What I’m Watching: The Good Place

The Good Place: Season 3, Episode 8 “The Worst Possible Use of Free Will” (B)

This episode was perfectly fine, but I don’t feel that we’re getting to a completely vital place right now. Michael telling Eleanor that, in one version of events in the afterlife, she and Chidi fell in love doesn’t seem entirely purposeful, though I guess it is meant to show her that she is capable of love, which represents a huge step for her and the potential that she has to be a good person. I like that, after seeing everything, Eleanor came to the conclusion that there was indeed no free will, and that everything that she had done was actually influenced, if only slightly in some cases, by what something else had done first. Michael pouring his iced tea on her was a great way to wake her up, and now they’re on to the next hair-brained scheme to be able to save as many souls as possible. Seeing flashes of our human friends back in the good place was fun, though the centaur Tahani was definitely strange. I was talking to friends recently who stopped watching this show after season one, and to me it’s still been terrific, but this season hasn’t quite matched the first two. Reintroducing both Shawn and Denise at the end of the episode as they built their own illegal portal to Earth was a very welcome step, and I can’t wait to see what they try to do to sabotage Michael and the humans, who are far more equipped for their arrival than they could possibly realize.