The Good Place – What’s My Motivation

By: Marie Thong

Picking up right where they left off last week, What’s My Motivation starts off with fake Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), real Eleanor (Tiya Sircar) and Chidi (William Jackson Harper) in Michael’s (Ted Danson) office. He explains that what he’s about to show the group is incredibly sensitive – the point totals of all their lives after they died (with real Eleanor’s at the top of the list). Unfortunately for fake Eleanor, her point total is negative 4008 – hence why she should be in the Bad Place.

However, Tahani’s idea may help resolve the whole issue – if they use the same formula here fake Eleanor can try and earn the points needed to stay in The Good Place by doing good things for her fellow neighbors and thus righting all the bad things that she inadvertently caused during her stay. Michael is unsure whether this plan will work, but it’s their best shot.

Earning the necessary points is turning out to be harder than initially thought. First, everyone kind of (a lot) hates Eleanor for all the trouble she caused – no one is all that eager to buddy up, play nice or forgive her. She starts off her quest by holding the door open and greeting customers at the local watering hole … a/k/a one of the frozen yoghurts cafes. But it’s proving to be fruitless as holding a door open for people is worth 3 points. Unfortunately, Eleanor’s motivation for doing it is for her benefit not for anyone else’s, which brings me to the second point. Eleanor’s motivation for doing good things is all weighted in self-preservation so she won’t be able to earn the points she needs down this route.

Big ticket items (as Tahani puts it) like self-sacrifice or “change the consciousness of a nation” are essentially impossible to achieve at this time and place. Or so they think (insert dramatic DUN DUN DUN here) … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

At their house, real Eleanor and Chidi are sitting down for breakfast when she confesses her love for him in the form of a little note in his eggshell. He accidentally mistakes it for the egg confessing it’s love, but when he realizes his mistake he’s caught off guard and unsure of what to say. Eleanor assures him he doesn’t need to say it back if he’s not ready. Though, things are still a little awkward.

At JianYu’s man cave, he and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) share a tender moment (a/k/a kissing), but something doesn’t feel right for him. He feels bad for not telling her dad, Michael (umm??), but she presses that Michael isn’t her dad and they shouldn’t tell him. She believes if he knew he would realize that JianYu is not really JianYu, but Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto). Though he’s still not totally comfortable, as he is tired of hiding and keeping their relationship a secret, he wants them to have a life they deserve.

Cut to flashback of Jason with his best friend Pillboi (Eugene Cordero) in a restaurant. Jason talks about wanting to move to Miami – as much as he loves Jacksonville if they want to make it in the DJ game they have to move. The only problem is they don’t have enough money. The flashback ends with the two of them agreeing to rob the restaurant they are at.

The next phase of Tahani and fake Eleanor’s conquest continues with a focus group at Eleanor’s house with some citizens of the neighborhood – a place where they can voice any and all grievances against Eleanor. Each person takes their turn sharing stories about what Eleanor’s actions had done to them, though once again it seems their attempt falls flat. Tahani realizes that the last time the residents were happy was at her party, which gives Eleanor an idea – recreate the party as a fresh start, a reset.

At a frozen yoghurt café Michael finds Janet, concerned as residents have been complaining that she hasn’t been responsive. He notices the wedding ring on her finger and becomes baffled though she won’t reveal who her husband is. Michael soon figures it out as JianYu is standing nearby wearing a matching ring.

He takes them back to his office and tries to understand the whole situation. You can tell recent events have started taking a toll on Michael and this isn’t helping matters. It seems after Janet was rebooted she was able to bond with Jason (I guess we’ll call him that now that Michael knows?) as he was always there for her. Michael sends her off so that he can talk to Jason privately (though it takes a few tries as Jason keeps protesting and calling her back).

At Tahani’s mansion Chidi and fake Eleanor are prepping for the party. Chidi is testing her on the neighborhood’s residents and how her wrongdoings affected them. They take a break when Chidi confides in her about real Eleanor’s confession of love. She gives him some solid advice, telling him to say it back as they are soulmates. If it was any other situation she’d tell him to wait, but Michael has already established they are truly soulmates. This earns her 20 points (cha-ching).

In Michael’s office, he explains the real JianYu is a Taiwanese monk, but he didn’t actually die like we initially thought. He went into a deep meditation that registered him as dead. So, when Jason Mendoza died at the exact same time, The Good Place’s system mistook Jason for JianYu, another contributing factor could be because they shared the same IQ (JianYu stopped learning at the age of seven so we all know what that means for Jason…)

Michael moves on to the litmus test, questions designed to test whether a person belongs in The Good Place. He finds that not only did Jason commit several serious crimes, but had a personalised license plate (I LUV BUTTS) and was a devoted fan to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (which apparently makes you a bad person?). Michael is overwhelmed by all this information and is consumed by stress, but when Jason walks over and places his hand over Michael’s chest he is able to calm him like he was actually a Buddhist monk. By all intents and purposes Jason is a bad person, but he still has some sort of pure, healing, calming energy running through him.

Flashing back, we learn that Jason Mendoza died when he and Pillboi were attempting to rob the restaurant. The plan was for Jason to hide in a safe while Pillboi “installed” it in the restaurant, later coming to uninstall it and saving his buddy. But after doing a bunch of “whip-its” and because there weren’t any breathing holes whatsoever, Jason suffocated to death.

At the party Tahani and fake Eleanor try and recruit Michael to make a speech about Eleanor’s goodness; however, in his current state of stress and anxiety he isn’t able to help very much or even say very much. The baton is passed on to Eleanor who attempts to apologize to her neighbors. while it is genuine and heartfelt, the residents are still not pleased with her for everything she put them through. Eleanor responds with “pobody’s nerfect,” after an awkward silence the entire room erupts in laughter. While she hasn’t righted all her wrongs it seems Eleanor has made some headway in earning the forgiveness of her neighbours. But, as we all suspected, the ticker hasn’t moved. She gained no points despite the wonderful party she hosted. It’s here she realizes that her motivation is corrupt. Every nice thing she did held no moral value. But she has a lightbulb moment, realizing what needs to be done. Fake Eleanor needs to sacrifice herself for the good of the community. She has to go to The Bad Place. The next morning, she finishes writing personalized apology notes for the neighborhood and tasks a confused and unsuspecting Tahani, real Eleanor and Chidi to distribute them with “pobody’s nerfect” t-shirts while she goes off to catch a train to The Bad Place.

After Michael reminds Jason how he died, he realizes that Janet deserves better than him and is willing to part ways with her. However, Janet assures him that she cares for him (quite possibly because she didn’t know how to care in the past). Michael resolves that Janet needs to be reset and goes to do so, but Janet (who is beginning to transition into rebellious robot on the brink of taking over the world) tells Jason that they need to leave before Michael can do anything.

Chidi, Tahani and real Eleanor are able to figure out what fake Eleanor is up to – that her motivation changed. They check the points ticker and discover that she now has over 1 million points meaning that she has decided to leave. They race to the train station to try and stop her (spoiler alert: they get there too late).

At the station, fake Eleanor is sitting down on the bench when Jason and Janet walk up. She asks Janet for a ticket to The Bad Place, but Janet instead informs her of the neutral zone which is where her and Jason are headed. At that moment, a train rolls into the station – the judge has (finally) arrived. The trio decide to steal the train and reprogram it for the neutral zone.

When Michael, real Eleanor, Chidi and Tahani make it to the station Michael tries to argue fake Eleanor’s case, but it’s too late as she has already stolen the train. She apologizes to her friends and disappears from view – only making things harder for herself and her friends.