The Soul Squad has finally officially made it to the Good Place. Janet connects with the local system to receive her upgrades while the humans indulge in the welcome gifts provided at the gates. Michael is concerned about whether he, as a demon, would be allowed to be there. Chidi asks Janet if any of the great philosophers have made it to the Good Place and Janet replies that while Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato are indeed in the Bad Place for various reasons, Hypatia of Alexandria earned a spot.
They enter the Welcome Center, and the Good Place Committee greet them as heroes. They tell the humans that a welcome party is being thrown for them and ask Michael to come along with them to their offices, as they want to bring him in as an official Good Place architect.
The humans enter the portal to go to their welcome party, which has decorations and memorabilia relating to all four of the humans' personal tastes. Janet also explains that there are green doors throughout the neighborhood, which serve as portals a resident can use to go visit any time or place, real or imagined, they wish to. Jason dashes off to fulfill his lifelong dream of racing go-karts with monkeys.
Chidi and Eleanor run into Hypatia of Alexandria (who tells them to just call her "Patty"), and when Chidi tries to ask her questions about philosophy, she's tongue-tied, not really capable of more than small talk, and not even remembering the word "philosopher". She then reveals that things in the Good Place are not quite as great as they initially seem. Hypatia takes them aside to explain: in theory, the Good Place is a paradise where all of one's needs and desires are instantly met, but eventually that pleasure wears out and the eternal nature of the afterlife wears down on the mind, reducing it to mush. Hypatia herself just barely has enough of a hold on her bearings to articulate this and even then she's prone to getting easily distracted and has forgotten all the knowledge she'd been famous for in her earthly life, much to her shame.
Tahani sees for herself what Hypatia has revealed as she socializes with the other residents, who are in even worse shape, as they're all bored and listless hedonists who can only speak in monotonous tones when interacting with her. Everyone has become happiness zombies, and by the time they realize it, they are too far gone to care.
Meanwhile, the Committee gives Michael a nice robe and a medal and have him sign a contract that makes him an official Good Place architect. As soon as it's signed, the Committee members scoop it up and dash out of the room, telling Michael that he's now officially in charge of the Good Place, they are all quitting effective immediately, and it's all his problem now. Michael wanders around in confusion, looking for the other architects, and only finds empty offices and lists of possible things to do to improve the Good Place (suggestions including music you can eat, giant mini doughnuts, bigger horns on the unicorns, and waiting for Beyonce to die so she can fix things).
Michael and the humans regroup. Jason reveals that go-kart racing with monkeys got boring eventually, which proves the Good Place is incapable of keeping anyone happy for eternity. Discussing this, they realize that's why the Committee quit: they knew there was a problem, but couldn't think of any solutions except more ways to fulfill desires. Tahani exclaims they have to fix this, as millions of new people will soon be coming in and they can't be subjected to the eventual mental ennui that's afflicted the other residents. They consider the possibility of rebooting the residents' memories so they can feel pleasure again, but the idea is rejected as Chidi believes it would feel wrong to use a Bad Place tactic. Eleanor then tells Michael to repeat what she had previously said to him when he underwent his existential crisis: that every human is a little bit sad all the time because they know they will die, but that knowledge is what gives life meaning; here, they don't have that. Eleanor suggests they find a way to let people leave.
They go back to the party, and get everyone's attention. The partygoers mostly just stare at them, silently, as Eleanor explains that the Good Place is like a never-ending vacation, but vacations are only special because they end. The Soul Squad has set up a new kind of door where when one feels happy and satisfied and complete, and want to leave the Good Place for good, they can just walk through the door and their time in the universe will end, leading to a peaceful rest of indeterminate nature. Michael finishes the speech, telling the residents they led great lives and earned their place here, so they can stay as long as they like, do and see every single thing they want to see and do, and when they're ready, walk through one last door, and be at peace.
The crowd stares, then breaks into cheers. A real party starts, everyone excited and happy. Hypatia then tells Chidi that she plans on staying a bit longer and relearn the things she'd forgotten.
Later, Michael and the others gather in a new neighborhood area. They all have new homes to live in, for as long as they wish. Eleanor and Chidi reside in a replica of the house Michael built for her in his old neighborhood (with a few adjustments), Tahani has a mansion, and Jason gets to reside in a replica of his favorite restaurant.
Chidi and Eleanor lounge in their house, and reflect on what the Good Place really is: the chance to have enough time with their loved ones.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Lisa Kudrow as a Genius Ditz version of Hypatia, one of the greatest intellects in history, is obviously a reference to her being Typecast as Phoebe in Friends despite not being much like her in Real Life (something she'd poked fun at on her earlier show The Comeback, where she met Michael Schur).
- Actually Pretty Funny: Rather than be embarrassed for Chidi, Eleanor looks both pleased that Chidi has found one philosopher that made it to the Good Place and trying not to laugh at her boyfriend totally geeking out like a fanboy.
- An Aesop: Pleasure is only pleasurable in contrast to pain, eternal pleasure gets boring very quickly, and life only has meaning when there is the possibility of it ending.
- The Afterafterlife: The gang's solution to the Good Place's monotony is to allow the people who grow numb to the Good Place to pass through a "Final Door". The exact details of what happens are unknown even to the gang other than it will be "peaceful", implying it to be a full Cessation of Existence.
- Anachronism Stew: Makes sense, at first — even though all the current Good Place denizens are from at least 500 years in the past, the Committee tells us it's customary for the Welcome Party for new residents to fit the newcomers' tastes, so the Good Place manifests as an unholy mishmash of 21st-century American and European decor. What's troubling is how all of the residents go along with this completely and none of them, including Hypatia, have any interest in showing the newcomers anything from their original culture. ("We try to stay current here.") This apathy is Foreshadowing for a far worse revelation.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Janet informs Chidi that most of the Greek philosophers are in the Bad Place. Aristotle and Plato for defending slavery, and Socrates for just being annoying.
- Ascended Demon: Michael finally officially becomes one in the biggest way possible. All the way to the Good Place he's still fretting that his nature as a Bad Placer is incompatible with the Good Place, that he'll burst into flame or immediately be kicked out or arrested... And the Good Place Committee instead welcomes him with open arms and immediately inducts him into their ranks. And then immediately resign en masse and flee, leaving him the sole Committee member and unchallenged ruler of the Good Place, and the closest thing this setting has to a Big Good.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The main characters finally achieve their goal of reaching the actual Good Place. Unfortunately, the residents there are losing their minds because their wants are granted without consequences and they're completely bored.
- Brick Joke: In a meta sense. Back in "The Funeral to End All Funerals", Michael asserted that out of all the main characters of Friends, Phoebe deserves to go to the Good Place. Patty is played by Phoebe's actress Lisa Kudrow.
- The Bus Came Back: One of the people at the party is Dave, Donna's new husband. Presumably they just wanted an extra and didn't intend for the camera to spot his face like that.
- Call-Back:
- The neverending shrimp dispensary Michael created for Eleanor back in "The Trolley Problem" appears during the gang's welcome party.
- Turns out Michael was telling the truth to Chidi in "Everything Is Great" about Aristotle, Socrates and Plato being in the Bad Place.
- Eleanor realizes that the residents of The Good Place are suffering from the opposite problem that Michael had in "Existential Crisis", i.e. the knowledge that they won't eventually die has made life meaningless.
- Jason wants to go go-kart racing with monkeys, something he mentioned in "The Book of Dougs".
- Celebrity Paradox: Following a few references to Friends, Phoebe's actress Lisa Kudrow appears in this episode as Hypatia.
- Cerebus Retcon: Previously it looked like the Good Place Architects were a bunch of pushover Extreme Doormats too eager to please, who agreed with anything just to be nice. Now it turns out that they were desperate for ideas, stuck at a creative dead end being unable to please the Good Place residents who literally had experienced it all, and were probably as excited as Shawn was at having a conflict presented to them as it gave them something new to do.
- Cessation of Existence: After learning of the complete boredom of everyone in The Real Good Place, they remember that the key Heel–Face Turn from Michael came from him recognizing a sense of mortality. So they create a door that gives everyone the option to "disappear" into the universe. Even they don't fully know what that will be like. The result is an immediate swing of positivity and cheer, even if they don't all run to the door immediately the knowledge they can end this existence gives them renewed enthusiasm.
- Comically Missing the Point: Hypatia isn't sure if the 5 on her shirt is an S or a math.
- Crapsaccharine World: The Good Place is the ultimate Utopia where all suffering is nonexistent and anything you could ever want magically appears... and everyone is so miserable because they have nothing to do. By the time Team Cockroach get there, most of the residents are horribly bored from lack of meaningful stimulation. It's so "good", that the Good Place Committee leave Michael in charge and bail because they have basically achieved perfection and are now at a total dead end. It's so bad, even Jason got bored of the go-karting monkeys he had occupied himself with.Patty: On paper, this is paradise. All your desires and needs are met, but it's infinite. And when perfection goes on forever, you become just a glassy-eyed mush-person.
- Deadly Scratch: The spirit of an ancient Phoenician man talks about how even minor injuries could lead to a deadly infection in the days before modern medicine:Tahani: How did you die?
Paltibaal: I got a cut on my hand. The year was 2491 BC, so that's pretty much all it took. You got a cut or you drank water that wasn't hot enough and then, boom, dead. - Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Eleanor suggests that, once a human grows tired of the Good Place, they should just be allowed to leave. Janet asks her what she's talking about, because there's nothing after this...and then she realizes what Eleanor means.
- The Fog of Ages: Patty is unable to remember much of her life on Earth partly due to this, as it has been eons since she has lived on Earth (according to Jeremy Bearimy).
- Foreshadowing: When Janet uploads all information on the Good Place, the first thing she declares is that seeing the Good Place all at once will scramble their brains. It is later revealed that this is what happens to all humans who spend long enough time in the Good Place, philosopher Hypatia unable to focus on anything for too long or think complex thoughts because her need to think critically on anything has atrophied in a world where everything is provided for her.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The Good Place Committee's list of ideas, beyond the ones Michael actually reads, includes waiting for Beyoncé to die and seeing if she can figure it out (she is 105% perfect, after all).
- Music you can eat
- Get more chocolate in chocolate
- More hoverboards
- Wait for Beyoncé to get here and ask her to fix it
- Less hoverboards somehow?
- Giant mini-donuts (not just regular donuts Dave will explain)
- The afterlife language writing you can read on the document Michael signs translates as Article V of the U.S. Constitution which talks about the mode of proposing and ratifying amendments to the Constitution.
- The Good Place Committee's list of ideas, beyond the ones Michael actually reads, includes waiting for Beyoncé to die and seeing if she can figure it out (she is 105% perfect, after all).
- Genius Ditz: Played with — in her earthly life, Hypatia was a brilliant mathematician and philosophy scholar and one of the most passionate defenders of the value of human knowledge, but Patty, when we meet her, is a caricature of a spoiled white Idle Rich Beverly Hills lady. It turns out this is entirely because of the corrosive effects the Good Place has on human motivation — we can see tiny flashes of the person Hypatia once was throughout the episode whenever she's lucid enough to explain things. She's probably only as proactive as she is compared to the total zombies around her because of that incredible will and intellect.
- Hell of a Heaven: The gang finds that the residents of the Good Place have gotten horribly bored with the everlasting bliss of the Good Place, and have become nonchalant zombies with virtually no emotion at all.
- Hypocritical Humor: Janet tells Tahani there's something wrong with the other Good Janets because they all just smile and go "Hi there!" Tahani looks at Janet quizzically, as Janet does this exact same thing.Janet: When I do it it's cool, but when they do it it's lame!
- Insubstantial Ingredients: The Good Place makes milkshakes with stardust. And then there's "music you can eat". The opening lobby has candies flavored with "the energy you had when you were twelve", "finally understanding Twin Peaks", and "grandma's hug".
- Irony: One of the things Patty has trouble contemplating due to her unstimulated mind is basic math. The real life Hypatia was a historically well-known mathematician, which is acknowledged In-Universe.
- Karmic Jackpot: It's not intended as such, but Michael has totally earned the right to run the real Good Place his way. He decides the best thing to do is to reform the Good Place so that everyone isn't eternally bored.
- Loony Fan: Chidi nearly loses it when he meets Hypatia, having had a poster of her in high school (or more specifically, a poster of Trinity from The Matrix that he imagined was what she looked like).
- Meaningful Echo: "Everything is fine." The first words seen as Eleanor first wakes up in the pilot, and the last words she says to Michael in this episode, finally happy with her life.
- My God, What Have I Done?: They realize shortly after getting into the Good Place that both architects and humans in the Good Place are burned out with the experience. They spent the entire series redesigning the system without realizing the Good Place is not quite the perfect fantasy they believed it was, and had just changed things so that there would be a massive influx of people who will learn the same thing.
- Nobody Poops: Patty mentions that one of the perks of the Good Place is getting to soil yourself and having the mess instantly disappear so no one notices.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Without any sort of hardship or inconvenience, the pleasures the Good Place offers quickly wear thin and the residents find themselves succumbing to mind-numbing boredom. Jason rushes off to go go-karting with monkeys, but shows up a few minutes later having gotten bored and cycled through go-karting hippos and draculas with jetpacks before deciding to just hang out with his friends.
- The Nothing After Death: The gang decides to offer an ending to the afterlife existence as an option for anyone who gets bored with eternal life, creating a door that will give anyone that walks through it a peaceful rest of indeterminate nature.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The episode is the one in where the story officially begins to focus on the real Good Place.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The moment when Jason declares he's bored of go-kart racing against monkeys signifies that the Good Place is incapable of keeping anyone happy.
- Oh, Crap!: "You've gotta help us. We are so screwed."
- Other Me Annoys Me: Janet seems to consider the other Good Janets there to be "lame". It probably does not help that she is more advanced than them and would find their lack of autonomy unrelatable.
- Perfection Is Impossible: After the Good Place Committee leaves Michael to run the Good Place, Michael finds evidence that 1) they have been struggling to find ways of improving the Good Place and failed miserably, and 2) the Committee find the Good Place as boring to work in as the residents find living in it.
- Portal Network: The true Good Place, unlike Michael's intentionally isolated and controlled neighborhood, has a network of shiny green doors that transport you to any place you can imagine simply by thinking about it when you open them. These go on to play a major role in the series finale.
- Precious Puppy: As they approach the Good Place, the Soul Squad is greeted by a giant talking puppy dressed as a superhero. Michael then regrets not adding talking puppies to his neighborhood.
- Read the Fine Print: Michael signs what he thinks is a contract to be a Good Place architect... but it's actually a contract to be the leader of the Good Place!
- Refuge in Audacity: Tahani claims that her godfather is the "most famous clock in the world" (aka Big Ben). Even by Tahani's name-drop bragging standards, it's unusual.
- The Reveal: We finally see part of the actual Good Place in the episode... and it looks like a convention center.
- Running Gag: Patty is so easily distracted that whenever she is uninvolved with the conversation, she immediately forgets what she was talking about. When she regains her bearings, she screams in frustration and angrily throws the stardust milkshake that magically appears in a nearby bush.
- Sanity Slippage: As seen with Patty, the boredom of eternal and completely stress-free paradise has led to the residents losing their minds.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The problems with running the Good Place have gotten so difficult to deal with that the committee tricks Michael into taking over as its leader. The second they pass on the baton, they make a run for it and leave the place.
- Shout-Out: When Michael lumbers in wearing his 'ceremonial robes' and explains that he became the Committee, Eleanor says "and then what happened, the Sorting Hat put you in Hufflepuff?"
- Smash Cut: The message that Team Cockroach sees in the stars, "Hello! You are about to enter—" is cut off by the title card, which of course completes the sentence.
- Take That!: A few:
- Anti-vaxxers get a jab from a man who died from a minor cut in pre-modern times."I would have given anything for a vaccine. Like, any vaccine. It's so weird that you people just, like, don't like them now."
- A good place which gives you everything you want for eternity and turns your brain to mush is likened to a cosmic Coachella.
- Those who oppose the right to die get a jab as the solution to 'eternal pleasure makes you a mush-brained husk' is where you can walk through a door to oblivion. The Good Place residents cheer at this idea, and become considerably more animated once metaphysical annihilation is available to them.
- Anti-vaxxers get a jab from a man who died from a minor cut in pre-modern times.
- Title Drop: Hypatia says to call her Patty.
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: The residents of the Good Place realized this after a few hundred years there, with the concept of having anything they want given to them losing its novelty because there's nothing special or new about it anymore.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Good Place committee is never seen again after they scrammed and gave their role to Michael.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The problem with the Good Place is that everyone gets bored of eternal paradise, with their brains eventually going to mush. The Soul Squad's solution to this is to give the Good Place residents the choice of leaving once they're satisfied. As soon as they announce it, everybody in the Good Place cheers and they have renewed enthusiasm for their afterlife now that they know it’s not forever.
