4x08 The Funeral to End All Funerals

[9.2/10] This worked wonderfully as a quasi-midseason finale for The Good Place. As a capper for the end of the experiment, and a transition point to whatever comes next, this had so much that was effective and enjoyable.

For starters, my favorite part of the episode may have been the group hanging out in the fake Good Place having the “funeral to end all funerals” for one another. It’s a great opportunity to work in some character-specific gags about everybody (Jason wearing a Jags-tuxedo, Tahani feeling most comfortable on a private jet, Eleanor being at a party at a house she wasn’t invited to), but also to once again reinforce the hard-won connections between our heroes, the friendships forged through struggles and mutual self-improvement. It’s a really sweet note to go with as we wait for the judge’s ruling, with everyone giving really nice speeches and it adding to the quasi-finale feel of the whole thing.

(By the way, here’s an unfortunate prediction for the endgame: Eleanor didn’t give her speech for Chidi, and that feels like a setup for a later payoff. My bet is that Chidi sacrifices himself for real in the finale, and then and there Eleanor finds the words to sum up her relationship and feelings with this man.)

I also like the arguments with The Judge. It’s another place where the ethos of the show comes out, but in a natural way (or at least as natural as it can be considering the circumstances). The fact that all of the test subjects improve except for Brent is no shock, but Michael’s impassioned defense is a high point of the show.

He makes a great deal of good points. Three out of four of the test subjects improved, some of them significantly. Three others improved in the afterlife, even though there’s some chicanery involved. And just as significantly, they improved other people’s lives on Earth. As Michael himself puts it, that external love and support makes us and them better, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great point and a great payoff to so much of the earthbound adventures from last season.

But the best point is the last one -- that Brent continued sucking and getting worse every day in the afterlife, until the very very end when he shot up almost to improvement territory. It stands for Michael’s point that no one is beyond redemption, that even the worst of us, with help and care and kindness (and even a good stiff kick in the behind) can better ourselves. There’s something both heartening about that idea and stirring about Michael’s presentation of it, and it’s a hell of a conclusion to draw for this half-season and arguably the whole show.

This is all aside from the fact that this is a damn funny episode! The Good Place committee being as hapless and self-sabotaging as they are guileless and self-encouraging continues to be hilarious. Maya Rudolph kills it as The Judge here, especially with her Ally McBeal reboot petition. And gags like Janet describing why she put Chidi on the toilet are very funny. (I also appreciate the explanation for why Chidi is jacked.) It’s easy to bring the drama and finale-esque heart here, but making it funny is its own achievement.

Still, the drama’s damn good too. I really like the swerve that in the end, Michael and our heroes win, convincing The Judge that the point system is messed up, but rather than using that as a reason to revise the point system, The Judge decides that it’s a reason to “cancel” and “reboot” humanity, deciding that it’s them who’ve gotten too complicated and need to be revised. That’s a nice “be careful what you wish for” ending, one that feeds into Shawn’s taunts of Michael’s failures which will no doubt make his eventual success all the sweeter, and provides plenty of conflict for the show to grapple with for the last six episodes.

There’s also a great payoff with the Janets. As if to prove Michael’s “no one is beyond redemption” point, the fact that it’s Bad Janet who saves humanity from The Judge’s obliteration, and the Janet army who emerges to join her as sisters in arms, is a great twist. (And how hilarious and awesome was roller disco Janet!?)

I’ll admit, given my reluctance with the Eleanor/Chidi pairing, I’m still a little hesitant about Eleanor being so focused on him. But at the same time, I like the idea of him having to redesign the point system and the notion that it’s the sort of challenge he’s been preparing for his whole life. And I like Michael as the countervailing voice who says that someone plagued with indecision who buckles under pressure might not react the way we might hope to this. I’m not sold yet, but there’s promise here.

Overall, this episode takes the sweet character moments, the dramatic conclusion of the experiment, a summation of the show’s view of humanity and morality, a promising conflict to power the series’s endgame, and a lot of very funny humor to make a superb episode that hits nearly all the notes you could ask for in the middle of the show’s final season.

Nice to see this season stop dawdling around and actually advance the plot forward in a meaningful way. The fact that the large questions The Good Place has been asking for years might actually have a resolution is exciting, even if the conclusion will likely end positively--it would just be so tonally off-brand and against the show's thesis for the protagonists to fail.

But what gripe I really have is with the logic of the judge's ruling. It really doesn't make sense. How would a hard reboot of Earth even sort of start to guarantee that things would improve? A hard reset feels blatantly unfair and although that's the necessity in order to incite the show's next act, it doesn't make sense coming from the being who is supposed to be literally the most fair person in the universe. I'm not sure what would have been a better move, though. But because this is the path that we've set forward, it feels as though the season arc didn't need as many episodes as we're getting. Considering so many episodes have been spent spinning their wheels, it almost feels like perhaps this show could have wrapped up with a significantly more truncated season--but I wouldn't be surprised if NBC wouldn't go for it.

That said, there is good stuff in this episode. I like seeing characters showing deep understanding of each other. And hearing Bad Janet say "I don't have to poop, I choose to" was fantastic.