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City of

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Angel
Season 1, Episode 1
Air date October 5, 1999
Written by Joss Whedon
David Greenwalt
Directed by Joss Whedon
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City of is the series premiere of the television show Angel.

Angel has moved to Los Angeles to fight evil. He is visited by Doyle, who is a half-human, half-Brachen Demon. Doyle tells Angel that he has visions from the Powers That Be ("The PTBs") of people who are in danger. The Powers sent him as a messenger to ask Angel to investigate these visions.

On his first investigation, Angel bumps into Cordelia, who has also moved to L.A. to escape Sunnydale and become an actress.

While at a party, Cordelia catches the attention of a man who later promises her a job as a model/actress but turns out to be a vampire. Angel comes to the rescue and after that Cordelia comes up with the idea that she, Angel, and Doyle should start up a detective agency, investigating supernatural and demonic problems.

"City Of" was one of the pilot episodes of several popular WB series (along with Felicity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek) that were featured in The WB's farewell broadcast on September 17, 2006.

Contents

Synopsis

Angel slumps at the bar of a dive in downtown Los Angeles, growing maudlin about an unnamed girl, when he notices three guys leave the bar with two girls. Sliding seamlessly from blithering to dangerous, Angel unobtrusively follows them out. In the dark alley, Angel dusts the guys, revealed to be vampires. The frightened girls, one of whom is bleeding from a minor head wound, try to thank their rescuer, but Angel warns them harshly to get away from him, and strides down the dark alley.

Doyle

Angel makes his way to his new home, a basement apartment beneath a ground floor office, where he finds Doyle waiting for him. Doyle introduces himself, explaining he's half human, half demon, then recaps the story of Angel's life, ending with his recent, painful breakup with the Slayer and his subsequent move to L.A.. Doyle explains that Angel's isolation, combined with the fact that he recently drank human blood, puts him at serious risk of relapse. Doyle gets visions from The Powers That Be (accompanied by debilitating headaches) regarding people whose lives Angel must touch; true redemption lies not just in saving lives, but in saving souls as well. Doyle concludes by handing over a scrap of paper on which he's jotted info about a young woman named Tina. When Angel asks why Tina needs him, Doyle replies that getting involved in her life enough to figure that out is Angel's first order of business.

Angel finds Tina during her shift and manages to persuade her to meet him after work. Waiting by his car, Angel is surprised to see her in elegant evening dress, and even more surprised when she pulls pepper spray from her purse. Tina accuses Angel of being employed by someone named Russell, but he slowly convinces her to accept his offer of a lift to the "fabulous Hollywood party" she plans to attend. When they arrive, Angel runs into Cordelia Chase, whom he last saw at her graduation ceremony at Sunnydale High some months earlier. Tina returns to Angel saying a man named Stacy was hassling her, and that she's ready to leave. On their way into the parking garage, Angel fights off Stacy and his goons.

Meanwhile, in her dingy apartment, Cordelia hangs up her one dress and nibbles purloined canapes while listening to her talent agent's discouraging phone message. After Tina falls asleep, Angel spends the night on the public library's computers, searching for information about Tina's friend Denise, who disappeared after becoming involved with Russell. The next morning, Angel tells Tina he believes her friend Denise was murdered. As she listens, Tina suddenly spots Doyle's note listing her name and workplace, and, convinced afresh that Angel has been running some scam for Russell, panics and runs. Angel tries to grab her at the building's entrance, but sunlight burns his hand, causing him to vamp reflexively. In stark terror, Tina flees.

Russell finds Tina when she returns to her apartment to pack. She allows herself to be drawn into his arms; Russell vamps and bites her. Angel races to the rescue, only to find Tina beyond his help, marks of vampire predation livid on her throat. Russell meets with a young lawyer from Wolfram & Hart, Lindsey McDonald, to discuss his airtight (if fictitious) alibi in the matter of Tina's unfortunate demise, and orders the lawyer to bring him Cordelia, whom he has selected as his next victim.

Angel tracks down Stacy and interrogates him until he reveals Winters' location, then persuades a reluctant Doyle to help him avenge Tina's death. Excited by her limo ride to meet the Russell Winters, Cordelia is impressed by his ornate mansion. After the butler ushers her into Russell's den, Cordelia promptly spills the story of her life to her seemingly sympathetic host - until she notices the unusually heavy drapes and lack of mirrors, and concludes aloud that Winters is a vampire. Winters vamps and reaches for Cordelia, who pivots toward the door. Angel has scaled the wall at Winters' estate, and blown out a junction box, causing the lights to go out just as Russell captures Cordelia at the top of the stairs. Shielding Cordelia with his body, Angel takes several bullets from Winters' guards as he picks her up and jumps over the rail to land in the foyer below. Evading more gunfire, they stagger out to the convertible and Doyle squeals them all away. At the apartment, Doyle extracts bullets from Angel's torso while Cordelia dresses the wounds.

The next day, Angel stalks into a top floor conference room at Russell Winters Enterprises, where Winters is conducting a meeting with Lindsey and other reps from Wolfram & Hart. Not impressed by Winters' claim that he can do whatever he wants in L.A., Angel asks the CEO if he can fly, then forcefully kicks his executive chair through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Exposed to direct sunlight, a screaming Winters bursts into flame and disintegrates to dust in mid-air. The chair, scorched and empty, smashes to the sidewalk below. As Angel calmly departs, Lindsey uses his cell phone to report that, although the Senior Partners needn't be disturbed just yet, there seems to be a "new player in town."

Back at home, Angel despondently calls Buffy, but when he hears her voice, hangs up without speaking. Later, Cordelia proposes that the three of get a sign out front and go into the business of saving souls as a team—at least until her "inevitable stardom" materializes. Doyle observes many people in L.A. need help and asks Angel if he's game. Angel stands alone atop a skyscraper, looking out over the bustling L.A. nightscape, and responds, "I'm game."

Cast

Starring

Guest Starring

Co Starring

Trivia

  • The vampire prosthetics (excepting Angel's) were a newly-created prototype design for this episode, as the production team wanted to try a darker, scarier look. However, they were unhappy with the effect, and soon returned to Buffy-style vamp-faces.
  • In the original script, the scene in which Angel finds Tina's dead body ends with him cradling her, then licking her blood from his fingers. Although creator Joss Whedon claims that moment was the point of the episode, as it shows how Angel is struggling in his goal of redemption, it was ultimately cut. "It was dark enough that he didn’t save this girl," says supervising producer Tim Minear. "I don’t think you needed him licking her dead body."
  • Christian Kane, who plays the unnamed lawyer later known as Lindsey McDonald, was close friends with David Boreanaz before joining the cast of Angel. "It was the first time David and me ever got to act together and there was just a chemistry," Kane recalls. "He was a badass and I was trying to be a badass and that right there was just a defining moment. You could tell the tension but you could also see the easiness of how we just flowed into each other. It's very easy to act with Boreanaz and I think he feels the same with me."
  • Batcave: Doyle's comment refers to Batman's secret hideout beneath the mansion of his alter ego, Bruce Wayne. This pilot episode in particular makes many allusions to the fictional hero, Batman, who uses gadgets and frequents the tops of tall buildings as he fights against dark forces operating in his own alpha world city, Gotham.
  • Billy Dee: When Doyle grows parched from all his "yakking" about Angel's history, he cajoles his audience into going out to purchase the alcoholic beverage known as Colt 45, obliquely referring to its popular ad campaign featuring Billy Dee Williams of Star Wars fame. This could conceivably constitute one of the numerous Star Wars allusions reputed to populate the Buffyverse.
  • Missoula: Tina tells Angel a lot about herself by mentioning she hails from the second-largest city in Montana. With a population more than 50 times less dense than L.A., Tina's hometown is much farther away culturally than geographically from the second-largest city in the U.S. An innocent country girl at heart, Tina prefigures all the victims Angel hopes to save, but she herself is unable to survive in the wilds of L.A.
  • The Depression: Angel tells Tina a lot about himself by mentioning he passed through Missoula more than 60 years earlier, but, fortunately for him, she has no idea that he's speaking literally.
  • Vikings: Doyle tries to bow out of Angel's assault on Winters' mansion because he has some "fairly large coin" riding on that night's pro football game. Angel disregards Doyle's protests, but uses that datum—that the Vikings are playing—to lull the guard at Winters' gate with false camaraderie. Angel plays the mook again in Sense & Sensitivity.
  • Vietnam War: When he tells Doyle he's been in 14 wars, Angel doesn't count Vietnam because the U.S. "never declared it."
  • Josh Holloway and Tracy Middendorf both appear in this episode. On the TV show Lost, Holloway plays regular character Sawyer, where Middendorf played Bonnie in the final 3 episodes of Season 3. Daniel Dae Kim (Gavin), Sam Anderson (Holland), Marc Vann (Dr Sparrow), all appeared in Angel as members of Wolfram & Hart later on in the series, and also went on to portray characters on Lost (Kim and Anderson playing regulars and Vann currently playing a recurring character, again a Doctor)


Continuity

  • When Angel asks Doyle, "Why me?", Doyle's reply—that the "balance sheet" isn't exactly in Angel's favor—thumbnails the main theme for the entire series. When Angel next asks, "Why you?", Doyle replies, "Well, we've all got something to atone for." Angel follows up on this lead-in to Doyle's history in "Rm w/a Vu", and Doyle makes good on his promise to open up in "Bachelor Party" and "Hero".
  • Meeting up with Cordelia at Margo's party, Angel explains that "there's not actually a cure" for vampirism. In fact, before the year is out he discovers that there exist at least two cures, a Mohra demon's Blood of Eternity ("I Will Remember You) and a summoning ritual recorded in the scrolls of Aberjian (To Shanshu in L.A.). Cordelia herself, in varying states of consciousness and corporeality, is an integral part of Angel's life for the rest of the series.
  • This is our first introduction to Wolfram & Hart, the powerful law firm (fronting for its Senior Partners) that becomes Angel's primary opponent. Though not named until "Five by Five", Lindsey McDonald is the "smart young lawyer" who provides legal and business representation for Russell Winters. In future episodes and seasons, Lindsey becomes one of Angel's most insidious rivals.
  • This episode contains the first mention of The Powers That Be.
  • Crossover with Buffy: At the end of this episode, Angel phones Buffy but hangs up as soon as she answers. Buffy's side of the call is shown in "The Freshman", which aired immediately before this Angel episode.
  • Doyle is the second of three demon guides sent to Angel by The Powers That Be. The first is Whistler, in season two of Buffy ("Becoming, Part One"), who sets Angel irrevocably on the path to his destiny. The third is Lorne (initially known only as The Host), who takes the place of The Oracles beginning in season two of Angel.


Music

  • Christophe Beck - "I'm Game"
  • Gus Gus - "Ladyshave"
  • Gus Gus - "Teenage Sensation"
  • Howie Beck - "Maybe I Belong"
  • Wellwater Conspiracy - "Right Of Left Field"
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