‘The Good Place’: Michael and Jason Wreak Havoc at ‘Demon Con’ (RECAP)

The Good Place - Season 4
Spoiler Alert
Colleen Hayes/NBC

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Good Place Season 4 Episode 5, “Employee of the Bearimy.”]

The Bad Place has lengthy, boring company-wide meetings that probably could’ve been a series of emails. Who would’ve thought?

“Demon Con,” as it’s called, ends up being the cornerstone in Michael’s risky plan to get Janet back. Of course, the whole thing rests on Jason being able to control his impulsive side. Can he quell the urge to lob a Molotov cocktail into the (literally) demonic crowd?

Meanwhile, back at the neighborhood, Janet’s absence creates problems for Eleanor and Tahani.

Colleen Hayes/NBC

A Good Bad Plan

Michael and Jason head to the Bad Place, where they stumble upon a yearly event called “Demon Con.” They watch for a few minutes, but eventually Michael puts his plan in motion; He steps out, with an audience of dozens of demons watching him and Shawn onstage, and pretends to be Vicki wearing the Michael suit. He then prompts Jason to come up, too.

Shawn is befuddled by the creation of a “Jason suit,” but Michael explains this away by saying Glenn is the one wearing it. He offers for the two of them to go torture Janet right away, alone, but Shawn has a better idea: He wants them to torture Janet onstage, now. Of course, this wasn’t part of the plan. “Oh, good,” Jason says when Michael discreetly informs him things aren’t going well. “I was worried you had a bad plan.”

High Production Value

When they bring Janet out, she realizes Michael and Jason are real and pretends the “torture” is working. They’re almost home free when the real Vicki walks out in the real Michael suit, and Michael is forced to reveal his true identity. Having previously reflected to Jason about his regret at being so cruel to so many people while he worked at Bad Place HQ, Michael issues a plea to the assembled demons. He insists they can all change and grow, but his speech falls on deaf ears.

With no other options, he pulls out the demon-vaporizer and turns Vicki to goo, then manages to escape thanks to the audience’s dazzlement with the whole ordeal (“I swear,” one of them says as they dash through the crowd, “the production value at Demon Con gets better every year!”

Colleen Hayes/NBC

A Derek Disaster

With Janet offline, Eleanor’s tasked with keeping the humans occupied. She sends them to a remote lake house at the edge of the neighborhood and has Tahani, the resident party-expert, set things up. There’s one snag with that plan, though: Chidi isn’t there.

If Janet was functional, Chidi’s absence wouldn’t be much of a problem. But because they need someone to run things, Eleanor and Tahani are forced to turn to Derek to keep the rest of the Janet-babies running—and, as one might assume from a being that fills champagne glasses with Scrabble tiles, this goes rather poorly. The neighborhood descends into chaos, which only stops when Tahani convinces Derek to reboot himself. Then, it’s worse. All of the Janet-Derek children collapse, leaving the neighborhood littered with unconscious people. Great.

Foooooooooles!

Eleanor works around all of this by going to see Chidi and giving him a fake puzzle to keep him inside. When the non-human contingent of the neighborhood crashes, she blindfolds him and leads him out onto the street, both needing him not to see his unconscious neighbors and having convinced him to attend the lake house party. Though there’s some confusion as all the residents reboot, Eleanor gets him to the rest of the humans, and all is well.

As the episode ends, Michael, Janet and Jason head back to the neighborhood. Jason says he knew the Bad Janet wasn’t the real Janet because she said Blake Bortles wasn’t the quarterback of the Jags anymore… which Janet regretfully informs him was true. He’s crestfallen until he realizes the new QB, Nick Foles, once won a Super Bowl… and then he’s devastated again when Janet tells him Foles broke his clavicle. Poor Jason! Got his girlfriend back, lost his beloved Bortles.

Colleen Hayes/NBC

Other Observations

  • Michael is the best character on this show, in my opinion. Others may disagree, and that’s fine—I think Eleanor is close second, but in terms of character development, Michael can’t be beaten. His speech to all the demons in this episode was genuinely touching, as was his self-awareness and shame about the person he used to be.
  • Tahani saying she wanted to learn something else felt like foreshadowing. Maybe the show ends with the formation of a new system and she takes on a different role in it (afterlife welder?)
  • Does anyone else feel like the “saving the humans” plot keeps stalling out? The show keeps emphasizing how important it is and that they can’t restart the experiment, but we’re seeing very little actual experimentation or development for the subjects. Aside from Tahani’s friend, they haven’t done much growing or changing, at least on-screen.

The Good Place, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC