MTVP So Cal Summer 2016: The LA Complex 1.05: "Home"

“The first step to fake recovery is admitting you have a fake problem.”
-Raquel

Let’s start this post off by addressing the elephant in the room. It’s not Summer 2016 anymore. Heck, it’s not even 2016 anymore! I am determined, however, to finish out our So Cal Summer series before we roll out what we have in store for you for Summer 2017. So enjoy some more recaps from sunny Southern California during this abnormally warm winter (thanks, climate change!). And now on with the actual post! In the penultimate first season episode of “The LA Complex,” many of the characters seem to reach rock bottom. Some seem to have new beginnings, although the prospect of those new beginnings working out long-term currently seems dubious. And somehow two women decide to have sex with Nick on one day. How does this happen?! I mean, Nick is kind of adorably doofy, but really? Two women in one day? Seems a little unrealistic to me. On a related note, Joe Dinicol, who played Nick, recently had a somewhat interesting run as Rory on “Arrow.” I was kind of disappointed it (presumably) ended as quickly as it did.

Early episode, Alicia shows up for her first day of work as Vivid. I feel like the creative team kind of went a little too far trying to counteract the “this is a porn studio” thing with “they’re a big, happy family that all eat lunch together in a cafeteria and have a chipper lady named Mandi in charge of spirit like a bunch of high schoolers.” Alicia was enthusiastic about the new job up to the point where it started to become real. She had bought herself a shiny new car and everything. When she is introduced to the person she’s supposed to be working with in her first video, she balks. It has all become too real, and she wants out of her contract. The director says she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to, but she wants to give Alicia a tour of the facility first. In the aforementioned cafeteria, the director hands Alicia off to Mandi, who takes Alicia to a storage closet filled with candy for some girl talk. Mandi offers to be Alicia’s first video partner, and Alicia eventually agrees to the idea. After the shoot, a famous director (or something like that) brings Mandi a birthday cake, and Alicia turns the connection into an audition for a music video.

Meanwhile, Tariq arranges for Abby to sing vocals on the track he’s been producing for Kal. Everyone is really impressed with Abby’s work, and at first it seems like the moment could be a real career breakthrough for her. Then Kal enters the scene, and things take a downward turn quickly. The guys tell Kal that Abby is Tariq’s girl, and Abby plays along with it. Kal can put the pieces together that Abby probably knows Tariq well enough to know Tariq is gay, and there’s a non-zero chance that Tariq has told her about their relationship. Kal decides that the right solution to this problem is to physically threaten Abby. Abbey gets really freaked out and leaves. This also leads to a confrontation between Tariq and Kal out in the parking lot, where Tariq screams asking if Kal loves him. Tariq ends up leaving, too.

Raquel is super psyched that Gary has agreed to back her movie, and she buys some champagne to share with the two doofy Luxe guys who wrote the movie. As you do in Hollywood, the three of them end up enjoying their champagne in the Luxe pool, and Gary catches them at it. I don’t think his brain immediately goes to Raquel duping him or anything, but he does think that Raquel has fallen off the wagon and is a danger to his sobriety. He rushes off, ending things with Raquel. Raquel, naturally, turns to drinking even more, and she may potentially have had the realization that she has hit rock bottom. She shows up at an AA meeting (one where Gary happens to be, naturally) and gives a big speech about how losing someone she loves is worse than losing the chance at a movie. She very carefully plans walking out and allowing Gary to catch up to her. By the end of the episode, they’re having sex and telling each other they love each other, and Raquel is texting the movie doofuses and telling them Gary is back in. It’s hard to get a read on Raquel’s motivation. Is she in it just for business, or does she have legitimate feelings for Gary? My guess is that it’s some of both.

Connor spends this episode an absolute mess. He’s been drinking too much, and he’s obnoxious to everyone at work. He’s still having a lot of trouble getting his lines right, and he keeps begging for another chance. Eventually, the production team forcibly takes him home. Only he doesn’t have the driver take him to his mansion. He goes to the Luxe and tries to get his old room back. Eddie says they’re all booked up though, and again suggests he go home. He runs into Abby, who is sympathetic to him at first, because she can see he’s not in a good place, but then he tries to put the moves on her and she kicks him out too. He ends up at a bar, where again he gets told to go “home,” but instead he ends up provoking a fight. Relief washes over his face when he realizes he’s bleeding. I guess he feels he finally got what he deserved?

Nick goes on quite the journey (that’s half-sarcasm) in this episode. Early in the episode, Abby tells him that she wants to “keep it casual,” and naturally, Nick spends much of the episode obsessing over what that could possibly mean. The thought continues to haunt him as he goes to an improv class. He’s not exactly a spontaneous person, so he bombs until another actor named Sabrina helps him along. Nick tries to kiss her in a scene, she slaps him, and everyone thinks it’s hilarious. Nick and Sabrina banter after class, and she invites him back to her place. He thinks he’s there to watch a comedy special she likes, she’s there to have sex. And have sex they do, with plenty of post-coital banter, mostly about how if Abby really wanted to keep it casual, she wouldn’t have said keep it casual. Nick returns home to find a very upset Abby (she’s had a bit of a day, after all), and when she makes the moves on him, he doesn’t say no. Which could be a problem considering her current emotional state. And that, friends, is how the unlikely event of Nick having sex with two different women in one day came to be.

No Tomorrow 1.12: “No Time Like the Present”

“I was wrong!”
- Xavier

We are in the home stretch, the penultimate episode of the season and things are getting kind of dire for everyone. More time has passed obviously and we are less than 4 months from the world ending and Xavier has gotten really pulled into his research. He’s trying to find a way to avert the asteroid because he’s realized he wants to have a future with Evie. he thinks he’s finally found something but it’s going to take some scientific help. Luckily, Evie may have a suggestion.

The head of Cyber Mart shows up and announces that he’s shutting down the branch and everyone is being shuffled around to different locations. I’m not sure that’s entirely legal without a union but it happens and our core four (I still think it’s weird that Deirdre has managed to end up with the other three as friends but maybe that’s just me) are being split up. Deirdre is literally being sent to Siberia which clearly puts a kink (and as Kareema would say not the fun kind) in her relationship with Hank. So Evie has the bright idea to go to the Tacoma location (where she’s being shipped to) and find a way to eliminate the three people in Hank, Deirdre and Kareema’s spots so there are openings for them to move to.

Evie devises a plan to get them into the Tacoma branch without revealing who they are (a quality assurance team). Once there, Evie sets her friends off to try and figure out what it is that their counterparts would rather be doing than working at Cyber Mart. I have to admit I did enjoy this part of the episode. It was kind of quirky and fun to see the team work together (even Kareema) to find a way to stay together. First up is Hank’s counterpart. Hank thinks he can bribe the guy with jerky but its’ really candle making that is his passion. Too bad the candle scent he’s come up with is horrible. But this gives Kareem and Evie an idea ot market the candles for weight loss. Their plan works and he goes off to make his gross candles in peace. Deirdre’s replacement is also pretty easy to get rid of. Despite Deirdre not understanding why her counterpart is so happy to help everyone, they realize that she just likes it and thanks to some connections in Hank’s family (he really is pretty integral to this whole thing) they get her a position working on a cruise ship. Kareema’s counterpart, however, is almost impossible to figure out. It seems she has no hobbies until they follow her to an underground magic show. They think that she’s into magic so Deirdre agrees to set he rup with David Copperfield (one of her nexes naturally) but the woman say she hates magic and thinks its lame. She’s only doing it because she wants to be with the guy who is her partner in the show (and her boss at work). So, romance is in the air and they head off into the sunset together. And our team is able to stay together at the new store! Kareema even gets a little emotional which is totally not in character for her. Helping people may not agree with her tear ducts but I suspect it agreed with her soul. She can be hard but really, she’s a softy on the inside!

With a little help from Jesse, Xavier manages to become the guy’s limo driver with the hopes of being able to share his theory so the guy (who is moving into space travel stuff) to help him find a way to stop the asteroid. At first the guy is totally not interested in even acknowledging that Xavier is a person. But as time goes on and Xavier picks up on the guy feeling like his success cost him the woman he loved. But Xavier does some digging and even reunites the couple. It’s enough to get the Cyber Mart guy to agree to set up a meeting with the head of NASA in Houston for Xavier.

Over at the blog, Timothy gets a new editor and he’s pretty hot for her right off the bat. She also wants to run the store on Xavier, even though his previous boss had promised it would never be published. He at least gets her to agree to have someone check Xavier’s science which leads to the scientist (with the name similar to Neil Degrasse Tyson) who had previously just tossed Xavier’s work without even looking at it. Timothy gets the letter back saying that the science was wrong and the asteroid isn’t hitting the Earth which gets passed to Xavier.

Xavier is clearly ecstatic that he was wrong because he can be with Evie but she’s already at the airport going to Iceland to see the Northern Lights like they’d planned. She kind of gave him an ultimatum: stick to freaking out about the science and burying himself in it or go to iceland with her and just enjoy the time. She had a point. I mean they’d been planning the trip and it was on both of their lists but he was so engrossed in his work that he wasn’t living his own mantra. I suppose when he finally realized he wanted to have a future with Evie, averting the apocalypse could be a bit all consuming. Unfortunately, even though Jesse agrees to drive Xavier to the airport, his devious cousin drugs him with horse tranquilizers and heads off somewhere else. And that’s not the worst of it! Timothy gets home to find the scientist and some government goons standing in his living room. The science was right and we are all doomed! Oh, and he can’t tell anyone! Poor Timothy. Just when things were looking up for him he gets slapped with a gag order. That’s not going to sit well with him. The final episode is going to be quite the doozy for our cast of characters!

No Tomorrow 1.11: "No Woman No Cry"

“But for now, if you’ll excuse me, Jesse’s a free man again. So, we’re gonna go to the bottom of Lake Washington and fish for golf balls.”
-Xavier

I’m going to call this episode “Chekhov’s Love Triangle.” The creative team set us up with a Timothy/Evie/Xavier love triangle right from the beginning of the series, so I suppose they felt they had to pay it off, even if it doesn’t make a ton of sense given how the story has moved. It’s pretty clear that Timothy is Evie’s past and Xavier is her future (for however long the future lasts, since, asteroid and all). In fact, the idea of a future was a big theme in this episode. The shine has begun to wear off of Xavier’s “seize the day” personality for Evie. She wants to know, if the asteroid didn’t hit, what would Xavier want to do with his future. Unsurprisingly, he has a lot of trouble answering that question, since his believe that the end of neigh is so central to his ethos. The major relationship drama for all our main characters seems to be on its way to resolution with this episode, which was nice. Since there are only two episodes left after this one (the show hasn’t been renewed yet, which, given the CW has already renewed many of its other shows, makes renewal unlikely), it’s nice that (I hope) we’ll be able to focus more on the threat of the asteroid and Evie and Xavier’s love story from here on out.

The episode begins with a contrast of two morning’s in Evie’s life. The first is waking up with Timothy during her senior year in college. It appears to have been the first night they spent together, and they decide to make it “Facepage Official” when Timothy says he dreamed about the future and their kids. In the present day, Evie wakes up alone after having made out with Timothy the night before. Xavier is at her door, and when she invites him in, he tells her all about his adventures with his family. Evie says that she’s proud of him, but she also confesses to having made out with Timothy. Xavier doesn’t take this well, and he leaves right away. When he gets home, he finds a pot boiling on the stove and feet sticking out from under the covers. It’s his cousin Jesse, who has been released from prison. They talk about the Evie situation, and Xavier ends up telling Evie that he’s bowing out because he doesn’t want to be in love triangle. Instead, he and Jesse are going to continue to have Apocalist adventures like fishing for golf balls at the bottom of Lake Washington.

Meanwhile, Evie has to make brunch for her grandparents, who have come over to visit. Evie’s grandfather isn’t in a great mood, and her grandmother reveals that he failed a driving test recently. He used to work on Indy Car engines, so not being able to drive is a real loss of identity. Evie promises to harass the DMV until they let him redo his test. Repeated phone calls and sending chocolates doesn’t work, but baking a bunch of cupcakes with the word “please” written in icing on the top does. Unfortunately for Evie’s grandfather, he fails his redo with flying colors. He can’t even get out of the parking spot without hitting all four poles. The whole family is devastated, although if he’s that bad of a driver, it’s a good thing he’s off the road.

In B-team relationship news, Hank is still moping about the Deirdre situation. He went bunker shopping, and the place he’s looking at only has room for one other person. He wanted that person to be Deirdre, but obviously that’s not going to happen now. He’s stuck trying to choose between Timothy and Evie. He probably rightfully guesses that Evie would be way too peppy and Timothy would spend the whole time wondering about Evie. Kareema’s not much help, because she’s nervous about getting married. Evie’s super psyched (as you’d expect) to hear the news, though. Kareema and Sofia go to the Justice of the Peace, but Kareema backs out at the last minute. She still wants to marry Sofia, but she can’t imagine getting married without her brother there. She really wants to make things right with Rohan, but she only has a limited amount of time to do so before Sofia needs to leave the country. Meanwhile, Deirdre is still wedding planning in earnest. Pete offers to plan the whole thing for her, but then he actually pawns the job off on her assistant. Hank can’t help eavesdropping Pete telling the assistant to make arrangements Deirdre will hate, so he intervenes and starts giving the assistant advice on things Deirdre will like, even though it’s painful.

Timothy makes Evie a lovely octopus dinner (kind of weird, but it actually looked good), and they have a great time until Timothy gets called away to work. This is clearly meant as a red flag for their relationship. Meanwhile, the bro-ing out with Jesse isn’t going how Xavier planned it. Jesse gets back together with his pre-prison girlfriend, Amber, and that’s taking up most of his time. He does manage to convince Xavier that he’s being stupid for bowing out of the love triangle. He makes the point that Xavier had all those awesome globetrotting adventures, but he came home because something was still missing. That something was Evie. Timothy and Evie go to the piano bar where they had their first date, but the date is interrupted by Xavier playing on the piano. Xavier and Timothy get into a rather hilarious piano duel that results in all three of them being thrown out of the bar. Evie admonishes the boys to act like adults. She says that she and Xavier can go on a date tomorrow, and then Timothy will go with her to Deirdre’s wedding the next day. The boys agree.

While at a store helping Jesse find a suit for a job interview, Xavier runs into Pete, who confesses his life-long dream of going to Ireland to study step dancing with Michael Flatley, being his usual self, Xavier tells Pete to go for it, since life is short. When it comes to his date with Evie, Xavier has quite the day planned. They go flying in a sea plane since Xavier just got his license, and Evie even gets to take the controls for a little bit. At a bar afterwards, though, things go south. Evie asks Xavier to think hypothetically about the future, and he just can’t do it. He says it’s “too painful.” Evie says that while she’s not sure she has a future with Timothy, Xavier being unable to conceive of a future for himself is just as bad or worse.

Kareema decides to go old-school to solve her problem with Rohan. When they were kids, they would work out their disagreements via pillow fight, so why can’t that still work when they’re adults. She gets Rohan to come to the warehouse, and they have an epic pillow fight. Afterwards, Rohan will finally talk to Kareema. She explains that being in love scares her, but she’s never felt this way about someone before. Rohan says then she should go for it, and she and Sofia have his blessing. He can’t bring himself to attend the wedding, and he wants some space for a little while, but that’s enough for Kareema. In other news, Hank finally makes his bunker decision – it’s going to be Evie. Timothy’s not too upset about losing that honor. He’s too busy trying to make a deadline typing with just one good hand, since he injured the other hand in his fight with Xavier.

Timothy shows up at Evie’s place and basically says he’s bowing out now too, for now at least. He thinks their lives are out of synch right now, but he still believes in their future, and if the asteroid actually doesn’t come in the next six months, they should talk, because maybe then Evie will have some clarity. Evie ends up going to Deirdre’s wedding alone. The wedding doesn’t go off as planned, though. Right before the ceremony, Pete asks Deirdre if her heart is really in it. Because if it’s not, he’d rather spend the money he would have spent on a third divorce traveling to Ireland to study with the Lord of the Dance. A relieved Deirdre gives Pete his ring back, and Hank is a little too celebratory when he hears the wedding is off. Instead, Kareema and Sofia use all the trappings to get married. Mikhail is the officiant, which is quite possibly the best thing ever. Certainly the best thing this show has ever done. When Evie gets home, Xavier is waiting on her stoop. Thanks to Jesse calling him a coward, he’s finally ready to tell Evie what he wants from the future. He always saw himself with five kids living on a farm and making goat cheese. When he asks Evie what she wants, she takes him go-cart racing with her grandparents. The racing really cheers up her grandfather, and she gets to show Xavier the kind of relationship she wants. By the end of the episode, Xavier is looking for another astrophysicist to check his work again. This time, though, it’s not to prove it. It’s to disprove it. He actually wants a future now. Oh and Hank gives Deirdre his bunker key after all.

This Is Us 1.16: “Memphis”

“I haven’t had a happy life. Bad breaks, bad choices. A life of almosts and could haves. Some would call it sad but I don’t, because the two best things in my life were the person at the very beginning and the person at the very end and that’s a pretty good thing to be able to say, I think.”
- William

Okay, I knew in a way that this episode’s conclusion as coming but I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we’d lose William before we officially lost Jack. I’m not sure why I felt that way but I did. I guess given where we left Randall at the end of episode 15, I didn’t want him to have to go through that again. But, Randall (and we) have to come to terms with the loss of another father figure.

Randall was hospitalized for a week and Beth is not happy that he wants to go off on a road trip with William to Memphis. But the doctor greenlights it and Randall and William are excited. Knowing Randall, he’s got things planned (sure he won’t use modern navigation but he’s bought a bunch of maps). William promptly tosses the maps out the window and instructs his son to just drive. They’ll get there. After Randall puts off seeing some ducks that William wanted to see (they apparently hung out at a hotel where his uncle used to be a bell hop), they do take a detour to see where some of Jack’s ashes are buried. I found it so touching that William was able to in a way bond with Jack. He pays his respects, especially after Randall reveals that Jack was always the one who could calm him down (cue a quick flash of Jack putting his hands on little Randall’s face and reminding him to breathe) and he has a laugh that always surprised him.

Once the guys finally make it to Memphis, we see where William came from and what led him to be where he was when Randall was born. We see his father going off to war and then his mother getting the news that he’d died. We see a young William seeing his mother off to Pittsburgh to take care of his grandma. And we also see that William is not only a poet but a song-writer. He’s playing with his cousin’s band (they’ve been doing covers for years) when William finally writes a song worth playing. And I have to tell you, it’s a great blues number about his mom and man their band is good. But then William gets a call that his mother is sick and he goes up north to be with her.

As William takes Randall to his childhood home to retrieve his treasure (some quarters and a few toys), we also see them taking in the sights and sounds and food of the city. They eat some barbeque and get trimmed at the barbershop. And then we see them head to his cousin’s club. Things are not as they were left forty years ago. His cousin, Ricky, is bitter that William never came back like he promised. Through flashbacks we see why William didn’t’ return. At first, it was to care for his terminally ill mother (it seems cancer may run in the family). And then as he was doing so, William met Laurel, Randall’s mother. And as William tried to cope with the loss of his mother, he spiraled down into drugs and alcohol. It was not pretty. But in the present, he’s trying to make amends with his family. And it leads to a great night. Randall gets to meet a bunch of cousins (and get drunk) and William plays the keys with Ricky for old time’s sake. It was a beautiful scene and I’m sure it was a lot of fun to shoot, too.

But, as we should have expected, this wasn’t just a trip to show Randall his roots. This was William coming home to die. The next morning, Randall wakes up to find William in dire straits. He rushes him to the hospital and at first he doesn’t want to hear the doctor’s prognosis. But it isn’t good. William’s organs are rapidly shutting down and he has hours at best. Randall wants to get Beth and the girls down to say goodbye but William says no. He said his goodbyes to the girls before they left and he doesn’t want their last memories of him to be looking down at him like he had to do with his mother. And then we get the scene I was waiting for since we learned Jack’s calming trick with Randall. William is a little scared to let go and so Randall places his hands on either side of his father’s face and tells him to just breathe. And then, just like that, William is gone. Randall is on his way back to his family to deal with the grief of losing another father (but hey, he’s got the book of poems William wrote for him). I hope that Randall is actually able to properly grieve for William. I’m still not convinced any of the Pearson kids actually went through the stages of grief over Jack.

As I said at the start, I knew this episode had to be coming but still I wasn’t’ ready for it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to officially lose Jack either! I thought it was a very well-done episode and I didn’t even miss the rest of the Pearson clan this episode. This was really about Randall and his father and it was a beautiful goodbye to a man who had a hard life but was trying to make amends for it. I just hope that Randall allows himself to be vulnerable and lean on all of his family in his time of need. Yes, I’m looking at you Kevin and Kate. I know they have their own stuff going on, but Randall really needs them now.

Fresh off the Boat 3.09: "How to Be an American"

“Tell us the story of how you guys met again. It’s my favorite love story. After ‘My Girl,’ of course.”
-Emery

As they used to say on MTV’s “Diary” back in the day (so sue me, I was a total MTV teen in the early 2000’s!)– you think you know the Huangs, but you have no idea. “How to Be an American” centered around Jessica’s citizenship interview, and in the course of the interview, secrets that both she and Louis have been keeping for years all come out into the open. At first, this seems like it’s going to be a disaster, but by the end, all is well, Louis and Jessica are on solid footing, and Jessica becomes a citizen. The final scene of the episode straight up made me cry, for reasons that will be obvious once we get to talking about it. There’s a much less weighty plot back home involving the three boys and Grandma Huang. The bit of satisfaction I got out of that plot was that Evan decides to solve the problematic situation in which the boys find themselves in the exact way I in which I had been screaming at the television (AAA is your friend, kids, and I don’t mean that as some sort of paid endorsement at all…as a single lady with back problems, I would never drive without it).

This episode makes use of an in media res structure. We start with Jessica and Louis at Jessica’s citizenship interview. The INS officer is just about to approve Jessica’s application when another officer comes in and hands him a folder. The officer says he’s going to have to ask some questions about Jessica’s criminal record. Backtracking to earlier that morning, Jessica and Louis are getting ready to leave for the interview. Louis is all sentimental, while Jessica just wants to get the whole thing over with and fill up the Accord with the “cheap, cheap gas” on the bad side of town where the immigration office is located. We’re also treated to a rehash of how Jessica and Louis first met. They both got sick from an octopus special at a restaurant near where they went to college, and they were next to each other in the bathroom line.

The boys have off school for a teacher training day, which really irritates Jessica. She thinks teachers should do their training during the summer. She kind of hates teachers in general, and we’ll soon find out why. Grandma offers to let the boys help her organize her perfume collection, but they aren’t interested. Emery and Evan decide to try and guess what their homework for the next week is going to be and do the work ahead of time, but Eddie thinks that’s lame. I have to say I’m on Team Eddie with this one. Eddie wants to have an epic brothers’ road trip for their day off. At first Emery and Evan are dubious, but Eddie convinces them he’ll be able to drive because he’s so good at Mario Kart. Evan is the last hold out, but when Edie says he can use his AAA card for discounts along the way, he’s in too. They have a whole list of activities, and they want to finish up the day at the local water park.

Meanwhile, at the immigration office, the INS officer starts by asking Jessica some routine questions about her student visa, which was how she first entered the country. She says she was a business major, which surprises the INS officer since her first job was as a teacher. This is new to Louis, who only knew that Jessica hates teachers. It turns out that Jessica took a teaching job (which turns out to have been teaching drama, not advanced calculus like Jessica said at first) to switch over from a student visa to a specialty occupation visa. She didn’t last a day, though, because she was horrified at how corrupt the other teachers were, using their maximum 20 minute grace period to get to class and getting high at the end of the day. The running joke that Jessica thinks all white people look the same is in full force, as characters we know like Honey, Deirdre, and Marvin play the teachers.

We then flash to Jessica discussing her immigration problem with her roommate (played by Honey) at the restaurant where she and Louis would meet. Louis mentions that his ex, Olivia Yang, had just broken up with him earlier that day, which comes as a surprise to Jessica. She thought Louis had dated Olivia back in Taiwan. Louis assures Jessica that he wouldn’t have proposed to her five times if she was just a rebound. In another flashback, we learn that Jessica decided to try for an extraordinary ability visa next, but it was denied, because you can’t just go into the immigration office and sing (badly) to get the visa. You have to have proof that the extraordinary ability is your profession. When Jessica returns to her apartment, Louis is waiting with his fifth proposal, and this time Jessica accepts. Louis is horrified to learn that Jessica basically accepted his proposal so she could get a green card.

Meanwhile, the boys’ adventure in the minivan goes about as well as you’d expect. They load the van up with a hibachi, boom box, and other assorted supplies, Eddie switches all the radio presets to his favorite hip hop station, Emery turns the front passenger seat into a “nap zone,” and they finalize the itinerary. There’s just one problem. They forgot their swim suits. As they rush back inside to get them, the van rolls down the driveway and into the middle of the cul-de-sac. Thankfully it doesn’t hit anything, but Eddie does realize that the doors to the van are locked. At first the boys panic (Evan does his “Home Alone” scream), but then they remember that Evan has AAA, and they can just place a phone call to have someone come and unlock the van.

The AAA guy unlocks the van with no problem, and he also, on the sly, warns the boys to set everything in the car back to how it was before so they don’t get caught. They heed his advice, and they’re pretty proud of themselves for their work. There’s just one problem they weren’t anticipating. Grandma. She saw what happened and took a picture of it. Apparently she’s got a ton of incriminating Polaroids on the inside of her closet door. She calls it her “Wall of Leverage.” The boys get stuck organizing her perfumes after all.

At the immigration office, we’re finally to the point where Jessica has to explain her criminal record. It turns out that while it seemed like she didn’t write Louis’ phone number down when he first gave it to her, she actually did. With permanent marker on a canoe at the restaurant. The restaurant owner wasn’t happy about the property damage and pressed charges. Jessica admits that she did fall in love with Louis at first sight after all, but she’s been keeping it a secret because she didn’t want to seem like a romantic. She also turned down the proposals so many times because she didn’t want it to look like a green card marriage. When the extraordinary ability visa fell though, however, she felt like she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t want to go back to Taiwan and be without Louis. The INS officer is touched by the story and approves the application. We end the episode with Jessica’s naturalization ceremony, which is what made me cry. I’m sure it was included as a political statement, and I hate that this country has gotten to the point where showing a naturalization ceremony in a positive light is pretty clearly a political statement.

The Good Place 1.12-1.13: “Mindy St. Clair” and “Michael’s Gambit”

“We can’t let Chidi and Tahani go to the Bad Place, they’re our friends. We literally owe it to them.”
- Eleanor

It’s the finale, folks. We’ve finally made it! And so, it appears have Eleanor, Jason and Janet. Or at least they’ve shown up in a desert where Mindy St. Clair lives. Once they find her (gardening naked), they learn that she was kind of a terrible person most of her life but did one great thing before she died so the Good Place and the Bad Place compromised and put her in a neighborhood of one. She and Eleanor chat about what happened to Mindy and we see Eleanor kind of flashing back to the day she died and being kind of retched to her co-workers. I have to admit I don’t particularly like Mindy. She tries to make Eleanor forget about Chidi and her other friends in the Good Place (she even brought photos and an ethics book Chidi gave her). Jason is pretty much just focused on trying to find a way to have sex with Janet.

Elsewhere, Michael, other Eleanor, Chidi and Tahani are trying to convince the judge to let Eleanor stay. Which is all well and good except every time someone gets emotional, the judge closes up in a cocoon. Very weird, indeed. Next up, they review Eleanor’s memories from when she was alive. Yes, she was a pretty horrible person back then but as we’ve seen, she’s changed and become somewhat better. She’s by no means perfect but none of the people in the Good Place really are. They’ve all got their faults and flaws. But the judge ultimately decides that both Eleanor and Jason belong in the Bad Place and he uses Bad Janet to reach Good Janet and deliver a message: return to the neighborhood so they can be sent off to the Bad Place, or Chidi and Tahani will be sent in their stead!

It takes Eleanor telling Jason about her crappy parents and how she used their bad parenting as an excuse to be a crappy person all her life to convince him to go back. They arrive just after the timer has ended, though. The judge decides that our group of four will decide which two get to go to the Bad Place. Michael is kind of freaking out about everything falling apart (we see him flash back to when he was told he got to design his first neighborhood on his own) so he goes off and hides in Eleanor’s room. We also see him coming up with a “Bold New Plan” for the Good Place (which is also in quotes hmm). After some deliberation (including Chidi being vexed by who he actually has feelings for), Eleanor and Jason agree to go to the Bad Place … until the other Eleanor comes in and says she’s taking one of the spots. Her rationale is that she’s already been there and she recognizes that Chidi doesn’t love her so this will never really be her Good Place. Now that just leaves them with the decision of which other person is taking the second spot.

This all devolves into a giant argument about who is going to go to the Bad Place until Eleanor comes to a very strange revelation that I’m still not sure how she figured out. All the fighting she says is like torture and so they aren’t going to take anyone to the Bad Place because they are already in it. Michael then turns into kind of a creeper. Seriously, what the hell? Hell, indeed. There is still a Good Place but Michael isn’t an architect for it. He’s one for the Bad Place. We see him pitching the idea to purposely make Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason torture each other. He bets he can do it for 1,000 years, although the judge says it will only work for 6 months. As we’ve seen it only worked for a few months at most. The other Eleanor was actually just another being like Michael. Everyone but Janet in the neighborhood actually was. And Jason and Janet’s feelings were real.

Michael decides to try again and erase all of their memories and spread them out because as Eleanor points out, they figured it out because they were all together and worked as team. So, Michael is going to give them different soul mates and spread them out. Eleanor tries to rouse the gang into action but they are all sitting there dumbfounded. We did learn that Chidi pushed everyone he cared about away with his constant indecision. And Tahani’s charity wasn’t very charitable in the end. She just wanted to stick it to her family. See, I knew they all had faults and flaws. In the end, Eleanor writes a note to herself and puts it in Janet’s mouth. Just as Eleanor is telling Michael to fork himself, he snaps his fingers and resets everything and everyone. We get a rehash of her finding out she’s dead and going through orientation. She meets her hot new soul mate but before she can admit she’s not supposed to be there, he takes off for the gym and Janet shows up with the note (which reads “Eleanor, find Chidi”). Janet disappears before Eleanor can ask what (or the proper question of who) is “Chidi”.

Okay, I was honestly expecting the gang to head to the Medium Place together to escape Michael’s dastardly plan but this was an interesting way to end the season, I’ll admit. I’m not sure I like where it’s going. It feels almost like our gang has lost their character growth and any season 2 will just be a rehash of what’s already been done. I don’t want to retread old ground. I want to see our quartet find each other, remember what happened and live and hang out together. And maybe find a way to take Michael down.

The Good Place 1.11: “What’s My Motivation”

“You have a tendency to overthink things. Turn off that giant brain and just say you love her, too This is your soulmate. She’s universe approved.”
- Eleanor

We are almost at the end of the first season of “The Good Place” and I’m honestly hoping this episode is a little less bizarre than last week. The love rhombus was very confusing last week. I’d love to say a little of the relationship drama has burned off at this point (I mean okay, so Chidi is pretty sure he’s in love with new Eleanor so that’s a step). But there is a lot going on in this episode.

For starters, we finally learn what Tahani’s’ great idea is to try and keep our Eleanor in the Good Place. Michael first shows the assembled group (minus Jason) their point totals from their lives and then shows the average of the people in the neighborhood (about 1.2 million positive points). Unfortunately, Eleanor has 4,003 negative points. Tahani thinks that if they count all of the things Eleanor’s done since she died, then maybe they can prove she deserves to stay. This venture, however, is far easier said than done. She starts by holding the door and waving (a la Wal-Mart greeter) at the Frozen Yogurt place. Tahani reasons that holding the door counts for 3 points so doing it for everyone in the neighborhood is like 1,000 points and that would at least get Eleanor closer to being in the green. But all it does is annoy Eleanor and give her some negative points instead. Their next plan is to have a small focus group to see why everyone hates Eleanor so much. The reasons vary: cafés crushed by giant frogs and sink holes, people falling into turkey carcasses. Eleanor realizes that everyone was most happy at Tahani’s welcome party before all the craziness started.

So, Eleanor and Tahani devise to hold a party to cheer everyone up. Meanwhile, new Eleanor and Chidi are sharing morning boiled eggs. Elanor slipped Chidi an “I love you” note in the top of one of his and he can’t seem to say the words back. As our Eleanor is getting ready for the party, trying to memorize whom she slighted how, he frets about if he’s saying the words back because she’s his soulmate and he’s supposed to love her or if his motivation is off. Our Eleanor just tells him to shut his brain off and tell her that he loves his soulmate, too. She’s universe approved after all. That actually earns her some positive points. At the party, she tries to apologize to people and say “nobody’s perfect” but it comes out garbled and everyone starts laughing. It also makes her realize their attempt is going to be futile because even if she’s doing nice things, she is doing it for the wrong reasons. But this seems to be a light bulb moment for her. She handwrites “I’m sorry” notes to each member of the neighborhood—with personalization no less—and gives Chidi, new Eleanor and Tahani instructions to deliver them all with T-shirts with her garbled saying on it.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Michael finds out about Jason (that he isn’t a monk) and Janet (that they’re married). This is so clearly not what the Architect needed right now. Not with the Eleanor drama and the fact that the judge (Sean) is on his way to make a final decision on what to do with our Eleanor. Jason is happy to be out in the open but Michael wants to kill Janet and reboot her again. Janet, who now has the capacity to feel both love and hate (yay for hating genocide), decides she doesn’t want to lose Jason and suggests they run away. We also learn how Jason died and how he got mixed up as the monk. The monk stopped learning and speaking at age 7 or 8 and so his IQ is about the same as Jason’s. And he went into such a deep meditative state that the universe thought he’d died and got Jason’s’ soul mixed up. We also learn that Jason died by suffocating in a safe while he and his friend tried to rob a restaurant so they could reach their dreams of DJ-ing in Miami. Jason actually realizes what an idiot he is and tells Janet she should leave him. But as we mentioned before, she’s not willing to give him up.

After delivering all the notes and T-shirts, Chidi, new Eleanor and Tahani wonder where our Eleanor has gone. Chidi starts to explain to new Eleanor about his motivation problem when a light bulb goes off in his head, too. Eleanor can’t get enough points by staying, so she’s got to leave. And her decision to do that has gotten her way up into the green. She’s waiting at the train station and runs into Janet and Jason. It turns out there is a woman who exists in a neutral space and that’s where the married couple is headed. Eleanor agrees to tag along (she’s been looking for a medium place the whole time). They have to steal Sean’s train though. Luckily, Janet is able to make it go where they want. Unfortunately, as they are doing this, Michael is trying to tell Sean they have a great case for why Eleanor should stay. Her stealing a train isn’t the best way to showcase their talking points but hey, at least she’s trying to give the people around her some peace.

I have to say, I’m kind of glad Jason isn’t quite as stupid as he used to be. The fact he realized why locking himself in a safe with no air holes was dumb and that he was willing to let Janet go. That’s kind of a big step for him. I’m interested to see what this neutral place is and why it exists. I also can’t wait to find out Eleanor’s fate!