User Reviews

"To Kill an Angel" is actually a bit more atypical compared to the formula Charlie's Angels show as the focus isn't on some undercover operation with the girls on another case for Charles Townsend's Agency, with the intention of entrapping a criminal. Sure, there's plenty of danger for the Angels, an investigation, and two dirtbag killers on the prowl. Professional hit men leave a bagman laying near a funhouse in an amusement park (yeah, nice place to kill someone, just points out how ruthless these two men are). An autistic boy, Skip (Dennis Dimster), abandoned by his mother because she felt she could not properly care for him, was taken to a sanitarium, and has been spending quality time with Kelly (Jaclyn Smith) when she is away from the job. Kelly takes him to the amusement park, where Skip bumps into one of the killers, Masters (Craig Ludwin), with the gun falling out of the hit-man's pocket. Korbin (Robert Donner), the leader of the hit men, expects Masters to find, and kill, Skip, demanding no loose ends, the result of the hit to go smoothly. Skip, picking up the gun, accidentally shoots Kelly, thankfully grazing her forehead without further damage. Skip flees the park, looking for items Kelly told him from a poem. While Skip is on his journey, Korbin (pretending to be Skip's father) will try to fish for information from bedridden Kelly as Sabrina and Jill (Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett) search for the kid. As I mentioned previously, this episode of Charlie's Angels steps away from the usual undercover formula, where one of the Angels has the central focus, trying to get close to a specific target to stop them from committing a future crime, with the plot primarily dedicated to finding and rescuing a kid from two cold-blooded assassins. The plot also offers the possibility of Kelly being in danger as Bosley (David Doyle), Jill and Sabrina turn their attention to finding Skip while Korbin has access to her hospital room. The finale at the amusement park, after Skip meets his mother (Lee Bryant), is predictable as the show always pretty much was, but still exciting in that the Angels give the killers (particular Korbin) an "amusing ride". This time Jaclyn (who, even stuck in a hospital bed with a bandage on her forehead, looks like a million bucks) is the more "important" Angel, although I thought this episode really did swell at getting all three greatly involved in the story, never a bad thing. The only real "turn-off" (not really the right phrase, but the only one I could think of to describe a slight disappointment since it is a specific reason I watch the show, to tell you the truth) is that this episode isn't as sexy as usual, but this could be a plus for many viewers who consider the plot a change of pace where story takes precedence over eye candy.

It was a nice attempt to show another aspect of Kelly, being a "Big Sister" to a little boy.

The problem is there are too many co-incidences and other bad writing.

One of the killers happens to drop the gun and his mask slips at the same time? Then he does not try to retrieve the gun?

As Skip is wandering around he gets a ride to the beach, and then goes walking down the beach. He just happens to find his mother's house?

Also, what responsible newspaper would publish such details about the boy and Kelly, when the police had to suspect that there might be killers looking for the boy?

Then in the hospital, after Kelly realizes her visitor is not the boy's father, she does not call the Townsend agency?

She could have talked to the others, or at least left a message telling them where she thinks the boy is going. Instead, she takes a cab, and asks the cabbie to make the call?

And then in the final scene, as shown in the pictures for this episode, there is no trace of the wound on Kelly's head.

This is a remake of the "Cricket" episode of The Mod Squad from Sept. 21, 1971. Here the two killers were added to the story, perhaps in an attempt to up the drama.

A weak episode that lacks proper motivation from just about everyone. The plot is simple: Kelly mentors a young autistic boy. She takes him to an amusement park where the boy finds a gun accidently dropped by two hitmen after they'd killed their target. One of the hitmen realizes his gun is lost and they turn back to retrieve it. Only problem is, the young kid picks it up and fires it at Kelly, who seemingly takes a bullet to the noggin.

The boy runs away while Kelly is rushed to the hospital. The two remaining Angels and Bosley slowly piece it all together with help from a catatonic Kelly, who manages to give them leads to pursue.

The hitmen, instead of fleeing town like they should have, decide they can't leave witnesses even though the witnesses didn't see a thing. Kelly was shot in the head and the boy was too traumatized to identify anyone, it's not even clear if the boy even saw them and even if they did, it's unlikely they'd be able to finger the two hitmen. This is the big plot hole. Oh, and by the way, why does a simple hit need TWO hitmen? One who's clearly inexperienced. Makes no sense.

So the older hitman shows up at the hospital posing as the boy's father and questions Kelly about the boys whereabouts. He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in the hospital room. Kelly, who's groggy, feeds him quite a bit of background info on the kid but at no time mentions the child's autism. And for some strange reason, the hitman doesn't kill Kelly even though that's what he had set out to do.

Meanwhile the boy is wandering all over town gathering items from a fairy tale story Kelly had told him. And virtually no one seems to think it's weird this child is off in the city all by himself. Inexplicably, the kid winds up at the Malibu beach house of the mother who had abandoned him a few years before. After an initial shock, she welcomes the boy back into her home but of course the kid steals her wedding ring and slips out the back window. For some strange reason, even though they missed the kid by mere seconds, she and the new man in her life DON'T GO AFTER HIM. They look out the window one time, don't see him, and just give up. Easy come, easy go.

The whole plot is set up for the big ending at the closed down amusement park, which is located in Long Beach and was called the Pike. The Pike in real life was shut down just a few years after the episode was shot. The hitmen arrive with plans to .... well, I guess kill the kid.... and then kill Kelly, who abandons her hospital room to search for the kid herself.

After foolishly taking on the hitmen (and being easily subdued), the other two Angels and the police arrive just in the nick of time to save the day. There is one good stunt where the younger hitman is run over by a cop car. Sabrina and Jill finally earn their pay by ensnaring the older hitman in one of those spinning carousels.

The episode ends back at the beach house, with the boy being turned over to the mother who had abandoned him.... TWICE. The Angels smile when the mother tells them she'll do a better job this time. YIKES!

The final shot is off the Angels on the beach, Jaclyn Smith wearing tight jean shorts that would have rivalled Daisy Duke herself. It's the only thing about this episode that wasn't forgettable.

I found this one quite slow moving - the whole episode is really just one long search for Skip, the autistic boy.

It does seem odd, given that we're always lead to believe the Angels are close friends, that Kelly hadn't told Sabrina and Jill that she does voluntary work, regularly looking after an autistic child - she keeps it a secret from them, telling them she's going on a date instead. Why would she do that?

Kelly picks the boy up from the Pacific Sanitarium - what kind of place is that? And the boy is handed over to Kelly by a nurse in uniform. So that's a lot of responsibility on Kelly's shoulders, and she carelessly, and irresponsibly, manages to lose him at an Amusement Park.

It's not fair to pick holes in Charlie's Angels plots, as it was never meant to be taken too seriously (although sometimes the plots are very good), but it was a bit too convenient that the boy Skip was able to walk from the Amusement Park to the restaurant where his mother used to work (she gave him away when he was 2 years old, so how would he realistically know where the restaurant is?), and then from the restaurant he's rather conveniently just given a lift to the beach by a stranger, and then, from there, it's just happens to be a short walk to his mother's house.

And, at the end, at the Amusement Park, when Kelly tells the taxi driver to telephone the police and the other Angels, they all miraculously arrive within seconds!

There are still a couple of good scenes though; Robert Donner is good as Korbin, the gangster who manages to trick his way into Kelly's hospital room, pretending to be Skip's father, and the best bit of the whole episode, in my opinion, is the short comedic scene, in which Sabrina and Jill deal with a seedy publisher who makes an offer to them to pose for an adult magazine, "the less you wear, the more you get". The two girls read each other's minds, and immediately carry out a little routine in front of him, pretending to be police officers, discussing out loud what his sentence for the 'pornographic preposition' will be - it's good acting from Kate Jackson as Sabrina, "oh, it was a joke", she says as the publisher backtracks, and they let him off so that he gives them the information about wage tickets that they came for, although Jill (Farah Fawcett) let's him know she still thinks they should book him as they leave.

Sabrina and Jill are on a telepathic level again in the episode's finale at the Amusement Park. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking", says Sabrina, and with no discussion necessary, they turn on the spinning wall ride (the Gravitron), trapping Korbin as he spins helplessly pressed against its wall.