Target: Angels

SUMMARY

A creepy hit man checks into a motel and proceeds to watch a slide show featuring improbable ‘candid’ photos of Kelly. We assume he is a hit man because he takes out a rifle (machine gun) and points it at the picture of Kelly projected on the wall and aims. We are not sure if he fired, although if he did, the front desk is probably going to double charge his credit card.

Cut to Kelly and a pre-facial-hair Tom Selleck (as charming Dr. Alan Samuelson) enjoying a youth basketball game coached by a very Bobby Knight-like Jill. Jill’s team loses; Kelly and Magnum PI decide to head for Kelly’s house for a healthy activity that does not involve going out with Jill and her team for pizza. Magnum kinda almost proposes, and Kelly kinda declines.

Dr. Alan Samuelson: “Do you ever think about…”
Kelly: “Getting married? Not very often.”

A dejected Magnum leaves and is not gone for more than three minutes when the motel hit man fires a rifle (machine gun) into Kelly’s window missing her but wreaking havoc on her living room wall.

The next morning Jill and Kelly arrive late, Jill explaining that the tardiness is due to someone having fired a rifle (machine gun) into Kelly’s window. The hit man leaves behind a religious medallion that is the same as that of the order of nuns that operated the orphanage Kelly was raised in. Kelly opts to lay low at a hotel in Burbank as opposed to staying with her teammates (who never offer).

Then follows another attempt on an Angel’s life (Jill) with the same poor aim that missed Kelly at her house. The Angels deduce that the nearsighted hit man must be wearing a weighted shoe because of the imprints found in the muddy ground are uneven. Thanks to a tip from her ex-military dad, Bri learns that a retired mercenary may be the cause of this trouble and Sabrina could very well be next.

The Angels then fake a deadly explosion in Sabrina’s apartment to fool the hit man into thinking he succeeded. After a fake funeral staged for Sabrina, Kelly and Jill decide that the only safe place for them is at Charlie’s private mansion (much to Bosley’s chagrin). The Angels converge at Charlie’s pimped out bachelor pad only to figure out that this is what the killer intended all along.

After the limping hit man is found dead, and Bosley runs a check of Charlie’s old cases they learn that the hit man had been hired by some shady accountant Charlie put away years ago is out for revenge and that he plans on blowing up Charlie’s cab as he is being chauffeured home.

Kelly and Jill steal a decoy cab; jumping out just in time as the accountant lobs a pack of dynamite in their general direction, resulting in their stolen cab bursting into flames. Sabrina and Bosley arrest the wild-eyed accountant after advising him of the fact that their was no humor in what he had just done, as Charlie’s cab turns around and speeds away before the Angels can get a glimpse of him.

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  ACTION 

Kelly and Jill get shot at, Jill’s shooting involves a brief chase. Sabrina’s water cooler explodes inside her apartment sending debris raining down on unsuspecting bystanders and Jill and Kelly steal a taxi from a bewildered cabbie and manage to get it blown to bits. 

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  FASHION 

Jill is in all her 1976 casual glory, be it coaching the all-girls basketball team or flirting with a cabby in her tie-die sweatshirt, she is nothing short of gorgeous. Sabrina switches it up between smart suits for the office and out in the field and a casual sort of artist’s smock draped over a matching turtleneck. Hey, it’s a style all her own.

Wardrobe Repeats
Kelly breaks out her puffy pirate shirt/brown skirt combo from the Pilot, and keeps the same blue outfit for the next episode, The Killing Kind. Sabrina wears the same pink plaid suit in Night of the Strangler and Angels at Sea, and the same red thing in Lady Killer.

Target:Angels	Pilot	Target: Angels	The Killing Kind
Target: Angels	Night of the Strangler	Angels at Sea	Target: Angels	Lady Killer
Target: Angels	To Kill an Angel

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  CLAIRVOYANT FILE PHOTOS

The pictures of the Angels the hit man uses for target practice are from previous episodes – captured from situations in which no picture truly could have been taken. Odd how the hit man can get these impossible shots with the camera but with his “rifle”? Not so much. 

Kelly
1. Angels in Chains publicity shot
2. Still from The Killing Kind
3. Still from the pilot
4. First picture again

Jill
1. Still from The Killing Kind
2. Still from tennis footage not used in the pilot
3. Snapshot apparently taken later in this episode

Sabrina
1. Still from The Killing Kind
2. Still from Hellride

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JOB SECURITY 

Kelly seems a lot more relieved about preserving her own safety than guilty about causing Charlie to get in a head-on collision with a semi truck. She doesn’t seem to realize if he dies, she’s out of a job … and if he lives, he should be mad enough for her to still be out of a job.

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  THE MAD CROPPER STRIKES AGAIN

Inside Charlie’s house, the Angels find pictures of Charlie carefully cut out and placed back inside the frame instead of just hiding the entire picture. These are the tasks that must make Bosley feel really important. Does he have his own life at all? Not to mention, these pictures are just stills from other episodes’ office wrap-ups. So Charlie actually has a photographer hanging around snapping shots whenever he has a bimbo over? Gross.

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  HOLY RECYCLED SETS, BATMAN!

I guess Janet LeMaire tired of the family property pretty quickly – you may recognize Charlie’s rec room as the foyer of the mansion from the Pilot episode. All they did was hang a blanket over the doorway in the middle.

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BIMBO REPORT

This is the very first time Charlie is not seen entertaining a bimbo during office hours.

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ROMANCE FOR KELLY

Aside from Skip, with whom there was an age difference, Dr. Alan Samuelson is undoubtedly the nicest man Kelly has ever dated. He’s a young, handsome, charming DOCTOR. He openly professes his love for Kelly and is even willing to work through the crazy to make their relationship a lasting one. This romance is the closest Miss Garrett ever came to sealing the deal on a solid match – too bad she blew it with “it’s not you, it’s me.” She had that right.

It’s interesting to note that Magnum PI’s Hawaiian mansion is actually located on the same stretch of beach that Kelly life guards four years later in Waikiki Angels. We wonder if her binoculars were really directed at the ocean, or perhaps conducting personal surveillance on the nearby residences. “I have to do this for work . . .”

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CURIOSITIES 

• This is the first episode that suggests that the Angels may have active sex lives. Kelly has a gentleman caller over at an hour the nuns at her orphanage would likely frown upon and Sabrina says she has “definite ideas” about how she’d like her ex-husband to “see her”. TMI if you ask us.

• Why is Sabrina so excited about hanging that hideous picture on the wall in the office? Either way, it’s never seen outside this episode.

• How does Kelly manage to drive all the way from Los Angeles to her orphanage in Texas, and back, all in a day? (Especially considering it burned down?)

• The normally brave Angels with nerves of steel let off a couple of uncharacteristic screams when being chased by the hit man (Jill) and upon finding him dead in a closet (Sabrina).

• Watch Kelly endanger lives as she tries to put her hair up into a sailor cap and drive a taxi at the same time. After a brief cutaway, her cap situation is perfectly arranged … probably thanks to her backseat driver / stylist.

• Charlie’s taxi crashes head on into an oncoming truck and both the front end and hood are clearly damaged, yet in the next frame the cab looks fine. Then how does the cabbie so casually ask Charlie if he’s OK? There were really no injuries?

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ANGEL STATS

Turtlenecks:	2 (Sabrina)
Shots fired by Angels:	0
Shots fired at Angels:	5 @ Jill, Immeasurable machine gun burst @ Kelly
Magnum P.I.’s Kissed:	1 (Kelly)
Ex-Husbands Kissed:	1 (Sabrina)
Angel Homes Attacked:	2 (Kelly, Sabrina)
Angel Funerals Held:	1 (Sabrina)
Criminal Charges:	Grand Theft Auto (Jill) Destruction of Property (Jill, Kelly)

TOWNSEND AGENCY COMMENTARY

KENNY
Episode Rating:
The first episode where we learn more about the Angels’ backgrounds, which is always fun. I love how Bri stages her own funeral, and seeing Bosley’s weepy reaction to it.

GREG
Episode Rating:
We finally get to see what the Angels do when not rifling through file cabinets and flirting with bad guys. Sabrina’s father and husband are introduced, Jill and Kelly also get personal lives and the first attempt is made to flesh out these characters.

I liked the fact that Kelly supported Jill’s team by going to the game and that Sabrina and her ex-husband are still sexually active. Sure, when you really start to think about the plot it kinda falls apart under any time of inspection (why didn’t Bosley check Charlie’s old cases to begin with?) and after the main hit man is found dead, new main bad guy Harold Meeker doesn’t seem too threatening but it was still fun to see the Angels hang out with each other and solve their own case for a change. 

ANNA
Episode Rating:
Thinking about Sabrina and Bill’s love life makes me throw up a little bit, but this is still an episode that sets standards for excellence in the field of background information. Kelly needs to take care of her orphan issues if she let Tom Selleck walk away. TOM SELLECK. Get it together.