TL;DR – With Time-Knife we get the big major push for the rest of the season and it is an interesting one indeed.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Review –

For the back half of The Good Place’s third season, we have jumped from Australia and have started ricocheting around the afterlife. Well in today’s episode we get to visit the last name dropped location in the series so far The Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes.

So to set the scene, during last week’s Book of Doug’s Michael (Ted Danson) and the gang – Janet (D’Arcy Carden), Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) discover what is really stopping people entering The Good Place. It is not spies in the Accounting Department, it is that the world of 2019 is significantly more difficult to navigate and even buying a single tomato is enough points to send you to The Bad Place. With this information in mind, Michael calls a meeting with The Judge (Maya Rudolph) in The Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes, where she is weakest, to discuss what it is that they can do about it. Now we will be looking at the episode as a whole so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

One of the ways that The Good Place shines is when it gets weird, like this season’s Janet(s) and tonight is no exception. The IHOP is beautiful, unsettling, weird, and incredibly well designed. This also extends to when they take it from abstract concept and try to represent it in some kind of reality, when you can show that you can get a laugh out of a green scarf (I mean it is also so you can cut down on the visual effects which you have to do, but mostly the scarf).

This week we also get the rogues gallery of returning guest cast, starting with Maya Rudolph as The Judge. Goodness can Maya make every scene she is in feel joyous in a way I don’t see often. Marc Evan Jackson is always a riot, and it is so much fun seeing him play Shawn who is so completely different than the usual straight-laced roles he is played in the past, and he completely captures that in his final monologue. Also because we are back in The Neutral Place it is time to bring back Mindy St. Claire (Maribeth Monroe) and Derek (Jason Mantzoukas). Mindy has been resetting Derek quite a bit since we last left which gives Jason a different range to play with, but not quite, it is odd but fun. Also thinking back to the revelations of this season, it means that Mindy was the closest anyone has gotten to The Good Place in 400 years.

What we see with this episode is that beyond all the amusing weirdness there is the focus of the back end of the season that I think we have been missing a bit so far. To prove that the point system is flawed, they are going to re-run the experiment that Michael unwittingly started all those years ago. One thing that I do find interesting is that I think we will see Eleanor step up and take the lead, and that will be an interesting shift in the dynamics of the show.

In the end, do we recommend Chidi Sees the Time-Knife? Yes, we do. It is fun, absurd, and askes some really interesting questions about the society we live in. I hope it provides the show with the focus it needs going forward, but then this is The Good Place, and even when it is missing some focus, it is still a riot to watch.                    

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Season Three of The Good Place yet?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Trailer – Click Here to View (all trailers have heavy spoilers)
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Good Place
Directed by – Jude Weng
Written by – Christopher Encell & Joe Mande
Created by – Michael Schur
Starring in Season 3 – Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, D’Arcy Carden & Ted Danson with Maya Rudolph, Marc Evan Jackson, Jason Mantzoukas, Maribeth Monroe & Brandon Scott Jones