Ben Koldyke Forking Kills It (Plus Easter Eggs) In This Week's 'The Good Place'!

Welcome! Everything is zero o’clock in the sky somewhere!

With last week’s episode jumping ahead to halfway through the experiment, perhaps some of me us believed that this was simply to get the in-show timeline caught up with the real timeline — after all, halfway through the season, halfway through the experiment, right?

Well, some of me us were wrong.

Because with tonight’s jump ahead six more months (give or take a few hours at the end), we’re now at the end of the year, and the end of the experiment … and things seem pretty forked.

But we’ll get to that. First, look at the pretty pictures!

Murder Board

Everyone loves a good murder board, and this one has some fun stuff. We don’t get a ton of closeups, so it’s tough to read some of the details, but I do enjoy the question (red postcard on the right, just above the words CONTROL GROUP): “Who or what is Derek?”

Also visible: this bit about Janet potentially being asexual, and what happened to Linda?

Universal Paperclips!

Remember Michael’s love of paperclips? Apparently, while they haven’t made an appearance in a while, they’ve always been there.

Michael’s Song!

Remember when Michael said he was writing a song? We finally get to hear a bit of “The Purple Train to Groovy City” when Chidi finds his lyrics:

“Here’s a trippy little ditty ‘bout a train to groovy city, open up your freaky crystal mind and we’ll have a cosmic good time.”

(As a bonus, this song makes Simone think they’re in hell.)

The Sinkhole Returns!

Not hidden, but the sinkhole (all the way from the fourth episode of season one!) returns, as the gang uses it to try to trick the new humans into helping Brent.

The Dramatic Push-in Reveal Also Returns!

Also not hidden, but the original HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS moment of the show gets a callback of its own - and this time Eleanor gets to jump in on the laughter, which I assume must have been fun.

(Side note: I love the gravely voice she puts on the line “Aw man! I can’t believe you figured it out!”)

Ben Koldyke, Take a Bow

Look, Brent Norwalk has clearly… not been great this season, which is a testament to Ben Koldyke’s ability to play a dickish jackass, who I you may remember as Don, the co-anchor Robin fell in love with on How I Met Your Mother, or as Dick Slingbaugh (wait, that was his character’s name?) opposite Maggie Lawson in Back in the Game, which I’m sure you all also watched.

But here, at the end of the line, confronted by the realization that he really was a bad person, Koldyke takes Brent through the five stages of grief in twenty seconds flat, and it’s just a sight to see, because there’s absolutely no way in hell I was expecting to ever feel bad for Brent, but look at that fear in his eyes. In a show with such powerhouse leads, Koldyke sticks the landing for his character’s emotional journey, and I loved it.

This Image. That’s It. There’s No Joke. I Just Love How They Did It.

Look, it’s a visual effect, and primarily just a cool way to signify time running out, but this gave me real Quantum Leap vibes, which I enjoyed.

What Now?

Now that we’ve reached the end of the experiment, it turns out, we still have questions left (and thankfully, six episodes to answer them). In no particular order:

Where did Simone and John go?

There’s no way they scored well enough, right?

How much more powerful will Janet be after she “violently eats her Janet-babies?”

Will we ever get to see The Good Place (outside of the mailroom, that is)?

How much more Derek will we get to Derek?

What will we do when this is all over?

That last one may be the toughest to answer.