The Good Place recap: Season 4, Episode 10, “You’ve Changed, Man,” Aired Jan. 9, 2020
Welcome back, benches! All of humanity is still at stake, and it all rests on Michael and our four favorite humans to come up with a plan before Judge Gen can destroy every human. No pressure.
I. Love. Maya. Rudolph.
Judge Gen is still absolutely the best. She spends the episode searching the Janet voids for the clicker to destroy humanity, and we get to travel a bit along with her.
“All Janet voids are nothing, but Neutral Janet voids are, like, the most nothing.” And Bad Janet voids are actually hilarious – full of bad music, dumpster fires, software updates, and a billboard for Pirates of the Caribbean 12.
Eventually, Judge Gen has searched every void except THE Janet’s, and Team Cockroach heads back into the void to propose a brand-new idea to Judge Gen, with the help of some eye candy catered to her interests.
You’ve changed, man
Chidi saw the time-knife, and he claims he has clarity now. He’s decisive, confident, and still super into Eleanor. Even with the whole universe in his hands, he was calm and giddy.
The new Chidi is going to take some getting used to. I don’t want to lose all that made up old Chidi, so it was refreshing to see he’s still giving ethics lessons, but wearing roller skates?! That’s new. I will say Eleanor is into this new Chidi, which helps.
Medium place
Team Cockroach comes up with a basic plan – not great, but better than the current system. If you score negative points on Earth, you go to the Bad Place. If you score over a million, you’re in the Good Place. If you’re in the middle, you get your own personal medium place.
The Good Place crew is on board, but Shawn refuses to agree. To try to force an agreement, Team Cockroach offers themselves to the Bad Place in return for a medium place for everyone else. No such luck. Shawn doesn’t care if the Bad Place has no humans to torture for billions of years as long as Michael loses right along with him. It’s personal.
It’s all come to this
Time for a new plan. At the end of life, humans still have a points total, but it’s merely a baseline. In the afterlife, all humans go through tests to address their moral shortcomings. They’d get feedback on the tests, then get rebooted over and over until they ace their tests. This way, everyone gets an even shot at making enough good choices to get into the Good Place, even if they fail to do it.
And, big shocker, Shawn passes on the plan. For one thing, the Bad Place demons would no longer be torturing all the humans. The Good Place and Bad Place architects working together to create the tests isn’t good enough for Shawn.
For Shawn, this is more than just torture and jobs for all the demons. Sure, he finds torture enjoyable, but he admitted that fighting Michael and the humans is the most fun he’s ever had. So if Michael is just going to accept defeat at the end, what fun is that? Reluctantly, he agrees and Judge Gen puts down the humanity destroyer. Phew.
Going into this episode, I 100% thought the episode title, “You’ve Changed, Man,” referred to Chidi. Nope. It’s actually uttered by Jason to Shawn, though it totally applies to Chidi, too.
With the Good Place crew, Bad Place crew, and Judge Gen all agreed on the plan, I am excited to see what newly confident Chidi does next. Stay tuned!
What did you think of “You’ve Changed, Man”? Let us know at @PureFandom on Twitter!
The Good Place airs Thursday nights on NBC at 9:00/8:00c.
(Image: Colleen Hayes/NBC)
