I realised something the other day. Jason was originally told he was a wise monk Jian-Yu, the kind of insightful person who may say simple aphorisms in Yoda-speak but have deep meaning. But no, he’s just an idiot.
Or is he? I think Jason is fulfilling that exact role after all.
>Mind blown<
It finally clicked with me that the actor playing Derek is the same guy who played Dennis Feinstein (the super-rich men’s cologne magnate) in “Parks and Recreation”. Maybe it was seeing him in the suit.
So, Derek has a reboot button just like Janet? Does that mean all the people Janet is making for the new Good Place will also have reset buttons?
I noticed this was Chapter 38. 13 episodes per season? Is next week’s episode the season finale?
If no one has gotten into the Good Place for 521 years, yet Mindy managed to accumulate enough points to be set up in the Neutral Place, does that make her the best person to have lived during the last half-millennium?
I love the direction the story line has taken. There’s controversy over what’s going on… so they run a test! How scientific!
Meanwhile, it’s an excuse to bring back Sean, Mindy, Derek (Derek!), and the good place neighborhood itself.
I have to admit I was imagining that one or more of the four new subjects would be people we had met before. (Maybe on another show? Maybe a cameo from someone from Pawnee, Indiana, perhaps?) But that would probably be a bad idea in the long run…
I mentioned this upthread, but the story with Mindy isn’t that she accumulated enough points to get the Medium Place. The Good Place and Bad Place couldn’t reach an agreement about whether she deserved the points for something she INTENDED to do and which DID occur, but which she didn’t DIRECTLY do. She either belongs in the Good or Bad Place, but they compromised because they couldn’t decide her points total.
Mindy is an illustration of an actual quandary that comes up in Ethics 101 classes, because the Good Place is basically a sitcom built from the first two years of an analytic philosophy curriculum.
I failed to thoroughly review the easier posts before commenting. Assesment: minus 8000 points.
Her going there is a bit of a enigma. Basically she was a rather bad person, who was *about to do *something very good. So the two Places compromised.
Derek’s multi-olived martini…probably a bit on the dry side, eh?
Classy, though.
Derek made me giggle more than anything else in this episode except Chidi. Goddamn these are some funny actors.
I was worried Eleanor’s mom would show up again. Tammy Swanson would be funny though. I gotta hand it to Sean; he can be really creative when it comes to torture. It’s interesting that Gen didn’t even bother summoning an actual Good Place representative. Also I loved how conveniently changing the humans’ perception of the IHOP also made it much cheaper.
Maybe, but IIRC when Janet created Derek she was trying to create another being like herself as a companion; this time she just has to create fake human beings without anything of her powers.
The actor who plays Derek, Jason… crap, I’m blanking on his last name – but anyway, he guest-hosted The Good Place Podcast this week so that the regular host, Mark Evan Jackson (“I play Sean”), could be one of the guests. MEJ does a great job of hosting each week and the podcast is unfailingly funny and interesting, but this week’s episode was epic. Strong recommend. Maximum Derek!!
Jason Mantzoukis is a podcast celebrity with one of the biggest budget and following podcasts out there, How did this get made? So he would be very well positioned to sit in as host on this podcast.
“What’s up, jerks?!” 
Zouks in Season 2, Paul Scheer in Season 3… June Diane Raphael has got to make an appearance next season, right?
Turns out you were correct and I was misunderstanding. -1000 Points.
Also, this fits into what we’ve learned about the system. If Mindy had actually instituted her amazing plan, she would’ve gotten hit by all of the unintended consequences and ended up in the Bad Place.
Am I right that there are two episodes left this season - a total of 13?
According to the Wikipedia article, yes, there are thirteen episodes this season. but the one airing this week is the thirteenth episode. So there’s only one episode left.