The Good Place season 4, episode 3 recap: Chillaxing

The final season of The Good Place airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. on NBC. Spoilers ahead!

We all know by now that the Soul Squad of The Good Place is having a more difficult than they had anticipated turning four people into good people. They need to switch up their strategy a bit.

Chidi has never been better. No, seriously. He’s having picnics with ants and playing disc golf without a care in the world, and a stomach ache for days. The only problem with that is, he can’t become a better person that way.

Michael suggests that he needs to be tortured by forcing him to make decisions as he did in the original experiment. In comes Jason to the rescue!

I know, I was surprised, too.

But Jason actually does a fantastic job freaking Chidi out. He poses at Jianyu, his original disguise, at the beginning of the series. Within a few seconds of meeting Chidi, he does what Eleanor did in the very first episode, admit he’s not supposed to be there.

A week later, Chidi’s stomach ache is back, and he’s having a hard time controlling “Jianyu.” He even covers for him at the luau when Jason throws in his lava stone so that his soul’s greatest desire – a motorcycle with Pamela Anderson’s breasts on it – appears in the sand circle. Chidi lies and says it’s his.

Chidi goes to Michael and Eleanor – who is enjoying his torturing a little too much – and talks to them about his moral dilemma. He thinks his newest problem is the universe’s way of saying he did something wrong, prompting Eleanor to cry. “I made God cry?” Chidi says, “Stomach ache, welcome back, old friend.”

Through their chat, though, Chidi realizes he can help “Jianyu” by giving him philosophy lessons. Again, this is just how Chidi became a better person before getting his mind erased.

Underneath it all, Eleanor is mad at Chidi for sacrificing himself for the experiment and “leaving” her. But she knows it’s to save humanity, so she picks herself up and carries on.

And like I said before, Jason is the hero because he ultimately played a huge part in putting Chidi on track.

Now, if only Tahani can figure out how to get John on board. She knows John is really into everything celebrity and exclusive. She invites him to a spa day where they gossip and drink Oprah’s mushroom water. (Yum!)

Once she thinks she has developed enough of a rapport with him, she tells him that what famous people are really into is philosophy and that he should join Chidi’s class. He shuts that down real quick.

She tries from a different angle, telling him how much he hurt her on earth with what he wrote about her, and he could care less.

That’s when Tahani realizes they are very similar, even though one is rich and the other poor. They were both very lonely on earth, and all they wanted was to belong. “If all you care about is that velvet rope, you’ll always be unhappy,” she tells him.

This prompts John to apologize. It’s working!

Now, as for Simone and Brent…we’ll have to wait to see what happens next week.

Funniest bits

1. Eleanor gives us some insight on Chidi: “My man used to collect action figures of famous philosophers… what a dork. I love him so much.”

2. Janet learns how to cope with breakups from humans. Number eight on the list is dying one’s hair, which she does. Number 12 is watching Mama Mia: Here We Go Again, which she also did. “It was just okay. Just full of the same songs as the first one.”

3. Tahani talks about John’s reluctance in apologizing to her: “I haven’t encountered this much resistance since I tried to get Timothee Chalamet out into the sun.”

4. Another Eleanor classic about Chidi: “He’s like superman with nervous diarrhea.”

Watch The Good Place anytime.

Read last week’s recap of The Good Place.