History Recap / TheGoodPlaceS2E02DanceDanceResolution

* NoJustNoReaction: Eleanor's reveal in Attempt #11 starts with this as she states that no version of Heaven would have a three-hour Jazz concert just for her.

** In the reboot where ''Jason'' figures out they're really in the Bad Place, most of his reasoning makes a bizarre kind of sense (i.e., his "soulmate" not knowing anything about Blake Bortles, his favorite football player).

* SmartBall: In one reboot, everything lines up so that ''[[TheDitz Jason]]'' is the one to first put the pieces together and realize they're in the Bad Place.
* SpottingTheThread: No matter what Michael tries to do to keep them oblivious, the humans keep figuring out the truth. At one point, some relatively minor details managed to tip off ''Jason''.

* MythologyGag: In the montage of Eleanor repeatedly realizing that she's in the Bad Place, one scene has her holding balloons while surrounded by cacti. This is an allusion to the show's promotional artwork where a frightened Eleanor is holding balloons next to a cheery Michael.

** This episode gives us a montage of these as Michael keeps putting the humans into different scenarios and yet each time Eleanor figures out that they're actually in the Bad Place. Even '''Jason''' figured it out once. That one ''really'' hurt Michael.
** Notably, ''Michael'' gets his own at the end of the episode after listening to Jason's bizarre story about Dance Dance Resolution, with him realizing that he can't survive on his own, and so needs to perform an EnemyMine with the humans to get out from under Vicky's blackmail since all of the other demons are fed up with the experiment and he has no other potential allies.

* FiveSecondForeshadowing:
** When Mindy was first introduced, she was shown to be walking around naked because she was completely alone until then and wasn't expecting anyone to be coming by. When Eleanor, Chidi, and Janet see her here, she's fully clothed, meaning she's been expecting them to come back.
** She also doesn't look remotely surprised to see them, hinting that this has happened numerous times before.

* IHaveAFamily: As part of the reboot montage we see Michael approaching the button that reboots Janet and activating the "beg for her life" failsafe. In one clip she asks him who will look after her pet birds, and in another she claims to be pregnant with his baby.

* MemoryGambit: Defied, as Attempt# 2 was undermined with a note Eleanor gave to Janet, Michael is on to the trick and goes on with Attempt# 3. But this cycles back to why it didn't work in Attempt# 1, as moving too fast on the literal torture clues them in on this not being The Good Place and both Michael and the demon cast members start getting sloppy on the details. When they go to Mindy for the 11th time, she actually started keeping track of what has happened to them and the many different plans they devised that didn't work.

* NoJustNoReaction: Eleanor's reveal in Attempt #11 starts with this as she states that no version of Heaven would have a three hour Jazz concert just for her.

* OffTheRails: The main foursome consistently manages to figure out the deception, resulting in Michael becoming desperate to keep things together and the other demons to become exasperated with having to go through the process again.

** Mindy bluntly informing Eleanor, Chidi, and Janet that this is the ''sixteenth'' time they've showed up in the Medium Place quickly highlights just how expansive and trapped both the humans and Michael are in their EternalRecurrence stalemate.

* FiveSecondForeshadowing: When Mindy was first introduced, she was shown to be walking around naked because she was completely alone until then and wasn't expecting anyone to be coming by. When Eleanor, Chidi, and Janet see her here, she's fully clothed, meaning she's been expecting them to come back.

** Notably, ''Michael'' gets his own at the end of the episode after listening to Jason's bizarre story about Dance Dance Resolution, with him realizing that he can't survive on his own, and so needs to perform an EnemyMine with the humans to get out from under Vicky's blackmail since all of the other demons hate him and he has no other potential allies.

** In the reboot where ''Jason'' figures out they're really in the Bad Place, most of his reasoning makes a bizarre kind of sense (i.e., his soulmate not knowing about Jason's favorite football star).

* MaleGaze: A female bisexual case; when Eleanor first meets Tahani in Attempt #3 and the latter comments on her large bosom, Eleanor looks right at Tahani's breasts with visible interest.

* DenserAndWackier: InUniverse; as the reboots go on, they become increasingly absurd and bizarre as Michael clearly starts to run out of ideas and the other demons start to care less and less about their jobs. Special mention should go to Attempt #4, which features an ObviouslyEvil smoking obelisk covered in glowing red runes.

* DeterminedDefeatist: Michael realized halfway through that he was obviously never going to make his plan work, yet he still tried literally hundreds of more times, mainly because he didn't know what else to do.

** Notably, ''Michael'' gets his own at the end of the episode after listening to Jason's bizarre story about Dance Dance Resolution, with him realizing that he needs to perform an EnemyMine with the humans to get out from under Vicky's blackmail since all of the other demons hate him and he has no other potential allies.

* IMadeCopies: Eleanor takes the tape of her and Chidi having sex and confessing their love. Mindy says, "No, don't it's my only copy," in a sarcastic tone that clearly means it isn't.

* DumbassHasAPoint: In the reboot where ''Jason'' figures out they're really in the Bad Place, most of his reasoning makes a bizarre kind of sense (i.e., his soulmate not knowing about Jason's favorite football star).