![\"Andy](\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/angel_lorne.jpg\")
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Even though I watched it faithfully, I was always somewhat frustrated by the TV series Angel<\/i>. The show had some very cool ideas at the core of it — I especially liked the notion that Los Angeles is full of supernatural beings who go about their business right under the noses of we oblivious humans — but it never really seemed to find its footing, even after five seasons on the air. Sometimes it was like a detective series with monsters instead of criminals, sometimes a variant of Highlander<\/i> in its focus on immortal angst, sometimes a dark, apocalyptic fantasy about the fast-approaching end of the world, and sometimes it was a satire of all of the above. While Angel<\/i>‘s parent series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i>, was also a mish-mash of different elements and story types, Buffy<\/i> gelled into a coherent whole more often than not. By contrast, I never got a clear sense of what the spin-off was actually supposed to be<\/i>. I kept tuning in, though, because I liked the characters, the thing that keeps me coming back to a lot of shows that really aren’t all that good (and keeps me away from some, arguably, that are; in the final analysis, a big reason why I never warmed to Ron Moore’s Galactica<\/i> was the fact that I disliked his characters).<\/p>\n
Anyhow, one of Angel<\/i>‘s more memorable characters was a gent named Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan, a.k.a. Lorne, a gentle-souled, green-skinned, telepathic demon who owned a karaoke bar and could psychically “read” others when they sang. My understanding is that he was originally intended as a one-episode plot device, but, like so many other secondary characters who go on to steal a show, Lorne proved popular enough that he was brought back for an encore, then became a semi-regular and finally a full cast member with the actor’s name — Andy Hallett — in the opening credits. Andy would appear as Lorne in 76 of Angel<\/i>‘s 110 episodes.<\/p>\n
I was shocked and saddened this morning to learn that Andy Hallett died<\/a> on Sunday at the far-too-young age of 33. According to a story<\/a> on NPR, Hallett’s been suffering from congestive heart failure for five years, basically ever since Angel<\/i> wrapped production. Hallett’s entry on IMDB<\/a> indicates he appeared in only three other projects, the last of which was a voiceover job in 2005. What a damn shame… even my grandfather, who died young of heart failure and has always kind of been my personal benchmark for these things, made it to 37.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even though I watched it faithfully, I was always somewhat frustrated by the TV series Angel. The show had some very cool ideas at the core of it — I especially liked the notion that Los Angeles is full of supernatural beings who go about their business right under the noses of we oblivious humans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}