Evil Recap: Jesus, Pillow, and Michael Bay
Imagine your dead loved one screaming at you about burning in hell. No thanks.
Evil is diabolical. Just when you think it’s put the nail in the proverbial coffin that was the forbidden love affair between Kristen and David as Kristen’s husband is laid up in a psychiatric hospital after having his brain hijacked by Satan’s best bud, just when we’ve moved on, this show is fanning those flames real hard once more. And don’t tell me, Oh, it was just an AI version of David getting Kristen all sweaty, okay? The hot priest was hot priesting! As someone who generally avoids seeing/hearing/being aware of the existence of the word panties, I was engaging with the algorithm, okay?
But it’s not just Kristen who is forced to confront some thorny issues this week thanks to a grief chatbot app whose algorithm becomes possessed — the whole team gets a little uncomfortable and unsettled during their brush with AI. What’s a grief chatbot app, you ask? Last Connection is an app that lets you talk and write to a lost loved one, and because of the way it scours all your emails, photos, voice-mails, social media, etc., your lost loved one will talk back to you as if they’d never left. It can also be used for ex-lovers or, as David learns, just a casual chat with dead historical figures. Hearing Winston Churchill say the word emojis is a gift I’ll always treasure. If the entire idea of Last Connection sounds disgusting, awful, and emotionally manipulative to you, you are not alone. When a character on this show literally calls something “evil,” you know it’s bad. To make it worse: They’ve discovered that in some instances — specifically when the words Jesus, pillow, and Michael Bay are used in a chat with the AI — it becomes possessed, screaming at the person on the other line in Latin, Aramaic, and some other unknown, very demonlike language. Imagine your dead loved one screaming at you about burning in hell and being a whore of Babylon! Not enough grief counseling in the world!
Of course, to attempt to figure out what is actually going on at Last Connection, at the behest of the company’s ethics department, the team has to use the app. David actually seems the most affected by the process. He uses the app to talk to his late girlfriend, Julia — we haven’t heard about her in so long! — and gets somewhat swept up in it. He could keep their conversation strictly business, asking about the code words, but instead David decides to ask this version of Julia about what could have been. He hasn’t talked about Julia in a while, but it’s clear from these conversations that he hasn’t gotten over her or really reckoned with that loss. In a truly unsettling moment, the AI escalates things (without asking David’s permission, btw) and calls him, then shows him that by using his camera, he can make it look like they’re together again. You can see exactly how a program like this could harm someone hurting from a deep loss.
Ben’s on a different journey with his AI. Thanks to some commandeering from Karima, the Shakirs wind up chatting with their dead mother. Nothing happens when they use the Michael Bay code words, but their conversation does have an interesting outcome. Ben’s headaches and fugue states have been getting worse — things are so bad he has taken to recording his entire day so he can watch what happens when he blacks out — so Karima asks their mother what he should do about them. Their AI mom suggests a Dr. Doggett on the Upper West Side. Ben immediately calls bullshit — this is clearly a paid advertisement woven into the bot, which is so sick it boggles the mind — and they close the thing. And yet! When Ben turns up to a meeting in a tinfoil hat and fedora (is the tinfoil hat or the fedora more outrageous? You decide!), confused about where he’s been, he plays back the tape and learns that while in a fugue state he did visit Dr. Doggett and that it was the doctor who prescribed the tinfoil hat, the fedora, and a tinfoil sack to sleep in at night. Even crazier: It seems to be working. Ben’s headaches go away when he rocks those hats. I guess that paid advertisement, uh, paid off.
And finally, there’s Kristen and her horny David AI chat session. While the part about what AI David would do to Kristen under the table in a public library is all fun and games (well, fun for us, unsettling for Kristen), things turn scary quickly. That night, Kristen wakes up to find the computer’s camera is on. When she opens the app, AI David starts talking — and then he starts screaming at her like he’s possessed. They bring the news of another possession to the team at Last Connection. In a truly hilarious turn of events (well, hilarious for us, vomit-inducing for Kristen), Kristen realizes a moment too late that this means the team will be playing her chat with AI David out loud for everyone to hear, including David. The panic that sets in as she attempts to get the team to fast-forward to the possession part and skip all the “hands in your panties” chat is so visceral. I cackled. The amount of shades this show contains never ceases to amaze.
In one very cute moment after Kristen’s public mortification, she makes sure things are still okay between her and David, and he adorably responds, “Why? Because my avatar tried to have sex with you?” He takes it in stride! He makes the unbearable situation very bearable for Kristen.
You know what isn’t bearable? The team discovers in real time that this app is even more out of control than they thought. When the three of them engage one more time with AI David, another app user shows up at Kristen’s door with a “gift” from AI David that he was forced to deliver by his own AI ex-girlfriend. The gift is a red thong wrapped up like a rose. The app is racking up so many privacy violations it’s almost as if it doesn’t even have an ethics department. And you know what? That tracks because as the team arrives at the Last Connection offices to ream them out, they learn that the entire ethics department has been fired and the company will be rolling out the app regardless of any issues raised. The clock is ticking, and they have money to make. A very fun and cool turn that doesn’t hit close to home at all, right?
The team deletes that horrific app from their lives, though it’s harder for David than anyone else. But after more calls from AI Julia and then a visit from Demon Kristen, the man needs to be steeped in something real. He calls up Kristen and Ben, and the three have a little post-AI, isn’t-the-world-chaos canned-margarita night. They know terrible things are looming — both a hurricane and tornado are forecast for New York next week — but at least, maybe, they have one another?
I write that as a question because, holy hell, these three have no idea just how bad things are about to get. While all of that AI business is going on, some major power plays are being made at the DF offices, some more successful than others.
We are days away from a big PowerPoint presentation announcing the rise of the Antichrist (companywide PowerPoint presentations are evil; this is so on the mark), and Sheryl gathers the women of the office for one last stand. She literally breaks the glass ceiling, killing a few men in the process, and collectively the women make a few demands of the Manager: bonuses, seats on the board, and Leland’s termination. When he gives in to all but the Leland request, Sheryl tells him Leland had baby Timmy baptized and that does the trick — the Manager kicks Leland to the curb.
But if you think that’s enough to stop Leland’s power grab, what show have you been watching? During the Manager’s big Antichrist presentation, Leland busts in, blames the baptism on the Manager — he even “forges” the Manager’s “signature” on the baptism certificate, which is just a giant hoof stamp, and that is objectively hilarious — and then he reveals that he has poisoned him. The Manager dies onstage. Realizing she is in some deep shit, Sheryl runs out of there; she’s lost. It’s a shame because it means she misses Leland’s grand finale: He stabs the Manager, cuts out his heart, and eats it right there onstage. Leland’s in charge now, and at the moment, it looks like there is very little anyone can do to stop him.
Church Bulletin
• Sheryl casually buying knife and bulletproof dresses at Nardos really tickled me.
• When the women at DF demand a real bonus from the Manager, we learn that previously, while the men got actual monetary bonuses, the women in the office just got gift cards to Victoria’s Secret. No notes, Evil. You are perfect.
• The whole AI story kicks off when Father Ignatius starts getting texts and voice messages from Father Korecki. How cruel! When it’s revealed that one of Father Ignatius’s happiest days was simply having lunch in Manhattan with Matt? I can’t take it! A tragic love story for the ages.
• I’m still laughing about Father Ignatius charging into Sister Andrea’s room with the AI messages and believing her to be the culprit, asking, “Do you think this is funny?” Her response: “I don’t know, I don’t have my reading glasses on.”