Frustrated with the mess that earth's become, God contemplates the end while two determined angels try to change his mind.
This episode provides examples of:
- Absurdism: While Craig's job was insignificant, he took joy in the little accomplishments and took it personally when Eliza implied otherwise.
- The Bet: After God declares that he'll demolish the Earth, Eliza convinces him to not destroy the Earth if she can answer one of the unanswered impossible prayers. If she loses, he gets to destroy the Earth and she has to eat a live worm and pretend to like it.
- Boring, but Practical:
- The Department of Dirt seems to be the most stable job Heaven, Inc. has. While the job is simple and easy (making specs of dirt and changing them from dry to wet and back again), Eliza moves out of it because it's, well, duller than dirt.
- Craig's work model in the Department of Answered Prayers is to pick innocuous tasks (like helping a woman find her car keys or finding a lost glove) and solves them using "discreet, natural phenomena" (like melting snowflakes or blowing leaves away one at a time). This is born both out of Craig's skittish nature and sheer necessity, as doing big things, like making it rain during a drought, causes massive devastation like a typhoon, as Eliza later learns.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: The entire world is run by Heaven Inc. Everything on Earth, from animals to clouds, constellations to dirt, are all managed by different Departments subject to mismanagement and budget cuts, all owned by a jaded and inept God.
- Doomsday Device: After God and Eliza make their deal, he puts the timer on a gold, 12-sided shape that is set to blow up the Earth with a meteor.
- Establishing Character Moment: Craig is found alone in the dark, huddled over his monitor. He treats the first prayer he introduced Eliza to — helping a woman find her car keys — as an important job and goes about it with "discreet, natural phenomena" (making the snowflakes melt one at a time). When Eliza picks a prayer — a man praying to survive a wolf-attack — he immediately labels it "impossible" and sends it to God. This shows us that he is the hermit type who has grown complacent with his boring job and is afraid of pushing the envelope in any way.
- Establishing Series Moment: The episode starts with God flipping through news channels — all of them showing environmental degradation of immense proportions — only to stop and rewind a racer praising him for his win. When his secretary Rosie shows up to remind him of his meeting to end all pain, he falsely claims that he was working on a solution for the World's problems. He finishes watching the interview, only to find out that the racer died immediately after in a fiery explosion. The camera pans out to reveal that the wall is covered in TVs, all of which reporting nothing but bad news. This establishes the Black Comedy that the show runs on, all of which happening in a world run by an inept God.
- God's Hands Are Tied: The only real job that God has seems to be answering impossible prayers. Since even answering the smallest prayers in any miraculous manner causes devastation, God lets the prayers go unanswered. The fact that they are labeled "impossible" speaks for itself.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- The entire plot is kicked off because Eliza tried answering a prayer without Craig. She answers a farmer's prayer for rain by accidentally causing a meteorological disaster. In a panic, she tries fixing it by stuffing the sudden influx of impossible prayers this causes through the pipe to God, only to clog it by accident. She runs up to God to try and convince him to help, only to accidentally convince him to end the world instead.
- Eliza accidentally causes an earthquake when he interrupts Craig answering a prayer to find a missing glove. After she finishes answering it for him, it is revealed that the man was going to use the glove to murder someone.
- Skewed Priorities:
- When Eliza points out how bad the Earth has gotten, God takes away from this that he should declare Earth a failed experiment and blow it up. He then decides that his next project should a restaurant.
- A lot of the "Impossible" prayers were about WiFi.
- What Could Have Been: In-Universe. In Animal Research and Development, they planned on making Talking Dogs by 2021, Flying Horses in 2024 and New Humans in 2028.
