Wolfram & Cast
This is not your grandsire’s podcast! In Wolfram and Cast, long time Angel fan Steven Youngkin host an Angel Podcast geared toward Buffy and Angel fans who have seen the entirety of both shows and want a more in depth discussion than a simple recap and review. Each episode of Wolfram and Cast will focus on one episode of Angel, but we will touch on greater themes and character arcs from the entire series, so a spoiler warning is in effect.
Wolfram & Cast
S2E2 ("Are You Now or Have You Ever Been") -- The Hyperion Chronicles: A Voyage into Angel's Dark Redemption Path
Ever found yourself captivated by the haunting allure of the supernatural, or pondered the weight of redemption and regret? This week on Wolfram and Cast, we navigate the eerie corridors of ngel's" past in the Hyperion Hotel, taking a magnifying glass to the depths of Angel's soul. Unearthing the layers of his backstory, we piece together how a demon of fear and a 1950s setting forge a crucible for our brooding hero's evolution, with David Boreanaz's performance carving a nuanced portrayal of a vampire caught between darkness and light.
As we inspect the tapestry of Angel's haunted history, we laugh and sigh with the main cast, who inject both humor and heartache against the backdrop of paranoia and a demon that feeds on fear. Our conversation twists and turns through the episode's powerful themes, discussing how Angel's search for forgiveness mirrors our own battles with inner demons, and culminates in the impactful decision to claim the Hyperion as the new base of operations for Angel Investigations.
Wrapping up our analysis, we shine a spotlight on the broader implications of Angel's choices and the demon's clever defeat. The Hyperion's dark past is now illuminated by Angel's journey towards redemption, and we leave no stone unturned as we explore how the episode's themes resonate with us on a human level. So, settle in for a thought-provoking session that promises to be as insightful as it is entertaining, complete with behind-the-scenes trivia and the lasting legacy of one of television's most compelling antiheroes.
Hello, welcome to Wolfram and Gaps an angel retrospective. I am longtime fan Steve Nyuggin and I'm sitting here getting the heebie-jeebies though I have heard that there's a cure for that. In this podcast I'll be doing a deep dive discussion on the Buffy Spinoff show, angel, one episode at a time, with spoilers for both series. I have chosen to focus on Angel because, as a fan of the show, I feel that even 20 plus years after the show premiered, it still has themes and ideas that are worth discussing. Thus, for each episode, I will go over what works, does it work, and all of the ideas and themes the show puts forth. In this week's episode, I will discuss the second episode of second season Are you Now or have you Ever Been, which was directed by David Semmel. This was David's second angel episode after season 1's expecting On Buffy. He directed four episodes, which included Never Kill Boy on the First State, what's my Line, part 2, go Fish and Loverslog. He directed episodes for numerous other series, including Party of Five, malibu Shores with three buffed, charisma Carpenter, beverly Hills, 90210, house Heroes, american Horror Story, hannibal, the Watchmen and Joss Whedon's the Others. He was nominated for Emmys for House and Heroes. David is currently working on Blank, which is a TV series about a medical drama about a selfish but successful surgeon who suffers a traumatic brain injury and retains his surgical skills but can't remember anything else, including all the pain he's caused his family and colleagues. The episode was written by executive producer Tim Maneer. Tim was with the show for his first four seasons and wrote 18 episodes, including Sense and Sensitivity, hero, some Nambulous Sanctuary, reunion Through the Looking Glass, billy and Hold. He also wrote the train job for Firefly and the season 1 finale Omega for Dollhouse. According to his IMDB entry. When he was a child, tim Maneer's parents chastised him for doing his homework while watching television. Little did they know he was planning a career a truckie long before there was next generation.
Speaker 2:Tim grew up in Whittier, california, and began making super 8 movies in his backyard at the age of 9. He studied film at Cal State University at Long Beach and began his professional career in film as a production assistant, then assistant director, in such films as Reanimator, the Men's Club, dude and Platoon. After penning several spec feature scripts, tim worked for a time as a script doctor, rewriting on low budget feature films. His television credits include the New Adventures of Zorro, Robin's Hoods for Aaron's Belling and Two for Stephen Cannell. He spent two years on Hightide, a super detective comedy drama, and he excused the show what to Girls in Bikini's Hour syndicated show. While working on Hightide, tim got to live for a year in New Zealand. He was nominated for four producing Emmys for Feud and American Horror Story.
Speaker 2:The episode originally aired on October 3, 2000 and the IMDB description of the episode is In the 1950s, angel aids, a woman hiding from her past in a hotel with a long history of death in Mayhem. In the present, angel hunts, a demon In the oral history book Slayers and Vampires, tim and your comment quote In season two we also really wanted to delve into Angel's mythology. It was a bit of a trick to create the mythology for the show and what I would always do is go back to Buffy episodes where there had been a little bit of his backstory, and always trying to do the math so that it would make sense. You may not have suspected that he lived in a hotel in the 1950s in Los Angeles because the first time you saw him on Buffy he was in the 90s when he showed up at the high school with Whistler, so I was telling the story from before he was a vampire to after he got re-insulted by the gypsy curse, to his trying to get back together with Darla when he had a soul, to his kind of wondering the earth. You know, he's not always going to be living on the street. Sometimes he's going to be living in a hotel.
Speaker 2:The episode in the hotel Are you now or have you ever been was to say that there was a part of him that tried to be a hero, who tried to help, and when it went wrong and he was disappointed by the people one more time, that sort of sent him down a darker path until he found his mission 50 years later. As mentioned, are you now? Is an episode that looks at a previously unexplored time in Angel's life is after he was given a soul and separated from Darla and the gang, but decades before it he met Whistler and Buffy. It shows us the transatory period where he stopped being the stylish and leafy, sadistic Angelus and became, as Whistler described, crazy, homeless guy who was danger of becoming a more useless rodent than he already was. It also introduces us to the Hyperion Hotel, which will become the base of operations for Angel investigations until the end of season 4.
Speaker 2:Through the course of the story. We see a number of rooms that we will see often Angel's room, other rooms that will be used by members of the team, the lobby, the basement and elsewhere. It also justifies Angel's desire to work there and to find a way to tie the hotel into his quest for redemption by showing us what is his darker periods. And finally, it does show us the darker side of Angel. Not the charming, leafy, sadistic Angelus, nor the brooding but kind Angel, and definitely not the dancing, singing Angel who loves very man low. This is the side of Angel we had not seen before a colder, more distant Angel who has a soul but no empathy, the type of creature that he may have become had Whistler not introduced him to a certain blonde slayer. And it's not the last time that we will see this very chilling side of him.
Speaker 2:With all of that in mind, I have just two questions for the audience. First, how well did the episode capture the tone and paranoia on the communists scare in the 1950s? And second, how many movie references did you pick out in this episode? Well, first, a general discussion and general opinion of the episode as a whole. As a whole, this is one of the series' best episodes and this was a huge improvement over judgement, and it's easily the best episode they've done so far, because one of the things this does is on a directing level.
Speaker 2:This gives a great example of how to use flashbacks to deepen a character. Up until now, the Angel flashbacks were more focused on putting us in on the what or the how. How did he get in, lose his soul? How did he separate from the team? How did Darla react to him? How did he become a vampire, so on and so forth. It was given as key points in his life. How did he meet Bup, so on, and those are all important moments and very interesting to know.
Speaker 2:So, not criticizing any of those flashbacks, but this one was less concerned with the how, because this moment in time, as we see, probably was at a turning point one way or the other, other than what I'll mention later was this might be the first time he actually helped a human after getting his soul back. But it was more concerned with the why. Why is he reluctant at times to help others? Why does he feel so guilty about his past? It's up until now, we assume that the guilt was all because of what he did as Angelus. Yet he slaughtered people, he sired people, he brutally murdered and tortured people well, which are things to feel guilty about. But now we see that even after he got his soul back, he was not suddenly a saint, that he didn't get a soul. And all of a sudden, I'm going to go start helping people, helping the hopeless.
Speaker 2:No, what we see in this episode was a several decade journey that, yes, he may have gone over the pain of having soul, but that doesn't mean he was ready to become good or to become or that we'll hear quite often throughout the series a champion, that he was not ready for Whistler to meet him, yet the powers that be weren't ready to make him their vessel to help make the world a better place. Because what it does is it shows us this transition. We knew Angelus. We'd seen him several times, both in the present and in the past. We knew how purely evil he was, how much of a sadistic monster and creature he was. We had seen that, we understood that. We also saw present day Angelus, the man who was brooding and felt guilt but was a good man, was willing to help people selflessly. Well, if you think about it, there had to be a transition there. It wasn't just a homeless guy living on the street drinking rats blood, pig blood, whatever it was. No, there had to be a transition that somehow or another he went from no soul to soul, to good guy, and this is showing us part of that transition is the time where it does have a soul but he's not good, and that's what this episode does superbly well is filling in that gap. As I said, it's not much a key moment per se other than introducing us to the Hyperion Hotel, but it is giving us a deeper view of his character.
Speaker 2:And I cannot talk about this episode without discussing the set design. The Hyperion Hotel is a great set, as we'll see throughout the next several years that the directors have a great time with this. As I had mentioned in a previous episode in Tushin Shu from LA, they had decided to get rid of Angelus's office because it was so confining, it was so limiting. There's only a couple of rooms they really had available to them the main office Angelus apartment with his bedroom and the kitchen slash living room. There's not really too much. They could do that. No matter how they did the camera angles, they would get very boring very quickly. With the Hyperion Hotel. They had a lot more real estate to play with and, as Stuart Blatt, the production designer, even commented quote I remember a lot of sets over those five years, but the hotel was a biggie and a joy. One of the great things with Joss and David Greenwald is that they gave me and us pretty much part-blanche once they signed off on something. Okay, I see where you're headed with this and they let us take the reins and run with it.
Speaker 2:One of the great things about the hotel is that for the exterior we used the Los Altos apartment on Wilshire Boulevard with the garden in front of that, and then we elaborated. We built a beautiful lobby and beautiful garden outside and the upstairs stairwell. We had elevators in there. That did work, but then we built a whole series of upstairs hallways, literally very reminiscent of Barton Fink. We were motivated by the spookiness of that and how the walls would come alive with the old wallpaper and carpeting, and David Greenwald agreed with it by commenting the hotel was actually more appropriate than the first year's thing, which was meant to be more like a private eye film noir kind of LA thing, to make it look different than Buffy. Angel is more Raymond Chandler than Buffy, also for me.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the small hotel business so I naturally took to that and it just made more sense. You could have a lot more people and it still function kind of as an office for people to come to and look for him and get cases and stuff. It just looked a lot cooler to me and I agree with him, it looked nicer. It felt still had a film noirish tone by the fact that it was built in the 1920s according to the episode and it had relevance in the 1950s. So it still had a Raymond Chandler type thing, even if it was in a tiny office. But, as I said, it gave a lot more real estate. It gave them various apartment rooms they could play in. It gave them the lobby, the office, the basement, the garden. They had a lot more sets they could use and it freed up as well as also freed up what they could do there, and also it allowed for more interesting camera angles going up the steps looking from the lobby up to the balcony and we saw that in this episode Then just getting started doing it and that made it a lot more interesting.
Speaker 2:And speaking of the directing, the transitions which we see several times in this episode never felt gimmicky. In fact, it felt stylish in a good way, such as like at the beginning, where it felt almost like you're looking at a postcard and the camera pulls in and it flashes to the past, to the 1950s and also a great shot that I'll draw attention to later in the episode, which was angels walking into the lobby in the past. He turns his head to the left to see what's there and it flashes to the present where we see angels game walking in. Camera pans back over. It's now present day angel standing in the exact same position. The past angel was Very smooth and never drew attention to itself other than just being a cool effect.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I really like about was this was a very narrowly focused story. We didn't have extra subplots. Or perdilia is doing this, wesley is doing that no, we didn't have any of those extraneous subplots. It was focused strictly on angel, on this 1950s mystery. Yes, it was had them working in the present day to figure out what was going on, but that was still focused on the 1950s storyline.
Speaker 2:It was just Wesley and Cordelia trying to figure out what was going on in the past, and it made good use of the characters Wesley, cordelia and Gun may not have had a lot to do, but they did serve a purpose. Gun maybe not as much as the others because they only had the scenes near the end. It's still in and I'll get to Gun in just a moment but it's still allowed Wesley and Cordelia to do more of the research and provide a little bit more of the exposition without slowing the pace of the story down. Instead, it actually provided a little bit of breathing room in between the 1950s scenes. And, as I mentioned for Gun, it came up with a nice way of getting him involved with the rest of the gang and showing on Maggeline the rivalry, which was a nice bit of humor there because it showed a little bit of the sniping between two of them and Cordelia responding to Angel thinking oh, the Thessal, like demons, paranoia is working on them. And Cordelia said no, these two were this way all the way over, has absolutely nothing to do with the hotel and sounding almost like an exhausted mother having to deal with two spelling children and don't always joke, but funny and laying the scene from what was going to be a dramatic scene.
Speaker 2:Otherwise. And speaking of the desolate demon, am I going to say he is a bad or good demon in terms of concept. I would say in between, I am actually going to criticize the negative part and then say that it is not as much of a negative, simply because the writers would probably say that we never intended it to be more than what it was. Unlike some demons where, yes, they came up with concept of this demon at this time, this one was not as much a specific demon as he was a concept. It was just representing paranoia that can work on suspicion and how it can consume your life.
Speaker 2:He was more of a concept and idea than he was a physical creature and I like the fact that he never becomes truly purportal because he has the tentacles at the bottom and everything like that. He never becomes totally flesh because he is almost pure emotion and less physical, and that is why you will notice in the final scene he never actually fights Angel in either in the past or in the present, because he is not a physical thing. He is an emotion that they have to fight and what he represents is what happens when we do let paranoia and hatred and fear consume and possess us, and how it can take over our lives and how, as he comments in his quote about the cycle of, he feeds them paranoia, they feed him their fear, and that this can become an endless cycle. That if we allow paranoia to consume us, it builds up more and more because, as I'll mention later, in one of the great concepts of the episode, which was the fact that when we become paranoid, we start to see bad things and that justifies our paranoia. So our paranoia increases, which causes us to focus on even worse things, and so on and so forth. One feeds the other and pretty soon it consumes us all and it will take over our lives.
Speaker 2:And the main point of the episode as I'll mention again later, with the beautiful final scene which that one would discuss because the final scene between he and present day Judy is so delicately and wonderfully handled that I couldn't praise it enough. I can tell you right now that's probably going to be in my top 10 favorite moments of the season is that scene. He and the actress playing Judy just do it perfectly. But the main point of that scene is to say that at some point we need to leave the hotel, we need to step away from our fear and paranoia, we need to move on with our lives. We need to put the past behind us and focus on the future. Because we become obsessed with the past and guilt and paranoia, our life will be gone and we'll be too old to appreciate what we have. And that's a beautiful note and beautiful message for the episode said. And one last thing that I want to praise the episode for, and that is the performance from David. This is one of his best performances he's given so far in the series.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned, he had to play a number of different shades of Angel in this episode. He had to give us the darker, more cold side, but not evil. Because, as I stay at the beginning, this is what separates this version of Angel from Angelus. Angelus was gleeful, angelus was charismatic and enjoyed torturing people, enjoyed causing mayhem. This version of Angel, there was no enjoyment. He was not taking pleasure in anything he did and even at the end, when he told the Thessalike demon take them all, it was an out of aim, sadistic joy. It was out of bitterness. In a way it was consuming him and, as a result, david had to play Angel in this tone of someone who was distant but not mean, because he did try to help Judy. And even when he was confronting Denver the bookseller yes, he did try to bite him, but it was a means to an end. It would get the feeling he wouldn't have attacked Denver unless he literally had no other choice. He was doing it just to play on Denver's fear of vampires.
Speaker 2:And also one other nice touch that I like in the 1950s they played was just like the actor who was hiding his homosexual affair and Judy who was hiding her past and other guests in a hotel who were hiding stuff from having others find out, angel was also hiding. He didn't want people to realize he was a vampire because they would turn on him, so he was just as scared as everyone else. And once again that came through in the scenes where he was hiding in the room, not so much because he didn't like anyone but because he didn't want anyone to find out his secret, just like everyone else was hiding. This is a nice bit of complexity there. So overall, as you'll notice, I have very few things to criticize on this episode. This is a superb episode and one just like blind date and a few of the others I would say, is one to show to a non-Angel fan, to show them what the show is capable of and the fact that it can go toe-to-toe with Buffy in terms of quality and, this case here, in terms of imagination as well.
Speaker 2:So, on that note, the episode opens with Wesley and Angel looking at a photo of the Hyperion Hotel which, as a reminder to the fans, is the hotel he stumbled into in the previous episode, when he was right away with Joe from the other demons who were trying to kill her and he accidentally came into the hotel. Well, he's now looking at the photographs with Wesley and he and Wesley make the comment that appears to be abandoned. As Angel comments 68 rooms, 68 vacancies. And we find out that it's been around since the 1920s and is located in what used to be the heart of Hollywood. At that moment, cordelia brings both of them drinks and she serves to Wesley English Tea she has a cup of coffee and to Angel she has O positive with a twist of cinnamon. As she comments, she wanted to try something different. And Angel then asks both of them to look into who the owner is and why it's banned. He doesn't go into any explanation why he's interested in this hotel, it just makes it very clear. It's a little bit of a loop but not mean way, just find out which can't about them. And he is purposely vague as to his interest.
Speaker 2:Well, at that moment we get a nice fade in on the picture of the hotel until it shows the hotel in the past. This is one of the transitions I was mentioning earlier where it's very smoothly done, where we see a present day picture of it, abandoned, lot, graffiti and all that. But then it pulls in and now it's the hotel in the past and it was open for business and beautiful inside and bustling, and it's made very clear that time is 1950, based on the outfits of guests. And the manager is going over instructions with the bellhop and he mentions in passing that room 315 has returned mail that Mrs Megan's breakfast, he needs to take that up to her and makes it very clear it's alcohol. Then also he hands the bellhop the weekly bill for room 217 and the bellhop hesitates at doing that one, at delivering that bill, because the guest gives him the heebie-jeebies and freaks him out because he says his eyes are cold. Well, he is still sent up there and he goes up there very reluctantly and he goes up to the room.
Speaker 2:And one nice touch I like about this is the panning down the hallway of the corridor is a long shot of it, and it's shot in such a way to make the hallway look even creepier than it is, and it is very reminiscent of Kubrick's long shot of the hotel in the shining, one of the many movie references that I'll draw attention to later. Well, the bellhop walks up to room 217, knocks lightly on the door and you can tell he's doing such a way that he wants to get away as quickly as possible. So he knocks just once and then leaves the tray with the bell on it and hightails it to the elevator. And as the elevator door is shutting, the apartment door opens and we do see who's living in room 217, and it's Angel, who's looking very different from how we saw him before. I mean, this is said in the 1950s. He's dressed in that appropriate style and, as I've mentioned many times so far, just by the look on his face, it is a very cold, distant look. It's not just serious or brooding or anything like that. No, it's a cold look, and you can tell what the bellhop would get if he be jeebies talking to him or being near him.
Speaker 2:Well, we get the opening credits and then it cuts into act one, where now we're back at the present day and a much emptier hyperion hotel and Angel's back at the hotel walking through the abandoned lobby. And as he walks around the lobby it pans into the past. And one nice thing I like about it is the radio is clean, faintly in the background and it gets gradually louder until it's normal volume as it faints into the past and it now pans around and we see the hotel is now very occupied with all the guests from that time. And on the TV is the Huwak hearings short for HUAC, short for House of American Affairs, and those I'll describe later when I get into the pop cultural segment, because there also knows McCarthy hearings. And, as I mentioned then, the famous phrase we hear on the TV are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party, is the basis for the title of episode are you now or have you ever? But those areas I'll discuss at much greater length because the paranoia that existed during those hearings at that time plays very much into the paranoia that feeds into this hotel. So it's more than just hey, look, we have a 1950s rep. No, that clip, even though it's done very quickly and it's easy to miss at first, is the very basis of the theme of this episode, of the paranoia almost making thing. There's more than one that's like David that's out there and might have been one, storing around the hallways of Congress at that time while watching the TV as people did in real life at that time. Are people watching the hearings? Because it was highly rated? People were watching it gavel to gavel every day.
Speaker 2:Well, angel walks into the hotel and he picks up a newspaper and avoids talking to anyone, just keeping to himself, hanging straight into the elevator and we see also another sign of fortunately of the 1950s is the is the concierge. He's turning away a black family claiming there's no vacancies, which we know that there's no vacancies for them. If they were white he probably would have given them a realm while meanwhile, exiting elevator, angel walks through his room and he's ignoring a man who's standing outside of all tell row and just talking to something on the other side not really, and we can't really tell what's being said and coming out of a different room are two men who are clearly affectionate towards each other and they would very nervously at angel and it's clear that they're nervous. That's not much about what angel is, because there's actually no reason they would think the angels of empire, but because of what they are, homosexual lovers, which, especially at that time in the 1950s, what they were doing was literally an illegal act. So not only would it have been career killing, because there was a reason why an actor like rock Hudson had kept his affairs secret, but they could have gone to prison because of it. And as a result, they, as well as angel, are in Pambu situations that, for obvious reasons, they did not want to get discovered.
Speaker 2:Well, angel enters his room and he sets out the bottle of blood that he has in his paper bag, and an interesting thing is this is human blood. Now you get the feeling he got it, probably got it from a blood bank or something like that. So no, he wasn't attacking anyone. So he was an angel is, but he was drinking human blood and, as we'll see later, the next time he turns cold towards people, he's also drinking human blood. So one wonders if drinking the human blood deadens the effect of a soul inside of him. Who knows? But anyways, he is wanting some ice.
Speaker 2:So he walks on the hallway to an ice chest and nearby is a man talking to something inside of a doorway. We don't see who or what he's talking to, we just hear whispering and we can't make out what it is. Well, the man keeps nodding in the green and says yeah, you're right. And at the other end of the hallway a man is counting on a door trying to get in. No answer. The angel ignores both of them and he just heads back to his room and puts the blood in the ice bucket.
Speaker 2:And coming out of the bathroom is a young woman who acts like she is the maid and says she'll be done in just two shakes. Angel very quickly points out that she's clearly not the maid, points out a few of the clues that told him she's not the maid. First, there's no cleaning trolley outside the door. Two, the sheets she's straightening on the bed are still dirty and also, as he says, she's the wrong color. Well, she apologizes and tries to explain, but instead of sympathetically listening to her, he very coldly tries to throw her out of his room.
Speaker 2:And again, this is an interesting in-between stage for him between Angel and Angelus, because Angelus probably would have killed her right then and there, great Room service, I've got somebody to feed. And he probably would have tortured her for a moment or so, first to increase her fear, to make her more palatable to him. So that's the angel. Angel, on the other hand, would have been sympathetic towards her and offered to help her. Yeah, tell me what's wrong. What can I do to help you?
Speaker 2:This version, though, is neither of them. He doesn't try to kill her no, he's not Angelus. But on their end, he doesn't want her there, just to toss her out. And she does beg him to not throw her out of the room because she says she does want her boyfriend to find her, causing him to once again coldly say well then, you shouldn't go into strange men's rooms. And he's about to toss her out into the hallway when he opens the door and he sees the man who was pounding on the other door earlier. But now this guy is trying to pick Angelus' lock to sneak into the room. And the man? Well, at this moment we then get this conversation.
Speaker 1:Where is she? Look, pal, this really isn't something you want to get involved in, that's true, which is why you're going to turn around and go away. Sorry, I can't do that, partner, because I know you're hiding her in there. I'm not hiding anybody, no, and why don't you send her on out here, and that way I won't have to come in and get her? You're not coming in here, you won't mind if I just come in and take a look around then? Gee, guess I do, mark, he's going down.
Speaker 2:Just a brief description for those who haven't seen the episode, of what you Were Hearing was the PI when he says you know, let me in. And he pulls back his vest to reveal that he has a gun on him, threatening Angel. Now of course we know that's the gun, is nothing to Angel, but Angel doesn't let him know that. So that's when he steps back slightly, as if they indicate that the guy can come in. But then when the guy takes step forward, that's when Angel slams the door hard on the man's face and says well, I guess I do mind which. First of all, once again, that's the appropriate tough guy line, that they do a lot better. Nothing cute C or just a quick, smart ass tough guy response. And anyway, then he takes the guy and bends his arm behind him and literally drags him down the hallway and throws him into the open elevator with the bellhop again and throws him into the elevator and that's when he says he's going down Very quick, very nicely done and very interesting scene, because it did have a bit of a tense moment, because since we're seeing a very cold, a loose Angel, it's actually hard to tell for a brief moment when he's talking to the PI, is he going to give up the girl, you know, just so that he could be left alone.
Speaker 2:And even there you get the feeling he's not really helping the girl because he's a good guy. He's doing it because the PI is just a piece of scum and okay, I hate you more than I don't care about her. And so that's why he decided okay, no, I mean, I give a damn about the woman, but I'm not giving her you. It's not worth it. And at that moment, that's when he heads back into the room with the woman who is profusely thanking him for what he was doing and just to make clear, as I said, that he's not a good guy yet his response slams the door in her face. So, instead of like, bring her in, hey, tell me what's going on, etc. No, shut the door. He's not wanting to help her. And so, as I said, his previous acts with the PI were not out of kindness, but simply because the PI was such a jerk and that's why he was not going to allow himself to be bullied by this idiot. But it's very clear he is not at the point where he's going to help victims out there and risk his life for them? Not in any way, not at this point.
Speaker 2:Well, the camera then pans away from the closed door to the present day angel and once again very smooth edit that's wonderfully handled in this episode and the camera then does a long shot showing that the hallway is now in a state of much more disrepair. It obviously is 50 years later. Who knows how many decades have been abandoned. Well, at that point we get a voiceover of Wesley, who's doing the role of misdirect position for this episode. He's given us a history of the hotel as he and Cordelia are researching it, and we learn that the hotel closed its doors back on December 16, 1979. And the hotel concierge, roland Meeks the guy we saw at the beginning of the episode talking to the bellhop and then turning away from the black family went room to room with a shotgun, killing people. But the hotel was declared a historical landmark. That's why it was torn down and is still standing. And the property management company that owned it had been trying to sell it, though, for 10 years, but so far there's been no buyers. And Wesley explains it's probably due to the fact that it has a long history of violence, from the very beginning in 1928, when a roofer left to his death taking two co-workers with it. So this place has been cursed literally from day one. And while he's talking, cordelia is looking through a bunch of the old photographs and she sees in one of them, from 1952, angels standing in the background.
Speaker 2:Now I'll give the episode credit. It always raises one question that I first thought of when I see that he's in a photograph, which is okay. Well, cameras have always been based on the concept of mirrors, of a capture as an image, and then, without going into exactly how cameras work, the short version is inside of a camera are mirrors which capture the image that's coming through the lens. Well, it's well established, vampires have no reflection. So how can a camera capture their image? Because, as I said, it's using mirrors to capture the image. Without the mirrors, there's no image. Well, I'll give the episode credit for realizing. Okay, that we have to create a new rule here for vampires that say that only certain types of mirrors don't capture their image. Some mirrors do, apparently, and they write it off. With this cute line from Cordelia, I mean one thing for certain Yep.
Speaker 1:it's not that vampires don't photograph, it's just that they don't photograph well.
Speaker 2:Which I'll give that light credit. It's a nice, cute way of saying just go with it. It's the writer's way of saying just accept, vampires can be photographed. Yeah, we won't pursue it any further than that, because we really need to have a way of putting Angel into a photo and we have no other way of explaining it, so we'll just have Cordelia make a joke and just move on with life. Which, okay, I'll play with that.
Speaker 2:But now it cuts into the past and Angel is smoking, which is one of the very few times in the series we see him smoking. And once again I'll bring up the same point that many fans have brought up, especially in regards to spike smoking, which is, it's established once again, vampires don't breathe. So how do they smoke? Because that involves breathing, which, once again, just live with it, they just do. But anyways, as he's getting a drink, though, he hears music from the next room, the Pericomo song, hooptidoo, and it's faint first because it's through the walls, but then the camera pans through to the next room, where the man that we saw earlier, who was standing outside of the whispering room agreeing with whatever he was hearing, is listening to the record, and the whispering sounds are again being made to him. We can't make out what it is, but whatever the whispering sounds are saying he's agreeing with. And he then picks up a gun out of his desk drawer and he covers his side of his head with it to muzzle the sound of the gunshot and he shoots himself in the head, which Angel then hears. And he also hears the body collapse. And once again, to show us this is a different Angel than what we have seen before or since, angels once again probably would have been over there to see if he could feed on it before the body goes bad and the blood is no longer useful to him and the present day Angel would have rushed over there to see what was going on and see if he could help this Angel, though, on the other hand, doesn't care. He's not going to profit from it, but he's also not going to help with it either.
Speaker 2:Well, before I move on to the next act, though, just one side comment about song Hooptidoo. As I said, is a pericomo song from that era and when, looking for the music to play when the salesman committed suicide, the musical director John Keane originally chose a Rosemary Cuny song called Batcha Me, but the publishers declined to give the show permission to use it. Due to the nature of the scene it would be used in. I guess they didn't want their song to be associated with a guy bullying his brains out on camera. Some people were just so picky.
Speaker 2:But anyways, coming back to the episode, the bell hop is leading the concierge into the room with the dead salesman and comments that the maid found him there. And it turns out that this is the third suicide that has occurred in the hotel in three months. And the concierge now also starts to hear whispering sounds himself. And among the sounds he hears is oh, shut your damn, they'll shut you down. And with that he repeats that same line back to the bell hop and uses an explanation for why he doesn't want to call the cops at all. And he tells the bell hop instead to store the body in the meat locker until they can figure out what to do with it. Well, down the lobby the guests are discussing the suicide because well, just like what would happen in any situation, tragic word travels fast and so if that happened, people would start talking and guessing about it. And also sitting in the lobby is a man who also hears the whispering who's telling him that it might not be a suicide and it also might not be safe to be in the hotel.
Speaker 2:Well, it now cuts over to the Griffith Park Observatory, which, for those not familiar with the LA area, is a real life observatory and very famous observatory, and it's a great tourist location in LA. Many millions of people go there every year. They have shows about the galaxies and all and everything else. It's a great place to go to and to take the family to, and the observatory is at the top of Mount Hollywood and it's one of the highest spots in LA, so, in addition to just being in the observatory itself, you get a great, fantastic view of the city below. So that's another reason why people go there and because it's such a great location. Many movies have been made there, including Rebel Without a Cause, which I'll discuss more in a moment, the Terminator and the Rocketeer. Well, also there this evening, though, is Angel, and he's visited by Judy, the woman from before, and Angel is wearing an outfit that is extremely reminiscent of the late actor James Dean's character in the movie Rebel Without a Cause, which also had a famous scene set at the observatory, and I'll discuss that more when I get into the pop culture segment in a short bit. At this moment Judy is straight and makes mobile talk but Angel once again is very non-responsive towards her and she again thanks him from before, but Angel gives no real response.
Speaker 2:Well, it cuts back to the present day and Wesley is looking at the photos of the bellhop arrested for the murder and Cordelia and Wesley mentioned that the hotel bellhop's name was Frank Gilnitz. Now one comment here about the last name Gilnitz. This is a name that was often used for incidental or unseen characters in the TV series the X File, usually with the first name John, and in fact it became a running joke on that show where you had a number of characters with that last name of Gilnitz. And the reason why that name came to be was the name was in that malgomen of the names of the longtime X Files writers John Scheiben, vince Gilligan and Frank Botnitz. Thus Gilnitz and the writer of this Angel episode, tim Minier, was a writer and story editor for the X File, so he was friends with those guys and that's why he brought on Gilnitz, just dropping the first name John and giving him the name of Frank instead, named after Frank Spots.
Speaker 2:But anyways, back to Frank Gilnitz. Well, he was arrested in 1952, in XQ 1954. And it's very clear from the description that Wesley's giving that it was because of the body they found in the meat locker. And what happened was the police accused him of committing the murder and deemed that it was a murder and not a suicide. And he and Crudely are going through all the other deaths and other violent acts and organizing them, realizing there is a long history here at this hotel.
Speaker 2:Well, it cuts back to 1952. And people are in the lobby, are now discussing the suicide and showing that that whispering is having an effect on them. They're no longer believing it's a suicide, they're now believing that it was actually murder and they're starting to actually accuse each other of it and wondering hey, you might have had something to do with it or whatever. Well, angel walked back into the hotel and heads to his room and Judy Stomps and asked him to come into her room and she lets him know that because it might be a murder, the police will be investigating. And she's scared that the police will uncover not just what might have happened there, which we know as an audience isn't much to discover, considering it was a suicide, but anyways. But she's more scared of the stuff that she has to hide, and she talks a little bit more about the PI, the man that Angel tossed into the elevator, and why he was looking for her. It's because of her former employer, a bank, where she was a teller and she was engaged to a man at the bank when they found out about her and they fired her immediately. And she explains that what they discovered about her was the fact that since she was age 15, she was passing for white because she's very light skinned. Now, one interesting thing about this is the fact that the actress who is playing her is Melissa Marsala. Now she explains in this episode that she's a black woman with light skin. Well, in reality, the actress Melissa Marsala is Italian and Chinese. There's no real African American heritage in her.
Speaker 2:So before I move on, one other sign note here I just want to draw attention to is her first role. When I was doing the research on her, I had to make a mention of this. Her first role was in a movie called Dan Pyer. I want to say that very slowly again in case it doesn't come through. Dan Pyer's V-A-N-P-I-R-E-S, and a summary of the movie is a meteorite turns a team of young gearheads, mentored by a former rooie for the ruling stones, into car vampire. It also creates an evil car vampire overlord who feeds on other cars. To save the world, they must stop his vampire car pack. And even better is the theme song, for Van Pyer was written by John Entwistle from the who, and this was a review written by an IMDB user.
Speaker 2:In gay, I think the lord on high above are vampires. Vampires brought me out of depression. Vampires struck down my worst enemies. Vampires fixed my marriage. Thanks to vampires, my children will finally respond to my voice again. My mother, who was in a terrible coma since 1986, swung out of her hospital bed into a jolly little jig after only a few minutes of vampires.
Speaker 2:As a simple father with good old American values, I cannot recommend vampires enough. First of all, to the person who wrote that review, I apologize for not taking a moment to note your name. God bless you. That is one of the best sarcastic reviews I've ever read of a bad movie that one. I want to read other reviews you've written because that was just wonderful and I get the thought that I had a hundred times more imagination than a group of car vampires battling a car evil car vampire overlord. I don't know if it's available on streaming, but I'm just saying right now I've got to hunt this movie down just to see if it's anywhere near as awful as the description makes it out to be. And also I just want to see if maybe it will cause my children to talk to me again. If it does, then I also thank the Lord above for vampires.
Speaker 2:But anyways, back to this episode. When she was discovered that she was passing, her fiance immediately broke off the engagement and because he determined that her blood was impure, because she was a child of an interracial married and also she lost her job, as I've mentioned before, when they discovered this, and in retaliation she stole thousands of dollars, which is still in a bag in her room. Well, angel is understanding towards her and she explains how she was ostracized and, as she mentioned, she's dimmed by white and blacks and considered not one thing or the other, which Angel could easily relate to. That because, well, he's in the same situation. He's not and he's out of soul with his vampire, so he's not accepted by that society. But he's also not human, so he's not accepted by human society. So he's hated by demons, feared by humans. So, like her. He has no real group that he can be a member of, so he does understand her better because he explains that her employer fired her basically because they were afraid because of her passing, and he does at this point offer to help her.
Speaker 2:What cuts back to the prison day were? Wesley and Cordelia are discussing Judy. We see that she had checked into an hotel but was never heard from again, and in an article that they're reading about her it now makes it very clear that Judy, who is on the run from the law, according to the article, because of stealing the money from the bank, but the police have given up the search for her because she's now believed dead. Well, at this point why wonder if Hyperion is really the hotel in California where Angel can check out anytime he likes, but he can never leave. My Spidey sense is tingling. It must be time for our pub culture segment, where I find every pub cultural reference in the episode, compile it in a supercut and make heads or tails of what they're talking about. Your spider sense.
Speaker 2:Pub cultural reference sorry. We cannot evict residents on the grounds of the hippie-cheapies. I'll be finished here in just two shakes, sir.
Speaker 1:But I'll do it. You pull any more than Van Helsen Jr. Crap with me, are we clear?
Speaker 3:I hear a polka and my troubles are true. Hoop-de-doo, hoop-de-dee. This kind of music is like heaven to me. Honey, hold my hand, turn it, get started, come on, there's any redhead? The question is are you now or have you ever been a member?
Speaker 1:of the comic board. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not. I'm not. Who would've thought any of this was Crayonk over there? I don't know. I don't care more about the plot. I'm not Me, neither I'm not. Come on 你".
Speaker 2:So we're covering the Little salon where we can talk about Acast Rap to Donp M Louis and his short cover. Now I'll jump in here for a moment. Maybe what's going on in this minute? Ethnic or poor? Not in the whole scene, sir Cut off. So you're not home-made. Are you to you?
Speaker 2:Because he played major roles in a number of different Hughes films. He was the Candy Club owner in the movie Weird Science, he was Rudy in 16 Candles, and the role I most associate him with is Carl DeGeneres in the movie the Buck Club. And besides John Hughes films, this man has worked steady. He has had over 200 credits on IMDb. His very first role, sadly, wasn't in fanpires, but it was actually in a very, very good movie. This one, I'll say sarcastically, it is a great movie. It was an uncredited role as mechanic number three in the Michael Mann movie Thief with James Cohn. As I said, that one I do recommend to a listener. That one was a very well-expected film, but anyways, his latest role, though, is 27 episodes at least as of right now, in the soap opera Days of Our Wives is Constantine Malunas, and his upcoming role is in the movie Berry Truths where, according IMDb, it's about a traumatized painter and her husband who moved to a subpluted, 100-year-old, abandoned house. But as her new painting unfolds, with help from a supernatural presence, a mystery from 30 years ago is unearthed, leading to a dangerous truth. And also one other actor I want to mention, playing the bellhop, is actor JP Manus, who, for fans of how I Met your Mother, which as we know, have tie-ins with Buffy Alzin Hanne, again starring in the series, and Angel Alex Danna-Soff, played Sandy Rivers, which if you've never seen how I Met your Mother, you will see a completely different side of Alexis and see how really funny that man is playing a complete jerk. I mean, it's worth the series, if nothing else, just to watch Alex in his episodes. But anyways, jp Manus was in one first season episode of how I Met your Mother where he played Not Moby, and his first role was in the classic Miyazaki animated film my Neighbor Totoro, where he was just one of additional voices, meaning he did a whole bunch of small lines for other characters, no one major character.
Speaker 2:But before I get into once again about the pop cultural references, the earth that I want to draw attention to, though, is the influences in here Signing so much oh, they did a pop cultural reference. Out of all the episodes I've seen so far, none have had so many influences from other sources feeding into this, because, as I mentioned, for example, the shining the carpeting in the hallway is very reminiscent of the carpeting in the hotel, and then also the room that Angel is staying in, room 217. In the movie, that's the room that Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, visits and his son is forbidden from entering, and we've seen the movie why it's haunted and very creepy. And also, just in general, just like the Overwok Hotel in the Shiny, the Hyperion Hotel has a persistence of evil living throughout the decades inside of the hotel, and so, just like the shining, we have the same thing here with the Hyperion. And then also, as I mentioned, the reference, as you heard in the clips to I Love Lucy, the reference, you know, zany Redhead.
Speaker 2:Also, there's a number of references to Chinatown, such as and I'll mention this again later when the PI shows back up, it's got tape across his nose. In this case it's because of Angel slamming the door hard into his face, breaking his nose. Well, jake Geitz, the detective in Chinatown played by Jack Nicholson, again also had tape on his nose. Now, in his case it was because it was cut with a knife and the PI's name in Angel is C Mulvihill. That's another reference to Chinatown, because in the movie there was a cop, a former cop, also named Mulvihill.
Speaker 2:Another reference to this that would fit into this is the classic Twilight Zone episode, the Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. In that episode it had a group of neighbors who were all very friendly and nice towards each other, but when they suspect that there was an alien landing a block over, they very quickly become suspicious and turn on each other and start accusing each other of either being turncoats for Earth and aligning with the alien race or being aliens themselves. And we see how quickly they turn on each other and allow paranoia and suspicion to zoom down. And then also the McCarthy hearings, which the title, as you heard in the audio clip Are you Now or have you Ever is basis for the title, and then also just showing the video clip, and then I'll mention more about the hearings, just the entire tone of paranoia there Rebel Without a Cause.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned, the Griffith Park Observatory scene, angels were in a red jacket outfit, very reminiscent of James Dean from that movie, and in the movie the leading lady is named Judy, played by actress Natalie Wood, and the conversation that is held in the episode of Angel is very similar to the same conversation held by Natalie Wood and James Dean in the movie about the end of the world. Well, another reference brought in is Vertigo, where, once again, there's a leading lady in the movie is also named Judy, played by Kim Novak, who, just like Judy in the Angel episode, also lived in Selena, kansas. And also one other Hitchcock film that ties in into this episode Psycho, where the Bates Motel was also described as having 68 rooms, 68 vacancies, just like the Hyperion, and that fact was aligned in the movie that Norrin Bates used to describe his Motel. And also, just like in this episode, the main female character in Psycho also stole a lot of money, not only from the real estate company that she was working for, but she did check into a hotel beyond the run of the law, and in Psycho, just like in Angel, she never left a hotel alive, though for different reasons. Now the big reference I want to discuss here, though, is the McCarthy hearing, because, as I said, that tone of paranoia that occurred during that time also plays heavily into the theme of this episode. So I want to give a background in terms of what the McCarthy hearing were for those who aren't familiar with it. They're now known as the McCarthy hearings, but at that time they were known as the Army McCarthy hearings and the committee chaired by Senator Carl Mont. The hearings convened on March 16, 1954, and received considerable press attention, including gavel to gavel live television coverage on ABC and the Dumont Network. The media coverage, particularly television, greatly contributed to McCarthy's decline in popularity and his eventual censure by the Senate the following December.
Speaker 2:Mccarthy came to national prominence back in February of 1950, after he gave a speech in Wheeling, west Virginia, in which he claimed to have a list of 205 State Department employees who were members of the Communist Party, and he claimed that the list was provided to but dismissed by Secretary of State Dean Atchison, saying that, quote the State Department harbors a nest of communists and communist sympathizers who are helping to shape our foreign policy. In January of 1953, mccarthy began his second term and the Republican Party regained control of the Senate, with the Republicans in majority. Mccarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and this committee included the permanent subcommittee on investigations. And the mandate of the subcommittee allowed McCarthy to use a period of his investigations of communists and the government because, once I note I mentioned before that he had a list of 205 names he never produced the list, he just would wave it on air and in the hearings but never actually show it to anyone. And meanwhile McCarthy appointed 26-year-old Roy Pown as chief counsel to the subcommittee and future Attorney General Robert F Kennedy as assistant counsel, while reassigning Francis Flanigan to the ad hoc position of general counsel.
Speaker 2:Well in 1953, mccarthy's committee began increase into the US Army, starting by investigating host supposed communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Malmo. Mccarthy's investigations weren't largely fruitless but after the Army accused McCarthy and the staff of seeking a direct commission for Private G Davis Shine, a chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and close friend of Roy Cohns, who had been drafted into the Army as Private the previous year, mccarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith and the Senate decided that the conflicting charges should be investigated and the appropriate committee to do this was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, usually chaired by McCarthy. Since McCarthy was one of the targets of the hearings, senator Carl Moldt reluctantly accepted the appointment to replace McCarthy as chairman of the subcommittee. John G Adams was the Army's counsel. Acting as special counsel was Joseph Welch of the Boston law firm of Hale and Doerr, and the hearings were broadcast nationally on the new ABC and Dumont Network and impart by NBC and Francis Newton. Little John, the news director at ABC, made the decision to cover the hearings live gavel to gavel, and the televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings.
Speaker 2:While the hearings went on, a photograph of Shine was introduced and Joseph Welch, a cone of doctrine. The image, the show of Shine alone, with Army Secretary Robert T Stevens On the witness stand. Cohn and Shine insisted that the picture entered into evidence of Shine and Stevens alone was replaced by Stevens and that no one was edited out of the photograph. Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Shine with McGuire Air Force Base Wing Commander Corporal Jack Bradley standing to Shine's right. A fourth person was also edited out of the picture. His sleeve was visible to Bradley's right in the Welch photograph and he was identified as McCarthy Aide Frank Carr.
Speaker 2:After the photograph was discredited, mccarthy produced a copy of a confidential letter he claimed was a January 26, 1951 memo written and sent by FBI Director J Edgar Hoover to Major General Alexander R Bowling, warning Army intelligence subversives in the Army Signal Corps. Mccarthy claimed the letter was in the Army files when Stevens became Secretary in 1953 and that Stevens willfully ignored it. Welch was the first question though letters validity, claiming that McCarthy's sorted copy did not come from Army files. He stated that he never received any document from the FBI. But when questioned on the stand by Special City Council Ray Jenkins and cross-examined by Welch, mccarthy, while admitting the document was given by an intelligence officer, refused to identify his source. Robert Cullier, assisted to Ray Jenkins, read the letter from the Attorney General in which he stated that Hoover examined the document and that he neither wrote nor ordered the letter and that no such copy existed in the FBI files, rendering McCarthy's claims merrily and the letter spurious. And in what played out and as the most dramatic exchange of the hearing, mccarthy responded to aggressive questioning from Joseph Welch On June 9, 1954, day 30 of the hearing's Welch Challenge Cone to give McCarthy's list of 130 subversives in defense plans of the FBI and the Department of Defense. Quote before the sun goes down.
Speaker 2:In response to Welch's Badgerial Cone, mccarthy suggested that Welch should check on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston law firm who Welch had planned to have on his staff for the hearings. Fisher had once belonged to National Lawyers Guild, a group which Attorney General Brown will call the legal ballwork of the Communist Party. Mccarthy had previously agreed to keep Fisher's involvement in both Welch's law firm and the National Lawyers Guild confidential. In exchange, welch agreed to leave a controversy regarding Cone's draft status out of the hearing. Welch revealed that he had confirmed Fisher's former membership in the National Lawyers Guild approximately six weeks before the hearing started. After Fisher admitted his membership in the National Lawyers Guild, welch decided to send Fisher back to Boston. His replacement by another colleague on Welch's staff was also covered by the New York Times.
Speaker 2:Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher, saying, quote until this moment, center, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Mccarthy, accusing Welch of filibustering the hearing and baiting Cone, resumed his attack on Fisher, at which point Welch angrily comes short with the famous following quote Senator, may we now not drop this. We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last have you left no sense of decency? And it's that quote. Have you no decency, sir, that get him in. Welch then exclaimed self from the remainder of the hearings with the parting shot to McCarthy. Mr McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have seen fit to bring this out and if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. You, mr Chairman, may, as you will, call the next witness. After Welch deferred to the Chairman Mound to call the next witness, the gallery burst into applause. Well, in God upholst.
Speaker 2:From January 1954, mccarthy's approval reigned once 50%, with only 29% disapproving. By June, though, the percentage that shifted by 16%, with more people 34% approving, 45% disapproving now rejecting McCarthy and his methods. And then, after hearing 32 witnesses and 2 million words of testimony, the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on Shine's behalf, but that Roy Cohn, mccarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some unduly persistent or aggressive effort for Shine. The conclusion also reported questionable behavior on the part of the Army, that Secretary Stevens and Army counsel John Adams made efforts to determine or influence the investigations and hearings at Fort Monroe. And that Adams made vigorous and diligent efforts to block Sakina's work for members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board by means of personal appeal to certain members of the McCarthy committee. Before the official report to release, cohn had resigned as McCarthy's counsel and sent her route, flanders had introduced the resolution of censure against McCarthy and the Senate and despite McCarthy's acquittal of misconduct in the matter, the Army and McCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst for his downfall from political power. Daily newspaper summaries for increasingly unfavorable toward McCarthy will. Television audiences witness firsthand the unethical tactic of the junior senator from Wisconsin. And on December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarthy, effectively erradicating his influence, though not expelling him from office. Mccarthy continued chair to subcommittee on investigations until January of 1955, the day the NEC Congress was inaugurated, and he was then replaced as chairman. And after his censuring, mccarthy continues anti-communist oratory, often speaking to an empty or near empty Senate chamber. Being increasingly to alcohol, he died of hepatitis on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48.
Speaker 2:Now it sounds like this was all about the Army. But one big thing to understand here about the McCarthy hearings is this scent of paranoia, because the common question that was asked when people were brought forth was are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? And they were pressured to name names, because the way it worked was you could either give up the names of your colleagues, in which case they will let you go, or reclaim your innocence, in which case then you might end up losing your job just on suspicion of being a member of the Communist Party. And where this affected heavily was in Hollywood, because it blacklisted a number of writers and actors and made it very difficult for them to work, because you had people like Lillian Hellman, leonard Bernstein, howard De Silva, john Garfield, berle Eibes Burgess. They were all blacklisted and it was tough for them to find work.
Speaker 2:And one name in particular that I want to bring up to close this topic off is writer E L A I Kazan, who wrote the most famous movie they could have written, but the one he was most famous for was the movie On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando and Carl Walden, among others. Which one best picture Among other Academy Awards. Well, the reason why even today, 70 years later, he still hated by Hollywood was he did name names and had turned over some of the names that I had mentioned above, men and women who, because of him, could not get work, and they view him as betraying them. Well, in fact, just to show you how deep this hatred went, in 1982, 30 years after this occurred, orson Welles, when asked about him, said Shemada Moselle, you have chosen the wrong Matilda on scene, because Eli Kazan is a traitor. He is a man who sold to McCarthy all of his companions at a time when he could continue to work in New York at a high salary. And having sold all his people to McCarthy, he then made a film called On the Waterfront, which is a celebration of the Informer. In 16 years after that, at the Academy Awards, he did receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. But to make it very clear that some things will never, some feelings will never change, screenwriters like Harlan Ellison loudly protested and said that he did not deserve that at all, he didn't deserve to be anywhere near the Academy. Because Harlan, in interviews, said A lot of my friends were blacklisted because of this jerk, and so no, I will never forgive him, and during the ceremony itself, people like Steven Spielberg refused to stand, though they did applaud, and in fact, when further actors like Nick Nolte, ed Harris and Amy Madigan made an open point of neither standing nor applauding when he got the award.
Speaker 2:Well, now back to the episode itself. It cuts back to the past and Angel is leading Judy to the basement to hide for a few days, and as he's hiding the bag of money, he starts to hear the whispering sounds as well, and we're still not quite sure what exactly they're saying to him, but he is hearing it now. But Judy proposes returning the money by dropping the bag off on the doorstep, and she now even says there is such a thing as forgiveness. Right, and you can see the look from Angel is no, he doesn't know what forgiveness is or if it's expressed by anyone. Well, it cuts back to the present day and Angel is wandering through the same basement, now marked up by graffiti of all kinds, and he looks in the spot in the pipes where he has hidden the bag and finds it still there with all the money intact, and he starts to hear the same whispering he heard in the past.
Speaker 2:Well, one side comment about the bag of money. Tim Menier says that he often gets asked about what Angel did with the stolen money that he recovered from his trading place, because he found it 50 years later and all the money is still there, as I said, and he points out that the money is never again mentioned in any subsequent episode. Well, menier says that most likely, this version of Angel most likely didn't keep the money, but that's not his style. He doesn't keep stolen money, nor did he use it to buy the hotel, because, once again, it's stolen money. What he probably did a grain of Menier was send it back to the bank in Selena, Kansas, and where Judy had stolen it, because that's the honorable thing to do.
Speaker 2:Well, it cuts back to Wesley, who's looking over the file, and he concludes that some force was residing at the hotel, affecting the staff in the residence, which would explain the long history of violence, but he's not quite sure what type of demon it is, though. A coordinator then comes up to him and just casually says it's a thesilac, a paranoia, deep whispers to his victims, beats on their innate securities, and I like the look for Wesley. I'll get less of shock. I'll say wow, that outdid me. I mean because she says it just so casually, as if what you didn't know was a thesilac demon and so you thought it'd be disrespectful towards, or it's one of your shock that anyone would have if Cordelia just suddenly walked up A woman that yes, she's getting better at knowing demons, but that's an obscure piece of knowledge to have. And what I like was that, while he's still staring for a second, she then slightly smiles and she reveals it's Angel on the phone. Well, angel told her what the demon was and she was just doing just the mess with Wesley.
Speaker 2:Well, angel was talking to Wesley on the phone and he concludes that the demon had taken over the hotel before it was finished, even being built.
Speaker 2:And Angel fears that it's still there in the hotel and he calls for, tells them to go, get gone and come down to help him fight it.
Speaker 2:After they raise the demon, and when Wesley says, well, I'll probably have to go and research how to raise the demon, angel says no, sorry, I already did that research.
Speaker 2:And we find out how he had done the research, because he goes back to the 1950s and he's visiting a bookseller named Denver and Angel's asking for books on demons and exorcisms and the bookseller then pauses into Angel's hands the Bible, which burns his hands and, as he vamps out, slightly dropping the Bible and this is the first time, as a note in either Buffy or Angel, that we see that the Bible has the same effect across has on them in terms of burning them, and so it's just as harmful to them, which makes sense, holy book. Well, angel vans out and prays to bite Denver, unless he helps out, and it then cuts back to the hotel and the bell hop then tells the concierge that he had to make the man fit into the freezer, not so subtly, implying that essentially he had to chop the guy up, which would explain later why the cops, upon finding the body, suspected murder, even if it had just been a body, left in the hotel room yeah suicide, getting shot to the head and all that, but a chopped up body?
Speaker 2:No, even if they determined he didn't kill the man, just the fact they chopped up the body is still a federal crime. Well, meanwhile, out in the lobby, the guests are beginning to turn on each other even more, accusing each other of killing the man, and the writer accuses the actor of being scared that his homosexual affair would be revealed, and the actor counter accuses the white writer of being a communist, once again displaying back into the McCarthy. Here, as I said, on Hollywood, people were turning on each other like Eli Kazan. Well, it cuts to a hotel room where Judy is seeing their quietly reading and she hears the whispering now as well. And it's telling her they know about you and you'll go to prison. And how long do you think someone like you could last in prison? And it's clearly having an effect on her because she starts to look very worried.
Speaker 2:Well, back at the bookshop, the bookstore owner is asking Angel how old he was when he was made and he's guessing that he was just a little over 30.
Speaker 2:And cute thing is Angel's offended by that and says no, which one could understand that, because at the time this episode was filled, boreanus was 31.
Speaker 2:So to make it sound so for the bookseller to act like he's so much older and 30, they would have probably taken the same offense. Well, angel is still, is talking to the bookseller asking to kill the Thess like demon, and the seller says is extremely tough and can only be done with corporeal. And it will only become corporeal after it feeds or it's raised, and to raise it they'll need an orb of Ramjoran, sorry, ramjoran. And he offers to sell it. But then Angel just quite says no, free. Angel says he's not seeing it in some of it a mean way, but just you're giving it to me free. And the guy very wisely agrees to that, along with secret herbs and other items, including acts, though he does mention that it might be better to have a lightning strike or, as he says, a finger of God type of thing. Well, as he packs it up, he still amazed that Angel is willing to help these people, which Angel does agree with.
Speaker 1:The vampire wanting to slay a demon in order to help some grubby humans. They just don't get it. To be honest, I'm not sure I do either.
Speaker 2:Which makes sense because, based on how Angel is in this episode, it's very clear this might be the very first time he ever helped any humans out, because what he and Prashite get is the fact that since he got re-ensold and he got over the sheer shock of that, he probably went into a form of hiding and just keeping away from the world and especially, as we saw in the previous episode, when humans were turning on him, scared of him, even though he wasn't going to hurt them, that would explain why he was trying to cut off all contact with them. Well, one last note here about Denver. The book's origins is a nice piece of continuity. He will make a re-appearance later on in the episode reprise, but now as an old man in the presence of this continuing there of the character. Well, it cuts back to the hotel and the concierge is also turning on the guests and starting to accuse them as well, and he says that the actress asked him for where she could purchase a gun. She says it was for protection, but he says it's because she's a prostitute and the bellhop reminds them that it was suicide. And when the concierge turns on him, the bellhop immediately then accuses the actress. Well, at that moment. The PI then walks in and he says he's looking for Judy and, as I mentioned, he now has tape on his nose which is an obvious reference to Chinatown and in fact he's even wearing an outfit similar to Nicholson's character movie.
Speaker 2:Right after this scene, angel then sneaks back into the hotel with the bag of items and he mysteriously finds the lobby empty, even though this is in the 1950s. And of all the transitions, this is the smoothest one. Yet I have to give them credit for how well done this was. It's done essentially in three shots. Shot one 1952 Angel is looking around the lobby with the sound of a door being shut and he turns. Shot two we now see in the present day his team walking into the lobby from the main entrance, hence the door shutting. Shot three Angel in the present in the exact same position. As I said, just that is their smoothest transition yet in the episode Well, the game starts the ritual and Wesley does the chanting while Cordelia sprinkles herbs and gun pulls out the supplies.
Speaker 2:Angel, sorry, wesley calls for the orb and Gunn snaps at him, saying well, you should at least say please. And then tosses him. The orb, lobs it and Wesley warns him that it's fragile. And, as I mentioned, beginning nice QBiff, here is Angel against the paranoia from the Thess, like demon working on Gunn and Wesley, and Cordelia then points out that no, they were this way all the way over, it was a paranoia, it was just sibling sniping at each other. Well, wesley then keeps with the chanting and the demon does begin to manifest in a nicely cool effect of waiver in the entrance way.
Speaker 2:Well, it cuts back to 1952 and Angel goes upstairs and sees the guests in front of Judy's room and they are now all accusing Judy of hiding stuff from them and her killing the salesman. Angel walks over concern, drops the bag and he starts to run towards her when Judy sees him, but instead of running to him for help, she instead accuses Angel of doing it, saying that he's a monster. The group then looks in the bag and they see the acts that the books already given him and other items as well, and they turn on Angel, knocking him down and unconscious and while like this is a disorienting scene because we see the mom turning on him becoming uglier by the second and the nice shot and the final shot of that act is a blurry shot of Angel looking helplessly at Judy, who just looks on in paranoia as she also becomes blurry as he passes out. Well, the lynch mob now drags the unconscious Angel through the hotel and they set up a news from the balcony over the lobby and Judy watches on concern but not doing a darn thing to stop it because most likely thinking well, if I try to stop it, they'll just turn back on me like they did before. Well, they push him over as he hangs and goes silent and the crowd goes silent as it appears that he dies. Just once again, note the fact that none of them know he's a vampire. So this isn't like the judgement thing where I criticize them for saying you do realize that wouldn't kill him, right, and this case is understandable, why the crowd wouldn't realize why you wouldn't die from hanging. And the bellhop, though, in this mob is the only one who is still vocal and in fact he's getting into it big time now by screaming yeah, swing free, you had it coming, because it's sadly, you would hear, at lynch mobs there's things like this at this, before and since. Well, they disperse silently, ashamed of what they did, because they realized they just killed a innocent man and, in their mind, too late to do it now, but after they leave Angel because, as we as the audience know, this wouldn't kill him anyways.
Speaker 2:Angel then comes to, he does get himself out of the news and he falls to the ground and at that moment the same shimmering appears behind him as the Thessalic demon becomes quarrel and the demon, as a note, is played by Tony Amidola, who plays the Thessalic. The demon speaks with a thick southern accent and that was Amidola's idea to give him that southern accent, because he said that it tied in with the Thessalic's theme of exploiting fear and bigotry which sadly, especially in the 1950s, was an element of the south. And with that he more was introduces himself to Angel and he further explains that he singled out in Judy as the tastiest of all because he said the reason why Angel, in his actions and helping her, restored her faith in mankind, only to be proven wrong. And the demon explains the fact that because of what happened, she will never trust anyone, ever again, thanks to Angel. So now he asks Angel for help and Angel now better because he tried to help people. They turn on him and in fact he just made things worse for Judy because, as the Thessalic demon said, you just made it so that I can feed off of her for the rest of her life, because she'll never trust anyone. And also, being off a bit of his paranoia is fear of mankind. Just very coldly says to the demon take them all. And the music in this scene is wonderful, great music. A lot becomes a little bit louder and all consuming as we see the coldness, the paranoia and the hateful Angel it's. He just walks out of there, turning his back on all of them, knowing the fact that he's just condemned them all to turn on each other.
Speaker 2:Well, now it cuts to the present day and the demon is corporeal again, but this time it's not because he fed, so he's screaming in agony. After being raised, he recognizes Angel and he addresses him and he thinks him for bringing him another meal, looking around at at the gang and says, ah people, full paranoia. And the cute thing is he singles out Wesley, which for being the most paranoid of all, which actually is a self-fulfilling thing, because now Wesley becomes paranoid and he implies that he has, and the demon mentions the fact that he implies that he hasn't left because he has been able to keep feeding, thereby making it clear the hotel is not as empty, as Angel thinks it is. Well, angel again fight it, and it doesn't take him some very quick fight because Angel, thinking of the lightning bolt, had rigged up the power box in the lobby and he grabs one of its tentacles and shoves it into the electrical box and electrocutes the lightning bolt, the power, the finger of God that Denver would front. Well, that does indeed kill the demon. And afterwards Wesley's reaction is still filled with paranoia by commenting did he mean especially that one?
Speaker 2:Well, angel, realizing there is still somebody in the hotel and suspecting who it was, immediately heads upstairs and he goes into Judy's room and he finds a much older version of her, sitting alone in the hotel there. And she explains that she has been haunted by the whisperings of the demon for the past 50 years. Which one could imagine, that hell of all that paranoia, all that fear and assuming her for a half for her entire adult life. And she looks at Angel and then come and say it looks the same and his response, very quietly, is I'm not. And she says further that she's been full of regret because she blames herself for the crowd kill him. She doesn't realize that he had survived the hanging, obviously, and she, because of the fear and paranoia. She has not left the room for the entire time because she was afraid of what was on the other side of the door, which is a fear a lot of people have. And Angel sure, sir, that she can go out now because she is safe.
Speaker 2:And as she gets up, it's much older woman says she just needs a little rest and Angel quietly helps her to her bed and she apologizes again for killing him and, unlike before, where she asked about forgiveness and he had no idea what it was, he immediately forgives her and, as I said, this is such a beautiful shot because there's a look of pure kindness in his eyes, as he is as full of regret as she is, because he realizes that since he refused to fight the demon 50 years ago, he had essence film Judy, as much as she thought she killed him because he condemned her not just a crowd, but her, a woman who truly did not deserve it to this life in hotel. So he is the reason she was trapped here. And well, anyways, she comments that she's just gonna rest just for a minute and you can see that she's so much more at peace right now. And she even comments that the voices are gone and then she closes her eyes and she passes away, which, but in this case is not really sad because when she was in her 70s, but also because of the fact that she is now finally at peace. And this is one of the most gentlest, saddest but most beautiful done scenes in the entire series, because in the episode both actors almost whisper their words, very quiet, and the music is also very quiet, so you have to pay very close attention. Bringing the audience into the scene and the message it sends is wonderful, which is the fact that forgiveness can and shouldn't always be given and not allow the past to consume you. You cannot allow what happened years or decades ago to haunt you for the rest of your life and that guilt and paranoia can't eat away at a person and that it can consume at a person's entire life, making one full of regret of what if I had done this, what if I had not done that At some point? Need to learn to get up and leave the room and not be afraid of what's on the other side of the door and, as I said, to forgive others. And, as I said, beautiful message for the episode to set.
Speaker 2:Well, it cuts back to Team AI sitting in the lobby and now Wesley is still going on about the demon signaling him out as the most paranoid, with the great line of. I've been accusing pretty many things of my time, but paranoid has never been one of them. Most people have been seeing it behind my back, which once they were credited to elect for signing that, for selling that line. But now Angel comes walking down the steps and he's much more at peace now than he was at any point in the episode Because he's managed to get past that big regret involving the hotel, involving Judy, because you can imagine the past 50 years that's partly been eating away at him. But anyways, cordelia is very happy to be free of the place because she comments, as a nice fallback to the beginning of the episode, that the place gives her the heebie-gees. But then he says you know he wants to move in.
Speaker 2:Wesley comments Angel, surely you more than anyone must appreciate how, for the better part of the last century, this place has been hosted not only to the muffled and demonic descent but the very worst faces of humanity. This is a house of evil. Angel at peace, says not anymore. And as the camera's blowing away, cute final lines of Wesley talking to him for himself. Angel, you don't frighten me at especially paranoid, do you Not? Especially Hell, thank God, I was worried, which I like, the not especially. And the episode ends. So now for our favorite kills and lines, where I discuss the kills that happened in the episode, as well as also some of my favorite lines.
Speaker 1:The order of Taraka. I mean, isn't that overkill? No, I think it's just enough kill.
Speaker 2:Well, for the kills, this one only had three gets total the Thessalic demon and I'm going to give Angel the credit for it because he's the one who did the actual killing of it by putting the technical into the electrical box. But also 200 deaths were the salesman who died by suicide and also Judy, who died of natural causes. So that gives us a kill total so far in this series of 41 and a half for Angel, still one half for Wesley, two for Gunn, 61 for others, and so taking us up to a total of 105 deaths that occur in this episode. And my pick for the favorite kill out of the three of them it's not hard to guess which one, because the Thessalic demon there was nothing much to it Pick up the technical, electrocuted it dead. I mean nothing bad about it, but it's nothing notable and it's hard for me to really see a salesman blowing his brains out in an empty room is the death of the episode. So obviously it's Judy dying of natural causes and in this case it's not much for how she died, she died of natural causes. It's for the reasons I stated before, just the entire scene and how beautifully it was handled and the fact that it allowed her character to go out in peace after five years of ugliness and paranoia.
Speaker 2:Well, for the favorite line, the one I would have to go with out of all of them, is the Thessalic demons intro, the one where, basically, him introduce himself how fear and paranoia he can feed off that and gives right back to them. Because the reason why I picked that line? Because, even though there are other lines that are simpler and beautiful, such as like Angel's line forgiving her, or him say I'm not when she says you haven't changed, and or his line at the end, when it responds to Wesley about the fact that this is a place of evil and he says not anymore, thereby acknowledging itself that he's not the way he was in the 50s, that he's not full of that evil anymore. So things have changed. But in this case I have to go with the Thessalic demons line. And the reason why? Because, as I've mentioned many times, the overall theme of this episode is paranoia, fear, bigotry. Because all of that plays into this one. There's the bigotry involving her passing, the fact that she was fired and her marriage ended when they found out she was irrational, the actor having to hide his back, having to hide the fact that he was a homosexual. You know so in the family at the beginning, not being allowed to stay there because they're black. So the victory occurs throughout the entire episode, but then also the fear and the paranoia, as I've mentioned many times, and as the Thessalic demon represents.
Speaker 2:It's the fact that, as I've mentioned before, is the fact that fear and bigotry is a self-perpetuating ignorance. Because if all we expect is the worst in people, then guess what? That's what we're going to find. And as we find the worst in people, it will further justify our hatred and fear. And because, for example, if I expect all black people to be muggers, rapists, whatever, then every time I read an article about a black person mugging or raping somebody, they'll say see, that proved my point. That's all they are. So it's self-petuating. I have this stereotype. I only look for the bad articles. I don't see, you know, anything that contradicts it. And when I see the bad articles, it feeds into my fear and bigotry even more and it becomes very tough to break this cycle.
Speaker 2:And the best line, in regards to the ignorance that surrounds bigotry especially, is from comedian Dennis Miller, who commented one time. Now, personally, I am baffled by the concept of racial prejudice. Why hate someone based on the color of their skin when, if you take the time, get to know them as a human being, you can find so many other things to hate them for, which is a funny line but also says very clearly it's what they hate a person because of them being a jerk, like the PI was a jerk, so it's easy to dislike him. But the hate a person for the color of their skin is just stupid. And also the other thing I want to draw attention to with the theme of the episode that the Cessalite Game and Play is on is group thing, where it makes it easier to stay with a group and adopt their fear.
Speaker 2:Now I mentioned in one of the influences on this episode was the classic Twilight Zone episode, the Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, where Rod Serling commented that he was influenced by the House of American Activities Committee and PUAC and that wasn't a basis for why he did this episode to show how easily we can turn on each other, and in fact the closing narration for that episode speaks of it very clearly. And at the end of the episode we hear Serling saying the tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions that fall out. Their weapons are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat as they fall out all of its own. And that's not the case for the children and the children yet unborn, and the pity of it is that these things cannot be found to the Twilight Zone Now.
Speaker 2:The episode was remade in 2003 in the revival of the series, and it covered a lot of the same grounds. Now, in this case, the resolution of the episode was different. Instead of it being aliens using our prejudices and fears against us we're not really doing an experiment but still same concept, neighborhood block, turn on each other very quickly and start accusing each other, and the narration also made it very clear In the 2003 update. The closing narration is it isn't enough for a sole voice of reason to exist In this type of uncertainty. We are so sure that villains work around every corner that we will create them ourselves if we can find them. In the case of a person who is vigilant, it's also fear that tears us apart, a fear that sadly exists only too often outside the Twilight Zone and, as I said, this was the entire basis of the McCarthy era that people are so desperate to avoid prosecution that they will throw their own friends under the bus, and the lesson of this episode is we cannot be consumed by that. Well, that's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 2:In the next show I will discuss the following episode. I will continue my retrospective, with Angel having very erotic dreams about a certain blonde from his past, while Cordelia takes it upon herself to protect the man who is proven he can more than take care of himself. So join me as I discuss how fashionable Angel looked in his Pink Ranger motorcycle helmet. So join me, steven, for the next episode of Wolfram and Cast. If you wish to reach out to me with any questions or comments, you can reach me on Facebook, instagram or Twitter, at Wolframcast, or email me at wolframcast at gmailcom. Feel free to write to me and I might read your comments or emails on the air. Please leave me a rating and review and be sure to press subscribe on iTunes, spotify, wherever you get your podcast entertainment. But for now, Thank you.
