Angels in America

- Season 1

(2003)

Louis abandons a hospitalized Prior; Joe and Roy confide in each other over drinks. Later, Prior hears voices from his hospital bed while Louis solicits sex from strangers, and Joe makes a drunken confession to his mother.

Cohn is diagnosed with AIDS. He pushes Joe to take the job in Washington so he can help Cohn keep his job. Prior becomes more sick and goes to the hospital, Louis can't handle being there for him so he leaves him. Joe comes out to his mother and wife as being a homosexual.

Cohn tells Joe how he was responsible for having the Rosenbergs - an American couple suspected of being Soviet espionage agents - executed. Fantasy begins to seep into reality when, soon after, a dead Ethel Rosenberg appears to Cohn and as classic retribution, making fun of his slow death. Joe sees Louis in Central Park at night and he touches Louis' face. The Angel crashes through the ceiling and tells Prior there is work to be done.

Louis, having forsaken his dying lover, Prior, returns to his apartment with the married lawyer, Joe, in tow. Cohn's doctor admits him to the hospital. Once there, Cohn meets Nurse Norman "Belize" Arriaga - a drag queen who also happens to be Prior's good friend. Although Belize despises Cohn for his belligerence and narrow-mindedness, he educates the vitriolic Cohn about life in the hospital. Amazingly, Cohn is more upset that his hospital room telephone doesn't have a "hold" button than the fact that he has AIDS. Late at night, as Cohn demands his own supply of AZT ...

Joe's mother, Hannah Pitt, has come all the way from Utah to see her son, who revealed the truth to her in a phone call days earlier. Having gotten lost in the homeless person riddled streets of the Bronx, she finally arrives at the Mormon Visitors' Center. Louis and Joe meet again on a nearby beach. Later, Louis meets up with Prior at Washington Square Park. Meanwhile at the hospital, Cohn, who is high on morphine, has an interesting conversation with the perceptive Nurse Belize. It leaves Cohn with the belief that Belize is the Angel of Death, so he asks him what ...

A fight with Joe leaves Louis badly scarred; Roy plays a final practical joke on Ethel; Prior wrestles the Angel and then addresses a review board in Heaven; Harper heads out West; Prior, outliving his diagnosis, pays a visit to his favorite angel and vows to keep living--free of secrets.