The Good Place season 3, episode 11 recap: Chidi Sees the Time-Knife

The gang meets with the Judge and convince her to listen on The Good Place. But will she help?

The Good Place returns with the gang already in the I.H.O.P.

But if you think they’re about to get their pancake on, you’re mistaken.

The I.H.O.P stands for International Hole of Pancakes, and if they try to eat anything in there, they will literally explode. But it’s the perfect place to meet the Judge (Maya Rudolph) because her powers are limited there.

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Michael hopes the Judge will listen to what he has to say about the Book of Dougs and take his side. If not, they’ll escape through a portal to another dimension and just keep running.

They enter a “meeting place” that looks, according to Tahani, like a “Diane von Fürstenberg patter from the 2013 spring collection.”

I think one of the things I love about The Good Place is the specificity of their usage of metaphors. They always leave you thinking, “You’re absolutely right! How did you think of that?”

The Judge augments their reality, so it seems as though they are in an actual I.H.O.P.

In the midst of their possible demise, Jason adorably asks Janet to be boyfriend/girlfriend, even though she’s not a girl. She agrees to go on a date somewhere, sometime.

Back to the important stuff.

Michael makes his case to the Judge, saying that humans think they are making one choice, like buying a tomato. But they are actually making a bunch more decisions they don’t know they’re making because the tomato was grown with pesticides.

The Judge isn’t swayed because she thinks humans should do more research. Michael decides to floss, or what he thinks is flossing because it seems to make humans happy. Ed note: this human wants it to go away.

Jason then jumps in and tells a story about his friend Big Noodle who was always late to dance crew practice, but he always had a lot going on, so Jason always gave him a break. It gives Michael the idea to suggest that the Judge go to earth herself and see just how complicated and hard it is for humans.

She leaves.

She’s back in less than 10 seconds.

“That was rough! Earth is a mess!” she yells disgusted. “And I guess I’m black? And they do not like black ladies down there.”

They may finally have a very powerful ally.

The Judge went to Tanzania, Paraguay, Vietnam, Denmark, Hawaii, and a Black Friday sale in an outlet mall in Michigan.

It’s terrible everywhere (except Hawaii).

She admits it’s not easy to make good decisions. Even if you try to make good choices, you still end up losing points because of the unintended consequences. There are boobie traps everywhere!

But before the Judge decides the course of action, she summons Shawn from the Bad Place to weigh in.

Of course, he says that humans are terrible, like Limp Bizkit and slavery and that it’s a fluke that Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason all became increasingly better people in the Bad Place.

Chidi begins to argue their case further but forgets they’re in the I.H.O.P. So, he sees the Time-Knife. No, I still don’t know what the heck that is.

When Chidi finally gets to make his point, it’s a good one. He says that the reason they were able to be good people was that the neighborhood took away all the factors that made life complicated, like having to pay rent, racism, awards, and prizes, etc.

Chidi suggests that they repeat the experiment to see if they get the same results.

They will pick four new people, build a neighborhood, tell them it’s the Good Place, and see if they improve. Michael suspects they will.

They can’t build the neighborhood in the Good Place, and they don’t want to create it in the Bad Place, so they decide to build it in the Medium Place with Mindy St. Clair.

The Judge gives Michael one year of human time for the experiment. He begins building the neighborhood using “Janet babies,” people she’s creating specifically for the experiment. The Judge vows to monitor the progress and makes Michael and Shawn promise no cheating.

Somehow, I don’t think Shawn will follow this rule. After all, he gets to pick the four subjects of the experiment.

Janet creates the very same clown house for Eleanor and Chidi and Eleanor’s request since the memories she watched had them falling in love there. They will be able to relax, chill, and be an average couple.

Janet creating her people for the neighborhood is pretty funny, as she grunts and screams like she’s in real labor.

Just before the first subject is set to arrive, Shawn calls and breaks the news that he created a “Michael” suit so that when the experiment fails, they will think Michael is torturing them for all of eternity.

Under this crazy amount of pressure, Michael is shaken and stressed.

The first subject is out in the waiting area, and he has a panic attack! We hear the subject knocking on the door and…cliffhanger!

We’ll find out what happens next week!

Watch The Good Place anytime.

Read the recap for Episode 10.