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'The Good Place' Season 4 Episode 11 sees lovestruck Chidi find an all-new way to fall for Eleanor

While Chidi has a chance to look at Eleanor's file, Michael has to find a way to teach demons the art of torturing with purpose
UPDATED JAN 17, 2020
William Jackson Harper as Chidi (NBC)
William Jackson Harper as Chidi (NBC)

Spoiler alert for Season 4 Episode 11 of 'The Good Place' — 'Mondays, Am I Right?'

Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper) might just be in the greatest moments of his (after) life. He is brimming with new-found confidence that's the result of over 800 torturous timelines collapsing into one.

His pitch to redo the way the afterlife functions has been approved, saving trillions of souls from eternal damnation. He is in a relationship with the love of his life, Eleanor (Kristen Bell), and they're about to spend eternity together, and there's only one thing that can undermine his confidence — and adorably, it's a raised bar of respect and admiration for Eleanor.

There have been long Reddit threads devoted to figuring out just how much time Team Cockroach has spent in the afterlife. Sufficient to say, it's been quite a few Jeremy Bearimes, and Chidi remembers them all.

One would think it safe to assume that the Chidi-Eleanor relationship doesn't have many surprises left, especially this late in the season. If there's one thing 'The Good Place' has taught us, it is that no assumptions are safe in the afterlife.

Now that the general plan for the new afterlife proceedings has been pitched and approved, the hard work of actually implementing it begins.

Eleanor, Chidi and Jason (Manny Jacinto) are tasked with looking through old Bad Place files and finding the first 1000 candidates to try out the new system, and prove that redemption is possible. Given that nobody's gotten into the Good Place for well over a hundred years, that shouldn't be too hard a task, so the team's taking their time and taking a peek at their own files.

This sends Eleanor into a panic, afraid that once Chidi sees her life in its entirety, any love he has for her will be lost. She decides that if that's going to happen, she'd rather know now, so she has Chidi read her rather extensive Bad Place file. 

It causes Chidi to question their relationship, but not in the way Eleanor expected — reading her file only made Chidi fall in love with her more.

While Eleanor may not have led an exemplary life, she certainly led an interesting one, and one where she asserted her independence from an early age. The Bad Place file offers every relationship's biggest dream, and biggest nightmare — if your partner could see everything you've ever done, all the good, and all the bad, would they still love you?

For Chidi, seeing Eleanor in her objective entirety only makes him love her more. So much so that he starts to worry that he's not good enough for her. Fortunately for him, some surprisingly shrewd trickery from Jason helps Chidi realize that as long as he trusts in their love, things will turn out alright, even with eternity. Jason's easy to be underestimated ("I've read some books"), but he's always been good at reminding people what their best qualities are, and it's a lovely moment between Jason and Chidi.

In the meanwhile, Michael (Ted Danson) has a job to do, which is to convince the demons of the Bad Place to help humans find redemption, instead of endlessly and repetitively torturing them.

It's not an easy switch to make, as the demons of the Bad Place have truly relished dealing out torture ('Chainsaw Bear!') in more direct ways, for millennia. Fortunately, Vicki (Tiya Sircar) has spent her entire aspiring actor career finding new ways to relate to humanity, and this is the role she was born to play. She's surprisingly effective at teaching demons new ways to challenge human souls ("It's like flattening the penises...of her heart"), and with the new system working so well, Michael's a little lost. 

The show is well aware of its upcoming end. While the last episode spent a little time consoling its fans who do not want things to end, given how great things have been over these four seasons, Michael's fear of not knowing what to do now that the fight is ending seems to be written for the show's creative team — its creators, its writers, its technicians.

Anyone who has listened to 'The Good Place: The Podcast', or read the interviews, knows just how much work goes into this show, and that work has all but wrapped up. The fans aren't the only ones who are going to find it hard to say goodbye to 'The Good Place,' and it's nice to know that the show's cast and crew share those feelings.

The show is not going out without one final treat, however — Team Cockroach, after all this time, is finally going to get into the actual, long-awaited Good Place — but will it be worth the wait?

The next episode of 'The Good Place' airs on January 23, on NBC.

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