Loveday Writing

We are then brought back to the present in Michael’s office where Michael decides run full diagnostics on Janet to determine why the glitches are happening. As he is about to start, Vicky comes in to ask Michael about the earthquake. Michael manages to stall her by encouraging her to torture Chidi, and then gets to work. After the diagnostics rule out some possibilities, Michael finds in the manual that the glitches may be a sign that Janet is processing or disseminating information that is incompatible with objective truth, aka lying. This makes him believe he is responsible for her glitches, as he lied to her about himself and his objectives, however Janet points out that if that were the case, she would have been glitching the entire time.

Tahani and Jason then walk in as they have been calling for Janet. Michael explains that he has taken her offline for a systems check. Jason then asks Janet for a list of things that will make Tahani happy, when she says she’ll give it to them, this causes another glitch to occur – the walls collapse around them and place them in a black void. When the walls come back, Michael sends Tahani and Jason away, and Janet tells Michael that she is losing her ability to sustain object permanence. Later when Janet says she is happy for Tahani and Jason, she vomits coins.

Michael deduces that the problem is Janet lying to other people, an ability she has gained over the course of her reboots. When Michael realises that the glitches have occurred when she lied about being happy for Jason and Tahani, he concludes that Janet is still in love with Jason, and tells her about her marriage to Jason after the first reboot. He also concludes that her feelings for Jason have amplified with each reboot. Janet then tells Michael that he has to kill her via her self-destruct mechanism, aka marbleise her.

Despite Janet’s encouragement (which includes chanting “kill me” at him), Michael can’t go through with as she is his best and only friend. Michael then concludes that her problem is an emotional and therefore human problem, so he decides to consult with Eleanor. Eleanor suggests to Janet that she find a rebound guy.

The episode ends with Janet telling Michael she is going to go to her void to spend time alone and focus on herself, only to return seconds later with a man in tow. The man is Derek, her rebound guy that she created.

Overall I enjoyed this episode and getting an insight into Janet and Michael’s relationship and past. I also enjoyed the character development with Michael with the reveal that he views and cares for Janet as a friend. I’m also looking forward to seeing the affect that Derek will have on the gang’s plan.

Stray Observations:

-Janet keeps her user manual inside her nose.

-Janets are kept in a neutral pocket dimension underneath the shapeless time void, next to accounting.

-A collapsed Janet is roughly the size of a marble, she can be launched into space through an inter-dimension suction tube, or eaten as a mid-day snack. She is very high in potassium.

-The diagnostics that were done on Janet included: looking into Janet’s ear with a rainbow coming out the other side, taking her blood pressure with Michael expressing relief that she still has no blood, taking her temperature (apparently 99.7 trillion degrees is a bit on the high side), and summoning and retrieving an object using the random object generator.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Hi guys, I’m broken!” (Janet to Tahani and Jason)
• “Look at us, a couple of old pals, trying to make our way in this crazy world that I built. Two peas in a pod, one of whom needs to kill the other one immediately.” (Janet to Michael on their friendship)
• “I don’t think I’ve ever meant this literally, but that might be too much information.” (Eleanor to Janet after Janet explains the situation to her)