The Good Place – Chidi Sees the Time-Knife

By: Ariba Bhuvad

The Good Place is making moves as the group heads to IHOP aka Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes. Michael (Ted Danson) has arranged for a meeting with the Judge here to discuss the flawed system that decides who gets into The Good Place and who doesn’t. IHOP is not at all what the group expects when they walk through a portal into the trippiest atmosphere ever. It’s like an acid trip of colors with odd dangers lurking about. Once meeting up with the Judge (Maya Rudolph), she transforms the trippy IHOP into the IHOP everyone recognizes (this is just so they can get more comfortable). Michael starts to inform the Judge that living on Earth is difficult and sometimes the decisions that are made have consequences that are out of the humans’ control.

The Judge is reluctant to believe at him first so she decides to check it out for herself. What feels like a minute to everyone else was enough time for the Judge to travel the world and get an idea of what Michael was talking about. She’s convinced that Michael is onto something and organizes a meeting with the group and the Bad Place’s Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson). Shawn isn’t all that enthusiastic about helping Michael out and thinks humans basically suck, but Michael believes the best of humans and knows that they have the ability to be better, just like this group of four. Chidi (William Jackson Harper) decides to chime in and is suddenly squished through a portal and disappears. When Janet (D’Arcy Carden) catches him and brings him back to normal, Chidi is fairly disturbed. He saw multiple realities and saw what Michael referred to as the Time-Knife.

The Judge comes up with a solid new plan that almost seems plausible. She suggests that they make a fake Good Place, recruit four new people to the neighborhood, and see if they can indeed change as these four did. The decision is made to create this neighborhood in the Medium Place with Michael being the architect. Meanwhile, Shawn will select the four people who will come to the fake Good Place.

Michael seems a bit overwhelmed as he starts to plan out the neighborhood and how it will look. Luckily, he has Janet to help who has over a trillion ideas on what they can do. Michael’s anxiety worsens when Shawn calls him to show that he has a Michael suit. He intends on using this suit to torture Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi, Jason (Manny Jacinto), and Tahani (Jameela Jamil) when their plan inevitably fails. Michael’s nerves get the best of him when the first subject arrives and he passes out seconds before meeting him.

In all of this, Jason tells Janet that he’s starting to develop feelings for her. It’s about time! They’re finally going to go on a date, and Janet couldn’t be more thrilled. Unfortunately, since they are at the Medium Place, it means Janet’s ex Derek (Jason Mantzoukas) is around to stir some trouble and insecurities. Janet reassures Jason that he has nothing to worry about because she and Derek are long over. But then again, Derek is going to help Janet create the residents that will live in the fake Good Place so who knows what could happen.