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June 8, 2025 • 11 mins

🎙️😇 John dives into Season 3’s second episode, where the rebooted afterlife neighborhood finds its equilibrium—or as close as it gets. When Trevor (Adam Scott) drops in under Shawn’s orders, his over-the-top “best friend” antics and relentless sabotage tactics threaten to unravel Chidi and Simone’s ethics study. Meanwhile, Michael and Janet brave Earth in powerless disguises, racing against the clock to expose Trevor without alerting the Judge.

From the Cowboy Skyscraper Buffet dinner disaster to the leaked “dank memes” that push Eleanor’s buttons, “The Brainy Bunch” expertly blends laugh-out-loud moments with pointed moral quandaries. John breaks down standout beats—treacherous group dynamics, clever callbacks, and the show’s signature twist—before ranking whether this episode earns a golden halo or a one-way ticket to the Bad Place.


E-mail your fan questions, comments and suggestions to TheRankwithJohnandZac@protonmail.com.

Support the show by becoming a patron at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/TheRankPodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Visit The Rank's website for up-to-date rankings at ⁠⁠⁠⁠TheRankwithJohnandZac.com⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Paul McCartney is her godfather.She worked for Baz Luhrmann as
his muse, and apparently she dida brief stint as an actress in
which she stood around and had Baz throw glitter on her.
But wait, there's more. Welcome back to another episode

(00:32):
of the rank. I'm John, and today we're going
to be doing another episode in my the good place rewatch slash
watch along and ranking. If you're enjoying those
episodes, or if you're just a fan of The Good Place and enjoy
consuming content about it, please subscribe and or follow.
Like the episodes? Comment, give us suggestions,
whatever. e-mail your thoughts to the show.
Please also consider becoming a Patreon on our

(00:54):
patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rankpodcast.
Now. Today we're ranking the second
episode of the third season of The Good Place, The Brainy
Bunch, written by Dan Schofield and directed by Jude Wang.
So here's your spoiler warning. There's going to be spoilers.
This has been out for a while. Watch it on.
Netflix if you want to watch it if you don't.
Care about spoilers? Let's roll on to the Potent

(01:15):
Notables. So this episode aired Thursday,
October 4th, 2018 and went from 3.134 million viewers to 2.958
million viewers. So Blues an audience.
It's back to its regular 830 time slot and the lineup is back
to normal on MB. Superstore.
Will and Grace and a new show, IFeel Bad, all premiered for NBC

(01:36):
this week. Superstore, The Good Places lead
in beat the Good Place with 3.159 million viewers.
Now, at least The Good Place did.
Beat, I feel bad. Whatever that is, I don't
remember that at all. All right, so let's go to the
competition. It went up against Grey's
Anatomy on ABC again, which got 6.612 million viewers, and Young
Sheldon on CBS, which had 10.684million viewers.

(01:57):
It also had Thursday Night Football to compete with, which
won the night with 13 .221 million viewers on Fox.
At least it beat out a. Rerun of Supernatural.
On The CW. Which got 641,000 viewers so
beat something. So the magazine AUS Weekly,
which Eleanor is reading when Chidi comes to her apartment,
chose the Hemsworth brothers butadds Larry Hemsworth, which they

(02:19):
call him the Hemsworthless brother.
Which is. Really mean but.
Also, he's fake. So it doesn't really matter.
And this Harkins back to when Tahani mentioned that was a
former boyfriend of hers. Fun little bit there.
So for our last poet notable andI don't, you guys should let me
know. If you like.
That I do this, I enjoy this. Tracking of.
Dahani's name dropping so we have some more.

(02:41):
Yay. She does love a name.
Drop so she. Apparently once played a
drinking game with Ryan Reynoldsand Blake Lively at their macro
biotic farm. That was the name drop for this
episode. Now.
Just to recap, she had. At least Bono, Taika Waititi.
Anna Hay, The Edge. The Queen.
The Rock. Thom York, Tilda Swinton, Tiger

(03:02):
Woods, Tim Cook, Tim Gunn and Tom Brady in her contacts list
on her phone, Malcolm Gladwell and Cormac McCarthy wrote blurbs
for her book. She donated all her clothes to
Goodwill. Which is what she called Prince
William. Since he married a commoner,
Deepak Chopra and Will I Am werespecial guests on a cruise for
her book. She uses Nicole.

(03:22):
Kidman's cryogenic anti aging chamber and while receiving a
test from the judge. To see if she can get to the
good place she walks. By room that all have.
People she. Knows talking about her and
these are the names that were seen on the doors that she
walks. By Blue Ivy.
Carter, Northwest. Prince William.
Prince Harry, Prince Quven. Johnny Wallace.

(03:43):
Someday I'll get it. You know I don't know.
Stephen Hawking, Fergie. Was.
As in the Duchess of York. Fergie Black of the Black Eyed
Peas. We don't.
See this. But she.
Says that Freddie Mercury and Winston Churchill were behind
one of the. Doors also.
Paul McCartney is her godfather.She worked for Baz Luhrmann and
as his muse, and apparently she did a brief stint as an actress

(04:03):
in which she stood around and had Baz throw glitter on her.
But wait, there's more. She says.
That she's gotten pretty good atlying because of hanging out
with. Johnny Depp, presumably.
Spending time with him and his bird sanctuary as.
She says that. She's been there.
She as a fake. Demon says she shoved hot dogs
down John Wayne's throat, and Tahani's robot in the Bad Place

(04:23):
says she's been to Elon Musk's underwater mansion.
And naturally, the real Tahani says she actually has been
there. She mentions that Kira Sedgwick
is the dear friend. She saw a waiter give the wrong
T to Russell Crowe and she went paragliding with Pippa Middleton
and Gibraltar. She said that she was on James
Franco's ironic trolley. She's dated to Hemsworth brother
as we just. Talked about.
Of course it was a fake one. Named Larry, but she's hidden

(04:46):
from Javier Bardem in Vanessa Redgrave's panic room.
She's snogged Ryan Gosling multiple times.
She mediated conflict between her friends Scary Sport, Posh
and Baby, the Spice Girls and Desmond Tutu.
She has a lifelong friendship with Diller that started from
Trust Falls gave Mark Zuckerbergadvice about being.
Good enough so that. He would let Eduardo Savarin go

(05:07):
also. She was the reason that Mark
dropped the from Facebook. She's good friends with Taylor
Swift, friends with Kanye, and best friends with BeyoncĂŠ.
Princess Diana and Maggie Smith are her godmothers.
Moala. Yousafzai and Kylie Minogue.
Wrote the foreword for her diaryand she had Princess Stephanie
of Monaco and Pash and Bex. Victoria and.
David Beckham at her 2006 fundraiser for stem cell

(05:27):
research in Barcelona. What a mouthful.
I don't. Know maybe?
I should stop doing that. Maybe you should.
It's crazy. And also we learned in an
episode. That most of that is.
True. Anyway, let's go to the episode
overview. So we.
Kick it off. With Michael and Janet talking
about how terrible Trevor is. And for those of you who are
starting this series. At episode 2 of.
Season 3 first of all, why? But also Trevor, a demon has

(05:49):
infiltrated the group. I realize that doesn't really.
Catch you up, but you should just go.
Watch the show. And or listen to the other
episodes of this show. So apparently Trevor is the most
dangerous evil being in the world.
According to Michael, Yikes. I.
For one was. Excited to see him back.
I think Adam Scott is hilarious as Trevor.
So back to earth and we watch the group trying to gel and we

(06:11):
get a sense of what Trevor is going to try to do to ruin their
chances. So he's going to be obnoxiously
clingy and nice and try to driveat least one of them away from
the group. It appears that it's going to
work on Eleanor. Because she gets fed up with
him, he convinces Chidi that he should.
Stay away from the group becausehe shouldn't fraternize with
members of his study. He drives a wedge between Chidi
and by doing so then he gets to Honey and Jason drunk.

(06:34):
The idea being that they would sleep together and I guess then
she would be embarrassed and leave.
I suppose all of this is. Happening, by the way, at the.
Cowboy Skyscraper Buffet, which is an American themed restaurant
where you're given a gun. For when your table's ready.
It goes off when your tables are.
It's just a lot of. Great jokes making fun of
America. With this restaurant, I loved
it. So Michael and Janet go to earth

(06:54):
to try to stop Trevor, seeminglyto no avail.
But it makes for a lot of fun and funny moments.
Janet trying to conjure things things but she can't.
And proceeding to complain aboutbeing on Earth was a lot of fun.
But Ted Danson just. Continues to be amazing.
We get a great bit. Between him and Trevor, where
Trevor is making fun of what Michael's wearing and he says to
Michael, hey, Dick Tracy called and he said you're a butt face

(07:15):
and he's piling your mom, which was funny.
But then Michael ends up using this Dick Tracy.
Called bit for the rest of the episode trying to get back at
Trevor. The aftermath of the dinner is
that Jason helps Tahani get homebut doesn't sleep with her.
Also, he ends up forgetting where he lives and sleeping in a
dumpster because he's Jason. Chidi doesn't sleep at all
because he can't stop thinking about how he's wrongfully

(07:36):
influencing his study. Eleanor doesn't show up for
class and is considering giving up, but Simone convinces Chidi
to go talk her into staying and he does.
So ultimately Trevor failed, butwill he keep failing because
this is just one day? Michael, Janet and Trevor are
arguing this very point when a door.
Shows up. And the doorman, you know,
capital D doorman comes out and says the judge wants to see

(07:58):
them. They all get in trouble with the
judge and she basically looks Trevor back to the bad.
Place but Janet's. Backlogged conjuring requests
all start hitting and they get in between the judge and them so
they're able to escape. Back to Earth.
Which the doorman actually helpswith for some reason.
And then that's where we end. They like to end on a
cliffhanger. Let's go to the rank and see how
it did. A wank.

(08:22):
So the rank is where I rank the episode based on five category,
story, acting, dialogue, episodecoherence, and character
relatability. We rank it on a scale of one to
five, one being the worst, five being the best.
Then I add a laugh counter, which is where I tally up the
amount of times the episode mademe laugh out loud, one point per
laugh and that gets added to thescore.
First category is story which. I gave a.

(08:42):
Buy this might end up being a boring rank segment, but I
thought this story worked. Really.
Well, it was. Kept within itself and
understandable the story. Was all about.
Whether the bond that these. Four people share Will.
Overcome the interference of thebad place that's the story and
it was it was a good one so let's go to acting, which I.
Gave A5. Everyone's just so freaking good
in this, it's really unbelievable.

(09:03):
How how good everyone is in this?
I've been saying this for a lot of episodes now so it's probably
boring, but everyone is perfectly cast, including guest
appearances. They rarely miss on them.
So let's go to dialogue which probably seen a trend.
I gave a 5. Just an incredibly witty and
fun. Episode.
Excellent writing. So let's go to episode
Coherence, which I. Gave a five.

(09:23):
I was like if I give it a 5. In this category then, maybe I'm
going too far, but I couldn't think of any reason that this
shouldn't be A5. Everything made sense,
everything fit, it was great. So 5 S character relatability
and I'll. Let you guess what I gave it.
If you guessed 5, you'd be correct.
So as always, this show is. Super relatable.
And now that we're past the silly.
Ways. They got them together in

(09:45):
Australia. We don't have to worry about the
motivations for that. So the relatability factor goes
sort of right back up. We're back to just normal.
Would I be annoyed with Trevor? Hell yes, you might say.
Why didn't the others get bothered by him?
Isn't that a little unrelatable?Well, he was really just honing
in on Eleanor so the others weren't experiencing it like
her, so I still think it works. I'm not going to go through

(10:05):
every character, but everyone works it.
Was excellent. So that leaves us.
With the laugh counter. So how many times did it make me
laugh? 18 pretty high score.
So this episode altogether, the total is a. 43.
Which puts it. Directly into the meaning of
life. Now I know I'm not trying to
make make a comment on which Monty Python movie is better the
meaning. Of life or the Holy Grail?

(10:26):
I just felt like the meaning of life.
Sounded like the top tier. I'm actually really glad that we
got a great, good place. Episode so quickly after I
started going solo because I really wanted.
To get something. Into that top tier, and we did,
so that's fun. So this puts the series average
up to 38.7, which is at the highend of the holy.
Grail tier. So that wraps everything up.
Thanks for listening and or watching.

(10:47):
If you'd like to see a list of our series and episode rankings,
you can do that on our website at the rank of John and Zach dot
com. Remember to subscribe, review
and comment, and please considersupporting us on our Patreon
site at patreon.com/lorraine podcast.
They can get exclusive. Perks.
And I'll leave you with this whydid Chiti think he needed to
start teaching philosophy to thefood he'd been into like an

(11:07):
apple in this? Episode because it was a bad egg
food this man. Again.
So I realize that's not a good joke.
But it's even. Worse if you didn't watch the
episode because you're not goingto get it.
If you listen to that joke and you're like, that's bad, go
watch the episode. Probably still pretty.
Bad. Still think it's bad?
But at least you'll get. It it seemed.

(11:38):
Funny when I. Wrote it, but then I said it and
it was not funny. Yes, that happens often.
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