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Carpe Noctem

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↳ Note: This article is about the episode. For the comic story, see Carpe Noctem (comic).

"Carpe Noctem" is the fourth episode of the third season of Angel and the forty-eighth episode in the series. Written by Scott Murphy and directed by James A. Contner, it was originally broadcast on October 15, 2001, on The WB network.

Synopsis[]

An old man casts a body-switching spell on Angel, and the old man enjoys the many pleasures of being eternally young, handsome and bloodthirsty in Los Angeles while a dying Angel tries to get his body back.[1]

Summary[]

While the Angel Investigations team hangs out in the lobby of the Hyperion, Angel gets excited about a Charlton Heston double feature at the Nuart Theater. No one wants to go but Fred, so she and Angel decide to go to what Fred thinks is a date.

Elsewhere, a musclebound man had sex with two women; he has tired them both out but he's still raring to go. Suddenly, he says time has run out and recites a spell. A glowing force leaves his body, and his skin folds in on itself and collapses on the ground.

Cordelia tells Angel to straighten Fred out about their relationship and reminds Angel that he's a "eunuch," much to his annoyance. Angel goes to talk to Fred, but stalls by pointing out to everyone an article pertaining to a young man found dead in an expensive hotel room in such a condition that it looked like his insides had collapsed. Wesley recalls a similar case the previous week, so the team decide to investigate the matter. They find that several men over the last few months have died in a similar matter, but the only connection between them is that they were all members of the same health club. Angel and Cordelia leave to check out the gym, while Wesley and Gunn go after other leads.

At the Wolfram & Hart offices, Lilah and Gavin discuss scenarios for attacking Angel on various legal fronts. Lilah tells her assistant to look up the contact information for a graphics artist and forger, named Carter Williams.

In Inertia Fitness Club, Angel manages to get a look at the files of the dead men after questioning a member of staff about their stance on steroid abuse. Cordelia gets distracted interviewing the handsome men exercising there. Angel finds that the only connection between the three men is that they all took the same exercise class. While looking into the class, Angel spots someone in the retirement home across the road using binoculars to spy on the room.

Angel goes to investigate Monserrat Retirement Community, where he meets an old man named Marcus Roscoe. He realizes that the old man is practicing some magic to switch bodies, but, when the man starts to recite a spell to use on Angel, Angel contemptuously starts to tell him it won't work. However, Angel abruptly finds himself in the body of the old man, and Marcus now has Angel's body. He knocks Angel unconscious and leaves.

On the street outside, Marcus thinks Cordelia is trying to pick him up when she tells him to get in her car, but he realizes that she works for his agency. When they get to the Hyperion, 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, Fred is Wesley's name, and that he is Angel's lover. When he realizes Fred is a woman, he starts romancing her and invites her to dress up and go "out on the town," delighting Fred.

After everyone leaves to continue the investigation, Marcus starts shredding the file of information on the health club deaths. Meanwhile, the real Angel uses the nurse's phone to call the Hyperion, but Marcus answers, gloats, and hangs up. 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, with the help of the forger she contacted, Lilah straightens everything out with the housing authorities for Angel (and foils Gavin's plans of threatening Angel with code violations in the process), then stops by the Hyperion to tell Angel 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. Angel vamps out and bites her neck, as Fred wanders in, ready for their night out together. Fred flees in distress, and Lilah pushes him off in a fury and threatens him. Marcus ends up confused as he feels his changed face and new teeth, and he finds he cannot see himself in a mirror.

In the retirement home, Angel has a heart attack, Marcus's fourth, foiling Angel's attempt to escape.

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 he now knows that he won't burn this body out with his carousing as he had previously with the other victims' bodies. He heads on over to the retirement community where his old body is to kill it's current occupant, Angel, and have his new body permanently.

At the hotel, Cordelia finds Fred crying in the elevator. After hearing that Angel was kissing someone, the team worry that he has lost his soul and became evil, but Wesley notices that Angel was apparently researching vampires, something he wouldn't do regardless. Remembering that all the dead men had acted out of character, the team starts to put together what has happened to Angel. Cordelia remembers separating from Angel when he went to the retirement home, and they head there.

Getting there, the team find Marcus about to kill Angel. Marcus tries to convince them that Angel is the one casting the spell, but they know better and knock Marcus out. Wesley figures out the Algurian body-switching spell and switches their bodies back. Afterwards, Angel destroys Marcus' Algurian conjuring orb, preventing Marcus from ever doing it again. As Marcus shouts at how pathetic they all are, he suffers another heart attack, and the group leaves as the orderlies arrive.

In the hotel garden, Angel begins his delayed talk with Fred, but she already knows that Angel is not free to love because Cordelia has explained the whole story, so Fred ends up being the one giving the talk. She talks 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. Angel runs inside, leaving Fred wondering who Buffy is.

Continuity[]

  • The episode features body switches, an ability previously featured in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes "This Year's Girl"/"Who Are You?".
  • This is the second episode in which Angel is called a "eunuch" and takes offense to it. The first was "Guise Will Be Guise."
  • In their investigation at the gym, Angel asks if there was any use of steroids, since the only remains of the victims are skin, and Cordelia asks if they have seen anyone "green and scaly." These are references to the episode "Go Fish," in which the Sunnydale High swim team inhaled steroids and became Gill Monsters, green and scaly creatures that leave their human skin behind.
  • The Angel Investigations calling cards featured in this episode are markedly different from the originals, featured in "Lonely Heart." While the earlier ones featured only the agency's phone number and the angel logo, the current ones sport the address of the Hyperion Hotel and a fax number, and comes in 4 versions: one with Wesley's name, one with Gunn's, one with Cordelia's (designated "Senior Associate"), and one without a name. The agency's phone number, however, is unchanged: (213) 555-0162.
  • Cordelia comes to the immediate conclusion that the woman Marcus was romancing (while in Angel's body) was a blonde (actually 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: Darla and Buffy ("Angel"). This trend is later continued by including Cordelia herself (after she gets blonde highlights) ("Tomorrow") and Nina ("Smile Time").
  • In this episode, Willow calls Angel to tell him that Buffy has been resurrected. Angel will call Buffy at the end of the Buffy episode "Flooded" to meet (off-screen) somewhere between Los Angeles and Sunnydale, and they will return to their respective homes in the following episodes, "Life Serial"/"Fredless."
  • Buffy and Angel's reunion after this episode and "Flooded" is the subject of the dubious-canon comic Reunion.

Appearances[]

Individuals[]

Organizations and titles[]

Species[]

Locations[]

Objects[]

Rituals and spells[]

Death count[]

  • Woodrow Raglan, collapsed by Marcus Roscoe's spell.

Behind the scenes[]

Production[]

  • The title is Latin for "seize the night," a play in the Latin aphorism "carpe diem," or "seize the day," from Horace's poetry collection Odes (23 BC).
  • The establishing shot for Elondria Hotel is also used for Lindsey's apartment in the episode "Reunion."
  • Marcus's incantation to body switch includes "Kimota," the word the British superhero Miracleman says to turn from his secret identity, Micky Moran, to his Marvelman form. "Kimota" is "atomic" phonetically backwards.

Broadcast[]

  • "Carpe Noctem" had an audience of 3.2 million households upon its original airing.[2]

Pop culture references[]

Music[]

International titles[]

  • Czech: "Výměna těl" (Body Swap)
  • Finnish: "Tartu hetkeen" (Seize the Day)
  • French: "Dans la peau d'Angel" (In Angel's Skin)
  • German: "Der Geist des Marcus" (The Spirit of Marcus)
  • Hungarian: "Élj az éjszakának" (Seize the Night)
  • Italian: "Carpe Noctem"
  • Portuguese (Brazil): "Carpe Noctem"
  • Russian: "Не упускай момент" (Don't Miss the Moment)
  • Spanish (Latin America): "Cambio de cuerpos" (Bodies Swap)
  • Spanish (Spain): "Carpe Noctem"
  • Turkish: "Geceyi Kaçırmamak" (Don't Miss the Night)

Gallery[]

Behind the scenes[]

References[]

  1. ↑ "angel: Carpe Noctem." TheWB.com. Archived from the original on May 17, 2004.
  2. ↑ "Nielsen Ratings for Angel's Third Season." Nielsen Ratings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, & Firefly. Archived from the original on July 5, 2008.
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