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Michael has officially had it with Eleanor Shellstrop. It’s bad enough that she’s improving as a person when she very much was not supposed to do that. It’s bad enough that she’s causing everything to go way off the rails by confessing she doesn’t belong. Now she’s infecting everyone else with her good person whatever-the-fork-she’s-doing too?
At least, that’s the only explanation he can come up with when Tahani replies to his fake apology for destroying her house with “I don’t care about the house, Michael.”
Throwing a party with the other demons in the Bad Place crew was supposed to ruin the house Tahani took such careful care of, threaten her image, her status, the only things she’s supposed to care about.
So it has to be Eleanor’s fault, somehow. She’s responsible for every other part of this experiment going so disastrously wrong. What has she done to Tahani? Has she convinced her somehow that decorating isn’t a worthy pastime? He wouldn’t put it past her. He wouldn’t put anything past her anymore.
For a moment, he’s so caught up in trying to figure out how Eleanor could have possibly made Tahani not care about her house that he almost misses the second part of Tahani’s statement: “I’m just upset that you let them walk all over you.”
And, well. That sentence doesn’t sit correctly. Tahani doesn’t care about the house because she’s more concerned about his behavior? His behavior was supposed to make her furious at him, like the shallow, status-obsessed person that she was— is. That she is.
But he’s supposed to play the caring Good Place Architect of the neighborhood, so he ignores how confusing that sentiment is coming from her and focuses back on that role to reply.
“Oh, I know, but they’re the only thing in the universe that scares me,” he manages. And because maybe he can still get Tahani angry if he tries, he keeps going.
“I know what I have to do. I just have to be…” he watches her face, “…more accommodating. Offer them everything they want, give in to all of their demands, and then they’ll have to respect me.”
“No,” Tahani insists, firm but still not angry. “You need to stand up for yourself. I’m going to tell you the same thing that I told Mark Zuckerberg right before he ousted Eduardo Saverin. You are smart, you are capable, and the time has come to hit ‘unfriend.’”
Okay, so. That didn’t work. Tahani starts rambling about something related to Mark Zuckerberg and removing the ‘the’ from Facebook (so at least she’s not a completely different person), and Michael says something about thanking her for her advice so he can leave.
He’s going to have to “stand up for himself” anyway. It’s not like he can let Eleanor actually leave the neighborhood, she could realize far too much. But Tahani wasn’t supposed to be pushing for it. She was supposed to be angry about them trashing her house! How could she possibly care about him more than that?
Humans and their stupid sentimental attachments. Demons know how things are supposed to work. You take care of yourself, because no one else will. He doesn’t have any true allies in this. The closest thing would probably be Janet, but only because she has no idea what’s really going on— besides, right now she’s a useless rebooting toddler.
Tahani doesn’t know what’s truly going on either, but she doesn’t even have Janet’s programming requiring her to help him. Why would she care about Michael— even persona, Good Place Architect Michael— more than the gorgeous house he designed her?
It has to be Eleanor’s fault. She’s the one ruining everything. Why did she confess, why has she changed so much, how and why has she caused everything to go so differently from how he planned it?
It must be her causing Tahani to care about him— about his fake persona at least. Eleanor is responsible for everything else that’s gone wrong, she must have done something to Tahani too.
Great. Just one more uncontrolled variable that he doesn’t know how to navigate. That Arizona trash bag is going to be the death of him.