Written by Gabriella Gamez
It’s the beginning of the end, fellow humans! Season 4 of The Good Place premiered Thursday night, and it looks like we’re in for the usual amount of shenanigans from our soul squad. Let’s recap the events together!
The episode kicks off with Eleanor welcoming Chidi to the Good Place. We see Eleanor struggle to keep a good face as she shows a rebooted Chidi around the neighbourhood. She also shows him his new digs, a room with his two favourite things: floor to ceiling bookshelves and reading lamps. She even shows him a neat trick he can do. Accio book!
We also see Chidi forget Eleanor’s name, and her expression ripped all of our hearts out. Let’s hope everything can work out in the end for these two!
As Michael and our fellow humans prepare to welcome a third member to the experiment, we get a cutaway of the demons planning another problem to throw their way. The third member that Eleanor welcomes turns out to be a boring lady named Linda, who “makes Neutral Janet look like Disco Janet”. (On an unrelated note, we need a Disco Janet episode immediately). The gang suspects something fishy about her dullness immediately. We also meet our fourth member, Brent, who Eleanor is immediately annoyed by. We don’t learn much about him, except that he’s a self-proclaimed “equal opportunity offender” in the materials business who likes to golf.
Jason’s jealous side appears when Derek shows interest in Janet, who is far too stressed to care about what these two idiots are doing.
Simone is unconvinced that she’s in the Good Place, believing instead that she must be in some sort of coma and that everything she’s seeing is a dream/figments of her imagination made up by her brain (is it “this is why everybody hates neuroscientist professors” now?).
The gang decides that Chidi may be able to get through to Simone, but Eleanor is immediately opposed to the idea. She says that Simone’s problem isn’t an ethical issue but a scientific one, though the gang knows what’s really going on. Eleanor is scared that Chidi and Simone may grow closer because of their history. Michael confronts her about this later, saying she shouldn’t let her emotions get in the way of the greater good of the experiment. Eleanor introduces Simone to Chidi, but he’s quickly weirded out by her strange behavior and proves no help (not yet, anyway).
The gang decide to deal with Linda first, who begin Operation Linda. After pressing her too far about what she’d like to do, Linda punches Michael and Eleanor in the face before flying off into the distance. After this, we find out that the demons sent one of their own as Linda in order to sabotage the experiment. The Judge decides to make Chidi the fourth member of the experiment since he’s been rebooted.
There’s a lot to take in from this first episode of the final season! Any theories for the rest of the season?
