I'll Walk With You

I shall now review every episode of Touched By An Angel, ever.

Touched By An Angel begins with opening credits that include sweeping shots of the Grand Canyon and soaring vocals from Della Reese aka Angel Tess as she sings “Walk With You” with her booming bluesy tones. You might see one or two white doves* here, but wait for them later in the show.

In walks Irish Angel Monica (IAM), who is told by Boss Angel Tess (BAT – infer from this acronym what you will) that she has been assigned to straighten out a wayward human being and show them the right path which inevitably means finding God. She’s like a caseworker, only with an Irish accent and a built-in glow-on-command feature.

These waywards often include: those on their death bed with unresolved family conflict, drunks, drug addicts, men and women unlucky in love, children with no father figures who have resorted to living a life of crime on the streets while their mothers work shift after shift just to keep their ingrate children fed and clothed, strippers/prostitutes, couples having trouble conceiving a child and then when they finally do the baby has Down Syndrome, women being blackmailed by men who have a copy of their sex tape, women who have given their child up for adoption and sex offenders**.

As a rookie caseworker, IAM often has no idea what to do to help these people. She asks BAT what to do and all she says is, “Baby, has God ever let you down before?” It’s that sort of direction I’m lacking in my life. So IAM prays and ends up infiltrating these people’s lives without them asking her any questions whatsoever, other than her name I presume, as she’s always on a first name basis with just about everyone in whatever town she ends up in each episode. It seems to be veritably easy for an angel to get a job, no questions asked. My personal favourite was when IAM got a job as a member of the secret service as casually as if she was changing her underwear. No CV required!

IAM then has to coax the story out of the person she is helping, although she might already know part or all of it. Sometimes she does it with relative ease, and sometimes she doesn’t figure it out at all. It’s all part of the suspense that is built to keep the viewer hooked. And to drag out the message of Redemption via Christianity™ for as long as humanly possible.

You know that shit is about to get real when Death Angel Andrew (DAA) appears, with his long golden locks flowing in the breeze. This means IAM needs to get a wriggle on and convey the message of the big man upstairs because time is about to run out for the person she is trying to help or someone associated closely with them. DAA turns up to help said person to the other side, and also to glance knowingly at BAT whenever IAM asks a stupid question. You see, DAA and BAT have been in the biz for centuries, there ain’t nothing they ain’t seen and there ain’t nothin’ that fazes ‘em. Except if you ask BAT to borrow her shiny red convertible. Then she’ll give you a withering look that will make you want to curl up in the fetal position and suck your thumb all the while thinking of lollipops and rainbows until the storm blows over.

We are getting to my favourite part of the show – the moment IAM (or BAT or DAA for that matter) reveals her true identity, which is always far enough into the episode to have established a story, but long enough before the end of the episode for the person to turn their life around. (It is a shame fonts don’t come with built in accents eg. FullyEarnestica Heavy Northern Irish. But just imagine this one does and activate it now.)

Monica: “I’m an angel Johnny, and God has sent me to tell you that he loves you, and that he’ll always love you, and that he always has loved you. You’ve just forgotten his love and resorted to a life of crime instead of studying to be a doctor like you always wanted to.”

Johnny: “Yeah, right, you’re an angel. And I haven’t shot up heroin for 48 hours.”

Monica: “I’m here to tell you that it’s not too late to change. Put your faith in God and he will repay that faith by curing your drug addiction in the next five minutes.”

Johnny: “Okay, no worries. Nice angelic glow you’ve got going on there too. Very realistic. Okay I’ve found god and I’m cured.”

After the realisation that Monica is in fact an angel (helped along by magnificent lighting above her head) and not a mental case with multiple personality disorder, these people ultimately get their lives back on track (unless DAA is hanging around) and a few white doves fly off into the sunset happy to have diverted another soul to the keeping of the lord.

It never fails to astound me the ease with which these social deviants accept the fact that they are special enough to have received their own angel. That they have been SINGLED OUT BY GOD and are worthy of the presence of all that is good and pure in the world. But hey, maybe it’s just all the crack they’ve been smoking. All along it turns out the Angel Brigade was the figment of a druggie’s imagination the night everyone got just a bit too fucked up. That’s plausible, isn’t it?   

Monica: “I’m an angel, Belinda, and God has sent me here to tell you to stop using bandwidth for such pointless slander. He knows you have wronged and loves you anyway, you just need to put your trust in him and turn off your broadband connection.”

Me: “I’d think I’d rather Andrew be my angel, thanks.”

*There must be a lot of white doves on unemployment benefits since this program stopped filming.

**This last one may or may not have ever been the basis for an episode of Christian Hour, but if anyone needed to find God and get back on the straight and narrow, it be a SO.