4x09 The Answer

[8.5/10] One of my complaints about early episodes of The Good Place was that the psychology could be too simple. We’d see the humans face some challenge in the afterlife, flashback to an illuminating vignette in the past that informed their choices and character, and then see them have a breakthrough in the present.

“The Answer” is that idea on speed. We don’t just get a solid Chidi flashback; we get flashbacks to his whole life, to hidden moments over the course of the show we haven’t gotten to see before, to intimate conversations that gave him guidance and solace. And we don’t just get to see him have a breakthrough; we get to see him have the breakthrough, a resolution of his constant need to decide and find the solution to the problem.

The psychology gets sufficiently complex to match. It’s still comprehensible for a network T.V. show presentation, but the story of why Chidi is the way he is has more bumps and bruises along the way than the type of backstory we saw in the first season.

It’s a story about fearing his parents were on their way to divorce and Chidi seemingly arguing them out of it. The idea that, like all kids, he was dismayed by his parents fighting, and unlike most kids, thought that logic and study were the key to preventing it. When that plan seemed to work, it set him down the path to thinking that all problems had solutions, and that any solution could be found with enough diligence and perseverance.

It led Chidi to a life of constantly trying to find the answer, of treating all questions as directed toward one possible resolution that must be excavated through rigorous logic and constant examination of the texts. The show underscores this a little too heavily in Chidi’s scene with his schoolyard chum, but it does well to frame Chidi as having solved his first big problem this way and it having set him on the path that would carry him through the rest of his life...and afterlife.

Granted, no philosophy advisor in the world would tell their grad student that their thesis needs more heart, and Chidi’s girlfriend breaking up with him the same week feels convenient. (Though hey, I’ll never turn down a shout out to David Hume in the process.) But it sets up the twin concerns of the episode: that Chidi treats all questions as both answerable and equally important, and that he thinks love and romantic fulfillment are a problem that can be solved in the same way that a philosophical problem could.

What’s great about “The Answer” is that it not only sets up Chidi being able to get past both of those issues, but it does so through intimate, heart-to-hearts with all his fellow survivors. He gets a lesson in decisiveness and being in the moment from Jason, something the Jacksonville native is an expert in. He gets a lesson on confidence from Tahani, who talks about achieving it through failure, through getting knocked down and getting back up again until the prospect of getting knocked down is no big deal.

He gets an unexpected kiss from Eleanor, and with it, a lesson on the universe-approved love of your life perhaps not being the actual love of your life, but it being something that you have to figure out for yourself. And he gets a final, and most outstanding lesson from Michael, who tells him that soulmates happen through work, not through fiat, and that there’s more to Chidi’s parents story than he ever knew.

Chidi’s parents didn’t reconcile because he argued them into it. They went to counseling; they saw the best of each other in their son; they were reminded of what was already there. Michael drives this home, with his little bits of afterlife-worn wisdom. Just as he’s about to have his memory wiped, Chidi discovers that the ideas he’s founded his life on -- that any problem, including love, can be solved -- are wrong.

That should be devastating, and yet instead it’s freeing. The man plagued by indecision because he’s not sure what path will take him closer to the mythical, platonic (or, more accurately, Kantian) ideal answer, is suddenly allowed to pursue his passions, to follow what moves him, without needing to have it approved and understood from each philosophical underpinning before going after it.

That’s especially true for his affections for Eleanor. I’ll admit, I’m still not fully sold on the Eleanor/Chidi pairing, and I have major qualms about the “finding The One will heal everything that ails you” message that more than a few other T.V. shows and movies subscribe to. And yet, there’s something incredibly stirring about Chidi’s note to himself. He has spent so long in search of the answer that it’s been paralyzing, preventing him from living his best life and being truly happy. Now, he’s found someone who conjures that happiness within him, and he realizes it’s more important than any grand, abstract problem he might otherwise set his mind on. There’s something truly beautiful about that thought.

There’s also something brilliantly ironic about the fact that Chidi has his breakthrough on not needing to find the answer and self-actualizes in a way that frees him from that burden, right when the group needs him to “Go all Chidi” and decide what new principles the afterlife should be founded upon.

But maybe, just as ironically, he’s already found them. Chidi and Michael reach the conclusion that life is not a puzzle that can be solved once and then set aside. Instead, you have to solve anew each day, again and again. Maybe the answer Chidi’s looking for isn’t a new way to formulate points or tally good deeds and bad. Maybe it’s that points, that reductions of the infinite complexities of our existence to dots and dashes and other efforts to chalk up the best and worst of us, inevitably fail to account for who and what we are from day to day. It represents a similar evolution in The Good Place itself -- recognizing that what makes a person who they are takes more than an A-to-B flashback, but a rush of key moments and realizations that build to a greater whole.

Either way, humanity, existence, and more may rest on Chidi’s shoulders, but he’s no longer burdened by the need to solve for x, and content to look into the eyes of the woman he loves with joy and hope. For now, at least, that’s enough.