[7.3/10] This was a bit of an odd episode in that there wasn’t really much of a story to it. It’s half-essay, and half-explanation for the plot of the show’s latest repilot. I’m not complaining exactly. There were some good laughs and good insights and a lot of promise for what’s to come, but it wasn’t an episode of television so much as it was a visual instruction manual for what we’ve learned and what’s to come. That said, I found the show’s conclusions pretty interesting. I like Michael’s thesis that the world is too complicated for humans to be good under the current point system, and Jason’s unexpectedly effective metaphor of people with too many understandable and sympathetic responsibilities letting some things slip. The Judge visiting Earth for a hot minute was a nice conceit for some more observations and a change of heart, and I like Chidi using himself as a living example for why “doing the research” isn’t a solution to the problem either. The show mostly talks about it rather than showing it, but does a good job of accounting for why there is a problem that needs to be addressed. I’m also intrigued by the solution of taking four new humans to a new hybrid neighborhood and seeing if they improve morally away from the complications of Earth. It works more as a way to wring some more mileage out of the show’s premise with another wild situation (i.e. as a T.V. plot) than a legitimate moral experiment, but I also like it as (an admittedly oversimplified) way for Michael to try to prove his point. The details of how the new neighborhood will be built and how it will be populated make for some nice Michael vs. Sean interactions and great Janet moments, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little rousing to see the old neighborhood (or at least its design) back again. But I particularly liked the one thing in the episode which does resemble a story: Jason reciprocating his feelings for Janet but then getting jealous of a many-times-restarted Derek. Jason Mantzoukas continues to be great, and between his not-quite suave speech and martini glass full of increasingly silly things, he definitely brought the laughs. Aside from the over-explain-y and talkiness of the episode, my one other complaint is that the special effects on the show were really shoddy. I know that effects aren’t the point of a show like *The Good Place*, but the IHOP in particular felt like a high school video with a green screen and mid-90s screensaver. It was bad enough to be distracting from the meat of the show. Overall, this episode is more table-setting than storytelling, but it sets up the central issue nicely and portends interesting things to come.