The Good Place – The Funeral to End All Funerals

By starrymag | November 20, 2019

By: Ariba Bhuvad

 

 

Matt (Brad Morris) emerges out of the obelisk with the results of the experiment, but isn’t quick to say if they won or lost. Unfortunately, he can’t reveal the results until everyone is in the judge’s chambers. Furthermore, until the Judge (Maya Rudolph) makes her ruling Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), John (Brandon Scott Jones) and Brent (Benjamin Koldyke) will remain frozen in stasis. 

 

Humans are not allowed to see the numbers, so only Michael (Ted Danson) can go through to the judge’s chambers. To calm Eleanor (Kristen Bell) down Michael hands her a bottle of tequila. 

 

With Michael gone Janet (D’Arcy Carden), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), Jason (Manny Jacinto) and Eleanor are walking around the neighborhood. Tahani feels like they’re saying goodbye while Eleanor morbidly mentions that they could all be split up. On the other hand, Jason does not want to die again because they’ve already had so many funerals. Janet offers to tell them what happened at their original funerals, but Tahani stops her before she can tell her about hers. Jason’s funeral was his friends putting graffiti all over Red Lobster while Eleanor says Arizona has two options for funerals–normal or body out on the shooting range for tax credit. After hearing all that Tahani suggests that they should throw themselves a funeral to end all funerals! 

 

Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson) and Bad Janet (D’Arcy Carden) show up at the judge’s chambers along with The Good Place committee–Chuck (Paul Scheer), Daisuke (Takato Yonemoto), Andie (Denise Sanchez), Bruno (Marc Sull Saint-Fleur), Meg (Tatiana Carr) and Paula (Dana Powell). Of course, the committee is super supportive of everyone, even Shawn. 

 

Tahani has her funeral first inside of a Gulfstream G650 private jet. Everyone says something nice about her starting with Jason who wishes people would have been nicer to her. Eleanor says Tahani helped her improve and taught her things like how you can’t buy bras from Home Depot. Jason mentions that it sucks that Chidi isn’t there with them so they decide to get his body, even though he’s still in stasis. 

 

The judge shows up in the chamber and reminds everyone that the results will have ramifications for eternity. Before they get started she wants Michael to sign a petition to reboot “Ally McBeal.” The results are finally ready to be shared so Matt reveals them. Simone improved by 12%, Chidi by 26%, John by 44% and Brent actually did not improve and regressed 1%. 

 

Jason has his funeral at the pool because it’s a Jacksonville tradition to have your funeral where you were born. His mom gave birth to him after she did a cannonball into the pool. Janet shares that Jason was the first person to ask her about feelings, even though she didn’t know what they were. 

 

Even though the results weren’t dramatic, Michael says that at least three people improved. The Judge isn’t convinced that the evidence is overwhelming. But as Michael points out, the original four got better in the original experiment and gives a Friends analogy to say that not everyone belongs in hell. Well maybe everyone, but Phoebe. Shawn is gloating over the results and says Michael lost and everything he did was for nothing. 

 

To prove his point Michael has Matt bring up active files for Kamilah Al-Jamil, Donna Shellstrop and her stepdaughter Patricia and Steven Peleaz, a/k/a Pillboi. These were the four humans that the group helped on Earth and their emotional support made the four humans better. Pillboi dedicated his life to helping the elderly, Kamilah started a scholarship in Tahani’s name to send young girls to college and Donna started doing homework (sort of) with Patricia. 

 

People improve when they external support and love according to Michael. The Judge even points out that Brent got better at the end. Michael goes on to say that no one is beyond rehabilitation and if the Judge doesn’t rule with them then they’ll miss out on the chance to see what someone like Brent could have become tomorrow. 

 

Janet doesn’t want a funeral like everyone else because she’s already been given so much from everyone. Tahani taught her about family, Jason taught her that she has more value and she watched Eleanor have hope when there was none. 

 

For Eleanor’s funeral they didn’t have to move from the pool as she just laid down with a bottle of liquor next to her while Tahani wore sweatpants for the first time. For Eleanor’s speech Tahani states she felt the most seen when Eleanor saw her and Jason decides to sing a very weird song. 

 

As expected, they held Chidi’s funeral with him surrounded by books. Unfortunately, Eleanor couldn’t find the words to sum up her feelings. Even if she would have gotten into it Janet informs them that the Judge is about to make her ruling and wants everyone to be there for it. And it’s a good thing because the Judge votes in their favor! She understands now that Michael was right and that humans are not fixed at one level of morality–they can always get better. And because of that, the points system simply doesn’t work or accurately to judge how good or bad a human is. There’s just one catch here… The Judge is going to reset the whole world, basically canceling Earth. She is going to extinguish everyone and start the human race over from scratch. 

 

Eleanor feels that it may be too drastic of a move to make, but the Judge believes everything is a mess down in Earth and that resetting everything is their best bet. The group was hoping that she would just adjust the points system, but as the Judge notes the points are not the problem. Earth is simply too complicated for this sort of system. Apparently, wiping out the human race is a matter of a click of a button, but the Judge is having a hard time finding the remote for it. 

 

With things getting out of hand, Eleanor tells Michael that they need to wake Chidi up. Instead, they try to talk to The Good Place committee who are busy writing a letter about the recent decision. They don’t get very far because of their honest and optimistic nature. 

 

After a bit of searching the Judge finds the remote, but before she can press the button it disappears. At first Janet says she put it in her void, but when the Judge goes into it and doesn’t find anything we learn that Bad Janet has it. It seems that she has decided to join the good side after reading Michael’s manifesto. Furthermore, she brings all the Janets (including a disco skater Janet) in who have also read the manifesto and started a group chat as a result. 

 

This pisses the Judge off who decides to go through each and every Janet’s void until she finds the remote and will marbelize them before moving onto the next one. Michael says they need to come up with a plan and, if anything, they need to change what they do with the points. Perhaps a brand new system for judging humans in the afterlife. The person best equipped to do this, according to Eleanor, is Chidi. He’s the one that can design the perfect afterlife because he’s empathetic, brilliant and willing to sacrifice his happiness for others. It’s literally what he learned to do by studying ethics and this is why he has to be the one to do it. Michael points out that if he wakes Chidi up and gives him back his memories it will be extremely overwhelming for an indecisive person. On top of that, they’ll give him like forty-five minutes to figure it all out. While Jason says he’ll do it Eleanor is adamant that they have to wake Chidi up.