(8 of 8)
Maybe he's right. But Fred Silverman, knowing that the best and longest-running television shows (M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore) have been the ones with sharply defined characters who catch at viewers' minds and offer them something to identify with, has been pressing for shows that are less job oriented and that give viewers an idea of how the Angels live off-duty.
The initial results are not promising. Lately no Angels have been tied up or stripped down, and there have been fewer dumb sex jokes. Dullness has been increased, but with no real gain in intelligence—and at the expense of the antic badness that sometimes enlivened the initial episodes.
It is possible, therefore, that the show will turn out to be just another passing fancy and not the shape of things to come. Or that it will merely settle into a prosperous rut, another gimmicky private-eye show with a following that keeps it safely anchored somewhere in the middle of the ratings. About all that, it is too early to speak. Right now, the last word must belong to Producer Spelling, in whose voice can be heard television's truest, bottom-line tones. Refusing to argue with the show's detractors, he utters what television people all believe is the unassailable defense of the indefensible: "The people out there love it, and we have the numbers to prove it."