The Good Place – A Chip Driver Mystery

By starrymag | November 6, 2019

By: Ariba Bhuvad

 

 

Michael (Ted Danson) goes to talk to Bad Janet (D’Arcy Carden) who is still locked up. He’s there to tell her that it’s her last day after being in captivity for six months. Michael says he has a story to tell her and then after that he’ll get rid of her. Before letting him continue, she proceeds to fart for an extended amount of time.

 

Michael has a book with him that is part of the story he wants to tell which started about a week ago when they sent Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), John (Brandon Scott Jones) and Brent (Benjamin Koldyke) on a ski trip. According to Michael, it went better than they could have hoped.

 

Chidi didn’t ski because he’s afraid of being high up at an angle, but he was able to find nooks to read in while everyone else went skiing. Upon their return Michael, Good Janet (D’Arcy Carden), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) meet up to talk about it. Apparently, Brent made the most progress and the worst thing he did was storm off. What matters the most to them is that he is changing his behaviors. 

 

Eleanor hands out the awards for the week including “Humanity Savior of the Week” which went to Jason because of his great work with Chidi while the “Hottest Savior of the Week” went to Eleanor. Collectively, this is the best they’ve ever felt about the experiment until Brent did something “Brent-y.”

 

He wrote a book called Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery, which Brent claims is a half spy, half murder, half submarine, half erotic, half political, half golf and half commentary on society. To celebrate his book Brent is going to have a party for it.

 

Simone and Chidi decide they’re going to read the book out loud and soon learn that that Chip Driver’s love interest is based on Tahani. In fact, most of the characters are mean depictions of them. 

 

During a meeting Eleanor and Michael realize Brent and Simone are their trickiest relationship. Simone makes snap judgments about people and Brent confirms the accuracy of her judgments. However, they need to convince Simone that Brent is better than his worst actions before the negative effects of this began to ripple out. 

 

Another one of the characters from Brent’s book is based on Chidi–Igby, a four-eyed nerd. Because of the character’s rigid description, Chidi wants to do something spontaneous and Jason says he can help him with that. Jason puts on some techno music and both of them start dancing. The music is something Jason created and the cop sirens in the background are real because he was being chased by them while recording. In the middle of their dance session, John shows up and realizes Jianyu the monk is not who he thought he was. 

 

Bad Janet interrupts Michael’s story to say that she is over the story and that stories about humans always end the same way. She also thinks Michael is stupid for believing in humans so much. He begs to differ and thinks that humans can be good sometimes and that they should give them the benefit of the doubt. 

 

Considering John loves to gossip, Chidi is worried about him keeping the Jianyu is Jason secret. John views it as an exclusive and says it the most exciting thing that has happened since they’ve been in The Good Place. In order to keep him quiet Chidi tells John that Jason will teach him the Magic Mike body roll, but he wants to learn the whole dance. 

 

Simone and Tahani read Brent’s book out loud together just as Eleanor shows up to ask them to forgive Brent. Tahani starts to say she will, but Simone refuses to on account the book is misogynist, racist and sexist. She doesn’t see why good people should be asked to forgive bad people like Brent and asks Eleanor for an answer. Eleanor tells Simone she will consult with a group of immortal beings to get answers to all of Simone’s questions. 

 

While playing golf, Michael tries to appeal to Brent by using golf as a metaphor. Brent has been playing golf with an assistance filter and when they turn it off and he starts playing bad, he gets frustrated. Michael tells Brent that it’s okay to admit if he screws up and that outside of golf, he can use it in other aspects of his life. 

 

At Brent’s book event two days later, everything fell apart. John realizes Tahani has helped him realize that gossip is bad but keeping Jason’s secret is hard. He just wants to gossip about something so he decides to talk about one of the neighbors instead. 

 

Eleanor is hoping to tell Simone to respond to Brent positively when he asks her about his book, but she intends on telling him that his book sucks really hard. Simone tries to keep it cool when he does finally asks but eventually lets him hear it, especially regarding Tahani’s character. Brent feels attacked and says that he is going to cancel the book event because of the women ganging up on him. 

 

During another meeting Tahani thinks maybe she can get Simone to handle the situation like the British. But Eleanor realizes Simone is not the problem, Brent is and they need to do something about him. Michael agrees and says they can’t wait forever to see him improve. 

 

During another round of golf Brent complains that Simone was very mean to him. Michael, on the other hand, says Brent has to apologize and take responsibility since it the first step towards healing the neighborhood. Brent decides he will be the bigger man. 

 

As he often does, Chidi is willing to help Brent which is something Simone can’t wrap her head around. However, he believes, they should be the bigger people. Brent shows up to apologize to everyone and says sorry if everyone was offended even if what he wrote was perfectly okay. Simone points out that he didn’t really apologize and if he doesn’t intend on doing so then he should stop wasting their time. 

 

Clearly Brent is not sorry at all and demands compliments about his book. Right then Tahani steps up to say his book was awful and was “racist, sexist poppycock.”  Brent disagrees because he feels like he accomplished something and that he doesn’t have a racist or sexist bone in his body. He deserves to be in The Good Place and then calls Simone a “condescending bench.” Chidi steps up to defend Simone’s honor and ends up punching Brent after Brent pushes him. 

 

Michael tells Bad Janet that they spent six months trying to help four humans fight their worst instincts and bond as a group, but it’s just gone now. Bad Janet reminds him that is why humans sucks, but Michael tells her that there’s one more chapter left.

 

Eleanor reflects on the bad day they had and how everyone lost points. Worse yet they don’t have a solution. Tahani suggests letting her tell John she is going to get ombre highlights and hope that he’ll try to talk her out of it. Jason suggest that he sets his monk robes on fire, which Eleanor says is not a bad idea. It’ll force him to help someone without actually thinking about it and Chidi can lead a class on empathy. Eleanor hopes this will get them back on track.

 

Michael and Bad Janet have been debating if people are good or bad, but after watching everyone pick themselves up he realized they’ve been asking the wrong question. It doesn’t matter if they are good or bad but rather if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. And that is where Michael’s hopes come from. With that, he let’s Bad Janet go and says that is how he is choosing to be better today. 

 

Michael hands her a book, not Brent’s, but rather a manifesto that Good Janet has been updating containing all the information about what has happened with the humans. He hopes Bad Janet will read it and as she pranced her way back home Michael made sure to spray the tiny room after all of Bad Janet’s farts.