So far I’ve been assuming that either Chidi’s soulmate is the “good Eleanor” (the clown-loving lawyer) and Tahani’s soulmate is the real Jianyu (the Buddhist monk) and that the real soulmates will show up at some point, or Chidi/Eleanor and Tahani/Jason (the DJ) will turn out to be unlikely soulmates who realize they actually were meant to be together all along. One of those may still turn out to be the case, but either would be complicated by a Tahani/Chidi romance.
A successful Tahani/Chidi romance could also raise some bigger questions about how accurate the soulmate matching system is, or even whether there is truly such a thing as a “one and only” soulmate.
ETA: Oh, since Michael mentioned that the “architects” don’t usually hang around in the neighborhood after everyone’s been oriented, I’m also wondering whether it will turn out that other “Good Place” neighborhoods aren’t as perfect as they were supposed to be but no one in charge noticed.
My theory, for which I’ll use a spoiler box even though this is merely speculation.
Right after Eleanor stands up to admit that she really doesn’t belong there, there is an I-am-Spartacus moment. Everyone else also stands to make the same admission, either to make Michael feel right about himself or because they also feel that they’re in the wrong place by mistake.
Could be nobody can get there until Janet reboots. So there’s a day or two to work something out.
But this is quite the selfless act. She’s sacrificing her eternal happiness for Michael (and Chidi, and everyone else’s) gain, at the cost of going to the bad place.
I somewhat wonder if, since Michael is the first architect to stick around with his neighborhood, if they will end up in other neighborhoods trying to fix those also, as Lamia suggested. I wonder if a rebooted Janet can look at those other neighborhoods and let people know what’s up.
Also, if Architect retirement sucks so bad, why would an architect ever retire?
What a great episode. So many hilarious moments involving killing Janet, Michael’d description of torture, and of course the big surprise ending. And the wonderful thing about this show is that I have literally zero idea what will happen next. Can’t wait!
My favorite little touch was how every time rebooting-Janet said “Hello”, Jianyu got all excited and responded. Poor guy is just not very bright.
Maybe what he said about Architect retirement wasn’t true. Maybe it was a ruse to get people to admit to being not the people they are supposed to be. This is going along with the idea that this Good Place is really a kind of purgatory.
The ranking of people in the neighborhood goes along with that. They may be ranked in order of their jerkiness. They are jerks, after all, not evil people, and thus not candidates for the Bad Place. Jiyanu is number two, and he is definitely a much worse person than Eleanor, who is number six. Tahani, who really is a pretty good person, is near the bottom of the list. She only needs to purge her insecurity, neediness, and vanity before she goes on to the real Good Place. Chidi is also a good person, but he needs to develop a sense of humor and ability to have fun, and then he will be done.
I love having a half hour comedy that delves into ethics. This is so needed.
Ugh - let’s just forgo spoilers altogether in this thread. People on the west coast are well aware of when the show starts (and ends), and spoilers shouldn’t be used for speculation, anyway.
Like you, I expected any number of other people to stand up and admit they weren’t supposed to be there - I was really surprised that Eleanor was the first to do so.
If it was just Eleanor I’d be suprised but since “Jianyu” is also a mistake I think it is likely there are others. Chidi and Tahani don’t seem to be obvious mistakes so I wonder if one person in each pairing is a mistake…
I doubt Eleanor will be sent to the bad place unless it isn’t so bad (I don’t think they will make Kristen Bell scream the whole episode)
Yeah, it’s somehow managed to keep me guessing while moving along quite briskly. I certainly was not expecting this latest revelation to come so early in the series. (There are at least six episodes left this season, and it could be picked up for more.) I’m assuming Eleanor will not be believed for some reason, but I really don’t know what the writers are planning to do.
I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep up this pace while still coming up with new surprises, but it occurs to me that even a dud of a twist probably wouldn’t seem terribly disappointing if there wasn’t an extended build-up to it.
Wasn’t expecting the reveal so soon. I think the result will be Michael putting off his retirement until he figures out just how Eleanor ended up there and what went wrong.
Didn’t Chidi, while bemoaning that he is stuck with Eleanor instead of being with a real soulmate, mention that he had never had a girlfriend? But in this episode flashes back to in bed with a woman waking her up to talk about his moral dilemma about his lie.
A small thing but there are not that any details for the writers to keep straight. When not right one has to wonder if there is significance to it or it is just sitcom sloppiness.
When he initially gave us his back story he explained that he was actually speaking in French and was from Senegal … did he mention his time teaching in Australia speaking fluent English then?
I loved the way they killed the main driver of the plot at the end of the episode. I think Dewey Finn is on to one possible way things can go next week. But another is that Michael just plain refuses to believe her, thinking she’s saying it to make him feel better (or some such).
Did the episode say where the flashback was set? I assumed it was in a French-speaking country and that we were hearing a translated version of Chidi speaking really good French while his boot-wearing colleague spoke French with an obvious accent.