‘The Good Place’ Pulled Off Its Most Impressive Episode Yet And People Are Extremely Here For It

Thursday night’s mid-season finale of The Good Place, “Janet(s),” was promised to be a real humdinger of an episode, and goodness gracious it did not disappoint. To escape the never-ending advance of demons in last episode’s cliffhanger, Janet quite reasonably had the solution to pull Michael, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason into her void — with mixed results!

While Michael came through with every hair on his perfectly coiffed head intact, our gang of intrepid degenerates … well, came through as four Janets, respectably. It wasn’t an easy feat to pull off, as series creator Michael Schur told Variety that everything had to be choreographed “to the millimeter.”

Yet, Schur was confident they could pull it off since Orphan Black “did like 1,000 times.”

“That’s what I kept thinking of — that scene in Orphan Black where the clones finally meet each other and Tatiana [Maslany] was just handing herself things and talking to herself and had her arm around herself,” he explained.

The primary difference between Orphan Black and “Janet(s),” of course,” is that while Maslany was playing characters that she was able to develop and act-out as she saw fit, the heavy-lifting of the episode relied on D’Arcy Carden — who had to maintain a balance between picking up on the subtle character traits of her costars without being over-exaggerated.

To accomplish this, Carden studied an initial cast table read in which each of her cast members read their lines as if things were business as usual.

“I didn’t listen to music for, like, a month. I only listened to that,” Carden says of the table read audio. “It is hard to play five really well-established characters that I know for years now — it’s a different thing than making up five new ones. We were really kind of figuring out if we wanted to do impressions of them or just a hint of them. We didn’t want it to be like ‘SNL’ sketch characters — we didn’t want it to be over the top. It was a really fine line.”

Suffice to say, Carden’s hard work paid off, because after the episode aired people took to Twitter to lay the praise on heavy:

— kelly (@cheleancr) December 7, 2018

MICHAEL: Everything okay

JANET: Nope! :D

The Good Place is a MOOD pic.twitter.com/rBPLNzFht8

— AJ ELICAÑO MICROBLOG (@ajejelicano) December 7, 2018

Obvi D'Arcy Carden is incredible but, like, wow is D'Arcy Carden incredible

— Alison Willmore (@alisonwillmore) December 7, 2018

This week’s #TheGoodPlace is a much deserved showcase for D'Arcy Carden, who obviously pays a LOT of attention to the verbal and physical mannerisms of her cast members. Nice one

— David McCormack (@davemccormack) December 7, 2018

is there anything better than D'Arcy Carden being Jason-Janet I argue, no.

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) December 7, 2018

The last episode of ‘The Good Place’ was flawless.

D’Arcy Carden deserves an Emmy. pic.twitter.com/ymB2L82Eva

— Damini (@NerdEfiko) December 7, 2018

Holy motherforking shirtballs if D'Arcy Carden doesn't win every award ever for this episode of #TheGoodPlace then this is the bad place.

— Tissa (@dtissagirl) December 7, 2018

D’arcy carden deserves more recognition pic.twitter.com/BtaopYCNbH

— lucia (@lokiscrawley) December 7, 2018

D'Arcy Carden better get an Emmy for #TheGoodPlace or I s2g I will…probably fume on Twitter a whole bunch.

But seriously. Give her a fucking Emmy next year

— Michelle Jaworski (@michejaw) December 7, 2018

Holy forking shirt the newest episode of #TheGoodPlace was so good!!! D’arcy Carden is a treasure.

— Emily (@GreatererEmily) December 7, 2018

Others had ideas about who should be the next host of the Oscars, with Kevin Hart out:

— Louisa (@LouisatheLast) December 7, 2018

Actually I take back my previous answer – my new answer is "literally anybody, but played by D'Arcy Carden"

— Jennifer Martin (@jenner25) December 7, 2018

This week’s #TheGoodPlace proves that D’Arcy Carden should host the Oscars but she should do it as every previous host ever.

— Eliot J Fallows (@EliotJFallows) December 7, 2018

That’s an idea we can probably all get on board with … Well, except maybe D’Arcy Carden.