'The Good Place' Episode 13 Review: 'Whenever You're Ready' is the best forking finale the show could give fans
Spoiler alert for ‘Whenever You’re Ready’ - Season 4, Episode 13 of ‘The Good Place’
A series finale is meant to bring its viewers a sense of peace in its farewell. A way for its audience to say goodbye to their favorite characters and know that their stories were resolved in the only way they could have been. As far as that goes, in ways both meta and practical, the series finale for ‘The Good Place’ might be one of the most perfect finales in existence.
The previous episode set the finale up perfectly. Introducing a Whenever-You’re-Ready door (WYRD in short) last episode brought up a few complicated questions, but every one of them is addressed and resolved through the course of this episode. The four-season wait to get into the actual Good Place turns out to have been well worth it, as the Good Place is not just a final reward - with the introduction of the WYRD, it’s a place to say goodbye.
The expected emotional weight of the episode comes in early, as Jason (Manny Jacinto) is the first one to realize he’s ready to say goodbye. Having accomplished everything he could conceive of himself accomplishing, he speaks of an inner peace letting him know he was ready to go. It's that sense of peace that we see come up on Team Cockroach, one by one and the cast expresses that peace so perfectly that when Eleanor (Kristin Bell) and Michael (Ted Danson) try to fake it at one point later in the episode, it's obvious.
Perhaps no one expresses that sense of peace more completely than Chidi (William Jackson Harper), given that he tries to remain in the Good Place for longer than he wants to, for Eleanor's sake. He puts on a brave face for the woman he loves, but it's easy to see the tiredness creeping in. The torture of eternal perfection was played for laughs last episode, but here, it's really easy to see how staying on past your time can just be more tiring than anything else. No matter how good something is, people are not meant to last forever, at least not without becoming an entirely new kind of person - like Tahani does (Jameela Jamil).
Tahani's decision to become an architect removes the last objection to the Good Place's methodology that existed - its exclusiveness. Having found her peace, Tahani finds herself a fresh purpose in reaching out and helping others. She's not confined to the Good Place, she can still reach out and make a difference to souls who are suffering.
The episode goes all out in creating 73 minutes of that feeling of peace. A series known for its twists, and surprises, offers little of that here. That's not to say that things turn out predictably - there are some surprsise cameos in here that make for a fun "Spot Who Got Into the Good Place" game - but reveals happen gently, build up to it, selling the reasons why things happen the way they did. A show known for its mile-a-minute humor still has that, but it's given space to breathe that it usually doesn't get to have. The experience of watching the show is perhaps the most gentle, and peaceful hour-plus of television one could hope to watch.
It might be a little unfair to judge other series finales by the standard that 'Whenever You're Ready' sets - after all, the episode's thematic heart is about learning to say goodbye in a way that others series finales just aren't. It's done so beautifully, though, and with such respect and love for the journeys of both the characters and the audience who came with them that it still deserves its place in history as one of the best series finales to grace the television screen.
There will be no more episodes of 'The Good Place,' but to quote Marc Evan Jackson (who plays Shawn) from the end of his 'The Good Place' podcast episodes - "Go do something good."