WiC Watches: The Good Place season 4

THE GOOD PLACE — “Patty” Episode 412 — Pictured: (l-r) D’Arcy Carden as Janet, Kristen Bell as Eleanor, William Jackson Harper as Chidi, Ted Danson as Michael, Manny Jacinto as Jason, Jameela Jamil as Tahani — (Photo by: Colleen Hayes/NBC)

Episode 412: “Patty”

I KNEW IT! I knew heaven wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How could it? The vision of heaven we have here on Earth has, for many millennia, been of a place where all your worries are washed away, where you can relax and enjoy simple delights. And that may have sounded appealing to the medieval peasants for whom the idea of blissful afterlife was crucial for getting through their days of toil and misery, but I think a modern person would get bored of that heaven pretty quick. And eventually, the prospect of an eternal break would bore those medieval wretches, too. Heaven would be like it is on The Good Place: a pristine complex where anyone can have anything they want, and nobody cares because they’re seen it all before.

This episode was a great satire of all these undercooked notions of the afterlife, and it arrives somewhere really profound: on The Good Place, the reward for living your best life is…death, essentially. The way Michael and company fix it, in the new Good Place, once arrivals tire of doing everything they want, they can choose to walk through a door and…be done. This is also wonderfully subversive. We spend so much of our everyday lives trying to stave off death — through beauty regimens, physical fitness, eating right, doctor’s visits — but it doesn’t have to be something scary. It’s a natural endpoint, one that gives meaning to everything that comes before.

I’ve think The Good Place rushed through some points earlier in the season, but this was a hit, and an important point to make this close to the finish line. I’m sad this show is ending, but that’s because I love it. And I wouldn’t love it if it didn’t end.

If that sounds maudlin, sorry. On top of the philosophical insights, “Patty” was jam-packed with hilarious moments and one-lines, such as…

The Good Bullet Points

• “Did you sick from the hot air balloon? I bet if you throw up it’ll just be butterflies or something.”
• Tahani’s reward: “Karlie Kloss did like me!” Also, excellent Coachella burn.
• Chidi was unspeakably adorable freaking out over meeting Hypatia of Alexandria, or Patty. Lisa Kudrow, as per usual, was daffy and charming and pretty much perfect. The casting on this show is always on point. I loved her describing math as, “The one with the number piles.”
• And also: “Look, there’s math on my shirt. Is it an ‘S’ or a math?”
• “Is Big Ben…somehow your godfather?” “Uh huh.”
• So Eleanor’s perfect party includes a bedpan once used by Stone Cold Steve Austin to attack Vince McMahon, but doesn’t include Stone Cold Steve Austin.
• “I’m gonna go Tokyo drift with monkeys! See you in a thousand years!”
• One of the suggestions on the Good Place white board was, “Wait until Beyonce gets here, ask her to fix it.” She’d have cracked it.
• “I would have killed for a vaccine, any vaccine. It’s crazy that you guys don’t like them now.”