caused an African American family to be turned away from the hotel, the racism that led to Judy's firing and rejection by family, friends, and fiancé, and the lynch mob that attacked Angel. This both captures the connection between anti-communism and racist policing, and serves as direct comment on the perpetuation of past prejudices and relevance to recent events. Set design This episode introduces the Hyperion Hotel, which becomes Angel'''s main set until season 5. 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 the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink. The exterior shots of the Hyperion are of a historic 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." Reception This episode is a fan favorite, regularly ranking as one of the top episodes of the series. Slayage calls this episode one of Angel's best: "a character study, offering insight into Angel's past." Noel Murray, writing for The A.V. Club, thought director David Semel "evokes classic retro-L.A. movies like Chinatown and Barton Fink and L.A. Confidential, but also Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray. It works as an offbeat one-off, but also expands the Angel'' mythology, by reminding the audience how long the show's hero has been around, and then giving him a new home at the end of the episode when he decides to move Angel Investigations' offices to the Hyperion." Writer Tim Minear says that, although he generally prefers the season-long story arcs to the movie-of-the-week,