"Touched By An Angel" lasted a season after this episode but already the show showed signs of weariness. And despite the presence of award-winning actors like Earnest Borgnine and Tom Bosley, this episode is indicative of its decline and why it should have lost its spot on network TV.
Personally, I love this series and enjoy watching it on DVD. "Touched" was an often beautiful series that carried a positive message: no matter what a mess we made of our lives, God loves us. Fine. We need something positive on TV today. Monica is much missed.
But "Touched" never did history well. It's always talking about the Bible and the Bible is mostly history. So why not treat history with pulling. God did.
"Touched" often took detours through history, always presenting it in a stylized, even jokey manner, as if the people then weren't as real or as imortant as people today. The history they presented was ill-researched and relied on generally-accepted knowledge. But too often what we've been taught about history, and has become general knowledge, is erroneous. Being stylized, its historical jaunts reminded me of the look of another program I like, the 1970s "Ellery Queen." Fine. Pretty. But in a show looking for truth rather than whodunit, it's palling.
"Touched" is not in the same sort of class as "Amadeus" or "Shakespeare in Love," which were lovely movies based on loads of anti-historical nonsense.
"Touched" couldn't get away with that because it presented itself, parable or not, as focused on truth.
It's okay to make parables that point toward Truth. But when they start using real people in the past or past times presented as true, they can't make the same sort of truth claims through lies.
This is especially dangerous on TV as, when viewers who don't know history "see" it unfold, they tend to believe it's real. And every "Touched" episodes that present a brush with history sucks eggs.
So, whether they visit Mark Twain or old Hollywood or Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" or this episode, detailing the decline of a once-idealistic TV programmer who now runs a rock-bottom public access channel and whose life is threatened by emphysema, if they present history with less than respect, they undercut their own message. It's dangerous to say you're presenting Truth and then use a vehicle based on untruth.
I won't detail their historical errors (which are legion in every historical episode they do) because they'd be spoilers. Suffice it to say this episode is not a favorite of mine. "Touched" produced many superb and moving episodes of its brand of parable, but this is among rhe rock-bottom presentations.
And while I'm on an episode I can fairly criticize, I have to say another thing that killed the show, IMHO, is Valerie Bertinelli. I understand their need to add her. After all, while seven years isn't long in the life of an angel, by this point in the series Monica couldn't keep being so innocent of everything human get up to or she'd be a pretty dumb angel. So here comes Gloria, especially created before our eyes, with no history and her incisive mind on a serious learning curve. But unless she also added time for Monica to be away filming different episodes for the high quality "Touched" usually maintained, her character made for just too many angels for one hour. I never really liked the addition of the Angel of Death in every episode but someone on high at CBS probably thought a little beefcake wouldn't hurt with female viewers. But let's face it, Bertinelli was just awful. And she's prominent here. She should've been de-created.
Personally, I love this series and enjoy watching it on DVD. "Touched" was an often beautiful series that carried a positive message: no matter what a mess we made of our lives, God loves us. Fine. We need something positive on TV today. Monica is much missed.
But "Touched" never did history well. It's always talking about the Bible and the Bible is mostly history. So why not treat history with pulling. God did.
"Touched" often took detours through history, always presenting it in a stylized, even jokey manner, as if the people then weren't as real or as imortant as people today. The history they presented was ill-researched and relied on generally-accepted knowledge. But too often what we've been taught about history, and has become general knowledge, is erroneous. Being stylized, its historical jaunts reminded me of the look of another program I like, the 1970s "Ellery Queen." Fine. Pretty. But in a show looking for truth rather than whodunit, it's palling.
"Touched" is not in the same sort of class as "Amadeus" or "Shakespeare in Love," which were lovely movies based on loads of anti-historical nonsense.
"Touched" couldn't get away with that because it presented itself, parable or not, as focused on truth.
It's okay to make parables that point toward Truth. But when they start using real people in the past or past times presented as true, they can't make the same sort of truth claims through lies.
This is especially dangerous on TV as, when viewers who don't know history "see" it unfold, they tend to believe it's real. And every "Touched" episodes that present a brush with history sucks eggs.
So, whether they visit Mark Twain or old Hollywood or Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" or this episode, detailing the decline of a once-idealistic TV programmer who now runs a rock-bottom public access channel and whose life is threatened by emphysema, if they present history with less than respect, they undercut their own message. It's dangerous to say you're presenting Truth and then use a vehicle based on untruth.
I won't detail their historical errors (which are legion in every historical episode they do) because they'd be spoilers. Suffice it to say this episode is not a favorite of mine. "Touched" produced many superb and moving episodes of its brand of parable, but this is among rhe rock-bottom presentations.
And while I'm on an episode I can fairly criticize, I have to say another thing that killed the show, IMHO, is Valerie Bertinelli. I understand their need to add her. After all, while seven years isn't long in the life of an angel, by this point in the series Monica couldn't keep being so innocent of everything human get up to or she'd be a pretty dumb angel. So here comes Gloria, especially created before our eyes, with no history and her incisive mind on a serious learning curve. But unless she also added time for Monica to be away filming different episodes for the high quality "Touched" usually maintained, her character made for just too many angels for one hour. I never really liked the addition of the Angel of Death in every episode but someone on high at CBS probably thought a little beefcake wouldn't hurt with female viewers. But let's face it, Bertinelli was just awful. And she's prominent here. She should've been de-created.
