Are You Now or Have You Ever Been

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Are You Now or Have You Ever Been is the second episode of the second season of Angel and the twenty-fourth episode overall. Written by Tim Minear and directed by David Semel, it was originally broadcast on October 3, 2000 on the WB network.

Angel revisits the Hyperion Hotel, a place he has not been to since the 1950s.

Synopsis

Angel asks Wesley and Cordelia to look into the mysterious history of the abandoned Hyperion Hotel. A photograph of the hotel blends into an action shot of the hotel exterior during the 1950s, as the manager sends the bellhop upstairs to give the guest in 217 his weekly bill. The bellhop nervously makes his delivery then runs downstairs, as Angel - the feared occupant of 217 - opens the door. As the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings blare on a TV, Angel strolls through the lobby. He observes a man banging on a door, and the manager turning away an African-American family, telling them that - despite what their sign says - the hotel has no vacancies. Back in his room, he finds a woman pretending to be a maid. Angel calls her bluff - saying to her, it turns out ironically, that she's the wrong color to be a maid. She confesses that she's hiding from her boyfriend, the man earlier seen banging on the door. Angel seems completely indifferent to her plight, but, when he sees the gun the man has, helps her hide.

In the present, the group arrives at the deserted and decaying Hyperion. As Angel heads upstairs, Cordelia discovers that the property is a historical landmark, but it has been plagued by many strange events dating back to when it was being built. She spots Angel in a 1952 photograph of the hotel lobby, and Wesley realizes that Angel has a personal connection to the Hyperion.

In 1952, the salesman in the room next to Angel's listens to a record, talks to someone unseen, then holds a gun to his head. Angel hears a gunshot and the record skipping, and drinks his chilled glass of blood without reacting. When the manager and bellhop discover the salesman’s suicide, the manager hears a demonic voice whispering "They’ll shut you down" (because it is the third suicide at the hotel in a very short time) and instructs the bellhop not to call the police; instead they hide the body in a meat locker. That night, the guests gather at the Griffith Observatory where they discuss the suicide and wonder why the cops haven't been notified. Judy tries to thank Angel, but he is unreceptive. The next day, the guests, many of whom are screenwriters, continue to discuss the salesman, questioning if he might have been murdered. Upstairs, when Angel comments on Judy's agitation, she confesses the man banging on the door was a PI sent by a bank from which she stole money. She was fired when they found out that - although she "passes" as white - her mother is African-American. Judy laments her decision to steal, and Angel replies that “fear makes people do stupid things," then clarifies he was referring to her employers. As Angel stashes Judy's bag of money in the basement, he hears whispering and realizes something in the hotel is making people crazy.

In the present, Cordelia and Wesley find newspaper reports of the bellhop’s arrest for the salesman’s murder, and an article about Judy with the headline, “Search Called Off - Fugitive Woman Believed Dead.” It turns out the bellhop was convicted of the salesman's murder, despite it actually having been a suicide, and was executed. Down in the basement, Angel finds the bag of money and once again hears the whispering. He joins the others, announcing the hotel hosts a Thesulac demon that whispers to its victims, then feeds on their insecurities. He says he already knows the ritual to make it corporeal so that it can be killed.

In 1952, Angel returns from a bookstore, where he has learned the ritual to corporealize the demon; meanwhile, the PI reveals Judy’s secret. When the guests turn on her, she points them towards Angel, announcing that he has blood in his room. Everyone attacks Angel, except Judy, who starts to cry. Angel is dragged into the hallway by the residents; a noose is tied to a rafter and he is pushed over the railing to hang, with the bellboy one of the mob leaders. The crowd cheers, then falls silent as they realize what they’ve done. When everyone leaves, Angel lets himself drop into the lobby. On the stairs, the Thesulac demon becomes corporeal, gloating about the paranoia he just fed on; as Angel's friend, Judy's betrayal was more delicious, saying that Angel's intervention has made her "a meal that will last a lifetime". The demon says, “There's an entire hotel here just full of tortured souls that could use your help." Angel replies, “Take them all.”

In the present, Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn arrive at the Hyperion and, after performing the spell to make the Thesulac corporeal, Angel electrocutes it with the exposed wires of the fuse box. Angel heads upstairs and finds Judy, now old, still in her room, where she has served as the Demon's "room service" since 1952. She says the voices are now gone, and asks Angel if it's safe to go out. He tells her it is, but she is so tired that she needs to rest first. She then tells Angel that she is sorry she killed him and just before she passes away, he assures her he's okay and tells her he forgives her. Angel returns downstairs; “We’re moving in,” he announces. Wesley reminds Angel that evil things have happened in the hotel, but Angel tells him that all of that is in the past.

Continuity

• The flashback scenes reveal that in the 1950s, Angel bore "a contempt for humanity that is reminiscent of Angelus but without the sadism". His decision to allow the demon to feed on the hotel residents foreshadow his decision later in the season to allow Darla and Drusilla to slaughter the Wolfram & Hart lawyers. Both times Angel deems that the humans in jeopardy aren't worth saving.

Behind the Scenes

Production

• This is another episode by writer Tim Minear that explores Angel's background. "He's cynical, I-don't-get-involved guy, and I thought that was a very interesting place to be," says Minear. "Although he does reach out to help someone in the episode, it doesn't take much to push him out of that light". When fans point out the flashback scene in Buffy in which Angel is living on the streets of New York City, Minear deflects the accusation of retconning by saying, "I don't believe he was thrown out of that room in Romania by Darla in 1898 and has been on the street ever since... in the 1950s, that was the beginning of his descent into the streets."

• This episode introduces the Hyperion Hotel, which will be Angel's main set until the end of season 4. Production designer Stuart Blatt explains that after blowing up Angel's cramped office in the season one finale, he had the opportunity to create a bigger, more "film-friendly" set that the crew and cameras could move through freely. Creator Joss Whedon suggested an abandoned hotel, something similar to the hotel in Coen Brothers' Barton Fink. The exterior shots of the Hyperion are of a historical building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles called the Los Altos Hotel & Apartments, which Blatt had previously used in the episode "I Fall to Pieces". The Los Altos was home to many Hollywood celebrities — including Bette Davis, Mae West, and William Randolph Hearst — before the Great Depression, similar to the fictional history of the Hyperion featured in this episode. Blatt says the front doors of the Hyperion are "exact duplicates" of those at the Los Altos, and the back garden closely resembles the back garden in the apartments, which allows the crew to film the characters entering and exiting the building on location. "Then we cut to the interior of the hotel," Blatt says, which is on a sound stage, "and it all works fairly seamlessly".

• The nighttime scenes between Angel and Judy were filmed on location at the Griffith Park Observatory, which overlooks Los Angeles.

• The close-up of the article about Judy shows the first paragraph is about Judy, while the rest of the article contains generic sentences not specific to any event and appear to repeat.

• Tim Minear, the writer of this episode, says that he often gets asked about what Angel did with the stolen money that he recovered from its hiding place fifty years after stashing it in the hotel (since the money is never again mentioned in a subsequent episode). Minear says that as far as he is concerned, Angel did not keep the money or use it to buy the hotel - instead, Minear says that Angel sent it back to the bank in Salina, Kansas, from which Judy stole it in 1952.

• Cordelia and Westley mention that the hotel bellhop's name was Frank Gilnitz. "Gilnitz" is a name that was often used for incidental or unseen characters on "The X-Files" (1993) (usually with the first name John); it became a running joke on that show. The name was an amalgam of the names of longtime X-Files writers John Shiban, Vince Gilligan, and Frank Spotnitz. The writer of this Angel episode, Tim Minear, was a writer and story editor for "The X-Files".

Pop Culture References

• The episode's title is based on the questions posed during the trials held by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations associated with Joseph McCarthy, the most famous question being: "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Footage from one of these hearings features in the episode, and the themes now commonly associated with McCarthyism and the era (such as paranoia and fear of 'the other') are major themes in this episode.

• A man in the hotel lobby says, "Ah, come on, honey! How do you think Lana Turner got started?"

• Denver makes a reference to a "zany redhead" character (Lucy Ricardo) played by Lucille Ball.

• Angel room number (in the 1950s) was 217, the same room number used in Stephen Kings 'The Shining'. People had feeling the room is bad, similar to what the bellboy feels about room 217 in the Hyperion Hotel

Goofs, Bloopers & Continuity Errors

• The $100 bills in Judy's bag appear to be of the style introduced in 1996, with the larger Ben Franklin head design, and not the style that would have existed in 1952.

• A flashback to 1952 shows a woman who embezzled $11,000. When the money is shown, it is in the new $20 bills that weren't issued until 1996.

• Cameras in the 1950s relied on an internal mirror to work, so Angel should not have shown up in the photo taken at the hotel at that time.

• Angel's position in the old photograph is different in the close-up shot from how it appears in the shot showing the whole photograph.

• In the brief flash edit that shows the salesman after his suicide, a single frame shows two crew members.

Music

• "Hoop-Dee-Doo" - Perry Como & The Fontane Sisters

Other

• Both Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt have cited this as one of their favorite episodes.