As we discovered last week, this show is now engaged in a blatant effort to out-reference me. Me, can you believe it? Props to all the folks in the forums who identified the shameless lifts, er, tributes. We'll show 'em who's boss.
We open with a shot of a black and white photo of a decaying building. "The Hyperion Hotel," Wesley tells Angel. "It appears to be abandoned." He's a natural at this detective stuff. Built in the twenties, heart of Hollywood, blah blah blah expositioncakes. Cordelia enters from the kitchen and hands out coffee, tea, and blood. This is known as the "Wilma Deering Effect," when a female sidekick goes from team player to stewardess in a show's second season. Cordy is also wearing a shirt that looks like something Goldie Hawn might have worn on Laugh-In. Given Wesley's penchant for darts, I don't know that I'd wear a shirt with big bullseyes on it, but that's me. Angel hesitantly wonders if the blood in his glass has "gone bad -- it's starting to coagulate." Cordy explains that she put cinnamon in it. She seems remarkably calm considering that Angel's hedgehog-do could put out one of her eyes if he moved his head suddenly. Angel tells the MoG to find out who owns the hotel and why the owner is letting it fall to pieces. Wesley asks who the client is, and as he heads out, Angel explains that there isn't one. Into the bright sunlight we see streaming into the apartment through every window. Thought we'd forgotten that over the summer, didn't you, writers? Sorry.
Cut to the photograph, and we begin to zoom in past the chain-link fence in the foreground. I can't help intoning, "Legendary was Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome..." Then again, maybe a This Property is Condemned reference would be more appropriate. Natalie Wood was in that, y'know. But we'll get to her soon enough. As we move closer, the color returns, and we've traveled back to the fabulous '50's. You can tell, because they rented a couple of classic cars to drive along the road. A slow montage (an anti-blipvert, if you will) of bellhops and hotel guests in the lobby ensues. At the front desk, the manager talks to the bellhop as he tosses envelopes on the counter: "Returned mail from 315. Mr. Ferris really must stop writing to his mother postage-due." He hands over a flask and says, "Mrs. Miggins's breakfast from Val's Liquors. Make sure she makes this one last -- they've cut off her credit. And the weekly bill for 217." The bellhop is unhappy about delivering the bill, because the guest in that room scares him. I'm gonna nickname him Chet. Chet chews his gum and whines, but the manager insists that the bill must be delivered.
Up on the second floor, Chet approaches room 217 with the bill on a silver tray. He's wearing a red uniform with gold buttons and the traditional stupid hat. I'm still trying to figure out if this is a cheap dive, or a four-star hotel. The quality of the guests and the small staff say one thing, but the uniform and tray say another. Anyway, Chet's nervous. He knocks. He's nervous. He leaves the bill on the floor. He leaves. Nervously. Got it. The door opens and Angel picks up the bill. What a shocker. His hair's been combed down, and he's got the same meticulous part he had when he was part of the Scourge Youth, but it's still an improvement over his current look. Credits.
The Hyperion, present day. Angel putters around among the remains. The HUAC hearings fade up on the audio as we drift into the past, and we hear: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Ladies and gentleman, we have a title! Not an especially coherent one, but a title nonetheless. Upon hearing that this sad story has become nothing more than a cheap way of establishing setting in five seconds or less, Elia Kazan cuddles his stupid Thalberg award and tries to believe that someday everybody will just forget it ever happened. While the manager tells a black family that they have no vacancies, Angel heads for the elevator, secure in the knowledge that yes, yes, we understand it's the 1950s, enough! Let us take this opportunity to discuss some of the other hotel residents and staff, speculate about their literary antecedents, and -- most importantly -- establish how I'm going to refer to them, because most of them don't have names. That's right, it's time for Count the Clichés! Here goes.
- The Blonde: She wears green. She's probably an actress, given who she hangs out with. Call her Lydia.
- The Writer: Someone doing an impression of Jake Johannsen as John Peter Toohey. He's cynical and chain-smokes, which is how we can immediately tell he's a writer. We'll call him Foreman, since he's watching the hearings with great interest.
- The Fat Guy: There's always a fat guy wearing a T-shirt and a Trilby hat. That's one of the noir rules. We'll call this one Walsh.
- We've covered Chet the bellhop, and the manager, who doesn't really need a name.
- Later we'll meet another hotel resident who lives down the hall from Angel. He's an actor, and friends with Lydia and Foreman. He's tall, dark, and bland, so we'll call him David Bor-- oh, sorry, that name's taken. Well, he's also got a not-very-well-kept secret, so why don't we call him, oh, Roomy.
When Angel steps out of the elevator, an Ed Harris impersonator is lurking in the hallway in an extremely unsubtle fashion. Down the hall, a door opens, and we see Kevin Roomy exchange tender goodbyes with a blonde kid. Not that tender; it is the WB, after all. After dropping off a bottle of blood in his room, Angel heads down the hall with an ice bucket. Willy is talking with someone who is hidden around the corner. Or is anyone there at all? Gee, it's spooky. Willy is nodding and repeating, "Yes, I understand, of course," while we hear indistinct whispering sounds. They're spoooky, too. So spooky that it merits three "o"s.
Angel gets ice, Willy vanishes, and the lurker from before starts knocking on doors. Angel goes back to his room. And, after a moment, realizes that he has company. A girl in a flowery white dress steps out of the bathroom and insists, "I'll be out of here in just two shakes, sir," and tries to tidy up the already-made bed. Angel deduces that she is not the chambermaid, since "there's no cleaning trolley outside, those sheets are dirty, and [she's] the wrong color." The girl insists that she's not a thief. Angel starts to pull her toward the door while she stammers out something about how her boyfriend is the jealous type. I can't believe that this whole Angel "event" is just another story about a stalking victim. There's a sound at the door. Angel pushes the girl out of the way and opens the door to find Ed Harris in the process of picking the lock. Wasn't the door open? Isn't that how the girl got in? Mild threats are exchanged. Harris not-at-all-subtly reveals that he has a gun. Angel opens the door further, and when Harris starts to enter, slams it into his nose. They tussle, and Angel eventually grabs Harris by one hand and an ear and escorts him to the elevator. As he returns to his room, the girl steps out into the hall and says, "Gosh." Several times. She elaborates, "I know we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Judy --" Angel slams the door in her face. My mom's name is Judy. Shout out? Okay, okay, I've run that joke into the ground. Sorry. Cut to modern-day Angel, staring wistfully at the door to 217. The wallpaper is peeling, but it's the same pattern as in the flashback.
Wesley says that the hotel officially closed on December 16, 1979: "On that morning, the concierge, Roland Meeks, made his morning wake-up calls with a twelve-gauge shotgun, room to room." Maybe he was driven mad by the fact that no one changed the wallpaper or the carpeting for thirty years? Besides, most hotels can't even remember to use the phone for wake-up calls these days, so let's respect the man's work ethic. Cordy turns to her laptop. Which has a pink post-it placed neatly over the Macintosh logo. We still know it's a Mac, but I respect the fact that they're trying to avoid gratuitous product-placement. She says that the hotel has been declared a historical landmark, and that the property management company that owns the building has been trying unsuccessfully to sell it for ten years. Wesley says that the hotel has "a storied legacy of murder and mayhem dating back to the hotel's construction in '28, when a roofer leapt to his death, taking two co-workers with him." How does one drag two other people along on a suicide jump? Or did he land on them? Cordy wonders why they're researching this particular topic. Wesley hems and haws, and admits he doesn't know. He suggests that they could use their research materials to "make a collage -- or a mobile!" Heh, but it'd have been funnier if he's said, "We could make a hat, or a boat, or a pterodactyl! Caw! Caw!" Cordy sorts through more amazingly high-quality black and white photos that she got -- where, exactly? Did I mention that they're action shots, not posed? And not yellowed with age, or grainy, or blurry? Even details in the background are remarkably clear. Thanks to those anachronistic details, she is able to spot Angel's mopey self in one shot. Except he isn't in the background of the photo she's looking at. When we go to full blow-up mode, he's in the background of a different shot. I'm sure, because the two people in the foreground of it weren't in the photo she was looking at. At least, not in the same pose. Anyway, Wesley says, "Now we know one thing for certain!" Cordy agrees: "Yup! It's not that vampires don't photograph -- it's just that they don't photograph well!" Word. They wonder why Angel didn't mention that he had "a personal connection" to the hotel. Wesley guesses that Angel was ashamed to do so. Cordy appears to be puzzled by this mysterious "shame" concept. I'm sure if she were more familiar with the idea, she wouldn't dress that way.
Speaking of shame, cut to Angel in a wife-beater, lighting a cigarette. I half-expect him to pick up a saxophone and go all beatnik on us (tell me that wouldn't be funny) but instead we hear the melodic stirrings of...a polka record from door. The chorus to which goes "Whoop-de-do." Willy is listening to this jaunty little number. And to the spooooky whispering. "I'll show you the life of the mind!" is one of the many things he completely fails to say. Instead, he takes off his hat and picks up a revolver. Back door, Angel pours himself a glass of chilled blood. Willy sits on the floor and puts a pillow by his face. Angel sips. There is a muffled bang, and then a thud, and the record begins skipping. Whoop-de-dead.
During the commercial break, Johanna calls to tell me, "I would shoot myself if a ghost made me listen to polkas." Then a promo for the premiere of Dawson's Creek reminds me that Angel's hair could be worse. Much, much worse.
Chet escorts the manager to Willy's room, explaining that the maid found the body. Upon entering the room and seeing the gory mess hidden conveniently behind the record player, the manager observes that "this is the third one in as many months." Chet remarks that suicidal guests usually tip better -- "like they know they're not going to take it with them anyway." But the manager is distracted by the spooooky whispering voices, and steps away while Chet has an inaudible monologue in the background. One of the voices says, "Three in three months. They'll shut you down!" The voices fade out as Chet asks whether he should call the police before or after he calls the carpet cleaners. The manager says they won't call anyone, and tells Chet to store the body in the meat locker. Even if they aren't gonna call the cops, I'm thinking he really should still call the carpet cleaners.
Down in the lobby, Foreman tells Lydia and Roomy that "the candle salesman in 215 shot himself." Lydia is shocked that management hasn't called the police. I'm not sure what's stopping her from calling them herself. Foreman is unfazed: "The guy punched his own ticket; why get outside parties involved?" Um, because he might have a family who'd be interested? He asks if Roomy would like the hotel to be full of cops and reporters. Roomy notes that there's nothing wrong with discretion. We pan over to Walsh, who is listening to the spooooky voices. They get spookier every time, so I have to keep adding "O"s, y'see. One voice says, "Maybe this wasn't a suicide. Are you sure you're safe here?" Walsh looks tense. Why doesn't Walsh leave if he's feels unsafe?
I beg for mercy when we cut to the planetarium made famous in Rebel Without A Cause. Judy strolls out to where Angel sits, moodily smoking. In a T-shirt and a red jacket. Like you know who. This is so very, very wrong. And what is he doing there? Is this Angel's hang-out? Why is this happening? Oh, for no reason at all except a cheap gag. Well, they got the "gag" part right. Judy starts a conversation with, "The world ends in ten minutes." She says that she happened to notice him and thought she'd say hi. Come to think of it, why is Judy there? Were planetariums really the happening singles scene in the '50's? Judy opines that seeing the show at the planetarium "makes whatever problems we have seem insignificant in comparison. I mean, the entire universe explodes." She goes on to explain that it's air-conditioned and cheaper than seeing a movie, and that she just had to get out of the hotel. Um, okay. Still doesn't explain why Angel's there. He asks whether her boyfriend came back. Judy says that she meant she had to get out after hearing about Willy's suicide. "Can you imagine that wallpaper being the last thing you see before you go?" she, I guess, jokes. But the crazy wallpaper is in the hallways, not the rooms; Willy's room had lovely blue walls. Angel suggests that maybe Willy killed himself because of the wallpaper. Judy thanks Angel for helping her. Angel finally turns to look at her, and says, "You're gonna miss the end of the world." There's an intermission at the planetarium show? Judy hesitantly turns and with a final, "I'll see you around," goes back inside.
Several photos of Chet struggling in police custody flash before us. Wesley holds a remarkably well-preserved press clipping with the headline "Bellhop Arrested for Murder" above the photo. Wesley says that Chet's name is actually Frank Gilnitz. It seems that the MoG are sorting through the many documented crimes which occurred at the Hyperion, and sorting them into folders by year. Cordy argues that Chet should go in 1954, when he was executed. Wesley disagrees: "The crime he committed -- the murder of the salesman and the storing of the body in the hotel meat locker -- that occurred in '52." Cordy says that this project is like a puzzle, which she designates "the who-died-horribly-'cause-Angel-screwed-up-fifty-years-ago game." New, from Parker Brothers! And at long last, a mega-blipvert makes up for lost time. So to speak. One of the shots is definitely of the crew preparing the set. There's also one of Willy with pillow and revolver, and if he fired it while in that position, he shot himself in the jaw. Which wouldn't have killed him quickly, if at all. Ick.
The Hyperion Round Table is gathered in the lobby, as usual. Walsh is insisting that Willy was very concerned about whether a particular bar served peanuts, which no suicidal person would ever do. Roomy says, "Maybe he was craving something salty." Foreman says that it wasn't a suicide. Lydia agrees that the fact that Willy was found in a locked room with a gun in his hand is "too perfect." Foreman says he's written one hundred locked-room mysteries. Behind them, Angel walks up the stairs. Why'd he take the elevator last time? It's one freakin' flight, for goodness' sake.
Angel is about to open his door when Judy calls him. He goes into her room, and as she prepares to light a cigarette she says that Willy was murdered. Angel disagrees. Judy insists that "there's going to be police, and questions, and I thought that you might want to know, in case, maybe..." She trails off, and then laughs, "I'm not implying that you've got something to hide." Angel says that everyone in the hotel has something to hide. He's so deep. Still struggling to light her cigarette, she says, "I guess if we left now it would look, um...I don't know, bad." Angel asks if her feelings "have anything to do with that P.I. I tossed out of here?" He hits "P.I." with such emphasis that I expect to hear the "dun-dun DUUUN" of dramatic revelation on the soundtrack. Then he offers her a light. Judy proceeds to explain that she used to work at a bank in Salinas, Kansas, and she thinks her employers are looking for her because they want the suitcase of money she stole from them. ["Psycho, much?" -- Wing Chun] Well, yeah, it's possible that they want it back. Judy insists that she hasn't spent any of it, and goes into her sob story: "I loved this job, and I loved this guy. We were gonna get married. And they found out about me at the bank, and so they fired me, and then Peter found out why and then he broke it off." After they fired her, she still had access to the bank vault? Maybe the 1950s were a more innocent time after all. Luckily, after robbing her employers, she made it straight to Los Angeles and didn't stop off at a little out-of-the way motel run by a guy named Norman where she repented of her deed. ["See?" -- Wing Chun] Besides, that movie didn't come out for another ten years or so. Judy asks if Angel is curious about why she was fired. Judy, you've volunteered everything else whether Angel asked or not, so why get shy now? Angel dutifully plays along. Judy says, "Because I'm not what I say I am." So she forced him to ask the question, and now she thinks she can avoid answering? Ugh. Judy finally explains that she's been passing for white since she was fifteen, but her mother is black. "My blood isn't pure," she says. "It's tainted." Angel looks bored. Not as bored as I am, but only because I've already seen Devil in a Blue Dress. Angel insists, "It's just blood," and Judy rants about how she isn't one thing or the other, doesn't belong, and Angel says he knows what that's like, and I almost miss the poignant subtlety of "Hero." Mid-rant, Judy looks distracted, and says "Yes, yes I am," and I guess she's talking to the suddenly inaudible spooky voices. You know, the ones we could hear every other time. So since we can't, maybe she's actually just crazy. That'd simplify things. Judy takes a seat and insists: "I am something. I'm a thief!" She says she got angry when the people at the bank called her names, and Angel says that "fear makes people do stupid things." Judy agrees that she was stupid, and Angel says he didn't mean her. Judy says she's trapped, Angel says she isn't. Judy wonders what will happen if the police find her bag of money. "They're not gonna find it," Angel says, picking it up, "'cause I'm gonna help you."
Cordelia wonders where they should file Judy. Wesley asks when she died, and Cordy says that Judy was on the run from the feds, checked into the hotel in 1952, and disappeared. They both the repeat "fifty-two?" in tones of awe. I never knew filing was so inspirational. Commercials.
Speaking of undead monsters, here's an ad for Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. He's the most productive corpse since L. Ron Hubbard. ["He's at least tied with V.C. Andrews." -- Wing Chun]
A cab and the same pair of vintage cars we saw earlier putter down the road. Angel escorts Judy to the basement while she tries to convince herself she can stay down there till the cops leave. Angel says that there aren't any cops. Anywhere? That's a bold philosophical position. Judy continues to ramble about how awful it would be to be in prison, "like being buried alive." Angel hides the bag of money in the ceiling, and finally hears the spoooooky whispering. He tells Judy to go to her room, and observes that "there's something in this hotel. Something that's making people crazy." Judy ignores him, and asks if Angel thinks that if she returned the money, they'd stop chasing her. "There is such a thing as forgiveness, right?" she wonders. Angel stares at her blankly, as if trying to remember his line.
Modern-day Angel notes that taggers have hit the ruined hotel's basement. He climbs up on a chair and pulls down the dust-covered bag of ill-gotten booty. Hee! I said "booty"! He opens it, pulls out wads o' cash, and hears, yes, spooooooky whispering.
"I can sense it," Wesley says. He declares that "some force" at the hotel was affecting the people there. Cordy wanders out and says, "A Thesulac. Paranoia demon. Whispers to its victims, feeds on their innate insecurities." Then she hands over the phone and says that Angel wants to talk to Wesley. Angel is fussing with the circuit breaker at the hotel while cradling the phone with his shoulder. He says that he hoped the MoG could figure out where the Thesulac demon went, but he now realizes that it never left the hotel. Angel tells Wesley to come to the hotel with Cordy, so they can raise the demon and then kill it.
A balding beatnik is sitting in a bookshop, looking at a television. "They keep calling her a zany redhead. Could be a brunette for all I can tell." Hey, I'm a zany redhead! Except for the zany part. I think. He looks up at Angel, who asks, "Are you Denver?" Denver, for it is he, replies, "No other cat but me. What can I do you for?" Angel wants information about demons, because the internet hasn't been invented yet. "Do you now, daddy?" Denver replies. I'm amazed they didn't give him bongos to play. Angel asks for information on exorcisms and demonic cleansings. Demonic cleansings would be the cleansing of demons, not the cleansing by demons, for which you have to call "Monstrous Maids." Denver suggests, "Try this one," and tosses a book at Angel. Angel catches a copy of the Bible, which sizzles his hands before he drops it and vamps out. Denver grabs the cross he has stashed on a bookshelf and shouts, "That's right! Run! Coward of the night! And tell your buddies, I am thinking very seriously of putting my bedroll down right here, so you bastards can't just walk in here uninvited!" As he finishes shouting to unimpressed passersby, Angel grabs Denver from behind and snarls, "You got a reputation, that's why I'm here. Now, it's been a long time since I opened a vein, but I'll do it [if] you pull any more of that Van Helsing, Jr. crap with me. Are we clear?"
Behind the front desk of The Hyperion, the manager is reading a copy of the Los Angeles Times with the headline, "Soviet Spy Ring Revealed At Hollywood Red Inquiry." Chet enters, and explains that Willy's body wouldn't fit in the meat locker until Chet made a few, ahem, modifications to the corpse. "No chance I'd get in trouble for that, is there?" Chet wonders. The manager tells Chet not to be paranoid. And is then felled by an anvil. Out in the lobby, Foreman is accusing Roomy of having some hand in Willy's murder. Roomy says he didn't know Willy, which leads Foreman to speculate, "Maybe he saw you with one of your little trysts? Maybe he threatened to tell the studio? Expose, perhaps, your little peccadilloes to the press?" Roomy fires back with what is, sadly, the best line in the episode: "Don't you dare use alliteration with me, you hack!" Tension rises. Judy is reading in her room when she hears the spooooooky voices whisper, "They know about you. They'll turn you in. You'll go to prison." She closes the window and sits down on the bed.
Denver and Angel sit in the bookstore's back room. Denver asks, "So you were, what, about my age, when you were made?" Angel asks how old Denver is. "Just north of thirty," is the reply. Bwah ha ha! "No!" says Angel, defensively. Sorry, I'm still laughing at that one. Right. So, Angel asks how to kill the Thesulac. Denver says that to kill it, they have to make it corporeal, which happens after it feeds: "Or, if you raise it, but that's tricky, and dangerous." He points Angel to a raising spell, adding, "You're gonna need an Orb of Ramjarin, but I've got one I can let you have for cheap [sic]." Angel suggests that "free" would be a better price. Denver agrees, and gathers the other tools Angel will need. He suggests that Angel might want a "lightning strike -- y'know, finger of heaven kind of thing" to kill the demon. In the place of lightning, he offers Angel a battle axe. Or adze. Whatever. Denver says, "A vampire wanting to slay a demon just to help some grubby humans? I just don't get it," as he packs up Angel's brown paper bag of exorcism goodies. Angel admits, "To be honest, I'm not sure I do either," as he grabs the bag and leaves. Me three. Blipvert.
Back at the Hy-paranoid Hotel, the manager mentions to a gathering crowd that Lydia once asked him where she could get a gun. Lydia insists it was for her own protection. "Protection, perhaps, from a salesman who was ready to turn you in for solicitation?" wonders Roomy. Chet shouts that Conseula, the maid, is the one who found Willy's body. Everyone begins arguing, until someone cuts them off with a shout. Ed Harris finally introduces himself as "C. Mulvihill." His nose is bandaged now ["reminding anyone of Chinatown?" -- Wing Chun], as he holds up a photo of Judy and says he's looking for her.
Still in the '50s, Angel steps into the suddenly-empty lobby with the goodies he got from Denver. The person, not the place. In the present, Wesley, Cordy, and, yay, Gunn, enter the lobby. "Let's do this," says modern Angel. Cordy sprinkles...something...on the stairs, while Wesley reads the summoning spell. Wesley pauses, snaps his fingers, and hisses to Gunn, "Orb of Ramjarin!" Gunn looks up with a well-justified expression of disdain, and says, "'Orb of Ramjarin, please,' makes it happen." Remember the Wilma Deering Effect I mentioned earlier? There's a similar phenomena called the "Hawk Effect," which describes the addition of a male sidekick who is more interesting than the star. Wesley says "please," and reminds Gunn to be careful with the orb. Gunn throws it overhand at Wesley, who barely manages to catch it. Angel tries to make everyone play nice, and says, "Whatever it's whispering to you, just ignore it." Cordy tells him, "They were like this all the way over here in the car." "Oh," says Angel. Wesley continues incanting, if that's a word. The stairwell goes all morphy as the orb glows in Wesley's hand.
In the '50s, Angel gets off the elevator to see that a mob has cornered Judy. Since they know she stole the money, they figure she killed Willy, too. Because they're all crazy and paranoid. Angel drops his exorcism kit and steps forward. Judy screams, "It wasn't me!" and spies Angel. She wrestles out of the mob and shrieks, "It was him! Look in his room! Go ahead, look! He's got blood, he's a monster!" Mulvihill picks up the discarded axe and wonders, "What kind of maniac are you?" Angel turns, and Mulvihill slugs him with the axe handle. Judy stands and watches while the mob kicks and beats Angel. One of the captions reads: "Out of my way, pretty boy!" Hee. Fade out.
When we return, the mob is dragging Angel toward the balcony overlooking the lobby. They rig up a noose while Chet shouts, "String him up!" As the noose is slipped over his head, Angel looks back at a tearful Judy. Angel is thrown over the balcony, and he doesn't fall very far, so if he was human he'd suffocate, but his neck wouldn't break. Luckily, this particular lynch mob isn't particularly well-schooled on the finer points of murder, so when he doesn't move for a few seconds, they're satisfied. Or disappointed. Or something. They all wander off quietly, and only the manger remains to wonder, "Oh my lord, what have we done?" Post-lynching depression is a terrible thing. Oh yeah, and Chet's on the staircase, still grooving on the rioter vibe. Finally he scampers off. Did you know that a movie called Death of an Angel came out in 1952? If not, you do now.
As soon as everyone's gone, Angel's eyes spring open and he pulls his head out of the noose and drops to the floor. It'll probably creep everyone out when they come back and find his body gone, but of course, we don't see that. Instead, we see the background morphing à la Sliders until finally a cloaked Texan masquerading as The Sandman's Destiny appears. "Well, I don't know about you," he says, "but I'm stuffed!" A large number of tentacles creep out from the bottom of his cloak while he explains that he feeds on fear and prejudice and hate and so on and so forth, and this idea is nothing like a thirty-year-old Star Trek episode called "Day of the Dove." Honest. ["Wasn't this also the premise of last year's Hallowe'en episode of Buffy, too?" -- Wing Chun] He oozes toward Angel and says, "See what happens when you stick your neck out for 'em? They throw a rope around it! And you thought you'd made a friend. Newsflash -- you had! That's what made her the yummiest morsel of all!" He goes on. And on. And on. Since it's a plot point, I'll mention that the demon says, "She's a meal that's gonna last me a lifetime!" He comes closer to Angel and tells him, "There's an entire hotel here just full of souls who could really use your help. Whaddya say?" For reasons which defy my understanding, we move to a shot which completely obscures Angel's expression as he replies, "Take 'em all." Now, that might have been kind of cool moment if it hadn't taken forty minutes to get to, and if we'd been able to see his face when he decided people weren't worth helping. But it wasn't. See how that works? Angel exits, the demon chuckles, we cut to the present.
The Thesulac is screaming, and Angel advises, "Watch his tentacles!" Cordy misunderstands, Wesley clarifies. Ho, ho, hum. The Thesulac says that the "take-out" Angel brought is full of paranoia, and, nodding at Wesley, adds, "Especially that one!" Wesley becomes paranoid at the thought that people think he's paranoid. It's not funny. It goes on for the rest of the episode, but I'm not mentioning it again. Moving on, I will say that if the flashbacks have taught me anything, it's that Angel in a leather jacket is infinitely preferable to Angel in a T-shirt. I'm actually noticing that he looks better in his modern wardrobe, which tells you something about how unpleasant the flashbacks were. Angel insists that the Thesulac should have left while he had a chance, and the demon says that the room service at the Hyperion is still excellent. At Angel's cue, Gunn raises a crossbow, but one of the tentacles snares him and throws him across the room. Angel hurtles himself across the floor, grabs a cable, and, sigh, quips, "Kitchen's closed," before plugging the cable into the circuit breaker. Snap, crackle, poof. The demon screams and disintegrates. Angel heads for the stairs.
Angel enters room 214 and finds an aged Judy sitting in a chair. "I don't hear them anymore," she whispers. Angel says that the voices are gone, and Judy smiles nicely when she recognizes him. "They killed you because of me. I killed you," she says, while Angel tries to contradict her. She continues, "He kept them from the door, he told me I'd be safe. Am I safe?" Angel says she is, and Judy asks if she can go outside. Angel starts to help Judy toward the door, but she begins muttering that she needs "a little rest" instead, so he aims her toward the bed. She apologizes, and asks for forgiveness. Angel tells her it's okay, and she repeats over and over again that she just needs to rest for a little while before going out, in case anyone missed the bit where she's dying.
Downstairs, Wesley is still doing his paranoid shtick when Angel returns. Cordy asks whether they're finished: "Because I, for one, will be glad to see the last of this place." "We're moving in," says Angel. "Throw pillows, what's not to love," Cordy chirps, not missing a beat. Wesley declares, "This is a house of evil!" "Not anymore," Angel replies. Except for the dead lady on the second floor. Or maybe she's not dead. Maybe Angel will occasionally sneak upstairs with cans of Ensure, refusing to explain why.
And now, some questions for review: Are we meant to think that the Red Scare and HUAC were all caused by Thesulac demons? If so, why'd they stop? How did the demon keep Judy alive while feeding off her guilt? Why couldn't Angel get Judy out of the room before killing the demon? Did the title really, when you come right down to it, make any sense?
week, Darla clambers all over Angel. In bed. And both of them are naked. Send help!