Season 1 Rewatch: 1x07 "The Eternal Shriek"

[enemyofperfect]

Hey sorchasilver, I hope I'm not stepping on your toes by posting this! But I've really been enjoying this rewatch, and I think at least a few other people have too, so here's another post for discussion.

Writers: Michael Schur (creator), Megan Amram
Director: Trent O'Donnell
Originally aired: 20 October 2016

Synopsis:
Eleanor and Chidi find that the only way to save Michael from going to "The Eternal Shriek" (part of the Bad Place) is to deactivate Janet. Since she is programmed to answer any question, Janet tells them exactly how to do it.

Memorable Quote:
Michael: Oh, my dear Janet. Will you be okay after I leave?
Janet: Yes. This will not affect me in any way.

Useful links:
Episode Transcript
IMDb entry

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

A few possible jumping off-points:

• Was there anything you see differently now in light of later episodes?
• Was there anything that really made you laugh?
• What is one moment that gave you feels?

[author_by_night]

Was there anything you see differently now in light of later episodes?

It's clear Michael very intentionally set Tahani up to fail. Misleading her into planning a joyous occasion... etc. He even knew perfectly well that Janet was fine, but played the whole thing up to literally torture them.

Was there anything that really made you laugh?

"Attention: I have been murdered. Attention: I have been murdered." So wrong, but hilarious.

(Also, whenever Alexa glitches, I ALWAYS mutter "attention, I have been murdered.")

[enemyofperfect]

Michael must have been having so much fun at his retirement party. What exquisite torment that was!

(Also, whenever Alexa glitches, I ALWAYS mutter "attention, I have been murdered.")

Hee, I love it!

[enemyofperfect]

I really love Janet so much, even at this early point in her development. She's so cheerful and clearly nonhuman, and yet: "I can't eat, so every time there's a new version of Janet, I like to take a piece of birthday cake and smash it around where my mouth is." She has preferences that in no way relate to helping the humans around her! She's such a great Janet.

It was a little disconcerting to see Eleanor so happy about Michael's retirement, knowing as we do now what that means for architects. But in a way, her clear selfish streak makes her brave stand at the end even better -- she isn't magically reformed by any means, but she can still take a big risk to help a friend.

As for Chidi, it's interesting that what really got him in trouble in the flashbacks wasn't the white lie -- it was the fact that, in his discomfort, he elaborated on it so much that Henry thought Chidi genuinely loved his boots. Also interesting: while announcing that he hated the boots clearly did nothing but hurt Henry, telling Eleanor how unhappy he was about letting Michael die might actually have helped them both grow as people. Sometimes, honesty is the right choice!

Odds and ends:

-I love that Michael gave his birth year as 0000.
-If we can put any weight on the old Chinese proverb gag, Mandarin seems to be on the list of languages Chidi speaks. How is he even?
-Pleurigloss sounds like such a great color.

[author_by_night]

I think the fact that Chidi was so upset over that lie also foreshadows his flaws. After all, it seems pretty ethical to me TO lie about such a thing. If someone says "be honest", don't be honest. I mean, sure if Henry was going to wear the boots to a funeral, Chidi might have been better off advising that it wouldn't be appropriate. Or if Henry was going to wear them surfing, pointing out that they might be slippery. But he couldn't handle the fact that he was dishonest to spare someone's feelings. And that's a pretty big oversight, as much as I love Chidi.

Good point about Eleanor's growth. She didn't magically change overnight, but she was willing to help a friend.

[erinptah]

Michael makes an "ew, corporeal-mortal-being sex is gross" comment at some point, which would make sense from an nth-dimensional species that has no need for reproduction, but in this episode he makes an offhand reference to having genitals. Total invention to add to Tahani's discomfort, or do demons actually reproduce somehow?

The description of Janet's update history makes her sound like a typical piece of software -- the developers keep working on the code, eventually release a new version, and then you download the update. Which made sense.

But in the next season there's this whole thing about "our Janet has been rebooted 800something times, making her the most advanced Janet ever." So it's not about new versions getting released from a central source, it's about each separate install of the Janet software rewriting itself on reboot? But if that's how she works, then why wouldn't it be standard practice for an architect to sit with your Janet and reboot her a couple hundred times before you actually dive into the job?

It would make more sense if her development was related to accumulated experience, not reboots. "This Janet had a much wider variety of interactions and input than a typical Janet over the same period" rather than "this Janet got rebooted more than a typical Janet over the same period."

...all complaints about logic aside, the acting for Janet is regularly my favorite part of episodes. Her turn-on-a-dime emotional presentation, the way she automatically emotes in certain ways even when they don't line up at all with what she's saying, and, by the end, her perfect embodiment of a persistently glitchy program in human form. It's all amazing.

[enemyofperfect]

I love this in-depth analysis of the different things we've heard about Janet's development! Maybe some of it is experience -- which does seem to "stick" at least a little bit across iterations -- but the reboots play some kind of role in helping her integrate that experience?

Or maybe nobody has any idea what's really going on, because this has never happened to a Janet before.

But yeah, D'Arcy Carden's performance is really incredible. I hope she has fun playing Janet, because she's always so great to watch!

[erinptah]

I did think about how, with computers, some updates can't be integrated until the device reboots. But that's still the "developers create and release a new update" system. You aren't going to get an extra-advanced computer if you reboot between updates.

"This has never happened before and nobody understands it" is probably as good an explanation as we're going to get, I fear :/

She's a delight!