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Monica
Played By: Roma Downey
- Affectionate Nickname: She has regularly been called "Angel-Girl" and "Miss Wings" by Tess, although they're not always used affectionately.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Monica is generally so sweet that on the occasions she gets mad, or utilizes her angelic powers in a forceful way, it's pretty jarring.
- Cassandra Truth: She was once institutionalized when she claimed to be an angel, though this was part of her assignment to save another angel who'd suffered a Heroic BSoD.
- Character Development: It's subtle, but it's present. During her first couple of cases, Monica had an issue with pride and overestimating her abilities, and treating some of the people in her cases as just that, cases and may not always see things through their perspective. Tess even has her de-powered a couple of times just to have her see things from the case's perspective(s). She gradually start to improve some of those skills and become more sensitive to others.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: Monica cannot sing (though in real life, Roma Downey has put out a CD of her own or two). One episode centered on how much it hurt Monica not to be able to sing the way she wanted to, to the point that it jeopardized her helping an assignment, a young adolescent vocalist played by Charlotte Church.
- Friend to All Children: She loves kids.
- Friend to All Living Things: She enjoys animals, everything from cows to caterpillars, and can also speak with them fluently.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: A recurring theme is Monica often unable to understand why some human beings can be so horrible with Tess saying some folks are just not lucky enough to be born with a good soul.
- The Hero: Monica's duties as a caseworker are always geared toward saving people from pain and danger. She doesn't always get the best outcome, since human life can be unfair, fragile, or tragic.
- Heroic BSoD: When she witnesses a terrorist attack killing dozens, it sends her into a doward spiral Satan showing up to try and convince her to give fully up on Him and fall from Grace didn't help.
- Lethal Chef: Though not so much because she can't cook as because she makes weird food combinations. The most egregious example probably comes from Season 3's "Have You Seen Me," where she worked as a diner waitress. She presented Tess and Andrew with a "reward for a job well done"—a sundae made with cherry cola, mocha latte, and...French fries. As Tess put it, "A reward or a punishment?"
- Must Have Caffeine: Monica deeply loves coffee, even moreso than nearly any other mortal beverage. She even got in addiction to it in one episode.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: She often goes barefoot, including in the opening credits. Being an angel, she's immune to any physical harm. She also says that she doesn't like to wear shoes unless it's absolutely necessary, and Tess has to command her to put shoes on her feet as she boards a bus in the first episode, and a pair magically appears on them.
- Trademark Favorite Food: She not only loves coffee, but anything with coffee as an ingredient. Over the years, she has tried to bake it in biscuits and sell an assignment on a recipe for mocha pizza. At the party to celebrate her hundredth assignment, the following were served
- Turn the Other Cheek: When she realizes Kathleen sabotaged her review by delaying her, Monica asks God to forgive Kathleen and asks nothing of herself. This shows her superiors she is worthy of her current duties and even earns her a promotion.
- Walking the Earth: She travels from place to place on her various assignments.
- Well Done My Child Angel: Monica alludes to this in Season 3's "Clipped Wings," saying that she's been so afraid of letting God down, she forgot about His mercy. In the same episode, she is so scared of being thrown out of God's kingdom that she begs the Angel of Angels to let her stay, even if she has to scrape gum from theater seats.
- In the finale, she turns down a chance to be a supervisor in order to be Zack's guardian angel while he's in prison. Zack turns out to have been GOD in disguise and is so impressed that she was willing to pass up the opportunity for promotion to protect a supposed nobody that she earns the promotion after all.
Tess
Played By: Della Reese
- Armor-Piercing Question: Tess is prone to these, but the season three episode The Sky Is Falling
takes the cake when she delivers a whopping three. First she gives to a group of people who are believing in Martians. Then later she gives a second one to Monica and finally she gives one to Dottie (an angel) who has come to help her (Tess) improve her manners. - Deadpan Snarker: She has a very dry yet very witty sense of humor.
- Good Is Not Nice: She is a lot more no-nonsense than Monica.
- Heroic BSoD: As strong as Tess can be, she’s had her moments. The biggest one came in “Black Like Monica” when she was so devastated at finding another Black man murdered in another brutal hate crime that she gave up on her assignment and went back to Heaven.
- Magical Negro: She’s the oldest of the group but is the wisest and experienced.
- Mama Bear: Tess can behave this way to anybody who tries to hurt Monica (see "Clipped Wings" for a particularly good example). She's like this with Andrew too, but much more so with Monica. Monica herself can be this way to people or demons who try to hurt assignments, especially children.
- Sassy Black Woman: Sassy is really an understatement.
Andrew
Played By: John Dye
- Beware the Nice Ones: When facing down a gang of skin heads threatening a Rabbi he caught a knife blade first with his bare hands and looked like was about to unleash heaven's wrath upon them. A reminder that even Lighter and Softer angels can be terrifying if you're threatening innocent lives in their presence.
- Also in another episode when dealing rescuing a 13 year old girl from a child predator, he caught a bat that the sick bastard tried to use to hit him with. He didn’t beat him with the bat even though he looked like he really wanted to but he used it to smash his computer which the creep had been using to prey on young girls with and to top it off? Andrew forced him to literally sit down and wait for the cops to come and arrest him.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: He might be the Angel of Death, but he's passionate about people understanding that death, if you have made your peace with God, is not meant to be scary. Even for those who have not done this, he's more serious and pitying toward them than vengeful. He somewhat reluctantly explains this to Gloria: "Their final journey...is not so good."
- Grim Reaper: He's the Angel of Death, and hates being stereotyped as this.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: He mentions that while working on some very tough assignments on the streets and dealing with unsavory characters that “even an angel has to get dirty” and in certain cases he has shown he’s not afraid to get dirty.
- The One Guy: He's the only member of the main cast to be male as Monica, Tess and Gloria are all female.
Gloria
Played By: Valerie Bertinelli
- Brainy Brunette: Computer-like brain at that.
- Cousin Oliver: She's introduced late into the show's run and is a lot younger than the rest of the main cast.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Inverted. Monica's first order of business is procuring Gloria some glasses because her vision is blurry.
- Naïve Newcomer: She was created very recently late in Season 7 and so she doesn't have a lot of experience with how the world around her works, leading Monica and Tess to have to show her the works.
- The Smart Girl: Absolutely. Her brain is almost literally a computer, due to the fact that God wanted to create an angel for the twenty-first century. In the Season 8 episode "Chutzpah," Sam Silverstein even gives her the nickname "Smart Girl."
- Straw Vulcan: Gloria several times came close to being this, especially in her first full episode, as she's brand new and it's explained that her brain works like a computer. (She's the first angel created in the 21st century, and God apparently wanted to try something new.) Her flat, unemotional response to a tragedy, combined with the tragedy itself, gives Monica a Heroic BSoD, and thereafter occasionally infuriates Tess too, but that's actually part of the point... she's there to make them reexamine why they react to certain things the way they do.
- Well Done My Child Angel: She hates the thought of letting God down.
