Recap / The Good Place S1E13 "Michael's Gambit"

"Ya basic!"

"Oh, man. Eleanor, you really suck."

— Michael

Just missing Shawn's deadline, Eleanor and Jason return, joining Chidi and Tahani. Shawn decides that they can choose any two of the four to go to the Bad Place. Many arguments are made for who should go and who should stay, with Real Eleanor offering to take one spot. As their arguments become more heated and frustrating, Eleanor laments how torturous this is... and then has an epiphany: the painful feelings the four of them have been experiencing was not by accident but by design, meaning they've been in the Bad Place all along. Michael admits that this is true - while brainstorming at his architect job, he had come up with an innovative idea for a section of the Bad Place posing as a Good Place neighborhood run by a stolen Good Place Janet where Eleanor, Jason, Chidi, and Tahani, the only human inhabitants, were to drive each other to agony while the demons worked to keep the humans on their toes. However, the plan went awry when Eleanor confessed; after that, Michael and everyone else had to scramble to keep things from going off the rails. He also didn't foresee Jason and Janet falling in love.

Eleanor then wonders why Tahani and Chidi are in the Bad Place, as they were ostensibly good and moral people. However, Tahani immediately realizes she was sentenced to the Bad Place because her charitable deeds weren't motivated by genuine altruism, but by a selfish desire for attention and to outdo her sister. Chidi initially believes he was sentenced to the Bad Place because he still drank almond milk despite knowing it was bad for the environment, but Michael clarifies that it was actually due to his rigid and indecisive behavior, which he refused to correct in any way despite knowing it made his friends and family miserable.

With his scheme exposed, Michael asks Shawn for a "redo" by erasing the humans' memories and changing some parameters, figuring the reason why he failed was that putting the humans together turned them into a team; by putting them farther away from each other in a second attempt, it could be a slower burn. Shawn grants Michael's request.

While Michael talks with Shawn, Eleanor, in a last-ditch effort to do something, rips out a page from one of Chidi's books and writes a message to herself on it, which she then hides in Janet's mouth. Eleanor taunts Michael, telling him he'll never win, to which he snaps his fingers, erasing the humans' memories. Eleanor awakens in the waiting room once again and Michael takes her around the neighborhood. After taking her back to her "house", Janet appears and gives Eleanor the note she'd written to herself. It reads, "Eleanor - Find Chidi".

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Tropes

• Aesop Amnesia: Now that Michael knows what went wrong, he deliberately inflicts this on the group by removing their memories.
• Affably Evil: The two co-workers of Michael's we see in his flashbacks, who despite being workers in the Bad Place are supportive and encouraging toward his efforts in building a neighborhood. Compare that to Shawn, who has absolutely no faith in Michael.
• All for Nothing: Subverted, because even though Michael erases everyone's memories, Eleanor still managed to Fling a Light into the Future by sticking a note in Janet's mouth.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Enforced by Michael who made sure that his version of the Bad Place doesn't allow for requited love for any of the four subjects. Well, he didn't think of Janet as a potential love interest for Jason though.
• Badass Fingersnap: A downplayed example but still dramatic, Michael interrupts Eleanor towards the end of the episode by snapping his fingers to initiate the neighborhood reset.
• Bait-and-Switch: Oh, did you think "Michael's Gambit" was a reference to an attempt to save our protagonists? hehehheheh.
• Berserk Button: Downplayed, but Jason, who is too dumb to be mad at anyone most of the time, even when they directly insult him, gets annoyed when Tahani keeps calling him "Jianyu" even after she knows his real name is "Jason".
  Jason: For the last time, my name is "Jason", not "Jianyu, the amazing and incredible monk"!
• Bittersweet Ending: All the hard work the team, especially Eleanor, has done over the last year is undone with a snap of Michael's fingers. However, Eleanor manages to provide a note of hope, sending herself a note: "Eleanor — find Chidi".
• Brick Joke:
  • In the flashback to Michael setting up Nina and Bart's characters, Nina cackles that they could probably trick Eleanor into thinking they're swingers.
  • Real Eleanor (or, as she's revealed to be, Vicky) mentioned that her torture included lava monsters. In this episode, a lava monster appears and disrupts Michael's meeting.
• Call-Back: Michael saying he believed he could get the humans to torture each other for a thousand years is a reference to the episode "What We Owe to Each Other", where Michael told Eleanor that he was planning to stay and monitor the neighborhood for the first "thousand years or so."
  • Jason recalls that he told Eleanor they were in an alien prank show. Eleanor high fives him for getting it right.
  • The marriage counselor/identity sniffer couple who were forced into Eleanor's and Chidi's house during the lockdown, Eleanor was right about them wanting to swing.
  • Eleanor's confession comes back, having thrown Michael's plans out the damn window.
  • Tahani's various charities and her conflicts with her family get recalled as the explanation for why she's in the Bad Place.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Janet's inability to eat. Eleanor figures that she can put a piece of paper trying to help herself in Janet's mouth and that it'll still be there in the next reboot. She's right.
  • While Eleanor and Jason's flaws are easily apparent, the reason Chidi and Tahani were also in the Bad Place is set up by connecting their flashbacks over the season with the established rules of what it means to be good. Chidi's neurotic indecisiveness caused havoc with his friends and family, and his refusal to change is a major character flaw. Tahani being The Unfavorite means nothing as Eleanor had Abusive Parents she couldn't pass the blame to and her charity work was for innately selfish reasons.
• Chekhov's Skill: Michael's ability to erase memories. First, he used it to make the humans forget their deaths, now he uses it to wipe their memories of their entire afterlife experience.
• Cliffhanger: Michael erases the group's memories, now about to do everything different to what ruined the setting the first time, but Eleanor has given herself a note to find Chidi again through Janet, which she doesn't get.
• Clones Are People, Too: Downplayed. Janets aren't exactly clones, but Tahani retorts that Jason can't be married to Janet because "there's a Janet in every neighborhood." But Jason insists that he's in love with this Janet, and doesn't care if there are identical versions of her out there.
• Complexity Addiction: Michael's entire idea for the fake Good Place is this, which both Shawn and Eleanor lampshade.
• Contrived Coincidence: By design. Every time the main four come up with a plan, someone shows up with a complication.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: After Eleanor realizes they are all in the Bad Place, Jason reminds her of what he said the night he revealed his identity to her, that they were all on a prank show. Eleanor realizes he was technically right and tells him good job.
• Deus ex Machina: Subverted - Bambadjan suddenly comes in with an obscure legal precedent that would let all four of them stay in the Good Place, but Eleanor shuts that down because she's busy Pulling the Thread and sees it for the coverup it is.
• Diegetic Switch: The *click* of Michael snapping his fingers lines up perfectly with the "ck" of Eleanor's "Ya basic".
• Didn't See That Coming: It's revealed that the biggest wrench in Michael's plan was Eleanor improving as a person, because he never imagined that Chidi could successfully do that. He also never predicted that Jason and Janet would get married.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The reveal that they've been in the Bad Place this whole time. At this point in the series, literally everything we were told about how the afterlife works is dubious at best or an outright lie at worst.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • While everyone is arguing over who will go to The Bad Place, Eleanor thinks, "This feels like torture." And then it dawns on her; that's because it is. Their entire afterlife experience has been so. They've been in the Bad Place this whole time.
  • During Michael's flashback in which he's designing the neighborhood, he mentions to his colleague that he wants to witness the humans' afterlife experience hands-on, but isn't sure how to do it. His colleague just advises him to do a good job. That sparks an idea in Michael, in which he takes that advice very literally.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Tahani when realizing why she's in the Bad Place.
• Everyone Is a Tomato:
  • Michael? He is an architect, but he works for the Bad Place.
  • All the residents of Neighborhood 12358W? They're demons acting out the roles of "good people".
  • And the main four? They're all "bad people".
• Evil All Along: Michael. Also the case with "Real Eleanor", who is actually a demon named Vicky acting out a role, as well as the other "residents" of the neighborhood.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The one flaw in Michael's master plan to have the main four torment each other was that he never imagined that Eleanor could learn to be good. Her confession threw a wrench in the whole setup.
  • Meanwhile Shawn saw it coming, and appropriately advised Michael earlier to do away with the complexities and send them all to the mundane tortures of the Bad Place.
• Evil Is Petty: The first thing Michael does on being outed as evil? Shove a potted plant onto the floor.
• Evil Laugh: Michael delivers one he'd obviously been holding in for quite some time after being outed as evil.
• First-Episode Twist: Relatively speaking, this is the BIG twist to the first season of the show and redefines the entirety of the series afterwards. It's impossible to discuss the next season, or indeed the rest of the show, without revealing what happens in this episode.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Eleanor's blunt insistence that she and Chidi be sent to The Bad Place is refused by Michael and Shawn despite fitting the conditions they'd already been given. A few seconds later, Eleanor reveals that doing so would ruin Michael's Paranoia Gambit.
  • Michael seems oddly pleased when Eleanor points out the main reason why his plan completely failed, shortly before he reveals that he gets to have a second try.
• Flashback B-Plot: Half of the episode consists of flashbacks to when Michael first designed the neighborhood.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Eleanor sticks a note in Janet's mouth before Michael resets their memories: "Eleanor — Find Chidi."
  Eleanor: What the fork is a Chidi? Why can't I say "fork"?
• Foreshadowing:
  • The revelation that all of them are in the Bad Place had a lot of subtle foreshadowing sprinkled throughout the previous Season 1 episodes. See the first heading for all of them.
  • Michael's workplace is shot in dark, muted colors in a cold, bank-like place, hinting that this is not a heavenly location.
  • Right before Dave drops Project No. 12358W on Michael's desk, you can just catch the title of the file he was previously working on: "Flesh Ripping Lighting." An extremely easy-to-miss but massive hint that he's not working for the Good Place.
  • Michael's flashback shows him casually telling his coworker which coffee pot contains antimatter and which has real coffee. The flashback was set off by Shawn mentioning a mistake Michael made, so the viewer thinks he's about to be proven wrong, but in fact he's correct - meaning his supposed anxiety and propensity to mix things up is just an act.
  • A light bulb goes off in Michael's head when his colleague advises him to do a "good job." Why would a Good Place architect experience a revelation upon being told to do a "good job"? Wouldn't that be their plan from the get go?
  • Neighborhood 12358W is dubbed "The Good Place" in Michael's designs. Now, why would any Good Place neighborhood be called that?
    • "Good Place" is also in quotations, which implies it's sarcastic or insincere.
  • Michael is genuinely startled when Shawn suggests that he may have to be retired for his mistake. This may seem a little odd in the moment, given that, a few episodes earlier, Michael was planning to initiate his own retirement over a comparatively more trivial manner and was much more composed about it. However, after the reveal this makes much more sense. Michael was never actually preparing to retiring himself and was just using the prospect to torture the humans. Now, however, Michael's plans have actually begun to fall apart, and the possibility of retirement is now a genuine threat.
  • Shawn is reluctant to go along with Michael's plan, but he, too, is tired of the same old tortures. He, too, needs change.
  • Chidi mentions that he always used almond milk even though knew it was bad for the environment. This will turn out to be a major part of the series' plot.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • For a split second, you can see that Michael was working on a file titled "Flesh Ripping Lighting" before it was blocked by Dave.
  • Michael has a plaque in both his apprentice and architect workplace that reads "You don't have to be immortal to work here...but it sure helps."
• Heel Realization: The group initially is puzzled as to why Tahani and Chidi were sent to the Bad Place in spite of their allegedly "good lives", until the former realizes that massive charity fundings didn't count towards her point score because her motivation was to best her snobby family's accomplishments and receive glory, and the latter realizes that his rigid and indecisive behavior made him a selfish person because it was severely inconveniencing his loved ones and he was not willing to modify his behavior in spite of the harm he was doing.
  • Also played for laughs when Chidi initially thinks he's in the Bad Place because he kept drinking almond milk despite knowing it's bad for the environment.
• The Hero: Eleanor continues to take up the mantle. She's the one who realizes what's really going on, exposing Michael's Gambit.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Eleanor is the only one of the main four who insists non-stop that she should be in the Bad Place.
• Ironic Hell: What the whole setting turns out to be.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Michael snaps his fingers and erases the main four's memories.
• Laughing Mad: A minor example, but Eleanor is so stunned by the realization that they're in the Bad Place that she can't help but crack up.
• Literal Metaphor: Exasperated by the whole situation, Eleanor thinks to herself, "this is torture"... which causes her to suddenly realize that yes, actually, they're being tortured, because they've been in the Bad Place all along.
• Memory Gambit: Eleanor has 30 seconds to think of some way around Michael wiping their memory and starting The Good Place experiment over again. Knowing Janet would be the only constant and she can't eat anything, Eleanor writes down a simple phrase and puts it in Janet's mouth. After the reset and Eleanor is alone for the first time, Janet gives her the paper which simply says "To Eleanor - Find Chidi."
• Metaphorgotten: "Even getting people to pull out each other's teeth is like... I can't think of the right analogy."
• Mood Whiplash: Michael expresses remorse over the fact that the humans are suffering due to his mistake, even saying that this is "truly the saddest day of my life." He then closes Eleanor's bedroom door, which causes goofy clown music to play. Justified, as it's revealed Michael is actually torturing the humans.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Michael offhandedly mentions to the humans that Janet wasn't in on the deception, and is in fact a Good Janet from the actual Good Place. Knowing that Janet is the only thing in the entire neighborhood that will genuinely try to help them gives Eleanor the idea to stick a piece of paper in her mouth advising her to find Chidi.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore; The fact that we've been in the Bad Place the entire time completely shatters the status quo. The entire rest of the series revolves around this reveal. All of the main four were sent to the Bad Place, Eleanor and Jason aren't here by mistake, Michael's a demon and so is the rest of the neighborhood, we've never seen the actual Good Place, the list goes on.
• Oh, Crap!: Eleanor acts very smugly after realizing she ruined Michael's scheme - but this smugness vanishes once Michael informs her that he can easily start over.
  • Michael has his own when Shawn casually states that Retirement might be on the table, no matter what the team decides, because his boss might not be happy with him.
  • "Next time?!"
• Once More, with Clarity: Several scenes from previous episodes are shown again, now with the context that Michael and everyone else in the neighborhood is torturing the main characters.
  • The reason Bart and Nina from "Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis" seemed so perfectly set up to keep Chidi and Eleanor on their toes was because they were — Michael thought of their private eye/marriage counselor schtick at Eleanor's doorstep. Nina even throws in the idea of getting them to swing with them, something Eleanor thought would happen in that same episode.
  • Michael's stunned face when Eleanor confessed was because she was a Spanner in the Works to his real plan.
  • The flashbacks to Chidi's life emphasize that he really did make everyone in his life miserable with his indecisiveness.
• Pull the Thread: Eleanor tells Shawn and Michael that she wants her and Chidi to be sent to the Bad Place. Despite fitting their exact qualifications, they haphazardly refuse, which perfectly illustrates what Eleanor was trying to prove; they're never going to call the train, because they can't. They're already in the Bad Place.
• Reset Button Ending: At the end, Michael resets everything, with a few minor changes so that he doesn't wind up in a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
• The Reveal: What the true nature of the afterlife is.
• Secretly Selfish: The reason why Tahani is in the Bad Place. She may have done a lot of charitable things, but her selfish motivations (upstaging her sister, getting attention and gratification) negated that.
• Sequel Hook: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason have had their memories erased and Michael starts his experiment over, but with the note Eleanor left to herself, she's not about to accept everything at face value.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The entire season's journey, ranging from Eleanor improving as a person to her outsmarting Michael and realizing they're in the Bad Place, is all undone with a snap of Michael's fingers.
• Significant Name Shift: When Eleanor catches onto the ruse and calls over Michael to expose him, she refers to him as "Mikey" in a patronizing tone, showcasing how she's no longer for falling for his trick.
• Shout-Out: Tahani's life goal was to make out with Ryan Gosling at the Met Ball. Which she did, a couple of times.
• Tempting Fate: Michael, while boasting about the fake Good Place, assures his fellow architects he can make the humans in there torture themselves for 1000 years. Shawn doubts it and tells Michael he'd be very lucky if he gets even 6 months out of them. By the end of the episode, Shawn is proven correct.
• This Isn't Heaven: The characters are actually in a new experimental section of the Bad Place where they were put together to torture one another while the demons only did minimal work.
• Title Drop: Downplayed. "Michael's Gambit" is never said in the episode verbatim, but when Michael presents his idea to the Bad Place, Shawn calls his plan "an insane gambit" which is clearly where the title comes from.
• Token Good Teammate: Janet is revealed to be this, as she's the only part of Neighborhood 12358W that actually is from the real Good Place, and thus was genuinely trying to do her purpose of making the humans' afterlife experience more easier and enjoyable.
• Too Dumb to Live: Jason, one more time, as Michael's about to wipe everyone's memories, and everyone else is panicking, Jason has already managed to completely forget what's happening.
• Twist Ending: This is the last episode of the season, and it has the famous twist ending of revealing they've been in the Bad Place the whole time.
• Villain Respect: Rather than being mad that Eleanor revealed what was truly going on, Michael laughs in glee.
• Wham Episode: We learn that the neighborhood has been the Bad Place all along, Michael and all residents aside from the main four are actually demons and at the end, Michael wipes their memories and resets the neighborhood.
• Wham Line:
  • "Holy mother-forking shirtballs."
  • "They're never gonna call a train to take us to the Bad Place. They can't. Because we're already here. This is the Bad Place."
    • Followed swiftly by: "Oh, man! I can't believe you figured it out!"
  • "Next time, I'll spread you out, so it's more of a slow burn."
  • "To Eleanor - Find Chidi!" sent to her by Eleanor from the first loop.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Eleanor revealing herself several episodes prior completely threw off Michael's long term plans, as they never anticipated she would fess up like that. Everything since then has been Michael trying to re-rail the system and pit them against each other, including bringing in the "real Eleanor." When Michael reveals the plan to wipe their memories and try again, Eleanor has to think fast to deliver some form of clue to herself in the next cycle.

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