Angel S02 E02 – History is the worst.

Previously: Angel kills a good demon and it sets his brood back up to an acceptable level. We are now ready to continue into the new season.
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Are You Now or Have You Ever Been

Lorraine: Wesley is looking over a photograph of the Hyperion Hotel. He tag-teams with Angel to provide us with the relevant back-story. Essentially, it’s big, impressive and has been abandoned for a long time.

Cordelia comes in and serves Wesley tea, has a cup of coffee for herself and hands Angel a cup of blood Angel inspects it for a bit before telling Cordelia that it appears to be coagulating. She replies that it’s just a little cinnamon and she was experimenting. As one does.

Kirsti: He should consider himself lucky – she could have added crumbled up Weetbix to it like Spike does! 

Lor: You know, his is the second time she’s served him blood but he doesn’t drink it. Do we ever see him sipping some blood? Not that I want to, but it seems like something they are steering away from.

Anyways, Angel tasks them with finding out why the hotel is abandoned and with researching its history from start to finish. Wesley wants to know who the client is, but Angel just cryptically answers that there is no client.

Sweeney: There is a direct correlation between brood levels and both his cryptic and lurky behavior. This indicates that his brood is at about where it should be. If he goes and stands in the shadows near the hotel, then we know his soul is well intact.

Lor: We are getting really good at Angel.

We use the old photo to stylistically transition to a flashback of the Hyperion in the 1950’s. A bellhop is given a few tasks, including delivering a bill to room 217. The bellhop is none too pleased because apparently the tenant is dead in the eyes. But off he goes nonetheless. He chews his gum like a cow the entire scene and it makes me want to slap the back of his head.

The Bellhop Cow knocks on the door for 217 and waits for a second before being all, “guess nobody’s home!!” He drops the bill off in front of the door and skedaddles. Dead in the Eyes comes out of the room to collect the bill and we pan up his body to Jaws-esque music to reveals he’s none other than Angel.

K: DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN. Also, I’m with you on the gum chewing. Dude needs a headslap.

Sweeney: MAGIC. I’m excited about this amazing flashback that will require neither accents nor terrible wigs! I’m glad dead-behind-the-eyes-nothing-to-live-for Angel still recognizes the important things in life, like hair gel.

Lor: He’s rocking the deep part again, too. Magic indeed.

Roll credits. The scene of Angel Super Mario jumping onto a helicopter is in the credits now. Fantastic.

In the hotel lobby, people are gathered around a TV. The person on TV asks, “are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?” That’s the episode title, so I’m going to go ahead and award the gold star to McCarthyism.

A little more research reveals that the gold star should in fact belong to J. Parnall Thomas.

Sweeney: Too late. We already gave it to McCarthyism. Gold stars can’t just be taken away and reassigned!

Lor: We can’t be willy nilly about these gold star rules, either.

Angel walks into the lobby and we circle around to the hotel manager telling a black family that there is no vacancy at the hotel. The Flute of Feels is playing the background because racism is the worst.

K: Oh, history. You’re the worst.

Lor: Angel gets on the elevator and we follow him upstairs. When he reaches his room, he sees two men exit a room across the hall from him. They seem rather chummy and handsy until they notice that Angel is openingly staring. The Chummy Men shake hands and part ways as Angel lets himself into his hotel room.

In there, Angel unpacks his jar helpfully labeled “human blood,” and grabs his ice bucket. Back in the hall, he notices a few more strange things, including a man whispering to a person off screen and a man knocking on a door. Okay, these aren’t exactly strange things, but the Flute of Feels has morphed into some Haunted House music, so I’m thinking we’re supposed to be thinking that all of this is strange.

K: The Hyperion Hotel has it all – gay rendezvous, crazy people talking to the walls, and a resident vampire. That black family pretty much lucked out.

Sweeney: Wait, why isn’t this what the show is about?

Lor: At least we have hair gel, Sween!

Angel goes back to his room and after a beat, a woman exits his bathroom and says she’ll be done in just a second. Angel can tell right away that she isn’t a maid, because she doesn’t have a cleaning trolley, there are no dirty sheets, and also, she’s white. Angel doesn’t want to hear what she’s really doing in his room. He just wants her gone.

He starts to push her out when the when the woman announces that her boyfriend is the Christian Grey jealous type. At that moment, we hear someone fiddling with the lock. Angel pushes the woman aside and opens the door to find a man kneeling in front of it, trying to pick the lock.

This guy, who we’ll just call… Bristian Crey demands to know where she is. He warns that Angel doesn’t want to get involved in the matter and advises that he just send the girl out so that Bristian won’t have to go in there and get her. Bristian flashes his gun and asks to take a look around inside.

Angel opens the door a bit, but when Bristian takes a step in, he slams the door in his face. Not figuratively. He uses the door to knock Bristian in the face. He then twists Bristian’s arm and walks him all the way to the elevator before punning to the bellhop, “he’s going down.”

K: Apparently Angel was a champion punner as well as a champion brooder back in the day!

Sweeney: His reclusive brooding gave him a lot more time to work on his puns. His current workload seems to cut into his pun-crafting time.

Lor: The woman meanwhile is super impressed and apologies to Angel for getting off on the wrong foot. Her name is Judy and Angel could not care less. He slams the door in her face, but this time only figuratively.

We pull back from the closed door to find we are back in the present with Angel just staring at that door in the abandoned hotel. Wesley’s voice tells us that the hotel officially closed its doors at the end of 1969. We pan some more, this time across a black screen, into Cordelia’s apartment, where Wesley further informs us that the concierge went on a room to room shooting spree, hence the whole closing down thing.

Cordy says that the the property management company that now owns the hotel hasn’t been able to sell it. Wesley says that the hotel has a long history of murder and mayhem. While Cordy thinks that’s all very interesting, she brings up that they have no idea why they are looking into any of this, because despite working for an investigator, they still haven’t managed to put together what is happening.

Sweeney: I guess that’s why they’re the employees and not the employer.

Lor: It’s okay, you two. You have other winning qualities. Like conveniently picking up the exact photo you need! Which is what Cordelia does. She picks up a picture from who knows where that happens to have a very clear shot of Angel. Wesley says now they know something! Cordy thinks he means that now they know that vampires do photograph, just not well.

Sure. That picture from the “1950’s” was practically digital quality, but okay.

K: Oh, show. Why must you torment us like this?

Lor: Wesley was thinking more along the lines of now knowing that Angel has a personal connection to the hotel and guesses that perhaps he was ashamed to mention that.

Flashback Hotel: Angel lights a cigarette! Bad vampire! Bad! Through the thin hotel walls he hears some music playing. We pan through the wall into the neighboring room where a man is not only listening to music but to creepy whispers. We can’t tell what the whispers are saying, but we do know that that man soon kills himself with a gun.

Angel hears the gunshot and doesn’t flinch. He just sips on his blood, which very quickly answers my blood-drinking question from earlier. Though, this is still lost-boy-Angel, so there is that.

The Bellhop Cow and hotel manager go upstairs to the suicide room. Apparently, this is the third time this has happened in as many months. The Bellhop Cow is rambling on, but the manager starts to hear the Overlying Whispers. They whisper at him that with three suicides in three months, they will shut him down for sure. Bellhop Cow asks the manager if they should call the carpet cleaners or the cops first. The manager says they should call no one and just store the body in the meat locker, this way they won’t get shut down. That is definitely one way to pursue job security.

Down in the lobby we listen to a group of people chatter about the suicide. In the foreground, an older man sits in a chair wearing a silly looking hat. Suddenly, he’s hearing the Overlying Whispers. A voice my closed captioning says is demonic suggests to the Silly Hat Man that perhaps this wasn’t a suicide.

K: Thank God for that closed captioning, because the voice kind of sounds like a news anchor to me…

Sweeney: +1 to Kirsti’s news anchor guess. Hilarious that the closed captioning is so helpful, though!

Lor: And really, I’ll take any help I can get.

Angel is smoking outside of somewhere when Judy spots him and walks over. She makes small talk about the show she just watched and then says that she had to get out of the hotel after what happened. Angel assumes she means about her jealous boyfriend, but she is referring to the guy in room 215 who killed himself. Angel is pretty dry with her, even when she thanks him for helping her. So, she leaves him alone to keep smoking his brood.

A series of photographs show us the Bellhop Cow being arrested. Cordy says he was executed in 1954, but Wesley files him in ’52, because that was the year of his crime: killing a salesman and storing him in a meat locker. So, kids, if your boss every wants you to store a body in a meat locker for him, just say no!

K: Pretty much if you boss wants you to ever do ANYTHING with a body and you’re not a police officer or a coroner, you should really say no. #lifelessonsfromtheSnarkSquad

Lor: Cordelia says that all this is like playing the “who died horribly because Angel screwed up 50 years ago” game. Don’t try this one at a party.

Flashback Hotel: Silly Hat Man is telling his murder-not-suicide theory to more people. Angel is walking up to his room when Judy pops her head out of her neighboring room and calls him in there. She tells him that the suicide was actually a murder and gives him a heads up that police will probably be there soon. In case he has anything to hide.

Angel turns this around on her and says that he knows that Bristian Crey wasn’t actually her boyfriend, but a private investigator. Oh. WHOOPS! I’d feel worse about calling him Bristian, but I mean, Christian Grey does some personal private investigating, right? Right.

Judy says that he was probably hired by her former employers, City Trust Bank. And he was probably looking for the big ass bag of money she took from them.

K: So it’s basically the plot of Psycho.

Lor: She swears she hasn’t spent any of the money, and that she just took it in an angry panic when they fired her for being mixed. She says she’s been “passing” since she was 15, though her mother was “colored.” Judy says she isn’t one thing or the other, and Angel says he can relate. See, it’s kind of like he has mixed heritage because he’s got that human/demon/soul conundrum.

Judy says she’d never stolen anything in her life but that people were saying really mean things. Angel says fear makes people do stupid things. Judy is all, “yeah. I shouldn’t have robbed a bank!” and Angel’s all, “NOT THAT. Racism.”

All of this has inspired Angel to help Judy hide the money she stole in case the cops come by to investigate.

Present day: Cordelia holds up an article about Judy and asks where they should file her. She checked into the Hyperion in ’52 and was never heard from after that. Cordelia, honey, then clearly you put her in 1952.

K: Maths is hard, yo. 

Lor: Flashback hotel: Angel is leading Judy downstairs somewhere. Judy rambles about how being in jail would be like being buried alive. Angel is hiding the big ass bag of money on the overhead pipes in the basement when the Overlying Whispers start up again. Angel hears them this time as Judy wonders if maybe she can just return all the money to the bank and hope for forgiveness. GOOD PLAN, GIRL.

Present Day: Angel is still wandering around the hotel. He finds the big ass bag of money is still exactly where he hid it and still full of lots of money.

K: Who needs paying clients when you’ve got hotels full of secret bags of money?! 

Lor: Not I! said Angel Investigations.

Wesley is trying to talk through the things that happened at the hotel, and says he knows there was an evil force at work. Cordy walks in and suggests perhaps it was a paranoia demon. Wesley is shocked she came up with such a good answer, but then she pulls a phone from behind her back and says Angel is on the line for Wes. She gives the cutest smile too, like she’s so pleased with herself for that little trick.

Sweeney: I’m pleased with her too. Good job, Cordelia.

Lor: Angel tells Wesley that the Thesulac demon claimed the Hyperion before they began building, which begs the question of what exactly it claimed if it hadn’t been built. Angel wants Wes, Cordy and Gunn on hand so they can raise the demon and kill it. He’s got the ritual ready and everything. Also, he’s even manged to fix the electrical problem in the building and I guess someone has been paying the light bill this whole time, because he manages to wire the lights back on.

Flashback Hotel: Angel walks into a book store and asks the attendant (named Denver) for any books he has on exorcisms and cleansing rituals and the like. Denver stands and tosses a book to Angel, but it’s a Holy Bible caked in dry ice. JUST KIDDING. The Bible just causes his hand to start smoking, which is another little tidbit of vampire lore we get from this episode.

K: I wonder what would happen if you gave him an e-reader with holy texts loaded on it?

Lor: If you ask certain people, they might tell you the e-reader alone is reason enough to burn.

Denver pulls out a cross but when he looks back, Angel is nowhere to be seen, so he runs out of the store and yells for Angel to stay out! But of course, Lurky McLurkerson is behind him. Angel puts him in a headlock and tells him to get him the freakin’ books and quit with the Van Helsing Jr. crap.

K: Also, I couldn’t stop staring at Angel’s vamped out forehead wrinkles. They look incredibly fake and awful. See?

Lor: At the hotel, Bellhop Cow tells the Job Security Manager that he had to make the man fit in the meat locker and then wonders if there is any way that could possibly get him into trouble. Behind them, the lobby people are still arguing about the “murder.” They’ve moved onto blaming one another for it.

Sweeney: If you believe someone is a murderer, is it really wise to say as much to their face without any evidence or backup? Like, if I think you’re a murderer, I’m going to run away and hide.

Lor: Good plan!

In Judy’s room, the Overlaying Whispers start up, until the Demonic Voice starts telling her that people know about her and will turn her in.

At the bookstore, Denver guesses that Angel was just about his age when he was turned. Angel asks what age that is and the answer is, “just north of 30.” I snort laughed even before Angel’s annoyed, “NO!”

K: It was pretty great.

Lor: Angel changes the subject to the Thesulac demon and how to raise it. Denver gives him what he needs and marvels at a vampire slaying a demon to help humans. Angel’s all, “shit’s crazy man.” and leaves.

We seizure cut back to the hotel where everyone is arguing about the “murder” and blaming each other. Just then, Bristian Grey, PI walks in and says he’s looking for Judy. He holds up a picture for everyone to see.

Angel comes back to the hotel and finds the lobby completely empty.

We see that Cordy, Wesley and Gunn walk into the lobby which transitions us back to present day. Angel is waiting and greets them with a, “let’s do this.”

Cordelia shakes out some sacred herbs as Wesley does the incantation. Wesley asks Gunn for the Magic Orb and Gunn is all, “SAY PLEASE.” And then Gunn tosses the orb to Wesley just to mess with him. Angel tells them to ignore the demonic whispering that is making them act so crazy! Cordelia whispers to him that they were acting this way the entire ride in the car.

K: Can we talk again about how glad I am that Gunn’s here??

Lor: This was pretty cute.

Wesley finishes the incantation and some bad squiggly effects inform us that something is happening.

Flashback Hotel: Angel is walking off of the elevator and sees that everyone has gathered outside of Judy’s room. They are holding her and accusing her of all manner of things. Judy spots Angel and breaks free from the mob to walk toward him. She yells that it was Angel who did it! He has blood in his room and everything. Bristian Crey, PI hits Angel and sends him down. The mob crowds around him.

The mob pushes Angel to the balcony of the hotel, and have a impromptu gallows all set up and ready to go. Angel throws a few long looks over at Judy who doesn’t do anything but cry. The mob puts the noose around Angel’s neck and pushes him off the balcony. He hangs and the rowdy mob goes instantly silent. Except of course the Bellhop Cow, who is awful and evil, mostly because he is still smacking that gum.

Sweeney: YOU POP THAT GUM ONE MORE TIME…

Lor: A+.

The crowd disperses all except for the Job Security Manager who takes a moment to wonder what they’ve done. Once he and the Bellhop Cow leave, Angel opens his eyes and frees himself from the noose.

K: It reminds me of Sherlock Holmes.

Lor: Behind him, the bad squiggly effects open a little doorway for the corporeal form of the Thesulac and his very intense slithering sound effect.

The Thesulac speeches that he just loves feeding off of people and their fear and prejudice, converting it into certainty and hate. The Thesulac goads Angel by saying this is what happens when he risks his neck for people– they put a rope around it. The Thesulac says that there is a hotel full of people who could use his help, insinuating that more bad stuff is going to happen. After thinking about it for a moment, Angel tells the demon to take them all and walks out. The Thesulac laughs and that laughter segues us back into the present.

K: Also, the Thesulac is apparently from the South… And he kind of reminds me of John Malkovich’s character from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Lor: The Thesulac asks why he’s been brought up again and makes a quip about Wesley being especially paranoid. Angel asks why the demon was still hanging around if the hotel has been abandoned all this time. The Thesulac answers that he’s still feeding and that paranoia is like fine wine. All that said, though, Angel manages to take him down by grabbing one of his tentacles and jamming it into an electrical box. The Thesulac is electrically slayed.

Sweeney: It’s a good thing Angel contrivance-magicked the power back on! Thanks Powers That Be Contriving.

Lor: Angel goes back upstairs to room 214. Inside he finds an elderly Judy just sitting in a chair. Angel calls to her and she says she doesn’t hear them anymore. She sees that it’s Angel and smiles at him, marveling at how he looks the same. She remembers that they killed him, because of her, but Angel assures her that isn’t the case. She asks if it’s safe to go out now, and he tells her it is. First, though, she wants to take a little rest. Angel helps her to her bed. Judy apologizes for killing him and asks for forgiveness. Angel grants it and Judy closes her eyes and rests for a little longer than just a minute.

K: Womp womp. Nice rescue, Angel.

Lor: Downstairs, the gang ask Angel if they are all done. Cordelia says the places gives her the heebie-jeebies. Angel replies with, “we’re moving in,” and so she amends to, “I mean, a few throw pillows. What’s not to love?” Wesley calls the place a house of evil, but look, if Cordelia can live with a ghost for a little rent control, surely they can put up with some bad juju to gain an entire hotel as an office, am I right?

Angel thinks so.

K: Especially now that they’ve got that big bag of guilt free money to buy the hotel with!

Sweeney: That was some pretty A+ contrivance money. Thanks, show. I liked that this was both backstory and part of the larger one-soul-at-a-time thing we kicked off in the previous episode. I’m also a fan of Wesley’s end-of-episode freak out about being paranoid. It’s precious. 

Lor: I enjoyed it overall as well. It wasn’t perfect but I liked seeing this piece of Angel before becoming the Angel we know now. Sure, he had a soul, but this show is a big fan of reminding us that having a soul doesn’t mean doing good things. Angel walked away from all those people in need, soul or not. I liked the full circle thing.

Mostly, though, check out the new digs.

Next time on Angel: Darla starts showing in up in Angel’s sexy times dreams in S02 E03 – First Impressions.