The Good Place – Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By

By:  Ariba Bhuvad

This week’s episode of The Good Place, “Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By” focuses on Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet’s (D’Arcy Carden) attempt to understand a man named Doug Forcett (Michael McKean), who we’ve actually heard about before during the series premiere. Doug is quite famous in the afterlife because he is perhaps the only person who has ever figured out (around 92%, according to Michael) just how the afterlife works.

He lives a selfless life always putting the needs of other humans and even animals in front of his own. Of course, this has led him to live a life of sacrifice, compromise and doing absolutely nothing for himself. The group heads to Calgary and while Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), Jason (Manny Jacinto), and Eleanor (Kristen Bell) go to a nearby, Janet and Michael go to Doug’s house to see him. They pretend to be a journalistic team who want to write a human interest piece of Doug, but really Michael just wants to learn as much as he can from Doug because he may hold the key for humanity to live better lives.

Chidi, Tahani, Jason and Eleanor hang out at the bar near Doug’s house, and after Jason gets annoyed of Eleanor’s high-pitched voice, he asks Chidi to join him for a game of pool. Jason teaches Chidi how to play pool Jacksonville style which basically involves playing with your hands and assigning as many points as your heart desires every time one of the cue balls goes into the hole.

Meanwhile, Eleanor confides in Tahani about her conflicted feelings about Chidi, especially after learning about the love they shared in a past life er simulation. Unless Eleanor plans on falling in love with Chidi again or pursuing him, Tahani advises against Eleanor bringing it up. To love or not to love, that is the question.

Back at Doug’s house, Michael learns about how Doug maximizes getting the most points possible for the afterlife. Basically, if Doug makes other people happy, he will be rewarded the most points so that is what he has dedicated his life to, even if it comes at the expense of his own happiness. As Janet revealed Doug’s way of exploiting the points system, he began to lose points quickly after repeatedly making mistakes.

While at the bar, Eleanor noticed that some of the patrons looked familiar and then it hit her that it was demons from the Bad Place! Before she could get the group out of the bar, Shaun (Marc Evan Jackson) gets in their way and blocks them from leaving. He wants to know where Michael is, and is demanding the group give up his location.

Janet and Michael continue to grasp to what drastic extent Doug lives his life, which includes having a funeral for a snail he steps on (which is just one of many he’s buried before). Michael tries to convince Doug to stop living his life this way, especially considering he even has a kid bully who makes him do his chores. But Doug doesn’t want to lose out on points and end up in The Bad Place. It was then that Michael has an epiphany regarding the points system, and he and Janet return to the bar to meet the rest of the group.

When they arrive, everyone has been captured by Shaun and the other demons but Janet goes into fight mode to start taking down the demons and pushing them into The Bad Place. For some reason, during this chaos, Eleanor decides to tell Chidi about her feelings, but more demons show up and Janet has to quick and drastic action taking the entire group into the Void–the place where she lives.