Carpe Noctem

Carpe Noctem is episode 4 of season 3 of the television show Angel, and is the 48th episode overall. Written by Scott Murphy and directed by James A. Contner, it was originally broadcast on October 15, 2001 on the WB network.

While investigating the strange deaths of various men, who appear to have been drained of life energy, Angel finds that an old man has switched bodies with him and he is trapped in a nursing home while this old man has taken over his body but doesn't know it's the body of a vampire.

Synopsis
A musclebound man has sex with two women, and is so vigorous that he tires them both out while he's still raring to go. Suddenly, he says time has run out, and a glowing force leaves his body, and then his skin folds in on itself and collapses as if it was only a rubber suit.

While the gang hangs out in the lobby of the Hyperion, Angel gets excited about a Charleton Heston double feature at the Nuart Theater. No one wants to go but Fred, so the two go, but then Fred thinks it's a date. Cordelia tells Angel to straighten Fred out about their relationship ASAP, and reminds Angel that he's a "eunuch," much to his annoyance. Angel delays talking to Fred by pointing out to everyone an article pertaining to young dead men found in expensive hotel rooms in such a condition that it looks like their insides have collapsed. Investigation shows that all of the men belonged to the same health club, and the team goes to investigate further. Cordelia has fun interviewing handsome men at the club, while Angel spots someone in the retirement community across the road using binoculars to spy on an exercise class. He goes to investigate and meets an old man named Marcus Roscoe. He quickly realizes that the old man is practicing some magic to switch bodies, but when the man starts his spell with Angel, Angel contemptuously starts to tell him it won't work... but it does, and Angel abruptly finds himself in the body of the old man, and Marcus now has Angel's body, and also knows that Angel is a private detective investigating the deaths of the young men. He knocks Angel unconscious and leaves.

Numerous misunderstandings begin to occur as Marcus walks around as Angel. First, he thinks Cordelia is trying to pick him up when she tells him to get in her car, until he realizes that she works for his agency. When they get to the hotel, he assumes it's an actual hotel and that Cordelia has taken him there to bed him. When Gunn arrives with breakfast, he thinks Gunn is a delivery boy, and pays him, plus he eats, puzzling everyone. And when Cordelia says he needs to have a talk with Fred, he assumes Angel is gay and that Wesley is Angel's lover, so he has the talk with Wesley. When he realizes Fred is a woman, he starts romancing her and invites her "out on the town," delighting the lovelorn Fred. After everyone leaves, he starts shredding the file of information on the deaths in order to cover his tracks. Angel, meanwhile, uses the nurse's phone to call the hotel, but Marcus answers, gloats, and hangs up, and Angel gets caught and gets his phone privileges taken away. He ends up staking out the entrance, hoping to go through it when the guard has turned his back.

Meanwhile, Lilah is growing disgusted and threatened by the actions of Gavin in trying to harrass Angel with code violations. She straightens everything out with the housing authorities for Angel and then stops by the hotel to tell him about the favor she has just done him. Misunderstanding, Marcus thinks she's an errand-girl and starts to romance her. She responds to his seduction attempts and they start tearing each other's clothes off. But then Angel vamps out and bites her neck, as Fred wanders in, ready for their day out together. Fred flees in distress, and Lilah pushes him off in a fury and threatens him. He ends up confused as he feels his changed face and new teeth, and then finds he cannot see himself in a mirror.

Meanwhile, Angel has a heart attack in the nursing home, Marcus's fourth, foiling his escape attempt.

Marcus then goes out to a club to dance and pick up women. He bites another woman, and has fun beating up three men with Angel's vampire strength. He's done some research and figured out that he's in the body of a vampire, and now he won't burn the body out with his carousing as he had previously. He heads on over to the retirement community where Marcus is, in order to kill Angel in Marcus's body and have Angel's body permanently.

Back at the hotel, the team starts to put together what has happened to Angel, and they go to the retirement home and knock out Marcus as he is going in for the kill. Wesley figures out the spell and they switch the bodies back.

As the episode concludes, Angel goes to have his delayed talk with Fred, but Fred already knows that Angel is not free to love because Cordelia told her, so she ends up being the one giving the talk. She talks poignantly about the beauty and the pain involved in loving. But she is interrupted as Cordelia rushes over to tell Angel the good news--Buffy is alive! Without another word, Angel runs to the phone.

Quotes and trivia
"Kimota", part of what Marcus says to transfer bodies, is a reference to British superhero Marvelman (the word he needs to say to turn from his secret identity, Micky Moran, to his Marvelman form).
 * Cordelia comes to the immediate conclusion that the woman Marcus was romancing (while in Angel's body) was a blonde (actually it was Lilah, a brunette), and upon realizing the woman's true hair color, believes something is the matter with Angel. This brings up her belief that Angel has a preference for young blonde women, humorously referencing the running gag that Angel nearly always romances women with blonde hair. These include Buffy Summers and Darla. This trend is later continued by ironically including Cordelia herself (after she gets blonde highlights), Eve, and Nina Ash
 * The central element of the plot of this episode is very similar to the Buffy episode Who Are You. The biggest difference between the two episodes is that, while in the Buffy episode a close, former friend switches bodies with Buffy, in this episode a complete stranger switches bodies with Angel.
 * In this episode Willow calls Angel to tell him that Buffy has been resurrected.