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"Smile Time" is a fictional television program featured on the WB Network series Angel. It was also the name of the episode that it appeared in, "Smile Time", which was the fourteenth episode of season five. Smile Time also appeared in the Angel: Smile Time comic book series by IDW Publishing in 2009, which was an adaptation of the episode.
Smile Time is the name of a children's educational television series, frequently referred to as an "edu-tainment" program. It was based out of Los Angeles, California and produced by a man named Gregor Framkin. The series utilized puppets to teach children about basic principals of learning such as mathemathics, as well as strengthening their social skills.
When ratings on the series began to drop, Framkin was desperate to save the series. To this end, he employed the favor of a group of demons to help him put Smile Time back on the map. The demons took the forms of puppets, who then became the stars of the show. The leader of the puppet troupe, Polo, turned Framkin into a living human puppet, and established their nerve center at the Smile Time studios, which they referred to as the Nest Egg. All of the other employees of the program were turned into mindless drones, forced to do the puppets' bidding.
Polo and the other demon puppets, which included a girl named Flora, a dog named Groofus, and a large bipedal purple thing called Ratio Hornblower, used the program to entice children, enslaving their minds, and ultimately stealing their souls. In the beginning, they did this only sparingly so as to not call to much attention to themselves. Their victims included a boy named Tommy, and a girl named Hannah. Their ultimate plan however, was to use subliminal stimuli on a massive wides-cale broadcast to consume the souls of hundreds of children all at once.
Through the course of events, Angel - the vampire C.E.O. of the Wolfram & Hart law firm caught wind of something strange taking place at the Smile Time studios. After breaching the Nest Egg, he unleashed mystical forces that inadvertently turned him into a puppet.
Angel then sent his employees Charles Gunn and the demon Lorne to the studio to brow-beat Gregor Framkin. Framkin, who was literally being manipulated by Polo, was unimpressed with their legal threats and told them that he had the strength of public opinion on his side.
As things progressed, the members of Team Angel uncovered the truth about what was going on and staged a raid on the studio. They fought up against the puppets, ultimately destroying them, and Angel was returned back to normal.