Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by the week’s new releases or premieres. This week: In honor of the premiere of WGN’s Underground, we’re honoring TV episodes about great escapes.
Charlie’s Angels, “Angels In Chains” (season one, episode four; originally aired 10/20/1976)
From its very first episodes, Charlie’s Angels began rising to the top of the 1976 TV ratings, with the irresistible premise of three beautiful detectives on often-glamorous adventures. But episode four, “Angels In Chains,” falls somewhere around a gratuitous parody. Whether by design or accident, it celebrates the storied history of the hottie women prison drama, like House Of Women or Caged Heat. There are shower shots followed by tiny towel cover-ups, and a hosing down for delousing (one Angel asks the guard, “When’s the last time you were sprayed?”). The corrupt prison, of course, is a cover for a prostitution ring/sex farm led by a deceptively sweet female warden, helped along by a couple of good-old-boy law-enforcement patsies. You can spot future Oscar winner Kim Basinger as a fellow inmate, and future Love Boat cruise director Lauren Tewes as the trio’s original client, looking for her lost sister. And that’s cult movie queen Mary Woronov as the hard-nosed guard who is extremely interested in Farrah Fawcett’s Jill (“I’ll try not to bruise her tender skin too hard”).