Jay G.

Can't believe it's the season finale next week. This show just flies by, even with the winter break.

I feel like season 4 may be the final season. It seems like they're reaching the endgame now.

brainee

To their credit, the show keeps coming up with twists that keep the story interesting. With Michael's new neighborhood, an army of Janet (and Derek) creations, and new "bad" people being brought it it feels like there's some more mileage in this show creatively.

bralph

Nice setup with the Chidi reset. I also like having Eleanor in charge. They do a great job of continuing to mix things up. I disagree that the "end game" needs to come soon. The show has continued to evolve and reinvent itself with no threat of getting stale. That could happen sooner rather than later, but it doesn't seem inevitable to me.

RichC2

Yeah, in a time where originality seems dead, the constant development on this show is pretty impressive. Did they explain why Simone wouldn't recognize the rest of the group?

clckworang

Yes, there was actually a lot of discussion about how Simone's memories could invalidate the experiment, so the judge told them that Michael could reset Simone to only remember events that happened prior to meeting the group.

brainee

I don’t know if it was a joke by the show or lazy DVR synopsis writers, but on my DVR the description of the last episode was just: “Various events occur, in a certain specific order.”

dex14

That was the official episode synopsis.

RichC2

Ah that's right, got a phone call and only partially paid attention to that part apparently.

JimRochester

Other than a couple dopey rom-coms, I didn't have much exposure to Kristen Bell. That girl has some charm. She and Dansen work well together.

brainee

Groucho

“Sushi and the Banshees” was a hilarious throwaway joke.

RichC2

She's an underutilized actress, she some how got relegated to second rate Rom Coms and occasional supporting roles in movies for a while as well. Though Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of my favorite Rom Coms, she isn't exactly the lead.

Plus she seems like a cool chick (her love of sloths and < $150 weddings help as well).

JimRochester

I saw her in When In Rome and Couples Retreat. She was fine in both of those but nothing 100 other actresses couldn't pull off. In Couples the ladies really played second fiddle to the men. Rome had a few moments of charm but was pretty a unremarkable contributor to the genre.

brainee

I loved her in Reefer Madness: The Musical:

mwbmis

I really liked Veronica Mars, but I "fell in love with her" on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Bell appearances were not to be missed.

I like that these seasons are only 13 episodes, but it makes a long wait when it is over.

randian

Wasn't this season only 12? This last episode was showing as S3E12 on my DVR.

mwbmis

Sort of. The first episode was an hour long so it was like two episodes.

RichC2

The first episode was split into two chapters (27 and 28) so it's definitely two eps

majorjoe23

I saw an interesting post on line that Mindy St. Claire is actually the closest anyone has gotten to getting into The Good Place, so much so that The Medium Place was created when she died in the 80s.

So it seems like she should be studied to figure out how she got so close.

Jay G.

The issue with Mindy wasn't that she was close; the points from her charity would've sent her over the top. The issue was whether the points from her charity applied to her, since she conceived of it and apparently had every intention of creating it, but died before she could. So the issue was whether Mindy was eligible for those points, which they couldn't decide on, which is why they created the Medium Place.

Plus, it's clear that Mindy is awful, in many ways, and even being eligible for the good place was due to a severe fluke. You can't save billions of people based on a fluke.

Jay G.

So my speculation about season 4:

With both Chidi and Simone memory wiped now, and Eleanor stuck as "The Architect," it seems likely that Chidi and Simone will become a couple again, with Eleanor powerless to stop it, lest spoiling the experiment.

We've also only seen 2 of the new "Good Place" subjects. The next two should be antagonistic somehow to Jason and Eleanor, although with Eleanor masquerading as The Architect, does that mean another memory wipe for her nemesis?

Finally, I'm thinking the latest experiment may end up being only a partial success: some of the new people will become better, but at least one will be a down-to-the-core bad person. This will sort of prove Michael's assertion that at least some people can become better than what their Earth points indicate, but there still needs to be a way to sort out the bad eggs. How to do that? Why, "The Good Place" of course. Instead of being a torture device, or experiment, "The Good Place" becomes a sorting system for all entering the afterlife. Set them up in it, free of all the variables in life, let them either become better or reveal themselves as bad, and then send them to the actual Good or Bad Place.

Of course, knowing this show, it's going to take a hard left turn into something I didn't foresee. But it's fun to conjecture.

Lifepawn

Michaels neighborhood was designed for humans to torture each other. As it stands now the original four humans will be torturing the new humans on purpose and the new humans will be torturing the original four unknowingly. The Bad Place always wins! Checkmate!