Michael showed them the same video they'd seen every time, with minimal tweaks, such as the "feel-good" sponsor. This reboot, the video was "sponsored" by baby kangaroos nestled into their mother's pouch.

During the part of the video where Michael addresses the soulmate proposition, he made sure to take a good look at Eleanor in the audience. Her legs were crossed in her chair and she shifted uncomfortably, looking around to see if anyone else seemed to be with their soulmate already. After noticing that no one had yet, she looked back down at her hands and then back up at the video.

Michael felt accomplished that he made her feel so lost and confused this early into the reboot, but he worried it wouldn't last long. And he knew the demons were skeptical about this approach, especially Vicky.

Even though he couldn't stand her, she did make some reasonable points. By claiming to be Eleanor's soulmate from the get-go, it will likely cause her to doubt the validity of the Good Place. However, if he tried an alternate plan involving this idea where he waited to confess he was her soulmate, it would make her lose all trust in him immediately. That is why he decided to give her the information immediately and let her settle into it.

He wanted the greatest chance at success in this reboot. He didn't want to waste time with things that wouldn't work at tricking the four humans into believing they were really in The Good Place, while still making them feel as miserable as possible. He wanted to make this experiment a successful one, and hopefully impress Shawn enough to earn his senior staff pin.

Still, Vicky had earlier made some preposterous assumptions that were very untrue and impractical that he couldn't quit thinking about.

He remembered the conversation vividly…

"So what I'm thinking about is.. wait for it! Telling Eleanor that I'm her soulmate! Eh? What do you think?"

"Ha, really?" Vicky scoffed. "Just how would that work?"

"Okay, get this: Eleanor has a lot of problems with feeling like she doesn't belong. By telling her that I am her soulmate, she has no one to confess to, and will continue to bottle up her stress. I get her to trust me, maybe even develop some of those human feelings, ya know love and all that jazz. She'll feel so confused and discouraged. It'll be great."

"I'm not seeing how that's any more torturous than anything else we've tried."

"Consider not just her anxiety about getting caught – but also her feeling as if no one could ever truly love her. Thinking that everyone else has a real soulmate, but she is stuck with the architect that is more worried about trying to solve the neighborhood problems than spending time with her. She'll feel so jealous of everyone around her. She's going to feel so insignificant! It'll be great!"

"I guess. But why go through all of this? It seems like a lot of extra work." Vicky had asked.

"Uh.." Michael didn't have a clear answer. Part of it was because he realized he needed to try something new. Setting her up with any of the other humans caused her to make the revelation about it being the Bad Place too soon and most of the other demons weren't as skilled in emotional manipulation as he was. They'd rather pull out toenails and smash noses with sledgehammers than play with people's feelings. Another part was simply for the fun of it. Michael was amused with Eleanor, and how she reacted to new situations. He wanted to see how she would react to this, he just couldn't figure out why that mattered so much to him.

"Oh, I see why."

"See? Yeah," Michael answered, not really knowing what made Vicky change her mind. Perhaps she would give him a good reason that he could latch onto, seeing as he didn't quite have the language to explain why he wanted to try this so badly.

"Yeah - you want to bone Eleanor," she responded nonchalantly.

Michael coughed in surprise. "What?"

"You have a thing for Eleanor. We get it."

"What? Ha! No way. She's such a gross human. No that's not… that's not what this is about."

"Look, I don't really care. If you wanna have at her, go for it. Kiss her, fuck her, tell her you love her, whatever. Just give me a better role this time. Ooh, can I be Chidi's soulmate? I'm thinking of being this French poet that's really bad, but he won't have the heart to tell her that her poems are bad and it'll eat him alive. I've got a whole backstory and everything."

Michael shuttered at the memory. Obviously, Vicky was very out-of-line for saying such a crazy thing. That could never be the case.

He was a professional. Even hell spawn had some level of self-respect to not create any conflicts of interest. Fraternizing with the victims was always looked down upon by Bad Place employees, for there was no room for empathy or guilt towards causing the subjects any suffering. Besides, Michael was a powerful 6000-ft tall fire squid at the heart of it all. What would cause him to become interested in a human being?

Then again, as he looked out into the crowd of faces, he couldn't lie and say that Eleanor's didn't catch his eye every time. Something about the way her posture was both charismatic and vulnerable ignited him with an indescribable passion. But surely it was the passion of seeing her miserable, yes? Seeing his newest arch nemesis all flustered and confused was enjoyable solely for knowing that he was making her feel bad, and not because of the way her cheeks blushed when she was trying to hide something.

No. He wanted nothing more than to break her heart over and over and over again, not mend it. He was a demon, after all.

At least that was what he told himself as he gazed out at her wide, curious eyes and beautiful blonde hair swaying lightly in the calm breeze.

Yeah, this was about the torture for sure.