Loveday Writing

According to Wikipedia, the series is set “in the Bad Place, as Shawn and his demon cohorts decide which humans to send to Michael’s newly formed afterlife neighbourhood to thwart his benevolent plan.” The series consists of six, (roughly) two-minute webisodes.

Part 1: The Mission

The first webisode sets up the premise of the web series with Shawn’s team of demons waiting in Conference Room C for Shawn to arrive at their meeting. When Shawn arrives, he informs them that they have to choose four humans for Michael’s new experiment who have no chance of improving, and that they can’t pick dictators or serial killers, much to their chagrin. He gives them an hour to think up of ideas.

Part 2: The Candidates

The series continues with files of potential candidates on the table that the demons are sitting at and the demons telling Shawn about them. Val suggests Mackenzie Troufe, a racist, shoplifting, trust fund baby. Bambadjan suggests Troy Hastings, a volunteer firefighter and occasional arsonist (firebug) who preferred being on social media to parenting, which ultimately led to his death. Gayle provides a few suggestions but ultimately admits to struggling to pick someone due to the large amount of bad people in the world to choose from, a struggle which the others admit to sharing. The webisode ends with the team still struggling over who to choose as subjects for the experiment.

Part 3: The Takeout Order

This webisode focuses purely on the team arguing over what to eat for lunch, with Todd, a fire demon, walking in asking where Evil Zumba is being held (a callback to the sight gag in the first webisode). The webisode ends with Shawn storming out, angry that the team are wasting time trying to decide what to eat.

Part 4: The Storm Out

This webisode kicks off with everyone full from the takeout they eventually made a decision on. Shawn expresses his frustration at the other demons for failing to decide on four humans for the new experiment (840,000 suggestions were made and they all sucked according to Shawn). Bambadjan, Val and Gayle pressure Glenn into talking to Shawn to get him to come back to the meeting after he stormed out.

Part 5: The Talk

The webisode kicks off with Glenn finding Shawn in another room smoking a goose turd cigar. Glenn tells Shawn that he knows he stormed out because he was worried, not just mad. Shawn confides in Glenn about his stress, and Glenn tells him that they are worried that he will never be satisfied, no matter who they pick, and it’s hard because people are dying all the time. When Glenn tells Shawn about Simone’s death, he has an epiphany and walks out.

Part 6: The Solution

Shawn comes back into the meeting and tells the other demons that if they want the experiment to fail they have to attack the group’s weakest point, themselves, and they need to make it personal and neutralise the original group by sending in four new people specifically targeted to make them miserable. Bambadjan suggests John Wheaton for Tahani, who is welcomed by the original group in the Season 3 Finale. The webisode and web series ends with Shawn staring Gayle down as she suggests Steve Hitler (a suggestion Glenn made in Part 1) as a test subject for several seconds before telling her that she “sucks so bad”, although being that they are demons, we’re not sure whether he’s actually mad at her or not.

Overall I enjoyed this web series as it provided a nice insight into the demons and how they operate, especially for the purposes of the experiment. While it was in Shawn’s and the other demons’ nature to be against the experiment, it was actually insightful to see how they think, operate, what their motivations were, and their struggles with trying to get it right.

Individually, I felt that Part 1, as the web series’ pilot, established the premise of the web series perfectly. Part 2 was the strongest webisode as it provided insight into the demons. Part 3 was the weakest as their escalating argument about what to pick for lunch didn’t add anything to the series. Part 4 was a slight improvement over Part 3 as the team’s progress was revealed (although they still hadn’t picked anyone) and Shawn storms out in frustration. Part 5 was more of an improvement as we got an insight into both Shawn and Glenn, as Glenn called Shawn out on why he left the meeting, and despite the peer pressure, Glenn was the best person to speak to Shawn as he wasn’t afraid to call him out and inform him of the other demons’ concerns. Part 6, the final part, brought a solid close to the series as they finally came up with a game plan and picked another human, John, who was ultimately selected and sent in the experiment, although the final moments could have been better, I felt that the stare down between Shawn and Gayle didn’t really add anything.

Stray Observations:

The title card of each webisode varies with its “created by” credit:

• Webisode 1 – “Created by A Bunch of Dingdongs”
• Webisode 2 – “Created by Some Fat Dinks”
• Webisode 3 – “Created by A Crew of Idiots”
• Webisode 4 – “Created by Your Mom”
• Webisode 5 – “Created by One Dingus, Another Dingus and An Even Bigger Dingus”
• Webisode 6 – “Created by Your Mom (She Came Back and Did Another One)”

-Apparently Conference Room C has the “Evil Plan” meeting scheduled at 11am and “Evil Zumba” scheduled at 6pm.

-Gayle’s suggestion of possible candidates included: a woman who was a cult leader and destroyed thousands of lives, a man who poached rhinos into extinction, and another man who doxed a comic book illustrator just because he thought she ‘drew Iron Man wrong’.

-Apparently a fart is a type of welcome in the Bad Place.

-Shawn tortures Emily Dickinson by making her listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast.

-Apparently the demons’ primary sustenance is the suffering they inflict on humans.

-Shawn tortures Julia Child by having her locked in a Papa John’s kitchen.

-According to Shawn, Johnny Depp uses blood transfusions from giraffes to prop up his diseased organs.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Val, you despicable piece of crap, why don’t you start?” (Shawn to Val on her ideas for candidates)