Knuckle down and concentrate because this episode of Strange Angel is packed full!
We’re back out in the desert this week in “The Mystic Circle of Young Girls”, building a new rocket testing facility in a large tent (since the team was kicked off campus the previous week for nearly blowing up some generals). Rich (Peter Mark Kendall) is on campus, picking up the last of his things, while he’s enduring a lot of ribbing. Their former facility is cleaned out already. Rich pulls out and his letters from Werner Von Braun.
Rich arrives at the new tent. Jack (Jack Reynor) describes his new vision of a new JPROL: Jack Parsons/Richard Onstead Laboratory. It’s revolutionary, Jack says. Rich says at least out there no one will see them blow themselves up.
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After the opening sequence, Jack is at the Agape Temple. He’s alone, but he has the password. He arrives before the ceremony starts and everyone is at a reception downstairs. Jack drinks some absinthe and looks for Ernest (Rupert Friend). He is introduced around. Maggie (Elena Satine) is there and she’s a little drunk on absinthe herself.
Jack wants to know what Thelema is, exactly, but Ernest says it’s better experienced than explained. A priestess leads the ceremony while she’s receiving really excellent oral sex form the priest (Greg Wise). Jack is intrigued while Maggie seems a little uncomfortable. Jack has to leave because he’s not initiated. He’s given a book to read downstairs. The book has the answers he seeks. He reads the book in the car while he listens to Winston Churchill talks about the invasion of Poland by Hitler on the radio. Upstairs, Maggie experiences a sexual encounter with another woman while and Ernest watches, and then joins in himself.
At home, Susan is also listening to the radio and she’s frantic about the European war. She wants to know where he was, and he lies.
An aside from your recapper: Jack lies a lot.
He wants sex and Susan seems willing, at least at first. Good Catholic girl that she is, Susan’s never had oral sex performed on her before but Jack asks her to trust him. She’s enjoying it to much so she makes him stop. She tells him it was disgusting. Jack leaves the room. He’s really angry. “I guess I’m disgusting.” Susan is super uptight, you guys, but Jack stopped when she said to and that’s a good thing about this show. Jack goes to the bathroom and imagines he’s pulling a crazy long hair out of his cheek.
Ernest shows up at the testing facility to document the tests on camera. Ernest follows Jack around filming him. He’s like the photographer at the wedding of Keira Knightly in Love, Actually. It makes me a little sad for Ernest, really, that he lives in a time and place where he can’t accept himself and his desires openly, so he joins a sex cult religion. Samson and Chung don’t want to dig the ditch and Rich won’t help either.
Cut to Susan at Church, where she’s clearly feeling upset during the message about the war. At dinner, they speak about the war in Europe and worry that war is coming to the USA. Her sister Patty is grounded again, for sneaking out to meet the boy from Halloween. Susan says Virgil tried to make her stop seeing Jack. Her sister says it’s not like she’s going to marry him, and Susan asks her sister if she has had sex (although Susan would never say the word “sex”, heaven forbid). Patty says she has. It feels good, why should she have to wait? Doesn’t Susan like how it feels? Susan freaks out and breaks a plate.
At his place (I presume), Rich is typing a letter to Von Braun and Jack comes in – he wants to know what’s going on. Jack understands. Rich’s worst fear – failing in front of everyone – has already come true, so what do they have to lose? Jack takes the letter Rich has written and reads it. Rich calls the rocketry frivolous in light of the coming war. Jack is super upset and tells Rich when he’s finished feeling sorry for himself, he knows where to find him.
At the Agape Temple, Jack meets with someone who came down the stairs in tears. She’s not upset – she’s been purging. He meets with the priest, who takes his photo. The priest says Jack wants to leave the world in boy, and they want to leave it in spirit. He talks about Rich’s loss of faith in the project, and the priest asks is Rich is jealous of Jack being a great man, a great leader. And, what about Susan, the priest asks. Why didn’t se come back? Jack says she was scared, but she never doubts him and always supports him. But doesn’t she make him feel guilty that he’s not meeting his obligations? And does she make him feel desired? Isn’t he sexually frustrated? Jack is angry. That’s his wife the priest is talking about.
We now see Maggie at work, adjusting everyone’s costumes. Ernest comes in and brings back the camera. Maggie sends everyone away so they can talk about the Agape Temple. She wants to clear the office. She says she is starting to understand. It’s magical. Didn’t he like it? He says it’s not about what he likes or what he wants. But she says, isn’t it? Does he still want her? He says he does. Then she wants to know how many other women he was with while they were separated. He won’t really answer, except to say that she can be as free as him to explore. She doesn’t want to – she found her true way, to be with him only. He says he’s sorry. She wants him to promise her that there’s not someone he wants more than her. He says there’s not. I don’t think she believes him.
Jack’s at the temple looking at the photos. The priest says the blurry images and weird light streaks are not a camera trick. All the settings are the same, but the process “reveals latent agitations invisible to the naked eye”. I think the priest is full of it, because these photos look like someone doesn’t know how to work camera settings, but let’s go with it for now. Jack’s photo is clear. He has a rare clarity. He’s struggling not to find his true will, but making others heed it. Rich’s faith will be restored when he can recapture the passion. But how? The priest will work on it. And he gives him a kind of amulet under the bed and it will change Susan.
Jack goes home and he puts it under the bed. He tells Susan he’s taking Rich to the Science Fantasy Society to help him reignite his passion for their project. Susan brings up the oral sex. Jack says she made her feelings clear, what’s there to talk about? He understands, and he has to go. They’ll make up for it when he gets home.
At the Science Fantasy meeting, Jack and Rich are listening to a reading. A woman shows up, and she’s the woman from the Agape Temple, Marisol. The book is about werewolves. Was the wolf always inside the man, or was he turned into one against his will?
Susan is at her toilet for Jack, and she’s masturbating. She goes to get her bible and then she finds the potion that the priest gave to Jack.
At the Sci-Fa society, Jack is getting a plate of food and confronts Marisol. She’s “following her true path”. She wants to move up, and she has to practice her craft in the world. She’s there to restore Rich’s faith. They sit down to eat. Marisol joins them, and says she’s a big fan of the author whose reading they attended. She draws Rich in by asking what they do and complimenting him. Jack interrupts them to say he’s got to go. He goes to his car but he is stopped by police or maybe miltary, asking if he’s Jack Parsons.
Back at the studio, Susan’s friend has developed the film Ernest took. She calls it a very “experimental” screen test and wants to know who the actor is. She tells Maggie there are no rockets. Maggie sees the footage and starts to get a clue. It’s kind of sad, really. I feel so sorry for Ernest and for Maggie.
Rich is walking with Marisol, talking about sci-fi authors. Jack was the hero, and Rich liked the machines. He always wanted to make an amazing machine. Marisol says it sounds like he should stick with it. Rich has never met anyone who didn’t mind him prattling on, and Marisol says she’s never met anyone quite like him, either. She catching the tram, and Rich abandons his bike to get her number.
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Cut scene to Susan lighting candles at Church. The priest comes in and asks why she’s looking so worried. She gives him the potion. Neither of them know the purpose. She tells him their neighbor is part of a strange religion and she thinks he’s going to the rituals. She lies and says she’s never been. The priest says they don’t know what they’re up against, but the bible is clear: it warns against false prophets in sheep’s clothing. Susan asks what she can do to make Jack see that. Susan should speak to Jack about her fears. She should find out everything she can, and present him with the facts about the false religion. He’s a scientist; he won’t be able to deny the facts.
Rich is located by the same car with the same officers that found Jack earlier. It’s Professor Mesulam (Rade Serbedzija); they are told the General will explain what it’s all about. They’ve already “rounded up” the rest of the team. Out at the tent, the army asks, “What do they know about Werner Von Braun?” They’ve been carrying on a correspondence since they were teenagers. Jack asks if something has happened to him.
They are shown a photograph of a rocketry test in Germany earlier that year. Von Braun is working on a missile that would hit London from Berlin for the Nazis. All of Europe is in great danger if he succeeds. They have no idea how close he is. Rich groks it immediately – they want to see the correspondence with Von Braun. Rich hands it over immediately. Rich says get rid of the letters. He’s gutted by Von Braun’s betrayal. Their hero is a Nazi. Jack says there’s a silver lining. The military could fund their project. Rich is disgusted. Everyone leaves and then Jack has a weird vision or something that he turns into a wolf.
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