‘The Good Place’ season 4 episode 10 recap: How will the new system work?
The Good Place is back, and it’s getting down to business with only four episodes left. When we last left off, Chidi (William Jackson Harper) was breaking our hearts with his search for life’s meaning, but it turns out the answers were in front of us all along: Eleanor (Kristen Bell).
Of course, that answer didn’t directly help them get a new plan, but it did help mellow Chidi out so he was focused and working on saving the universe. While the Judge (Maya Rudolph) and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) were wandering through every Janet’s void trying to find the Earth resetter, the Soul Squad had some hefty work to do.
It takes some work, and horny thinking between Chidi and Eleanor, but a plan is created. After justifying Judge’s attention with Timothy Olyphant, the Soul Squad pitch their new plan based on Putting Cruelty First by Judith Shklar. This plan has been four years in the making since our four humans have basically gone through it already.
What the new system would look like
Someone like Tahani, who’s biggest flaw was not being able to pull off the Mod look, gets sent to the Bad Place automatically in the current system, giving them no chance to redeem themselves. In the new system, her points on Earth will be the defining factor in the test she’ll receive when she dies. Since Tahani’s points were in the red, but not as in the red as, say, Hitler, her test would be easier.
Each test would be designed by a Good Place and Bad Place architect, making the person take a test based on their moral shortcomings on Earth. After taking their test, the subject sits down with the architects to discuss how they did. Then they get rebooted, only retaining a vague memory of what happened during that evaluation. Think little voice in your head.
By the end of the episode, they won their argument and now the Soul Squad gets to redesign the afterlife. The team then turns to Chidi, who’s a little too mellow to actually help get the plan into place. So, with two episodes and one super-sized finale left, how does The Good Place change the entire afterlife? We have some ideas.
Bring back the three new humans
The perfect first-person, or people, to test this new system out on are the three who we’ve spent the past season with. John (Brandon Scott Jones), Brent (Ben Koldyke), and Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) were the proof the system was broken, so why not use them to prove the system works?
We’ve already seen that even Brent, the low of the low, can have improvement when it matters. Why not design a test around him that really makes him admit he’s wrong in his behavior? Or how Simone is not willing to accept things that don’t fit her scientific explanations? Even John still needs some work, so he can get past his desire to be in the it-crowd.
Some demon sabotage is due
Not that we want the Soul Squad to fail, but this new system has some flaws. In this new system, everyone gets a chance to redeem themselves. But do people like Charles Manson and Benito Mussolini deserve the same chances as Carrie Fisher and JFK to get into the Good Place? Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson) raises some concerns with the system during the episode, and we’re expecting the demons to mess things up.
Right now, the demons get to play similar roles as they did in Michael’s original neighborhood. They still get to somewhat torture, but they’re more so just bodies for the experiment. There’s going to be an uprising because at least one of these demons is going to miss butthole spiders.
The four humans are zero hour
The humans at this point are the best versions of themselves. Just look at how Chidi is after he’s seen the time knife back in “The Answer”. But the best proof that this system will be successful is if our dear Team Cockroach can improve in this new system. No matter what, the four humans found each other and became better in every version of Michael’s neighborhood.
But separated, only Eleanor was able to pass her test. The Judge caught all four humans off guard, proving that they hadn’t approved as well as they thought they did. This new system is the Judge’s test on a more detrimental scale. If the four humans still improve through this new system, as they did in every other system, then the system is successful in what it wants to accomplish.
