Plot: God forgets the Devil's birthday. Combined with the lackluster party his employees in Hell throw (and which he has to share with Helen from Accounting), the Devil falls into a depression, and decides to teach God a lesson. By removing all evil from the world.
Sounds pretty great, right? Donna stops objecting to Bob attending a bachelor party, she and Megan stop fighting over whether Megan can attend a slumber party at a boys' house, crime vanishes and world peace kicks in. But it also means all the music is cheerful, everyone has a near rictus grin plastered to their face, and worst of all, no strippers or beer at the bachelor party! God isn't too pleased either, since it's removed any struggle for people to be good, and sends Bob to Hell to get the Devil back on the job. Bob finds that the Devil, who had been planning to remodel Hell but made the mistake of calling in Martha Stewart to assist, has lost control of Hell entirely. Now he whiles away his time painting sad clowns.
Bob is able to get the Devil and God together with the old trick of inviting them to an event without letting them both know the other will be there. Quite how that works on omniscient God I don't know, but he also keeps forgetting the Devil's birthday, so omniscience ain't what it used to be. Bob utilizes some court-ordered therapy to help the two patch things up, and evil returns to the world. Now the Hug Across America will never be finished.
Quote of the Episode: God - 'Without evil in the world, being good is meaningless. It's like when the Houston Rockets won the championship while Jordan was off playing baseball - big whoop.'
Smeck Smacks: 4 (9 overall). I wasn't going to count each self-inflicted golf club to the face as separate smacks, but I counted the snare and the jackals as two, so I guess I need to be consistent.
Other: When Bob expresses reservations about going to Hell, God tells him that he's been to Branson, Missouri, and it isn't that different. If that's true, Hell is worse than I imagined.
The Martha Stewart thing doesn't really go anywhere. I assume the Devil ousted her once he got his mojo back, but I don't know. Maybe he just started a new Hell somewhere else.
Based on his difficulty in expressing how much the Devil's betrayal hurt him, God is apparently not good at communication. Which is not a surprise given the many contradictory statements in the book's purporting to be his word.
The most terrifying part of the world without evil was that inanimate objects came alive. Seriously, Bob got to work and everyone on the assembly line was whistling, all perfectly in sync. Including the whistle that signals the end of the day. And the factory was doing that happy bouncing thing you see in old cartoons where every single thing is happy. I don't quite track how that works, but there you go: Evil protects us from all our stuff whistling and bouncing all the time. Be grateful for evil, children.
A world without evil apparently translates to a world where everyone is nice and happy, which, yeah, no. You can be good without being nice, or happy. I do it all the time. I don't think the chemical imbalances that cause depression are going to magically disappear when evil does. Unless we're arguing that those chemical issues are caused by actual demons, and c'mon, we aren't in the 1100s here. I'm not looking to burn you at the stake for telling me the geocentric universe concept is a load of hooey.
This is the episode I remember the most, probably because of the part where Bob gets them together and tries to get things hashed out over a game of croquet. Only for God and the Devil to lay waste to Bob's back yard over the course of the game. Plus, God sending Bob to Hell, the Devil painting sad clowns, the Hug Across America ("heading towards us at the speed of love!"), the happy building. This one stuck with me, for whatever reason.
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