the_good_place | Season 4 Episode 09: The Answer

While I liked the arc very much, I honestly don't know how I feel about 4.9 as an episode.

"The Answer" was very good in terms of giving us a lot of backstory on Chidi, as well as showing us just how he would be able to wake up. It's not just a magical "oh, I'm awake and I REMEMBER EEEEVERYTHING," which is what I was expecting. Subversion is always great in my book. I loved seeing all of the connecting threads, as well as some things from his POV. Poor young Chidi! Oof, he's bad at romance pre-Eleanor, too. And I grinned madly at the end, because I was thinking the paper was going to say "Chidi, find Eleanor," except it was an entirely new take on the former method.

Oh, and "have I really been that annoying for 300 years?" was the perfect line.

The one thing that threw me off wasn't Chidi being inspired by trying to prevent his parents' divorce, but that apparently all of the characters knew it. At least Eleanor. (And Michael, but he knows everything about their lives, so...) Yet we never heard about it, which made it apparent to me that the writers tacked it on. My gripe here is probably most a nitpick from one writer to another, as well as expecting so much from this particular show. Still, it stood out a little bit to me.

Mostly, I find it hard to truly judge because it really was setting up the rest of the show/series. When the next episode airs in January (or February?), I'll rewatch this one as well and see what my take is then. :)

Edited 2019-11-22 12:53 (UTC)

That's a good point about how this episode in particular is basically a side story to the ongoing events. I'm sure Good Place isn't the only series to have done this but it definitely seems like a very 2010s style of storytelling where a show can basically spend an entire episode on something like this in the middle of a big development, because storytelling has become so serialized.

I love that observation about serialization! I hadn't thought of it, but it makes so much sense.

Yeah, as a Chidi-backstory episode it was very sweet and fulfilling!

All the mini-Chidi acting sequences were adorable. The idea that his presentation didn't auto-fix his parents' problems, just inspired them to go into counseling and go through the process of working on the problems, was a nice realistic bit of insight. You don't usually see that situation on TV.

Not a lot of jokes, although when they went for the laugh, they got it. (And the slow-mo drink-spilling interludes were a great bit.)

I don't remember anyone but Michael mentioning the divorce backstory. When did it come up with Eleanor? It makes sense to me that Chidi would open up to her about it during one of the reboots where they slowly fell in love -- and most of the show takes place during times when at least one of them doesn't have that memory, so it would've been hard to work in.

My only gripes were (a) Chidi's "soulmates" were all women, doubling down on a pattern where the show will gesture at female characters being bi but conspicuously avoid doing it for male ones, and (b) why didn't he ask Janet whether soulmates were a real mechanic of the universe? Michael's position of "can't rule it out for sure, but I don't think so" felt right for him, but Janet should actually know!

I think

author_by_night is remembering that Chidi and Eleanor discussed that story after game night, which was an iteration where they'd clearly been spending a lot of time together, even if Chidi was trying to stay true to his ~~raven queen~~ soulmate at the time.

I totally thought he was going to ask Janet about soulmates, too! And now that you point it out, it really is sad that they never gave him a male love interest even for a second. What a missed opportunity.

It was interesting to get the various scenes from the different lives Chidi has experienced in the Neighborhood, such as the idea that he was once paired with Tahani and also that he learned things from her and Jason which he apparently never did in his Earth life.

It does beg the question though of whether the reason that Chidi can improve and listen is because he knows he's dead and the stakes are different. After all, if he thinks he's in The Good Place then nothing can go so very wrong, plus he has all eternity to make up for wrong choices and explore different paths. Plus he has less to occupy him (no tenure track career, for example).

I also feel that his specific questions and desire to believe in soul mates speaks to what I said a few episodes ago about how Chidi and Eleanor "took", whereas he and Simone didn't, because she wasn't feeling that lack in the first place. Whereas he clearly always has.

I almost feel like this episode was a love letter to all the anxious nerds watching, or maybe I mean an extended plea for us to please attempt to chill out just slightly. Which, well, fair enough, really.

I mainly enjoyed it in the little moments: Tahani's little pleased smile at Chidi and Eleanor strolling off together, Michael apologizing again for the torture and all, Janet genuinely so sad at saying goodbye to one version of Chidi. And on an even more frivolous note, I'm unreasonably in love with Eleanor's one top with the stars. What a pretty shade of green.

I am rooting for Eleanor and Chidi to end up together, but feel like the show is forcing this "soulmates" idea on us.

I'm in pretty much the same place, unfortunately. I love a lot of what they're saying about soulmates as being based in relationships you build rather than magical compatibility, and Eleanor and Chidi have been a super cute couple from day one, but... in a story with such scope and almost literally endless possibility, it feels kind of strange to have one pairing so insistently put forward as as essential and inevitable.

I think I'd feel happier about them if they were being presented as a good outcome, rather than the good outcome, if that makes any sense.

Season 4 Episode 09: The Answer

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