Angel had been a soulless, immortal vampire who was legendary for his evil acts until a band of wronged Romani punished him in the 19th century by restoring his soul, which overwhelmed him with guilt over his past actions.
Acting on Doyle's first tip, Angel encounters Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), who has moved to L.A. from Sunnydale (where Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes place) to pursue a film career.
One of the frightened girls, Janice, bleeding from a minor head wound, tries to thank him, but Angel, fixated on the blood, warns them harshly to get away from him and strides down the dark alley.
Tina accuses Angel of being employed by someone named Russell Winters, but he convinces her to accept his offer of a lift to the "fabulous Hollywood party" she plans to attend.
Meanwhile, in her dingy apartment, Cordelia hangs up her one dress and nibbles snacks she stole from the party because she could not afford food while listening to her talent agent's discouraging phone message.
Later that day at his heavily guarded mansion, Russell meets with a young lawyer from the evil law firm of Wolfram & Hart to discuss his airtight (fictitious) alibi in the matter of Tina's demise.
After a servant ushers her into Russell's den, Cordelia spills the story of her life to her host - until she notices the unusually heavy drapes and lack of mirrors and concludes aloud that Winters is a vampire.
As Angel departs, the lawyer uses his cell phone to report to his firm that, although the "Senior Partners" need not be disturbed by the news of the death of their client just yet, there seems to be a "new player in town".
"[2] A similar scene occurs in flashback in Season Four, where Angelus reveals this caused Angel to revert to the pathetic state he is in when Whistler encounters him eating rats in 1996.
In his essay on music as a narrative agent, Matthew Mills points out how the theme used for the character of Angel is used multiple times in this episode, at different tempos and by different instruments.
When Angel finally accepts Doyle's challenge at the end of the episode, his theme plays with a "brief respite from minor tonality" to underscore his newfound determination.
The novel City of was published in 1999 and translated into French (La Cité des Anges), German (Stadt der Träume) and Brazilian Portuguese (Bem-Vindo a Los Angeles).