Loveday Writing

Michael explains to the gang that Janet’s void has a back door to the Janet Warehouse, which is right near accounting. He tells them that he and Janet will go to accounting, while they’ll stay in Janet’s void. As the gang are the first humans to not immediately go to the Good or Bad Place, this makes them interdimensional fugitives. Michael also points out that as The Judge would be pissed off at him for his actions, she might take it out on them, and the Bad Place is still after them, literally the whole universe is against them.

Michael and Janet go to accounting posing as Good Place employees to speak to the Head Accountant, Neil. Neil shows them the main feed where every action by every human on Earth is recorded and sent to an accountant to be assigned a points value based on the absolute moral worth of that action. Moments later, an undefined action comes through, which goes to the relevant accountants, is given a points value, which is then re-checked with billions of other accountants who are chosen at random, who always come to a consensus on the points value. Neil tells them that because of this process, tampering is impossible. Michael then asks to see Doug’s file.

When Neil pulls up Doug’s file, he tells Michael and Janet that Doug has currently accrued 520,000 points, however despite this total and Doug’s attempts to lead a perfect life, he won’t be getting into the Good Place. This shocks Michael into asking Neil how long it has been since someone got into the Good Place, Neil does a search of the system and informs Michael that no-one has gotten into the Good Place in 521 years.

Meanwhile in Janet’s void, Jason and Tahani go for a walk and find Janet’s stored memories of her and Jason’s relationship and marriage, whilst Eleanor tries to get Chidi to discuss his feelings for her and their previous relationship. Chidi denies having any feelings for her and believes that this version of himself is not the same Chidi that she fell in love with. Chidi’s consistent denial of his feelings for her causes Eleanor to have an identity crisis and start to appear as different people. When Janet appears in the void to find out what’s going on, she realises that Eleanor’s sense of self is disintegrating and is taking the void down with it. This in turns causes Janet to start experiencing side effects, which could expose her to the accountants. She tells Michael that he needs to marbleise her, as Michael is trying to convince Neil that the Bad Place hacked the system to no avail. Janet tells him that he keeps looking for someone else to have the answer, but he needs to find it for himself.

Chidi restores Eleanor’s sense of self by reminding her of the kind of person she is and kissing her, which also leads to the gang reverting to their real appearance. This leads to the gang being evicted from Janet’s void in front of the accountants, which causes an alarm to go off, alerting everyone in the universe to their location. The gang, Michael and Janet flee from the accountants, with Michael taking the Book of Dougs (a book which details the points total of all humans beings named Doug), and they use a pneumatic mail tube to get into a post office in the Good Place.

This episode is one of my favourites for many reasons: it’s simplicity in its setting (in Janet’s void and in accounting), D’Arcy Carden’s stellar performance (she portrayed six different types of Janets, four of them being different individuals in the form of Janet), and the main story arc progressing and turning a corner when Janet points out to Michael that he needs to start fixing the problems with the system himself.

Now that Michael, Janet and the gang are in the Good Place, albeit in one of its post offices, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Stray Observations:

-Janet refers to Chidi when he has taken on her appearance as Chidi-Janet. Chidi does the same thing when he refers to Jason and Eleanor in Janet’s form as Jason-Janet and Eleanor-Janet.

-According to Janet, Neutral Janets are the black or blank sheep of the Janet world.

-This episode marks the first time we see the accounting department.

-The accounting department is very specific. For example, there is Walter who is the accountant for Borrowing (Money), Milton who is the accountant for Impressions (Borat), and Clementine who is the accountant for Songs with Specific Dance Instructions.

-According to Neil, 99% of all new human behaviour are connected to weird sex things.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I’m still waiting on a response to the request I filed for immediate suicide.” (Matty to Neil)