Lonely Hearts (Angel)

Infobox Television episode


Title=Lonely Hearts
Series=Angel
Season=1
Episode=2
Airdate=October 12 1999
Production=1ADH02
Writer=David Fury
Director=James Contner
Guests=Elisabeth Röhm
(Kate)
Lillian Birdsell
(Sharon)
Obi Ndefo
(Bartender)
Episode list=List of "Angel" episodes
Prev=City of
Next=In the Dark

"Lonely Hearts" is the second episode of season 1 of the television show "Angel". Written by David Fury and directed by James Contner, it was originally broadcast on October 12 1999 on the WB network. In "Lonely Hearts", Angel Investigations looks into a series of killings linked to a trendy L.A. singles club. While there, Angel meets Kate Lockley, an LAPD detective also tracking the serial killer - who believes, because of circumstantial evidence, that the murderer is Angel himself. After discovering the murderer is actually a body-hopping demon, Angel seeks Kate's help in tracking down the bartender, now possessed by the demon, and killing him. Kate, believing the bartender committed the murders, accepts a provisional truce with a circumspect Angel.

Fury wrote this script to replace "Corrupt", which introduced a darker characterization of Kate Lockely.

Plot

At the office, Angel sits in the dark, alone. He blinks when the lights come on and Doyle arrives, with a Friday-night plan for the three of them to go out together. Besides trying to get Angel to break his isolation, Doyle also has a personal agenda—he wants Angel to put in a good word with Cordelia for him, without letting her know about his demon heritage. Angel is just declining to arrange a date between his coworkers, when Cordelia arrives with a box of the calling cards she had printed up for Angel Investigations. Angel, clearly at a loss, guesses the little angel drawn on them is a butterfly, while Doyle, trying futilely to impress Cordelia, guesses the graphic depicts a night-hunting owl. Just as Cordelia whaps him on the arm in mock disgust, Doyle is seized by a vision of a night club, accompanied by an impending sense of calamity. Angel goes out clubbing with Doyle and Cordelia after all.

Meanwhile at D'Oblique, the club in Doyle's vision, a young woman named Sharon sits alone at the bar, unaware she is observed by a man named Kevin. He approaches her and they move to a table to get acquainted. Lonely and desperate, Sharon and Kevin soon make a real connection and leave the club together, just after the Angel Investigations team arrives. Cordelia immediately begins to pass around Angel's business cards, until Doyle stops her, cautioning her to stay "under the radar," since some people might label Angel the "v-word." Cordelia guesses "vampire," but Doyle means "vigilante." After briefly talking with the bartender, Angel makes no progress with people near the bar until a woman named Kate asks if he's all right. Intrigued by this apparent reflection of his intentions, Angel awkwardly strikes up a conversation with Kate, who also seems unadept at the social scene. Despite a slow start, Angel and Kate find enough in common to make what they both consider to be a true connection. Across the room, a rude guy mockingly speculates that the AI calling cards give Cordelia's number for services of a more personal kind, and Doyle tries to stand up for her. When Cordelia gets indignant, and the rude guy is backed up by his rude friend, Doyle stops negotiating and wades in. Having just declined Kate's invitation to go someplace quieter (making Kate suddenly very frosty), Angel charges into the fight and thrashes both guys, before the bartender ejects them as known trouble-makers. A stylishly turned out woman, impressed by Angel's heroic actions, coyly introduces herself. Angel gamely follows her lead, trying to ascertain whether she might be the person Doyle's vision didn't show. As he banters, Angel notices Kate watching, seeming hurt and angry, and, in turn, helplessly watches her leave the club.

The next morning, after spending the night with Kevin, Sharon calmly gets dressed, unperturbed by the bloody sheets and Kevin's dead body on the bed. At the office, the team spends the day researching any past incidents connected to D'Oblique. Their search turns up a badly mutilated woman and an eviscerated man, both known to have been at the club. While Doyle and Cordelia look for more links, Angel goes back to D'Oblique to see if he can spot the killer. On his way in, Angel literally bumps into Kate, who takes umbrage when he tries to warn her of a suspiciously non-specific danger. Inside, Angel talks to the bartender and another patron and finds out that Kevin disappeared after going home with Sharon. After asking a few more questions, Angel tracks Sharon down, then runs straight to her place to try to prevent the next murder.

Angel arrives at the apartment just in time to see that Sharon is dead while Neil, the geeky guy she took home, is alive and hosting a parasitic demon. Angel and the demon fight, but it gets away just as Kate arrives and finds Angel leaving the crime scene. Pulling a gun on Angel, Kate reveals she's a detective with the LAPD, and arrests him. When Angel sees that Kate won't be convinced he's not the killer, he breaks out of her grasp and dives out the third floor window. Meanwhile, the demon goes back to D'Oblique to find another host body. As dawn approaches, Angel makes his way to Cordelia's dingy apartment, not knowing that Kate has gone to illegally search his own place. Waking Cordelia and Doyle, Angel asks them to research eviscerating burrowers—demons that move from body to body, endlessly seeking the perfect one to live in forever. They discover their burrower is vulnerable to fire. Seeking help to destroy the powerful demon, Angel calls Kate and requests a meeting, asking for five minutes to explain himself, to prove that he isn't the killer. Later that night at the club, Kate asks the bartender to notify her when Angel arrives. A few minutes later as she fends someone off, the bartender tells Kate he thinks Angel is out back but, when they get there, the bartender smashes a wine bottle into the back of Kate's head. Angel arrives just in time to keep the burrower demon from transferring to Kate's body, forcing it back inside the bartender. Though weakening, the bartender host is still strong enough to fight Angel until Kate recovers somewhat. Then, not wanting to deal with them both at once, the demon tosses Kate and Angel down into the basement and locks them in.

While the demon cruises for a fresh, undamaged body—having little luck "making a connection," given the bartender's blood-soaked shirt and peeling skin—Kate and Angel finally escape D'Oblique's basement and split up to search. Angel locates the bartender first, and again battles the demon in its bartender host, which is still strong enough to injure Angel. Still waiting for Kate to back him up, Angel barely manages to throw the demon into a nearby burn barrel before collapsing to the pavement. Ignited by the fire in the barrel, the bartender host is immediately engulfed in flames. Howling, the demon lurches purposefully toward Angel, who helplessly watches, unable to move. Circling back, Kate arrives just in time to shoot the bartender, knocking him to the ground and halting the attack on Angel. After more police and emergency services arrive on scene, Kate gets a moment alone with Angel. She admits that she never would have guessed the bartender was the killer, thanks Angel for saving her life earlier, and confesses to searching his apartment. Agreeing that the bartender had ample opportunity, Angel makes no mention of a body-hopping, parasitic demon being the real killer. Then, after thanking Kate for saving his life as well, Angel asks why she chose to tell him of her illegal search. When she says she wants the two of them to start over from the beginning, with no secrets between them, Angel pauses almost imperceptibly, then agrees.

At the office, Angel generously and very awkwardly suggests that the three of them go out together, but is deeply relieved and gratified when Cordelia and Doyle instead take pity on him and leave him to brood in the dark, alone.

Acting

Main cast

*David Boreanaz as Angel
*Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
*Glenn Quinn as Allen Francis Doyle

Guest stars

*Elisabeth Röhm as Kate Lockley
*Lillian Birdsell as Sharon Richler
*Obi Ndefo as Bartender

Co-stars

*Derek Hughes as Neil
*Johnny Messner as Kevin
*Jennifer Tung as Neil Pick-Up Girl
*Tracey Stone as Pretty Girl
*David Nisic as Slick Guy
*Ken Rush as Guy
*Connor Kelly as Regular

Production details

Special effects supervisor Loni Peristere explains that to get the effect of the demon burrowing through the characters' bodies, Dave Miller built a prosthetic back to identically match the actor. "We shot the actor doing his action with tracking points, little marks on his back, and I just soft edged, matted and tracked in a locked-off version of the actors back with the burrowing demon and stuck it on there," Peristere says. [Citation |url=http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts/digitalMagic3.html |title= Special FX: CoA Interviews Loni Peristere, Special FX Supervisor |first=Kristy |last= Bratton ]

David Boreanaz's stunt double, Mike Massa, says the scene in which he is tossed across the room upside down is his favorite stunt of this season. To get the effect, he was shot across the room using an air ram. "The reason I like it so much is because it really knocked the heck out of me," he says. "It was 900 pounds of thrust on the air-ram. I had to hit the corner just right. If I was off, if I hit dead center of the corner with my shoulders spread it could have broken a collarbone. I had to hit it sideways, my back flat to the wall and kind of skip into it, but it just pile drove me right to the ground." Director Jim Contner "was jumping up and down... He thought that was the best stunt he’d ever seen." [Citation |url=http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts/massa2.html |title= Mike Massa: Stunt Double for "Angel" |first=Kristy|last= Bratton ]

In an essay examining the use of cinematic effects of time on "Angel", Tammy Kinsey points out Doyle's visions are depicted on film for the first time in this episode. Although short and simple compared to later visions, the quick cuts and flashes of light establish the aesthetic approach of "Angel" compared to the more conventionally filmed "Buffy". [Citation |title= Reading Angel: The TV Spin-off With a Soul
editor=Stacey Abbott |first=Tammy A. |last=Kinsey |pages= 51 |publisher=I.B.Tauris |year= 2005 |chapter= Transitions and Time: the Cinematic Language of Angel |url=http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7B42U0hgDy0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=%22that+vision+thing%22+angel+&ots=O9BPB9gkOm&sig=unwx6wQvzSd0bjnyxU32BOchV5I#PPA51,M1]

Writing

David Fury wrote this episode to replace his original script, titled "Corrupt", which also introduces the character of Kate. However, in Fury's first script, Kate had a crack cocaine addiction and worked undercover as a prostitute. Producer Tim Minear says the episode was "a little bit too hopeless, a little too grim"; after the WB Network rejected the episode it was completely rewritten. [Citation |url=http://www.timminear.net/archives/angel/000039.html
title=ANGEL: Season One, Episode By Episode with Tim Minear |first=Edward |last=Gross |date=August 14, 2000 |accessdate=2007-09-25 ]

Arc significance

* This episode introduces the character of Kate Lockley, who plays a recurring role until the end of season two. Kate and Angel will meet several more times before she learns in "Somnambulist" that he is a vampire, after which their tentative relationship grows extremely strained until their final encounter in "Epiphany".

* The interrelated elements of Doyle's attraction to Cordelia, his attempts to hide his demon heritage from her, and her attitude about the "gift" of his visions are all established in this episode, and will all bear fruit in "Hero".

Continuity

Cordelia's rosy-tinted remark that "dating was easy in high school" is explicitly belied by events in "Lovers Walk." In fact, Buffy and her friends find dating to be one of the chief horrors they face during their three adventurous years together in Sunnydale ("Buffy", seasons one through three). Although he sidesteps Cordelia's conversational gambit and declines to expand on the topic of his curse, Angel himself found dating the Slayer traumatic in the extreme during that interval, particularly around events in "Surprise" and "Becoming, Part Two". He is still wracked by the ordeal of breaking up with Buffy ("The Prom"), then of leaving her altogether ("Graduation Day, Part Two") just a few months ago.

Cordelia remarks about Doyle's visions "If they were my gift, I'd return them". In the episode she receives them she does indeed try to lose them but when presented with the opportunity to give them up in the season 2 finale, she refuses stating that they're "a part of me".

Quotes

:Angel: What are you looking for?:Kate: Depends on how many daiquiris I've had. Oh God, way to come off like a drunken slut. "Slut's" better than "hypocrite," though, right? I'm moving up?:Angel: You're kind of hard on yourself.:Kate: Well, I'm a self-flagellating, hypocrite slut. What was your question?

Cultural references

* Batman: Doyle says to Angel, "It's not like you have a signal folks can shine in the sky whenever you need help, right?" Elsewhere in the episode, Angel pulls out a grappling hook gun and fires it over a wood beam, causing Kate to ask, "who are you?" This is a direct reference to a scene in the 1989 "Batman" film.

* Ken and Barbie: When Sharon mentions her childhood dreams, Kevin looks around at all the plastic people in the crowded noisy room and says, "Ken and Barbie had it easy. They didn't have to come to places like this."

* Peter Pan complex: Cordelia demonstrates her strange mixture of insight and obliviousness when she singles out D'Oblique patrons for her pop psychology lesson to Doyle. In fact, many people in the room could have issues with social (im)maturity and loneliness and abandonment (Angel perhaps most of all). What Cordelia doesn't seem to grasp is that people (including herself) connect with other "people", not with abstracts such as relative wealth or a model's good looks. Unlike the Talamour they're tracking, she still confuses initial attractiveness with substance.

* Naked City: When Angel asserts that he'll be able to recognize the eviscerating Talamour demon in whatever body it inhabits, Doyle quips, "That only leaves about five million suspects in The Naked City." This could be one of the clearer mission statements for the entire series, which incorporates elements of mystery, drama and noir within the context of a big city intended to function as a character in its own right. Cordelia explicitly makes the noir connection again in the first episode of season two, "Judgment".

* Cagney & Lacey: In "Somnambulist", Cordelia also refers to Kate as "Police Woman."

Music

*Adam Hamilton - "For You"
*Chainsuck - "Emily Says"
*Extreme music library -" Ballad of Amave"
*Helix - "Quango"
*Kathy Soce - "Do You Want Me"
*Mark Cherrie and Ian McKenzie (JW music library) - "Lazy Daze"
*T.H.C. - "Girlflesh"
*Ultra-Electronic - "Dissonance"
*VAST - "Touched"

Translations

* Italian title: "Cuori solitari" ("Lonely hearts")
* German title: "Einsame Herzen" ("Lonely Hearts")
* Spanish title: "Un corazón solitario" ("A lonely heart")
* French title: "Angel fait équipe" ("Angel's team")

References

External links

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ee also