‘The Good Place’ Star D’Arcy Carden Reacts To Janet And Jianyu’s New Romantic Storyline

D’Arcy Carden loves the new romantic storyline between her character, Janet, and Manny Jacinto’s Jianyu, who got married in this week’s episode of “The Good Place.”

While meeting with reporters at Television Critics Association winter press tour on Friday, Jan. 6, Carden revealed that she got excited the moment she found out that Janet’s friendship with Jianyu, a.k.a. Jason, would turn romantic. “I was, like, ‘I get to kiss Manny?’ Yeah, I was, like, very into [the new storyline]. Maybe too into it,” TVLine quoted Carden as saying.

While some fans find Janet and Jianyu an odd match, series creator Michael Schur said that Janet’s rebooting made their romance possible. “I can’t remember who pitched it, but the idea was, like, when Janet, when an omniscient, all-knowing universal source of knowledge, when her memory is wiped clean and she’s slowly rebooting all of the information of the universe, at some point very early in that process she and Jason will be at the exact same level,” Schur explained to Yahoo TV. “And so [we thought] let’s just have them hang out when they are at that exact same level and maybe they’ll become friends.”

“It was like a weird version of ‘Flowers for Algernon,’” said Schur of Janet and Jianyu’s pairing, referring to the sci-fi short story and subsequent novel written by Daniel Keyes. “That’s how we thought of it, where it’s just like she is at his level for about a third of a second and then is much smarter than him, like, one hour later.”

“The Good Place’s” next episode, titled “What’s My Motivation,” airs on Thursday, Jan. 12 at 8:30 p.m. EST on NBC. Check out the synopsis for Season 1, episode 11 below:

“Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and Tahani (Jamela Jamil) hatch a plan while Michael (Ted Danson) makes a startling discovery. Meanwhile, Chidi (William Jackson Harper) confides in Eleanor after learning some interesting news.”