WiC Watches: The Good Place season 4

THE GOOD PLACE — “A Chip Driver Mystery” Episode 406 — Pictured: D’Arcy Carden as Janet — (Photo by: Colleen Hayes/NBC)

Episode 407: “Help Is Other People”

In “Help Is Other People,” The Good Place chases its characters up a tree. The four new humans figure out that something is wrong in the neighborhood thanks to Simone, who never quite let go of her paranoid streak from the start of the season. Who knew she would end up causing this much trouble for the experiment, second only to Brent?

Then, once they’re up there, the episode throws rocks at them. Now that the humans have figured out that Eleanor and Michael are lying to them, the entire experiment is in jeopardy, since their motives may be clouded. Michael devises a plan to get them to demonstrate how much they’ve learned: he drops Brent down a sinkhole, hoping that the other humans will unite and save him, but only Chidi does; Simone and John hightail it out of there in Brent’s Escalade. It looks like the experiment has failed.

Another twist: trying for one last Hail Mary pass (with thanks to Jason Mendoza for the uncharacteristically apt analogy), Michael and Eleanor push Chidi towards figuring out that they’re not in the Good Place, but rather in hell. It’s a fun echo of the thousands of times Eleanor put this together in the early seasons, with Eleanor even riffing on Michael’s evil laugh. The point is to try and get Brent to finally, finally realize he’s a rat bucket of a person — a “toilet full of broccoli,” as Jason puts it — since only then is real self-improvement possible for him. And he comes so close. He comes agonizingly, painfully close, the kind of close you can only get at the end of a cliffhanger-happy TV show, but he doesn’t quiiiiiite make it. He starts to tell Chidi “I’m sorry” (unless he was about to say, “I’m so awesome,” which is possible) but the clock strikes midnight before he can get the word out, marking the end of the experiment.

Did he get the points? If so, were they enough to put the humans over the top? Will Eleanor be able to down that margarita pitcher before the judge comes and gives her ruling? I don’t know, but I want to know badly.

This was a gripping, plot-heavy episode of The Good Place, setting one hell of a table for the final act, when the show has its say about what it means to live a good life, and to be a good person. “Help Is Other People” wrings actual pathos out of Brent Norwalk, of all people. Next to high points like that, the gags about Michael doing magic were pretty weak, but that’s only because I’m genuinely invested in seeing what comes next.

The Good Bullet Points

• Tahani kept her celebrity references limited to Princess Kate, although she did manage to sneak in plenty of humblebrags about the vacation they took together.
• We got more of Dumb Shorts Kathy. Now I demand a rendition of “The Purple Train to Groovy City.”
• Eleanor easily had the line of the night: “We hope that our early successes make up for the embarrassing mess we’ve become. Like Facebook, or America.”
• “Can you make them clap harder?” “They see what they see, man.”
• “Jason, that was…coherent.” “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to.”