WiC Watches: The Good Place season 4

THE GOOD PLACE — “Mondays, Am I Right?” Episode 411– Pictured: (l-r) Manny Jacinto as Jason, William Jackson Harper as Chidi — (Photo by: Colleen Hayes/NBC)

Episode 411: “Mondays, Am I Right?”

I wonder if this show will end with Chidi and Eleanor realizing that being together doesn’t guarantee eternal bliss. Really, The Good Place has a tall order trying to give us a convincing picture of eternal bliss at all. In pop culture, heaven is often depicted as a placid place where your every need is cared for and you never need to stress about anything, but does that really sound like an ideal life? To some people, sure, but a lot of folk enjoy a little danger, a little stress, a little worry. It makes the good moments stand out. What will our four heroes make of this when they finally get to the Good Place — the real Good Place — in the next episode?

I suppose that’s a question for next week, and whatever my concerns, the moment where the gang piled into the hot air balloon brought a smile to my face. It was a long time coming. Still, the discussion between Chidi and Jason about whether they’re cut out to be with Janet and Eleanor in the long term has me wondering if we’re in for a more melancholic ending, or at least one more complicated than, “And they all lived happily ever after in perfection.”

Take Vicki. She’s been an absolute stain of a person over the course of this show, and I think she would agree with that assessment. But here, she finds satisfaction in running the new afterlife system, taking over the job from Michael after he sees how naturally good at it she is. Is that terribly realistic after seeing her fumble through her time as the manager of Michael’s old neighborhood? Not really, but I wonder if The Good Place is trying to tell us that Vicki, at least, has found her own purpose — her own heaven — through satisfying work, something you probably don’t have to do in the Good Place.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more it sounds right. Who wants to hang out with the impossible cheerful good place residents we’ve met so far? The show has gone out of its way to make them seem insufferable. There’s a shoe gonna drop.

Okay, enough meta rambling. This episode was funny. I loved the title scene, where the one Bad Place architect couldn’t get it through her head that a grounded morality test shouldn’t include a chainsaw bear. You know what? As long as they don’t hurt me, I wouldn’t mind a chainsaw bear or two in my heaven.

The Good Bullet Points

• “What the here is going on?”
• Tahani had a pretty sick Taylor Swift burn. Fun name drops for Vin Diesel and the Rock, too.
• Hell has a performative wokeness department.
• “Sweet Hitler’s hairpiece!”
• “Think of it as flattening the penises of their heart.” “Oh, now it makes sense.” Man, the Bad Place people really get hung up on penis flattening. They do need new ideas.
• “I’ve never said this before, but, wha?”
• “I have an ice-cold yoga class. It’s amazing, you pull so many muscles.”
• Before we see the new neighborhood up and running, the title card tells us that it’s “1.28 Jeremy Bearimy later.” Who knows how long that was for our four humans?