Corrupt

Corrupt was originally intended as the second Angel episode, but the production was abandoned, and instead "Lonely Hearts" was written and produced

Prostitutes have been going missing for several months. When Doyle has a vision of a girl called Chrystal who may come to be linked to the girls missing in action, Angel Investigations gets on the case. Angel befriends Chrystal for $300. Cordelia goes under cover as a prostitute called 'Cookie', and Doyle protects girls who might be in danger. A cult of pimps have been worshipping T'Purok the Corruptor. The demon takes over the prostitutes and makes them commit violent murders. Kate Lockley is a drug-addicted under-cover cop, so angry with the cult that she tries to kill them. Angel saves her from committing murder and instead tracks down T'Purok for a debate about the nature of humanity.

Behind the scenes

• David Fury commented that

"And along those lines the second episode that I'd written called 'Corrupt' - it was pretty much about junkie prostitutes. Not usually what you see on the WB. And Kate, the police woman character on the show... originally was an undercover cop who was addicted to cocaine and was sleeping with men for sex, because she got a little bit too far into her undercover work. [1]

• Tim Minear said a few words about the unaired episode in an interview with Cinescape:

David Fury, who wrote this episode, had written a script called 'Corrupt' in which Kate was a police officer working undercover as a prostitute who was actually becoming a prostitute and was addicted to crack. That was originally the introduction of Kate. Obviously we were still trying to figure out what the show was at that point. This was the first episode after the pilot, and it was written before the new staff arrived. They just went incredibly dark with this thing and decided at the end of the day that it was a little bit too hopeless, a little too grim. After that episode was written it was actually being prepped when the network, too, had some concerns about it.`

It would seem that this was about the same time that the Internet ran rampant with rumors that the WB had shut down the show for retooling. `You can't really call it a shut down because we hadn't really started,` Minear clarifies. `We just pushed back the shoot date for the first episode a week or two. It's not like alarms went off and we had to pull plugs on everything. I've read on the Internet where people were saying the network freaked, and they told us to shut down, and that's not true at all. We were still creating what the idea of the show was going to be, and basically we decided to rethink that first episode. The other thing that people don't realize is that a lot of the other episodes that we've done this year were written much earlier and did not change significantly. It was really that first episode where we went back, rethought it, and we were lucky we had the luxury to do that. [2]

• Only two days before the episode went into production shooting was ordered not to start because The WB Network believed that the episode was too dark in tone. The script was largely abandoned although elements of it became "Lonely Hearts". Parts of the "Corrupt" script were also reused in later episodes.

Quotes

• Acting

CORDELIA: "So, how's tricks, fellow hookers?"

STREETWALKER #1: "Bitch, if you're living the life, I'm Julia Roberts."

Cordelia proves her bad acting skills investigating under cover, she uses her disguise to enquire what is happening on the street.

• Addiction

ANGEL: "I'm sure when you started you were immune to the temptations. At first. Then maybe to protect your cover, you indulged once, twice. No problem. Cross one line, you draw another. Cross that one, draw another. Cross that, draw another... Til it's not even you doing it anymore. It's her. Then it becomes easy. You can do anything. You can't get close to this world and not have it rub off on you."

Angel is also talking about his own desire/addiction for human blood. He had drank Buffy's blood in "Graduation Day, Part Two", and in a scene cut from "City of" had also drank the blood from a murder victim.

• Demon heritage

CORDELIA: If we have to rely on demon-boy here to get one of his visions every time we need a client, we'll be broke in a month.

DOYLE: Stop calling me "demon-boy."

In this story, Cordelia already knows about Doyle's demon heritage. In the series she would not find out for several months until the episode "Hero".

• Evil

ANGEL (to Crystal): I've run across evil before. Never once found any to be necessary.

The series would later spend years delving into the need for balance between good and evil rather than the overwhelming control of one over the other. A world without evil was proposed by Jasmine. Many of the main characters would behave in more ambiguous grey areas rather than simply fight for the cause of good.

• Humanity corrupted?

T'PUROK: You think you can make a difference? As long as there are souls -- weak, wounded, begging to be perverted - I'm everywhere and eternal. I'll be around when the last of humanity eats itself alive -- Oh, it's going to be beautiful!

Angel raises the ax over his head.

T'PUROK: (continuing; rising in pitch) Kill me?! Kill a hundred of me! You are one, where I am a THOUSAND!"

Angel swings the ax. It lands (off-camera) with the appetizing CHUNK sound of something's head being cleaved in two. He eyes the demon's corpse for a moment...

ANGEL: Nine hundred and ninety-nine to go.

Angel later has similar conversations during Season 2, for example with the paranoia demon in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been", and with Holland Manners in "Reprise".

Corrupt on Wikipedia