The Good Place: A Girl from Arizona" (Part 2) (4x02)

Kristen Bell is a talented actress.

Cons:

Not much to say, other than that I wish Tahani had more to do. She's been very underutilized these first two episodes, but hopefully we'll see that turn around soon.

Pros:

Jason made me laugh more than anything this week. He's never been my favorite character, but the line delivery and comedy from this guy is often a delight. The breakup with Janet worked for me because I don't really like them as a couple, but also because we get to see Jason exploring some emotional hardship and coming to terms with what that means for his future. Also, the poor boy got some bad news about his favorite sports team...

I really liked Tahani comforting Jason. I feel like their friendship is one of the unexplored gems of this show. If we could get the two of them to spend more screen-time together, I would be quite happy.

I'm in love with how much I hate Brent. I talked about this last week, but I think it's so interesting to see this show grapple with this specific type of person. Brent is in many ways a caricature of white male privilege, but all of us who pay attention know someone who exhibits a lot of these behaviors. Eleanor points out that men like him think the world revolves around them... because it kind of does. This is what's so insidious about privilege. Why shouldn't this guy think he's brilliant and the best? The world has always rewarded him for his mediocrity and petty bigotry. I'm excited to see what a hopeful show like The Good Place does with a character like this. Are we going to get to a point where we feel sympathy for him? Where we see him capable of real change?

The best part of this episode is definitely Eleanor's crisis of faith in her own abilities. She overhears the rest of the gang questioning her leadership, as apparently their odds of success have decreased since Eleanor became team leader. She quits, and Michael has to go and talk to her, to convince her to keep going. This show has many different positive messages in it, and one of my favorites comes in the way that Michael and Janet both talk about their human friends. They are all-knowing and all-powerful beings, but they can't predict for the behavior of humans. The whole experiment they are running is about whether or not humanity can be saved, whether or not they can get better and learn and grow. We know that it worked for Eleanor and the others. But will it work again?

Eleanor is actually perfectly equipped to run this experiment, specifically because she's just a girl from Arizona. She doesn't have omniscience or all the super powers in the world at her fingertips. She's a person who decided to try and be better. Her creativity has solved so many problems over the seasons, and now she gets to have a leadership role and help other people be better too.

I love her ideas - when the first method of helping Brent be better backfires, she decides to trick him by playing to his ego. He's going to start doing good deeds for purely selfish reasons, but that was why Eleanor started her own improvement quest, too. After a while, maybe he'll start being better out of habit, and will actually change. For Chidi and Simone, the key is to get them helping each other. If Chidi can help Simone with the idea that maybe this is all really happening, maybe Simone will help Chidi realize his own competence and make him better as well. We're still early days on these ideas, so we don't know how effective any of this will be. But Eleanor has a newfound confidence in her abilities, and I'm excited to watch her try!

That's all I've got for now. This show is so much fun to watch, as always!

9/10