiosde arc with Smith leaving in the final Hawaiian episode (We all knew she wanted out at the end of series 4 as she spent most of Series 5 looking tired and bored).
8. The Ladd (middle class), Hack (high class sophistication) and Roberts (streetwise) line up could have worked very well.
9. If we summ up the key points, Hack was definitely an under utilised asset to Charlie's Angels as was Tanya Roberts (to a lessor degree). Lack of team work in Series 4 and lack of good quality scripts in Series 5 is what led to the end of a series that could have used story arcs and recurring villians from one season to the next to give good linkage and strong continuity to Charlies Angels.
10. Perhaps this has all occurred in a parallel tiome line and alternative universe. Long live Shelley the Beautiful Hack.

Didn't officially jump, just ran its course.

It's on a local 24-hour rerun type staiton. I kind of enjoy seeing the '70s fashions.

Don't blame the actresses at all , lay the blame on the writers and producers. A rotation of writers and maybe hiring the occasional freelance writer or why not having one of the cast write a script or direct a show or two?
No one should have left , Farrah , Kate and Shelley should have been kept on as recurring characters.
There should have been some recurring enemies of Charlie that popped up at least once or twice a season in story arcs with maybe a big name normally at Ratings sweeps time?
We barely knew the Angels'pasts...they were hastily touched upon.Shelley and Tanya were never allowed that chance really.
We never really knew what made the Angels tick.Did anyone have a darker side?What would an angel's breaking point be? I mean in FULL THROTTLE we have MADISON go bad because of more money or was there more to it that the writers were clueless about.
Kate was right about realism ; Farrah was right about deeper characterization. The spin-off was not such a bad idea, there could have been interplay between the two shows, with the Angels that left having appeared on both shows for a while.
And if you look closely on the name plate at Townshend Detective Agency in the final season, it also reads Paris, France....when did that happen?

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Tanya Roberts dissipated whatever interest there was still in the show. All the other actresses, from Kate to Shelley, were promising talents when they joined the show. They brought freshness, beauty, glamor. Tanya was virtually a has-been when she came onboard, a jaded reject from many TV-movie parts like "10" and "Flying High". She couldn't act and found her true calling in the r-rated tv productions and x-rated pictorials she became known for later on.

Shelley Hack brought class and elegance to a tired show. With Shelley, the show was actually recovering slowly from Kate's departure. Then Tanya Roberts happened--heavy eye make-up, horrible voice, zero acting skills, porno star demeanor and appeal--and the recovering show suffered fatal seizure and instant death!

I remember the episode: Jaclyn Smith relives some sort of childhood trauma in which she's locked in a closet-she moans over and over again:"BEEMISH! BEEMISH! BEEMISH!"(really hammin' it up). I was about 13 years old and-sick as it sounds-laughed so hard I wet myself.