Kelly Garrett may be Charlie's most beautiful, graceful, and sweetest Angel, but further psychological investigation reveals that Kelly Garrett is one incredibly disturbed woman.  Kelly?  The gentle flower who remained forever true to her employer when all her co-workers quit one right after the other?  Kelly?  The Angel who, even when arresting some foul villain, remained cordial and gracious throughout?  Unfortunately, it is true.  The Angel considered to be the most "boring" is really anything but!

      The evidence is clearly there.  She's been shot in the head not once, but twice.  She's been traumatized by a multitude of evil-doers, and has seen the gritty underworld of crime and all its human remains.  Kelly's been to hell and back, shot up with heroine, burned in a boiler room, and terrorized by an insane drag queen.  And her personal life!  No matter how many times Kelly has fallen for someone, romance eluded her to the very end.  Stay tuned for details!

      Kelly never knew her parents.  She was orphaned as a baby and raised at the St. Agnes Orphanage in Dallas, Texas.  Her last name, Garrett, was given to her by one of the sisters at the shelter.  Upon visiting her childhood refuge, Kelly was told by Sister Anne that she was always quiet and shy, thus keeping to herself.  The only childhood friend Kelly ever had was a little girl named Barbara, who, after becoming a nun herself, had since died while working as a foreign missionary ("Target Angels").  Her later childhood was spent in foster homes throughout the country.  One home in particular would be where Kelly lost her youth and became forever a tormented soul.

      In one of the most disturbing scenes ever filmed for CHARLIE'S ANGELS, Kelly reveals a horrible secret from her past.  While trying to solve a mysterious robbery, Kelly attends a séance with Jill.  Even though Jill doesn't realize it at the time, Kelly begins her downward spiral on an emotional roller-coaster, right there at the séance table.  The following are the exact words Kelly spoke in a little girl's voice while under the influence of an hypnotic trance.

   "Please, oh please. Please don't.  Don't make me go in the dark closet.  Please, Beemish.  I'll be good. I promise I'll be good.  Let me have Lily Beth.  I get so scared in there alone.  Oh, Beemish, please let me have Lily Beth for company.  Beemish!  Beemish! Beemish!"  ("The Seance")

      Beemish was the evil matron who stole

Kelly's rag doll, Lily Beth, and then locked little

Kelly in a dark and lonely closet! In Kelly's horrify-

ing flashbacks and nightmarish visions, viewers

learn that Beemish really is some-thing to be afraid

of.  The iron clad scowl on her face reveals that

either Beemish is possessed by demons or was born

in a very bad mood.  Whichever, it is any wonder

Kelly didn't end up in an insane asylum after living

under the care of her wicked matron.

Kelly's adolescence was also spent in various foster homes.  Living out her teenage wild streak, Kelly ran around with boys who stole cars and went joyriding in their free time ("Taxi Angels").  Up to that point, the rest of Kelly's past is somewhat unclear, but in recognition of the producer's original intentions, Kelly was street smart and had been around the block a few times.  It was once stated that "...Jaclyn's character should be a girl who had had a hard life, who maybe had even done a little hustling".  Smith nixed that idea.  "Kelly may have had it rough, but not THAT rough!"  Considering Kelly's soft mannerisms and gentle charm, it is quite unlikely that she would have ever turned tricks.  If she had, she most certainly would have become much harder, more cynical, and completely intolerant of the evil men she put away so often.  Note that these characteristics were all present in Julie Rogers, upon Kelly's first meeting with her in "Angel in Hiding".

      Kelly joined the Los Angeles Police Academy and proved that she wasn't just a wispy little flower to be walked on.  She had an excellent shot and held her own with the males at the academy quite well.  Upon being hired at Charles Townsend Associates, Kelly made life-long friends in Sabrina Duncan and Jill Munroe.  While Jill was an insatiable flirt and Sabrina, a divorcee' who liked sex and hard liquor, Kelly seemed like she had her feet firmly planted on the ground.  When her revelation about Beemish was exposed, Kelly was placed under the control of an evil hypnotist and almost drove Jill and herself off a cliff.  Using reverse psychology, Jill talked Kelly out of it and comforted her deeply disturbed friend.   Instead of getting help for herself (this was the 1970s and the term "dysfunctional" hadn't become so mainstream yet), Kelly read a book on the human psyche and fooled herself into thinking that she was all better.

      Even though Kelly and the Angels seemed fine with the possibility of Kelly's morbid childhood trauma behind her, it would resurface in many ways.  In two incidents Kelly took two damaged boys under her wing.  In "To Kill an Angel", Kelly befriended the autistic Skip.  While doing volunteer work at the Pacific Sanitarium, Kelly and Skip bonded, thus she spends extra time outside of her work there with him.  While at a carnival, Skip gets hold of a real pistol and for some strange reason fires it at Kelly.  Hospitalized and frantically worried about the lost boy's safety, Kelly flees to save Skip from hit-men who want him dead.  She emerges from this episode as if nothing ever happened, not even showing signs of a scar.

      A few years later she would also come to the rescue of a battered pre-teen boy named Greg ("Angel's Child").  While working with a grumpy sergeant on a case, Kelly learns that he is a child abuser and gets custody of his son.  This shows just how deeply Kelly feels for children without proper care, a throw-back to her days as an orphan.  Could it be she fears that a Beemish lies in every household?  As a savior to both Skip and Greg, Kelly re-unites them with their parents and has cured the relationship.  With her caring heart and need to help others, Kelly proves to everyone just how real of an "Angel" she really is.  As Bosley once said, "If I didn't love her before, I do now".

      So where does this leave the prettiest Angel of all?  Alone, of course.  Jill has left the team and Kelly sits on the sidelines as Sabrina and Kris find romance in various forms (see "Romantic Angels").  Because of the fact that she was abandoned as a child, Kelly can never really commit to a relationship.  The real truth of this is provided by her boyfriend of three months, Dr. Alan Samuelson (played by Tom Selleck).  As Kelly sends him packing, he lectures her on why her life is so miserable.  Here is the revealing conversation that ensues:

      Kelly: "It's not you, it's me!  I feel like the walls are starting to close in"

      Alan: "Going off and hiding isn't going to solve anything"

      Kelly: "I don't know how you can be so sure about that"

      Alan: "It never has, you told me that yourself.  You start to get serious in a relationship and then you run away, and then you kick yourself because its gone by the time you come back.  That's the pattern and you keep repeating it"

      Kelly: "I thought you were a surgeon, not a shrink!"

      Alan: "I'm in love with you and if it ends its gonna hurt like hell, but I'm more concerned with what happens to you.  Don't you see, you wanna love.  You wanna be loved.  But this thing you got keeps getting in the way.  It's gonna keep you from getting what you really want".    ("Target Angels")

      In tears, Kelly watches Alan leave.  This is just the first of many failed romances for Kelly.  She would fall for a cat burglar ("The Jade Trap"), a free-spirited pilot ("Angels on High"), and a politician ("Terror on Skis").  With Alan long gone and these affairs short lived, Kelly would finally meet the ultimate love of her life, Bill Cord.  As a lawyer, Bill has been searching for Oliver Barrow's long lost daughter, for she is to be the heiress to his vast hotel fortune.  After much investigation he pin-points it down to a private detective named Kelly Garrett.  Unsure of her heritage and not quite comfortable with her new and extremely prestigious surroundings, Kelly reluctantly allows Oliver to accept her as his own.  In the process, she falls for Bill Cord, and he with her.  Wining and dining on a boat, Kelly loses her heart to Bill and like Sabrina before her, she may just quit the detective business to marry and raise a family.  When Oliver suddenly dies, Kelly is determined to find out who she really is.  Sending for Tiffany to come and dig up her past, Kelly ships Bill off to work for Kris.  After yet another near-fatal car accident (see "Angels in Autos"), Kelly recovers to learn that Bill and Kris have fallen in love with one another.  Furious at her good friend and co-worker, Kelly storms off in a tearful rage.  To top it all off, Bill turns up dead the next morning.  Kelly's last hope for love vanishes without further words.  She is incredibly shocked and almost rendered speechless.  Fortunately Tiffany and Bosley pull the team together to solve the mystery surrounding his death and in doing so wrap up Kelly's case somewhat.  It is learned that all the information on her was planted, thus she still doesn't really know who her family is.  Kelly remains a lost, loveless, orphan with a painful past and a truck load of personal problems.

      In between all of Kelly's romantic dismays and childhood hauntings, she encountered several horrors while working as a private detective.  Of all the Angels, she was involved in the most car accidents.  It is amazing that she survived them, let alone the fact that she never received any major physical impairments (see "Angels in Autos").  One of the Angel's most difficult cases was when they were sent off to jail to investigate a prison murder.  Put on display and humiliated beyond belief, Kelly and her co-workers were forced to disrobe and allow them selves to be sprayed down by an evil lesbian warden and later leered at by a menacing prison guard ("Angels in Chains").  Further horrors ensued.  In addition to her gun shot wounds, her head was also smashed into a wall by a murderous lunatic ("Angels at Sea"). While baiting a crooked accountant, Kelly was almost strangled to death atop an abandoned oil refinery ("Lady Killer"), and was almost subjected to sadomasochism with Kris after being kidnapped by drugged out hippies ("Waikiki Angels"). She even received a minor burn to her hand while trying to escape a flaming boiler room aboard a cruise ship ("Angels Ahoy").  In that same episode, Kelly really is tormented beyond belief when a bunch of goons in Halloween costumes douse her with liquor and try to drown her in a pool.  If it had been any other Angel other than Kelly, this scene would be easy to overlook.  But, in retrospect, Kelly's near drowning by a bunch of costumed monsters seems extremely symbolic of her troubled life.

      One of the most nightmarish events in Kelly's life outside of being terrorized by Beemish, was the time she was secretly shot up with heroine ("Avenging Angel").  Learning the hard way of what drug addiction is all about, Kelly becomes incredibly sick and targeted for death by people who believe she really is a drug addict.  Crying real tears of pain, Kelly wonders aloud what the life of a real drug addict must be like.  As if she hadn't been through enough, she later became the victim of a crazy drag queen ("Angel on the Line").  Jealous of Kelly's natural physical beauty, Margo begins pranking Kelly with obscene and spooky phone calls.  Tired of the devastation in her life, Kelly cries that she doesn't deserve this treatment.  Is the most beautiful Angel about to crack?  It sure seems like it.  When she realizes Margo is a man, Kelly goes absolutely ballistic!

      By her fifth year as one of Charlie's private detectives, Kelly seems to have totally transformed from her quiet reserved self into a numb and passive

presence.  Kris had already taken over as the leader when Sabrina left,

and Julie's so busy trying to learn the ropes, she doesn't have a clue.  Not even Bosley seems to notice the change in his favorite Angel.  The gentle smiles no longer appear as often as they once did.  Kelly doesn't seem to participate in the conversations like she used to and her soft exterior has become embalmed with life's hard realities.  The new Kelly Garrett must be observed closely in comparison with the Kelly Garrett of the 1976/1977 season.  The changes are subtle, but they are most definitely there.  It was high time Kelly got out of the private eye business.

      That decision was made for her when a maniac gunman shot Kelly in the head ("Let Our Angel Live").  Unlike her first gunshot injury to the head, this one was very serious.  The doctors tell Julie, Bosley, and Kris that Kelly has a 50/50 chance of survival.  Thanks to a miracle, or the fact that Kelly actually sees the face of the mysterious Charlie Townsend between sleep, the Angel survives the trauma and feels the love of her friends and "family".

      The tragedy of Kelly Garrett perhaps shows just how irrelevant the term "cardboard-cutout" is when referring to the Angels.  Kelly has deep psychological wounds and because critics never bothered to watch the entire five year run of the show they had not idea what was really going on with Kelly, as well as the other Angels.  It is impossible to believe that Kelly came out of all these aforementioned tragedies unscathed.  She may be an Angel and she may be incredibly beautiful, but Kelly possesses extraordinary depth.  Whether or not Jaclyn Smith was bored with playing her or actually realized Kelly's problems will never be known, but then again, nobody realized what a neurotic basket case Jan Brady of ‘The Brady Bunch’ was until only a few years ago.  CHARLIE'S ANGELS may be considered fluff by most, but anyone who examines the character of Kelly Garrett a little more closely will realize that even Angels have deep-rooted problems too, and that their lives weren't always so fluffy.  Kelly can be looked at in two different ways.  She was heavenly beautiful, a workaholic who was very loyal to her employer and co-workers, very graceful and extremely tender when dealing with sensitive situations.  Her caring nature rescued two children from despair and her concern for others must never be forgotten ("Angels on the Streets" and "Catch a Fallen Angel").  On this level Kelly is the truest Angel ever!  On the other hand, Kelly is, well, Kelly is just a mess!