The first two episodes of The Good Place seem straightforward enough. Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is a selfish person who mysteriously wound up in paradise and needs to learn how to be good before she's discovered. It's a solid premise but also the kind of premise that seems like it could grow tiresome or unsustainable pretty quick. Having Eleanor be the one thing wrong in paradise can only go so many directions. Luckily, Tahani Al-Jamil reveals that there's a lot going on here then meets the eye, which is very welcome news indeed.
As the title suggests, perfect neighbour Tahani (Jameela Jamil) is the focus of Tahani Al-Jamil, as Eleanor gets to know her neighbour as an excuse to find out if she's the one who left her the "You don't belong here" note at the end of the last episode. It also gives us an excuse to get to know Tahani, who didn't have much to do in the first two episodes beyond serve as a symbol of irritating perfection to contrast Eleanor with and try to connect with her soulmate Jianyu (Manny Jacinto). So what do we learn about Tahani? Well it turns out the reason she seems so perfect and friendly is because she just really is that perfect and friendly. She raised over 60 billion dollars for charity in her lifetime, while dabbling in things like modelling, museum curating, and being Baz Luhrmann's muse. She may come across as a bit conceited and condescending but it's nothing intentional on her part. The key thing we learn though is under that perfection, she's as insecure and desperate to feel like she belongs as Eleanor is. Her inability to connect with silent Jianyu, which was played for laughs in Flying gets some actual pathos here as we find out just how depressed she is by the fact that he won't break his vow of silence for anyone, even his soulmate. It's what really breaks through to Eleanor and gets her to reluctantly embrace Tahani ("Ugh, of course your hugs are amazing", she grumbles).
Really though Tahani's main purpose in the episode is still to teach us something about Eleanor. Throughout the episode Eleanor is determined to prove that Tahani is not who she seems to be and is someone sinister and evil underneath her shiny surface. All the while a housewarming plant Tahani gave her withers and dies as Eleanor keeps trying in vain to prove Tahani wrote the note that's been giving her so much stress. Meanwhile flashbacks show how she broke up with a boyfriend because she saw his efforts to do the right thing by boycotting a coffee place where the owner sexually harasses people as him lording over how much better than her he was. Eventually after Chidi (William Jackson-Harper) suggests that the note was written by her own guilty conscious manifesting itself through the good place, Eleanor is able to admit that perfect people make her insecure and that when she sees someone she feels is better than her she has to try and drag them down to her level. It's a realisation that puts Eleanor in a new light, showing how insecure she's always been about the kind of person she was. The note hit her so hard because she just wants to belong to and once she has admitted this, she's able to help Tahani feel better about herself and cause the plant to bloom.
Eleanor's realisation also allows her to help Chidi who's been feeling insecure himself about his life's work and his place here. Tahani Al-Jamil wisely lets us get to know Chidi as a person outside of Eleanor by pairing him up with Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D'Arcy Carden) for a story in which Michael tries to find Chidi a hobby. It turns out Chidi has been obsessed with ethics all his life, spending 18 years working on a manuscript about his findings and Michael wants him to have new adventures while he's here. It's a great chance for Jackson-Harper to show off how funny he is and Chidi's inherent nervousness plays well off of Danson's trying-to-help Michael. His efforts reveal new things about Chidi as we learn cartography won't work because exploring makes him nervous (he has what doctors diagnosed as "directional madness"), and journalism is a no-go because he doesn't like deadlines. Ultimately though, we learn that Michael is just trying to find him a hobby because Chidi's 3600 page manuscript is so convoluted and muddled, it took Michael (who can read all the world's literature in a hour) two weeks to get through it. This raises a lot of questions (like if the book was so bad, how did Chidi's knowledge of ethics qualify him for the good place) and causes Chidi to doubt himself and his purpose, before committing himself to starting over and writing the book again with Michael's help. Chidi wants new experiences but he truly does love ethics and he owes himself to be true to that. Even Janet gets the chance to be insecure through a comic runner where Michael tries to help her personality as she tries to be his assistant. This is mainly an excuse to watch Carden string together a bunch of colloquialisms, toss off increasingly ridiculous fun facts, be overtly sexual, and then cold and cruel but she's great at every iteration of Janet before she eventually reverts back to her original self. It also opens the door for Eleanor to be Michael's new assistant, which along with him taking on the role of Chidi's advisor opens the door for Danson to be much more involved with our leads, which should complicate their attempts to keep Eleanor's secret from him.
All of this makes Tahani Al-Jamil a perfectly enjoyable episode of television. The kind of third episode you'd expect from a show figuring out it's rhythm. Until the last two minutes upend everything we thought we knew so far. Confronted with another anonymous note telling her to meet the sender at town square, Eleanor learns she wasn't the note sender after all. Jianyu was AND he can talk. It's a good twist, but also a fairly predictable one. Why have Jianyu in the main cast if his only function is to be silent and perfect? What really takes Tahani Al-Jamil to the next level there is the episode isn't content to stop on that reveal. Jianyu doesn't belong in The Good Place either and he doesn't know how or why he got there. And suddenly the question of how Eleanor got to the good place becomes significantly more interesting. Who else isn't supposed to be in The Good Place? How perfect is the system for figuring out who gets in the afterlife? Who is Jianyu really? It's a big reveal and the impressive thing is it comes in the third episode instead of the 7th or the 9th. It shows Michael Schur has bigger plans in mind for this show and he's not going to string us along very long before giving us a look at them. It makes me that much more excited for next weeks episode and to see what will happen next and what else isn't what it seems. One thing's for sure: the characters on this show might be insecure, but The Good Place certainly isn't. And it's not afraid to show it.
Memorable Moments
-As a symbol, the housewarming plant a bit too cutesy and on-the-nose, but it does lead to a great bit where it literally bursts into flames after Eleanor steals Tahani's diary.
-"Who died and left Aristotle in charge of ethics?" "Plato".
-"So now I’m supposed to be nice and make friends and treat her with mutual respect?" "Yeah." "That’s exactly what she wants me to do Chidi. Wake up!" "That’s what everyone wants everybody to do".
-The reveal that Tahani translates to "Congratulations" and Al-Jamil translates to "Beautiful" is a terrific joke.
-In her fun fact phase, we learn from Janet that Columbus is in The Bad Place on account of the raping and slave-trading and genocide, as is every deceased member of the Portland Trailblazers. Her best fun fact though? "Fun fact: Janet is me."
-Chidi really likes taking his time on things. "You never even named your dog, did you. When it ran away you posted signs saying 'responds to long pauses'".
-Malala Yousafzai and Kylie Minogue wrote forwards for Tahani's diary. Of course.
-"First of all, throwing sand is an excellent way to put out vodka fires". "Why would you even know that?!"
-"I don't know how I got here, I don't know what's going on, and I am freaking out homie!" Jianyu frantic delivery of the word "homie" turns a major twist into the biggest laugh of the night.
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