- Story Arc: Demona and her survival; Brooklyn and his attempts to build trust with other humans
- Characters: The Manhattan Clan, Elisa Maza, and Demona
- Enemy(ies) : Demona
Brooklyn is enjoying a night out on the motorcycle he, along with Lexington and Broadway, built. When Brooklyn reveals himself before a group of bikers, they attack him assuming him to be a threat based on his non-human appearance. He is saved by the intervention of Demona, who then wishes to speak to him in order to plead her case before Goliath.
Demona returns in the episode "Long Way to Morning".
This Episode contains the following Tropes:
- Accentuate the Negative: As Goliath notes, Demona's arguments to Brooklyn about humanity focused on the bad qualities while ignoring the good ones.
- And I Must Scream: Goliath implies that he was fully conscious beneath the spell, able to hear Brooklyn's apology and Elisa's Logic Bomb. Which means he knew what he was doing while he was attacking Brooklyn, but couldn't stop himself.
- Armor-Piercing Question: "They were used to us a thousand years ago. Did that stop them from betraying us and destroying our clan?"
- Audience Surrogate: Brooklyn takes this role for this episode. Though no child has ever been singled out on the basis of being a gargoyle or other sentient non-human (at least as far as we know, but just in case we will forever hold your peace), but it's no secret that some people (especially school children and thugs) have been prejudiced against individuals who don't conform to their definition of "normal" resulting in unjustly mistreated and ostracized for those differences. Brooklyn experiences this distasteful part of human nature first hand when he is on the receiving end of an unprovoked attack being judged based on the "unnaturalness" of his physical features instead of the content of his character. See Took A Level In Cynic below for details.
- Bloodstained Glass Windows: Though the place where Brooklyn and Demona fight at is the Cloisters
, the principle is still there since its architecture was inspired by that of medieval churches. - Brainwashed and Crazy: The effects of the spell Demona uses on Goliath to override his free will.
- Chalk Outline: What's used to show that a murder has occurred is a drawing on the street. Disney didn't want to show a real corpse.
- Continuity Nod: Demona makes a mention of Goliath and Lexington's ambush by the Pack that occurred in the prior episode.
- Cool Bike: Built by Lexington, Broadway, and Brooklyn over the course of several nights. Brooklyn takes it out for a spin and shows it off to some bikers, who are impressed with its design ... until they see that Brooklyn isn't human, at which point they freak out and attack him. During the fight, a single bullet causes it to instantly explode.
- Failed a Spot Check: Upon returning from Demona's nightly tour of humanity's faults Brooklyn reverts back to his pre-NY, medieval way of speaking, answering Goliath's question about his joyride with "illuminating." Unfortunately nobody picks up on the change.
- Genius Bruiser: Goliath is shown to pass his spare time reading.
- Humans Are Bastards: Demona tries to convince Brooklyn that humans can't be trusted because they're innately evil. Specific examples she cites are an incompetent justice system that lets offenders off easily (which Elisa later unwittingly corroborates when she reminds Goliath that Xanatos is about to be released from jail), violence between even relatives, and murder. By extension, she argues that they will not treat other sentient beings any better. However Goliath later states that her argument is based on a misleading "half-truth."
- Humans Kill Wantonly: Demona claims that humans as a whole kill easily and points to a number of incidents that are occurring that very night to prove her point, saying "they hold each other's lives completely without worth."
- Loophole Abuse: Near the end of the episode Goliath is still under the spell Demona cast on him that forces him to obey anyone who holds the spell. Even if there was a counterspell, nobody knows how to even read it, let alone cast it. Elisa manages to undo it by ordering him to live for the rest of his life exactly as he would as if he was not under a spell. Whether it was that this instruction was followed or that the cyclic logic breaks the effect, Goliath is restored to normal in which the effect is broken, as his eyes would have continued glowing if he were still under the spell, even if he behaved normally.
- Manipulative Bitch: Demona used Brooklyn as a means of getting Goliath to come along, supposedly to "open his eyes" to her view of humanity, but actually to use him for her own purposes. Though she wasn't entirely wrong.
- No More for Me: After seeing Brooklyn pop a wheelie and fly over a wall with his gargoyle wings spreading out, a police officer asks his partner if they should call it in. When the partner asks him what they should call in, the police officer immediately throws away a box of donuts, saying, "That's it, I'm-I'm off sugar."
- Police Are Useless: Discussed when Demona attempts to convert Brooklyn to her human-hating ways:Demona: What would you do? Capture him for human justice? He'd be out of jail in a day.
- Really 700 Years Old: Demona reveals to Brooklyn that she's lived for a thousand years old rather having been in stone sleep for a millennium as she told the clan in "Awakening", which explains why her attitude after they awoke had changed to be even more cynical than when they knew her in the dark ages. The Season Two four-part "City of Stone" episodes go into further detail.
- Saying Too Much: Demona gives away a key detail when she reveals that Goliath will obey whoever holds the spell she cast to control him, allowing Brooklyn to tear out that specific page from the book Demona is using and get Goliath away from her.
- Smart People Know Latin: Demona, the more cunning of the clan's gargoyles, can read this dead language, which is necessary given that most spells in the Gargoyles universe are written in Latin.
- Take That!: The bike that Brooklyn uses was created for merchandise and the executives mandated that it be incorporated into at least one episode.
Brooklyn rides it for less than five minutes before it is destroyed with only one shot from a handgun. Harry Callahan would be in envy of that kind of firepower. - Took a Level in Cynic: Demona seeks to get Brooklyn to go through with this by showing him certain unsavory acts by humans (inefficient application of Justice, hostility towards even fellow friends and family, and murdering others over the pettiest of reasons) claiming that what she has presented is the norm of human society. However, when Demona's true motivations are made clear upon taking over Goliath's mind, Brooklyn calls her out on her crossing the
Moral Event Horizon seeing that her rampant cynicism has turned her into a xenocidal lunatic. Overall, Brooklyn comes to the conclusion that some people lack good moral character, and thus becomes more careful in who he trusts, but that these flaws are not sole constitution of humans' nature. - Villain Has a Point: Discussed at the end as the reason Demona's arguments about the rotten side of humanity were so effective in manipulating Brooklyn.Brooklyn: What Demona said sounded true at the time.
Goliath: Of course, it did. It's a half-truth she has thoroughly embraced. But it's not the whole truth. - You Are a Credit to Your Race: Brooklyn thanking Elisa for undoing the brainwashing spell on Goliath.Brooklyn: I knew Demona was wrong about you at least. Any species that has you for a member can't be all bad.
Elisa: Thanks... I think. - You're Insane!: Brooklyn, disillusioned by the problems of humanity, is manipulated by Demona to steal a spellbook in order to help his leader, Goliath, "see the truth of the world". Brooklyn cooperates, but when Demona attacks Goliath with a spell from the book that makes him a mind-controlled slave, the young gargoyle protests that he only wanted to Goliath to see the truth. Demona intones with flashing eyes, "You wanted him to know the truth. Now, our truth will be the only truth he ever knows!" At that brazenly evil pronouncement, Brooklyn yells to Demona, "You're insane!" and attacks her to get the book back.
