WiC Watches: The Good Place season 4

THE GOOD PLACE — “You’ve Changed, Man” Episode 410 — Pictured: (l-r) D’Arcy Carden as Janet, Maya Rudolph as Judge — (Photo by: Colleen Hayes/NBC)

Episode 410: “You’ve Changed, Man”

New Chidi is great. He says “I love you” to Eleanor without thinking, roller skates for fun and faces the apocalypse with a can-do attitude and a hunger for warm pretzels. We’re keeping him.

Chidi’s new chill is the result of having all 1,000-plus versions of him dumped into his brain at once, which gives the group the idea to fashion a new afterlife system that’s less cruel than the current one: their idea, as it stands now, is to administer a kind of morality test after you die, the specifics of which are tailored to your own life. Pass it, and you get into the Good Place. Fail, and you take it again, having most of your memory wiped but retaining enough to help to learn from what you did wrong and try again. Demons would play roles like they did in Michael’s neighborhood, the Good Place and Bad Place architects would work together to design the tests, and humanity wouldn’t have to get rebooted. Everything sound good?

That’s the conclusion everyone — even Shawn — reaches by the end of the episode, but I dunno if I bought it. Team Cockroach comes up with a couple more plans before this and Shawn shoots them all down, not because they were bad but because he just doesn’t want Michael to get a win. Shawn is basing his decisions on what feels good or bad to him rather than on what’s actually best for anyone, which is pretty consistent with how shitty people behave. It also makes sense that he comes around not based on any argument, but because Michael gives up and Shawn is suddenly terrified that he has to face the next billion years without playing their cat-and-mouse game. The key to winning with Shawn, as with a lot of selfish people, is to play on their feelings, not convince them.

Still, everyone in the Bad Place is getting a raw deal. I know Shawn was getting bored with penis-flattening and what not, but wouldn’t this new plan mean that no one would ever get tortured again, since they all have as many chances as they need to pass the test?

It struck me a bit as a ploy to move the plot where it needed to go for the final three episodes. In fact, “You’ve Changed, Man” mostly felt like table-setting for the endgame, with some funky commentary from Disco Janet to make it go down easy.

And that’s fine. It’s still a little hard to believe that the show will be over in a matter of weeks. I wanna hold on as long as I can.

The Good Bullet Points

• Tahani name drop watch: Bruno Mars, LeBron James and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who spent at least one crazy night together.
• I loved visiting the different Janets’ voids, particularly Bad Janet’s post-riot hellscape. Did you notice the billboard in the background: Pirates of the Caribbean 12: Jack Sparrow fights Aquaman probably at this point what does it matter?
• Also loved Bad Janet’s sad long fart.
• “Shut up! Shut up. Hi. Shut up. I’m confident now.”
• “The fair thing for us to do is just keep giving up more and more stuff we want unilaterally until this demon’s finally happy!”