“The Good Place” Season 4 Premiere Review by Josh Davis
October 5, 2019 9:42 am |
The Season 4 premier of “The Good Place” debuted on Sept. 26 and picked up right where Season 3 left off.
The basic conceit of the show started as four mortals, all average or below average of moral character, were sent to hell but told they were in “The Good Place,” an imaginary construct invented by demons in order to slowly torment their human captives. Instead of falling prey, however, the original four of Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jason (Manny Jacinto) managed to come together and achieve both personal and collective moral growth.
By the end of Season 3, the core group – plus reformed demon Michael (Ted Danson) and the excellent D’Arcy Carden as Janet, a sort of all-knowing artificial intelligence similar to Alexa or Siri – are forced to usher in a fresh crop of Good Place recruits and help them achieve some level of personal growth. If they don’t, the humans will be tortured for all eternity by a gaggle of Bad Place minions led by Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson), a dry, deadpanning demon boss literally hellbent on sabotaging our protagonists.
The catch? Shawn has specifically handpicked the new recruits to torment the original Good Place gang, and Eleanor’s on-again off again soulmate Chidi reset himself in the Season 3 finale so as not to interfere with the experiment.
Among the new batch are Chidi’s ex Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), and John (Brandon Scott Jones), a shallow gossip columnist/blogger ala TMZ sent to annoy Tahani.
John, commenting on the amount of Botox he injected just before dying, at one point says, “I’m hoping that my corpse looks like a wax, tiled floor. My ex boyf is going to be supes jeal.”
There is also Linda (Rachel Winfree), secretly a demon in disguise, and Brent (Ben Koldyke), basically a textbook asshole in a polo shirt who seems to be an annoyance to everyone.
Examples:
“I’m the furthest thing from racist — my dentist was a black woman!”
“Is there golf here? There frickin’ better be.”
“Princeton, (I) graduated in the top half of the bottom half of my class. Rowing team, sailing team, class president – I hung out with all those guys.”
The season premier comes with plenty of “Good Place” standards, including sight gags, like a restaurant called “Lasagna Come Out Tomorrow,” and classic Eleanor one-liners like “Technically, the pride of Phoenix is a life-size statue of Alice Cooper made from cigarette butts.”
The premier also comes with a trio of Marvel Cinematic Universe gags, including Chidi summoning a philosophy textbook like Thor summoning his hammer Mjolnir, Tahani quipping about saving Michael from growing a goatee, “I lost that battle with Robert Downey Jr. and I’ll be damned if I lose it with you,” and Brent, told Janet isn’t a secretary, remarking, “Here we go with all the terms we gotta learn, right? Vice President of Helping. Captain Marvel. You know what I’m saying.”
Eleanor’s major struggle this season will almost certainly be her separation from Chidi. Not helping things, Simone, a neuroscientist, doesn’t buy the façade of the Good Place and sets up an eventual reunion with her ex. Early on, she comments, “None of this is real … clearly I was in some kind of horrible accident. I’m on my deathbed and this entire thing is just a hallucination constructed by my damaged brain as it slowly shuts down.”
Throughout the episode wackiness ensues, as she later shows up at a party wearing a cheese hat, foam fingers, an exaggerated Elizabethan collar and a dabbing Einstein shirt, sing-songing, “I’m in a coma and none of this is real.”
The gang does manage a win when it discovers Linda is a demon in disguise, and The Judge (Maya Rudolph) orders Chidi to replace her as the fourth new recruit, further pushing Eleanor’s limits.
Jason, meanwhile, deals with a usurper for Janet’s affection in Derek (Jason Mantzoukas), a being similar to Janet, albeit far more childlike and much less intelligent.
Two things ultimately make this show: the sharp writing and the expert timing by the cast. A lessor actor than Carden, for example, couldn’t pull off a mouthful like, “I wish I could stay and help, but the system is so complex that if I lose concentration for even one billionth of a second, the entire neighborhood could collapse in on itself like a dying star — also Brent wants a BLT.”
The fun will be in watching how the rest of the season unfolds as Shawn and his demon gang push the original cast to their limits. How will Eleanor and Chidi finally be reunited? What about Janet and Jason? Where will Michael and Tahani wind up? And do the writers have one last twist up their sleeves to rival Season 1?
Through three seasons, “The Good Place” has consistently proved it’s one of the best, smartest and funniest shows on TV, and Season 4 shows no signs of slowing down.
With 13 episodes left in the final season, audiences are in for one hell of a ride.
Share this:
Tags: Josh Davis, pop culture leftovers, Television Reviews, The Good Place 2019, the good place NBC, The Good Place Season 4
Categorised in: Television Reviews
This post was written by Leftover Brian
Comments are closed here.