Loveday Writing

Jason – Jason is the first member of the group to feel ready to walk through the final door. After playing the perfect game of Madden with Donkey Doug, the realisation that he is ready hits him. When Janet arrives and sees his attempt at making a romantic dinner for them, she realises that he is ready too, and has the others meet them in the original neighbourhood so he can have a goodbye party. Jason DJs and dances with his crew, later he sits with Eleanor and Chidi, with Chidi asking him how he knew he was ready. Jason tells him he experienced a calm and peaceful feeling when he came to the realisation, he also shows them a necklace he made Janet, worrying that she will forget him. Eleanor and Chidi reassure him she won’t.

The next morning, Janet takes Jason to the door and he goes to give her the necklace, but he can’t find it. Janet gives him time alone. Later when Chidi is ready to walk through the door, Jason comes out from behind a tree, revealing that he never went through the door and waited around 1,000 Bearimys to give the necklace to her, which he found in his other pocket. He tells her that it wasn’t hard for him to wait for her, as he spent his time peacefully contemplating, like a monk. He then walks through the door for real.

Tahani – Tahani is the next member of the group to have the realisation that is she is ready to leave. She has this realisation after making her way through a to do list that consists of learning and doing things for herself, as well as having fun. She and Kamilah also reunite with their parents after they pass their test. To their surprise, their parents are happy to see them and they end up spending all their time together. When Kamilah remarks that she is actually growing bored of their parents repeatedly telling her and Tahani that they love them, Tahani has her realisation.

During her farewell party, Tahani realises that she neither wants to stay nor leave, and asks Michael if she can become an architect so she can actually help people. The next day, Michael takes her to her first day of work as an intern, working under Glenn and Beadie, and gives her a peacock bow tie as a “first day at work” present.

Later, Eleanor brings Mindy to see Glenn, Beadie, Shawn and Tahani so she can be put through the system. Eleanor proposes that Tahani design Mindy’s test, all of them agree, and Shawn reveals that Tahani is close to becoming a certified architect.

Chidi – Chidi is the third member to have the realisation that he is ready to leave, however he stays as Eleanor is not ready at the same time. That being said, Eleanor is able to pick up on Chidi being ready to leave before he admits to it.

To convince him to stay, Eleanor takes Chidi to Athens and then Paris. Chidi tells her that he doesn’t want to leave her but he does have to leave. Eleanor begs Chidi to stay and he does, however she realises, based on reading ‘What We Owe to Each Other’ that asking him to stay is selfish. They watch the sunset together one final time, with Eleanor asking Chidi to leave before she wakes up the next morning. When she wakes up, she finds Chidi left a calendar for her, with pictures of him dressed up in different outfits that he knows she’d be turned on by.

Michael – The beginning of the episode shows Michael in his new role on the Joint Council of Afterlife Affairs, which consists of him, Shawn, The Judge, Drew (from the Good Place Committee, even though he quit?), Vicky, Janet and Chidi. After many Bearimys pass, Michael shows up to a Council meeting to find out from The Judge that the Council has been dissolved as his new system is working perfectly.

Later, Michael tries to walk through the door (at one point trying to piggy back on Eleanor) but Janet points out that the door was made for humans only. Michael laments at his inability to move forward when everyone else can and that he’ll spend his days wandering around like a retiree. This gives Eleanor the idea to have Michael become human and experience life on Earth, which The Judge agrees to after Eleanor points out that no-one else is going to request this from her and Michael deserves this after he helped re-design the afterlife. The Judge gives Janet the power to make Michael human.

Michael’s life on Earth is briefly seen – he manages to make friends, gets a dog and names it Jason, and learns how to play the guitar (with Ted Danson’s wife, Mary Steenburgen, making a cameo appearance).

The final moments of the series has Michael get a knock on the door by a young man named Ken. Ken tells Michael that a letter was delivered to his mailbox by mistake. Michael is excited to see that he got a rewards card for one of his favourite stores. He tells Ken to “take it sleazy”.

Eleanor – After Eleanor experiences Jason, Tahani and Chidi leave, she manages to persuade Mindy to be put through the system and take her test, after having Tahani agree to design her test.

When Eleanor is finally ready to walk through the final door, Janet asks her what she thinks is on the other side as it’s the one thing in the universe she doesn’t know the answer to. Eleanor paraphrases Chidi’s philosophy on the concept of death being like waves in the ocean. When Eleanor walks through the final door, she becomes a series of sparks in the sky, one of them landing on Ken, which leads to Ken delivering Michael’s mail to him.

Overall this was one of the best series finales I’ve ever seen. We get to see the group live out their lives in the Good Place and the success of the new afterlife system. Jason and Janet get their happily ever after for a while, and I was honestly surprised that Jason was the first person out of all of them to be ready. I also appreciated that he became like a monk in the end. I also appreciated that Tahani got the happy ending she deserved by managing to have a happy family life, learn things for herself and pay it forward by becoming an architect. I also appreciated that becoming an architect was a third option, even though Tahani was the only member of the group to take it. I also appreciated Chidi’s certainty when he was ready and it didn’t surprise me that Eleanor was the last to leave.

Overall this was one of the most unique shows I’ve ever seen, not only in its premise but in its execution. It’s very rare that the makers of a show know how long they want to last, in this case four seasons, and are actually given that time by their network. Because of this, the show didn’t lose its quality or run out of steam like most shows that go on for far too long do.

In terms of its seasons, I felt that the first season was solid in establishing it’s premise, characters and ultimately pulling off a great twist in its finale, something you don’t see that often in shows. I felt its second season was where they really hit their stride by establishing there was a problem in the afterlife that needed to be solved, as well as Michael bonding with the group and reforming. I felt that the third and final seasons had more weaknesses as its story arcs and subplots involved re-hashing everything to the viewers, due to the characters initially not knowing what happened to them. However the final season came to a clean and satisfying close with the afterlife system problems being resolved and the new system succeeding.

I’ve enjoyed watching and reviewing The Good Place.

Stray Observations:

-Michael is trying to write a song. At the beginning of the episode he is on attempt #803 and the lyrics include: “Riding on a groovy wave of love, I’m going for a cosmic ride, surf the freaky purple vibes of love, the marshmallow cat is inside…”

-According to Janet, the number one request made by men over 50 in the Good Place is a guitar that magically plays the right notes.

-Tahani learnt how to install a bathtub, fly a helicopter and defuse a bomb.

-Tahani and Kamilah died before their parents.

-Tahani’s to do list includes:

• Land a triple axel
• Solve the Poincare Conjecture
• Perform Il Dolce Suono from Lucia Di Lammermoor at La Scala
• Burp the Alphabet
• Become a master woodworker
• Learn how to repave a driveway
• Break Graham Gooch’s record of 456 runs in a single test
• Master conducting (orchestra)
• Master conducting (train)
• Beat NBA jam on all-star
• Free Solo the Colossus of Rhodes
• Fix the Jesus fresco that lady messed up
• Write “Tahani Al Jamil’s Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote””.
• Make a vegan dessert that nobody suspects is vegan.
• Invent a new musical instrument
• Truly nail Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes rap from ‘Waterfalls’
• Finish infinite jest
• Spend one meaningful day with my parents
• Problematically objectify Eleanor

-Doug Forcett chose to have his younger body in the Good Place.

-Jason was born when Donkey Doug was 18 years old.

-Michael’s last name as a human on Earth is Realman.

-The series finale spans at least 3,230.52 Bearimys.

-John hooked up with Alexander the Great.

-Trevor can still be seen flying through the hallway.

-Brent can be seen in a debriefing session with the architects who designed his test learning that he can’t tell a woman to smile.

-It took Eleanor 2,000 Bearimys to finish reading ‘What We Owe to Each Other’.

-Mindy has rebooted Derek 151 million times. Derek is now both a singular point in space, and yet also contains space itself.

-William Shakespeare eventually walked through the final door but not before writing 4,000 plays which included ‘The Tempest 2: Here We Blow Again’.

-Both Eleanor and Chidi picture Aristotle as John Stamos with a beard.

-Doug Forcett eventually walked through the final door.

-More trivia/fun facts on this episode can be found here.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I know you’re sad because you have the same looks on your faces that my teachers did when I raised my hand in class.” (Jason to Tahani, Michael, Eleanor and Chidi)
• “Can I get you a cup of anti-matter?” “Sure, I take mine with non-dairy neutrinos.” (Tahani-Beadie)
• “Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through and it’s there, and you can see it, and you know what it is, it’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death, for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s supposed to be.” (Chidi to Eleanor on the concept of death)
• “I think you’ll find that Tahani will be certified very soon. Did that sound evil? I didn’t mean it to. I was sincere.” (Shawn to Eleanor)
• “Goodbye fire squid, hello silver fox!” (Janet to Michael on making him human)
• “I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart, and all the wisdom in the universe. Take it sleazy.” (Michael to Ken who brings him his mail, and the final lines of the series)
• “I owe it to you, to let you go.” (Eleanor to Chidi)