‘Angel’ Is Soaring but Misses His Mark

A friend and I were schmoozing about television recently when she mentioned “Touched by an Angel,” the luminous halo of Sunday nights, on such a roll for CBS that it regularly cracks the A.C. Nielsen Top 5 and draws more than 20 million viewers in its time slot following “60 Minutes.”

More than just a fan of “Touched by an Angel,” my friend is a disciple, absolutely a true believer, someone so deeply moved and emboldened by this series that her voice quivered with emotion as she recounted her feelings about it. This is not someone who lives her life in front of a TV set. She is a professional woman with other interests, yet someone who clearly regards “Touched by an Angel” as profound and unique, the weekly inspirational she refuses to do without. Her stirring response to the series touched me.

Television not being merely a dispensable tissue, something plucked from a box, used, then tossed away and forgotten? How often does that happen?

Prime time’s soulful hour of miracles surfaced in 1994 on Wednesday nights, performed credibly on Saturdays in 1995 and this season has just exploded, packing the chapel with loyal congregants in the Sunday time slot where viewers used to chant the whodunit gospel of “Murder, She Wrote.”

“Touched by an Angel” hasn’t changed much since its inception under executive producer Martha Williamson, with Roma Downey still helping mortals as angel Monica and Della Reese still her mentor as angel Tess. The only addition is John Dye as Andrew the angel of death, a good guy with a scary title.

This is hardly prime time’s first venture into “angeldom,” with Michael Landon, for example, doing his own good deeds for earthlings in the mid-’80s as the heavenly messenger of NBC’s “Highway to Heaven.” Yet “Touched by an Angel” is so much more overtly spiritual than “Highway to Heaven” that its presence is all the more distinctive, especially given prime time’s long, musty, dishonorable tradition of treating mainstream religion almost as a cult along the lines of Heaven’s Gate, something either to be snickered at, cavalierly dismissed or ignored.

Those gaudy ratings for Monica and Tess have shredded that. And heeding the message it was receiving from viewers, CBS this season added “Promised Land,” a drama about a family whose religion is core to its universe, and the WB Network is airing “7th Heaven,” an hour of drama depicting a pastor’s brood. Neither series parts the Red Seas, creatively or in the ratings.

There’s no question that all three series help fill a need, however. Especially “Touched by an Angel.” So much so that after seeing and hearing how deeply it affected my friend, I hoped to experience a “Touched by an Angel” moment myself. A nonbeliever in the series, after watching occasional episodes and finding them corny, manipulative and so overcooked that they charred my emotions, I turned on Sunday’s repeat episode, opened my heart and waited for the epiphany.

It never came.

The story focused mostly on a rapprochement in the desert between an archeologist named Henry and his elderly grandfather, a reunion that began painfully but ultimately had the old man achieving his mission by getting his estranged grandson to relocate his Orthodox Jewish roots.

Years ago, Harry the grandfather (Harold Gould) had disowned Henry for marrying “a Catholic girl from Boston,” but now had somehow found his way (don’t ask how) to the Navajo excavation site where Henry and his wife were working, bearing a prayer book, a relentless spiel and a mezuza--biblical prayers on a tiny parchment rolled into a tiny box for mounting on Jewish doorposts. “You’ll pin it on your tent,” said Harry, whose goal was to make up with Henry and proselytize him back to the traditions of devout Judaism.

Monica was at the site working undercover, so to speak, as Henry’s research assistant, and Tess was there taking photos of everyone and just hanging around, with no one questioning her presence. When the third angel, Andrew, appeared mysteriously on a ridge early in the episode, you knew this was going to be Harry’s last stop, for Andrew’s house calls are never gratuitous.

Indeed, Harry was dying and wanted Henry’s promise that he would say kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer that celebrates God. But first came their row, with Henry responding angrily to Harry and his “religious crap.” Of course, he changed his mind, with more than a little help from Monica and Tess.

I admired the story for respecting all traditions, and ambitiously converging Harry with a Navajo tribal elder (Russell Means) leading a protest against the archeological dig’s violation of sacred grounds, each addressing the other a bit in his own dying language, Yiddish and Navajo, respectively. “Look at that,” said Tess. “A Navajo tribal elder meets a New York tribal elder.” Very, very nice. The juxtaposition of cultures was inspired.

Yet both men were stereotypes, the Navajo gent speaking in the kind of stiff, sage Native Americanese usually found in bronze, and Harry ultimately schlepping and boychiking his way back into Henry’s heart, while turning out to be a former junk dealer.

In addition, the story may have given the erroneous impression that Henry had only two options, either being a non-practicing Jew or an Orthodox Jew like Harry, with no strata between.

Meanwhile, despite Henry having been rejected by his family because of her religion, his wife displayed amazingly tolerance. “They wanted what’s best for you,” she told him. Meaning not marrying her was best for him? Not to worry, though, for the script dispatched her back to Boston in mid-episode, avoiding the messiness her presence might have caused had she hung around for the finale when Henry put on his yarmulke to say kaddish for Harry, who had died in an attempt to rescue his grandson from an underground cavern where he was trapped.

Although I didn’t receive the epiphany, Henry did, down there in the bowels of the Earth with his dead grandfather and the spirits of long-dead Navajo, and with Monica doing a cameo there, too, revealing to Henry in stereophonic sound that she was an angel.

Henry’s Navajo intern also got the message--a visit from his own dead grandfather in a dream persuading him to change sides and join those protesting the excavation. Not to worry about that either, though, for Henry came around regarding the dig, too. “I was wrong,” he announced. “I have learned this was a sacred place. I wish to honor all the people who died here.”

“Touched by an Angel” had pulled off the trifecta: conversions, tidy resolutions and Tess singing “Swing low, sweet chariot. . . .” In other words, the series was much as I recalled it, very pious, very sweet, very gentle, very uneven and very much over the top. As always, a noble effort needing better execution.

Some day it will come. You have to have faith.