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That was a really fun episode. At least until that gut-punch of a flash forward, anyways. I love the rappers. I love that they replaced Honeynutz. I flove that Honeynutz 2.0 lost his cotton candy in the tub of water, just like that viral video of the raccoon that washed its cotton candy in water and lost it. "Bitch, do you know how much time I spent building that character? You think I'd give that up just because Honeynutz 1 aged out?" Yeah, whatever happened to the plan for Becca to be a surrogate+egg donor for Paul? Does Tallulah have a rich younger cousin? The flash-forward was technically impressive: the camera pushes in on the brand new car as Gretchen gets in and closes the door, and then it seamlessly fades to the next shot where it's parked in front of the house, and all dinged up, but the camera is in exactly the same position to start. I suppose that could be done with a computer-controlled camera arm but I'm guessing that's expensive and rare and I wonder how to do it without. Also, Jimmy clearly isn't wearing a wedding ring in the flash forward.

By the theory of season 3, no one has scored enough to earn Good Place admittance in centuries. Maybe Simone had her own almond milk type situation. I think John is Shawn's pick to be Tahini's (inadvertent) torturer, not her parallel. (TBH, it's a shame none of the other three original humans were big Kamilah fans. I think they hadn't quite dialed in on Tahani at the start of the show, so the idea that Jason and Eleanor and Chidi would torture her by their very selves didn't quite work, not as much as the torture designs for the other three.) Simone might be more of a parallel to Tahani in her relative awesomeness. But mostly she's Shawn's pick to torture Eleanor and Chidi.

@HunterHunted, the Alchemax cafeteria scene reminded me of the (non-Marvel) comic “Atomic Robo”, about a scientist-adventurer robot and his company Tesladyne, full of scientist-adventurers... some less enthusiastic about the adventure stuff than others. But the evil version of that. (Atomic Robo is awesome.) For what it’s worth, the released script says that was the cafeteria for the security staff. Doesn’t quite jibe with all the lab coats though. — While the movie’s name references Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse mega-event and provided the impetus to include Spiders-Gwen, Noir, and Ham (and Peni), the core story of the movie owes a bit more to Bendis and Pichelli’s Spider-Men miniseries, where 616 Peter Parker was pulled into Earth-1610 after 1610 Peter died, and that’s when 616 Peter first met Miles. The two go to Aunt May’s house, Pete gives Miles some advice… It’s fun.

I think Peter B is more like the Raimi Spidey. 616’s shares superhero duty with a host of other NY-based heroes. Peter B appears to be entirely alone, along with every other Sony (non-MCU) Spidey. (Besides multiverses, anyways)

There’s some convoluted reasoning for why Miles was given his mother’s last name, but yeah, in addition to it being really messed up that Jefferson’s parents named him Jefferson Davis, Miles was almost Miles Davis.

Well, our Earth doesn’t have a real Spider-Man. But Miles’ earth has a few distinct differences from ours: water polo is a huge pro sport and Chance the Rapper wears a hat with “4” on it instead of “3”. Also, Spider-Man kissed an upside-down Mary Jane while in the Raimi movies (and for Peter B Parker) Spidey was the one who was upside-down. Also, the timeline fits better that Peter B is the animated mirror to the Tobey Maguire Spidey, in that he’s been a superhero for twenty years. Miles’ Peter had only been doing it for six.

There's some intense scary stuff but not much of it and I don't think it's any scarier than the Star Wars films. It is really hyperkinetic, esp as it ramps up to the biggest closing action sequence. I genuinely have no idea if that's okay for little kids.

The casting for Spike alone is almost an insurmountable task by itself, especially because the martial arts demands of the role shrink the available pool.

Season one finale, Michael to Chidi: "Well, if it'll make you feel any better, you were the closest to actually getting in, up there. You weren't that close. You were just the closest." probably a clue in retrospect about how Chidi didn't qualify for (at least) the Medium Place!

I’m watching this EPK and Jon Chu casually mentioned that Constance Wu had never been to Asia before filming. Aw. (I can totally relate; I didn’t visit till I was 28, yet my parents are from there.)

No, I saw it in Vancouver. FB ads are good for something, because this Wednesday I saw the ad for the advance screening and bought my ticket then!

I just saw the advance screening ahead of next week's general release and it is amazing. Visually stunning and a solid story with a lot of fun. BTW, @festivus, I thought the same thing about Jake Johnson when I saw the trailers, but when watching the movie it just about never crossed my mind.

Scrubs reunion panel at the Vulture Festival! The twitter video starts with a little over 16 minutes of dead air waiting for the panel to begin, so you can skip over all that.

Radishes are a delight and pickled daikon (a Japanese root vegetable that’s basically a giant radish without the color) are even more delightful. but even so, Doug’s life is horrifying.

I'm totally an Eleanor/Chidi shipper too. (Do we not have a portmaneau couple name? Cheleanor? Nordi?) Kristen Bell didn't really sell the romance last season IMO but in this ep, I bought it. Eleanor read the definition for determinism out of "A Complete Idiot's Guide to the Cliff Notes to Philosophy For Dingdongs ... For Morons (Abridged Edition)" -- I think that's what the last two words say, anyways. Technically the Jeremy Bearimy of it all means there's not particular reason the illegal afterlife-Earth portal opened up in the present time rather than a while ago, but ... it probably did, to make the storytelling easier. And that would definitely kill my pet "Vicky is secretly Simone" theory, not to mention that Vicky appeared on earth as Vicky. Ah well. TBH, considering that in this episode Michael reiterated (in flashback) that the entire Good Place was made up by him, it's kind of disconcerting that Doug "92% right" Forcett might still be one of the very few true things pre-face-turn Michael said.

We probably haven't seen traditional Bad Place torture because it is really way beyond network TV standards, but certainly the demons talk like they have a lot of experience with twisting and whatnot.

Business Insider interview with Hubbard and Yang.

I rewatched a bit of the season opener to see Donkey Doug’s first appearance, and when he quit the dance crew, he and Jason had a handshake that was about the first third of the handshake between Jason and Pillboi.

The AV Club interviews Kirby Howell-Baptiste.

I liked this episode a lot. I do hope that they can pull back a bit on the Florida/Jacksonville stuff and I do assume they were taking this episode to blow it all out while they could. Because that was a lot. That said, I loved the Bigfoot cab. And the VR thing was highly implausible but hey, it gave this time on Earth a bit of the supernatural stuff that makes this show feel like itself, so I'll overlook it. Jason and Pillboi's handshake goes into the hall of fame for TV handshakes, along with some classic Turk and JD routines (from Scrubs) and Abby and the Bed Bath & Beyond employees (from Broad City).

I kept wondering where Simone was, but hand to god I really did forget about Larry.

William Jackson Harper wrote a play! https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/travisville

https://shadowandact.com/william-jackson-harper-conquered-a-top-5-fear-on-the-good-place-season-3-episode-4

Wow, this episode was much better than the last one. I guess any time Eleanor cares, I totally buy it. I am glad that Chidi just had a breakdown in the supermarket, because I was worried he was going to die, Eleanor-style. And the violin player was Megan Amram! (It helps that I remember her playing the violin from An Emmy For Megan.) I wonder if the dot in the i from the Jeremy Bearimy afterlife timeline will play a part in future scheming.

I disagree with you here. For me, the show is compelling on an intellectual level for what it posits and asks about the afterlife, and it's compelling on an emotional level because the characters care about each other. But Michael can't show he cares to the humans because he's undercover. Eleanor openly cared in this episode (masked by her defense mechanisms, but still) Jason and Tahani and Chidi didn't. And Janet cared about Michael, a little. It ended up feeling hollow -- too much plot, too little genuine emotion.