There's something inherently selfish about Eleanor's quest to be less selfish. By pretending she's someone she's not, she's allowing potentially all kinds of chaos to come to her neighbourhood, including the giant sinkhole that threatened to destroy everything tonight. And if she succeeds in her quest, she'll still have stolen a spot in paradise from someone significantly more deserving of it. Her quest to learn ethics is also tough on her "Soulmate" Chidi. His reward from a life of teaching ethics has turned out to be teaching more ethics for potentially eternity. Eleanor has learned to appreciate what Chidi is doing but she hasn't learned to appreciate Chidi and that tension makes Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis a fruitful and rewarding episode of the increasingly good Good Place.
The episode definitely benefits by spotlighting Eleanor and Chidi's uneasy relationship, which has been backgrounded for the past two episodes but still serves as the heart of the show. Chidi's lessons are starting to pay off for Eleanor who is delighted to see herself doing things like letting someone go in front of her when she's not sure what she wants at the Frozen Yogurt place instead of holding up the line or sampling 12 flavours she doesn't want out of spite ("You do that?!" "No, Chidi. I used to do that".). So naturally she wants more "good person" lessons all the time. This is starting to be a real burden on Chidi, who wants to be doing paradise things like "rowing out on a lake with a good bottle of wine, reading french poetry" but feels an ethical obligation to keep helping Eleanor. Of course Eleanor is not too happy to find out that Chidi feels this way and decides he can leave, but before he can, they find themselves stuck at Eleanor's because of a sinkhole induced quarantine. William Jackson-Harper has been stealing the show since episode 1 and he continues to be great here, bringing all of Chidi's frustrations and resentments to the surface, while retaining his nervous energy. Bell is also great, seeming genuinely hurt that she's being forced to watch TV instead of going to school and then angry when she realizes she's upset about that.
Things really become complicated when they have to play host to Nina and Bart, a former Marriage Counsellor and Identity Theft Specialist respectively. Of course they can't even keep up the charade of being happy soulmates for a couple minutes and find their relationship being put under the microscope. This is when we find out the real reason Chidi has been so frustrated. It turns out he never had a soulmate or a serious meaningful relationship on earth and now he's supposed to have his perfect soulmate and it's not what he had hoped it would be. This is when the inherent selfishness in Eleanor's quest finally becomes apparent to Eleanor. At the top of the episode Chidi has been teaching utilitarianism, the idea that the action that leads to the most good and the least pain is the correct one. When Eleanor came to the good place, she took the place of Chidi's real soulmate and the more Chidi helps here, the more likely it is that he'll never get to meet her. By helping Eleanor, Chidi is sacrificing his own happiness because that's the least amount of pain for the greater good. This realization inspires Eleanor to give Chidi the day of rowing out on a lake with wine and french poetry he wants and a "Fork Off Eleanor" sign to use whenever he needs a break from her, because even if they aren't soulmates, they are friends and she's finally ready to start treating Chidi like one. Finally Eleanor is able to acknowledge the sacrifice Chidi is making and by taking steps to rectify her selfishness, the sinkhole her selfishness created in the last episode finally heals itself and goes away. It turns out a bit of selflessness can heal a bit of selfishness. It's a positive step for Eleanor and Chidi and hopefully one that will carry forward into future episodes.
Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis also gives us our best look yet into Tahani Al-Jamil, as she gets a peek at the neighbourhood goodness rankings while Michael and Janet are dealing with the sinkhole crisis and discovers she ranks 321 out of 322 people (Jianyu ranked 2nd and Eleanor ranked 6th, which is interesting considering what we know about those two). This sends Tahani into a tailspin as flashbacks reveal she spent her life in the shadow of her much more talented sister Kamilah. It turns out a lot of what Tahani did was to try and earn validation from her parents who never thought she was good enough. It's an affecting and tragic backstory that immediately teaches us a lot about why Tahani is the way she is. When her parents die and misname her in their will as Tahini (Like the sauce), she decides to step out of her sisters shadow and achieve great success all on her own but that fear of not being good enough hasn't left her. So she immediately tries to step up her game with elaborate brunch parties for all the people stuck at her mansion in an effort to move up the rankings. When that doesn't work she decides to try and help Michael and Janet fix the sinkhole. Of course that backfires when side effects from the hole cause her face to resemble an abstract painting, and Michael finds out she's seen the rankings. Ultimately he assures her that while the point counting stopped when she died and the rankings are final, the mere fact that she beat out billions for a spot in the good place means she is good enough and has nothing left to prove. It's a small capper to her arc, but an effective one for now. I wonder if this is something that will be revisited in future episodes though because the feeling of not being good enough doesn't go away that easily.
Also not going away that easily are the problems that have come up with the neighbourhood. Michael's story in this episode is slight, but one that sets him up for a major role in the weeks to come. Ted Danson gets a lot of notes to play, from goofily reciting the Western Hemisphere brunch banter he's been working on ("You haven't seen Hamilton? Hey, did you hear about Stephanie") to trying to conceal his panic about the whole sinkhole crisis. Michael thought the sinkhole would fix itself but it only grew and grew. When it finally went away, he has no idea why it did. It's become apparent that he does not have control of the neighbourhood he's designed and this terrifies him. So by episodes end, he recruits Eleanor to help him find the reason for all this trouble. This should prove an interesting dilemma for Eleanor in the weeks to come, as she happens to be the reason for all this trouble. So once again The Good Place tells an amusing and satisfying story, while continuing to set up for more stories down the road. It's been a good ride so far and we're not even halfway through the season yet. It's hard to say where all of this is ultimately going (though I have a few guesses), but episodes like this one have me very excited to find out.
Memorable Moments
-Jason doesn't get a lot to do in this episode but his monologue on utilitarianism is a beauty. "It's like, I knew this girl Sheila? She was a black market alligator dealer with a pierced jawbone. Sheila was gonna get married to my boy, Donkey Doug and make him move to Sarasota. It would've broken up my whole break dancing crew and Donkey Doug was our best pop-and-locker. So I hid a bunch of stolen boogie boards in Sheila's garage and called the cops. I framed one innocent gator dealer to save a 60-person dance crew".
-Michael keeps calm in the face of crisis. "Tahani, dear, could you show us to a private room where no one can see or hear us, even if I yell very loudly out of fear?"
-Eleanor knows when Chidi says no big deal, it's a pretty big deal. "When I told a boyfriend something was "no big deal," it meant anything from 'I just bought weed from your nephew,' to 'I secretly befriended your ex-girlfriend last year, things got out of hand, and now I'm her bridesmaid.'"
-Tahani introduces her sister. "Kamilah, of course, is the youngest person ever to graduate from Oxford University, she's a world-class painter, social activist, iconoclast, Olympic gold medalist for archery, a BAFTA Award-winner for her documentary on her Grammy Award-winning album, and the person voted 'Most Likely to be Banksy.'"
-Tahani made "Doughnut Holes" for the sinkhole repair but Janet informs her it's too soon by "exactly 9 days".
-I hope we see more of Bart and Nina, who may or may not want to swing with Eleanor and Chidi.
-Chidi not actually knowing how to row a boat is a very funny capper to his storyline this episode.
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