- ❝ "I'm Brent Norwalk and I'm a good person! And I don't belong here, I belong in the Best Place!" ❞
- —-Brent Norwalk
Brent Norwalk is a series regular in season 4 of The Good Place, portrayed by Ben Koldyke. He is Subject Four of the four humans selected for the experiment. In life, Brent was a racist, sexist, and misogynistic employer in the Materials Business who was sent to annoy Eleanor Shellstrop by Shawn during the afterlife improvement test.
In order to help convince Brent that he doesn't belong in the Good Place, Eleanor and Michael host a talk show called "That Was Your Life" with hopes that Brent will realize how much better the others were. Brent says, "Sure. I'm pretty interesting," when he begins talking about his life and goes on to explain how he earned his spot at Princeton and grew his family's company. After things start to derail, Brent exclaims that it's his 'TeeTime' and leaves in a Cadillac Escalade, still convinced that he led a better life then everyone else there.
The next morning, Eleanor and Michael resort to the same situation that Eleanor was met with her first morning in the 'Good Place'. The neighborhood fills with Escalades, golf balls, neighbors wearing Princeton colors, and Perrier raining down from the sky. After several minutes of chaos, Eleanor and Michael run into Brent who admits that what is happening is clearly about him and that he must not belong there. Eleanor and Michael are convinced that they had succeeded until Brent tells them that he must belong in a place better than the Good Place, The Best Place. Eleanor and Michael reluctantly agree.
The next day, Eleanor and Michael inform Brent that he was indeed correct and there was a mistake in the system. They tell him that the 'Best Place' is reserved for only the people that led the best lives, a place for the 'Diamond Elite'. Hoping that Brent will do enough good to become better, Eleanor and Michael say that only the neighbors with the highest scores will be allowed to enter the Best Place and that he must prove to them that he should be one of them.
Later on in the series, Brent writes a novel called Six Feet Under Par. The other eight, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Michael, Janet, John and Simone, all think the book is rude, racist and sexist. Chidi attempts to summon a philosophical book from his apartment to discuss it, but the book hits Brent in the head when flying through the air. Brent accuses Chidi of attacking him, and shoves him, which results in Chidi punching Brent across the face.
In the next episode, Michael performs a magic trick, causing Brent to fall into a sinkhole. Chidi falls in with him, while Simone and John leave. He soon discovers he will not be going to the 'Best Place' but that Michael and Eleanor tell him he is in the Bad Place. He begins to finally apologize to Chidi, before the two, along with Simone and John, are frozen in place.
He is calculated to have gotten slightly worse by being in the neighborhood. For much of his period there, he is much worse, but he improved greatly in the moment before the end of the trial as he began to apologise to Chidi, thereby taking part in saving the human race.
He is last seen on a monitor in the architects' office still participating in his ongoing testing on attempt number 15,724. He is expressing surprise that it is bad to tell women to smile, "even if it genuinely makes them more attractive".
He died on earth when he won a game of shots in a Diamond Elite Club Bar with a pilot, and he drunkenly asked if he could fly his helicopter, which resulted in killing them both.
Trivia
- Brent is the third character on The Good Place to write a book, with Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery. (The others are Tahani Al-Jamil with Get Out of the Spotlight and Chidi Anagonye with "Who We Are And Who We Are Not: Practical Ethics and Their Application in the Modern World: Moral Reasoning and the Human Paradox of Self Preservation in relation to the Social Contract: a Treatise on the Value of Universal and Mutually Beneficial Ethical Responses, as Displayed in Everyday Interactions.")
- Brent grew up in a Chicago suburb and went to Princeton, which is where his father and grandfather went before him. He shows great pride in this.
- He inherited his materials company from his father. It was a 90 million dollar company when he inherited it, and in roughly 18 years Brent had turned it into a 94 million dollar company. This, assuming he died in late 2019 (when the fourth season of The Good Place began release) along with the assumption that he was the head of his company right up until his death actually means the company lost quite a bit of value due to inflation, as the inflation rate between 2001 and 2019 would make it so his company, if growing with inflation, should have been worth approximately 130 million dollars.
- He is a fan of gold and top gun
- The outfits he wears throughout the fourth season are all made by Norwalk materials, his own company.
- Brent has an unnamed father and Grandfather who both went to Princeton, an unnamed spouse and an unnamed son, who will inherit his company and his 94 million dollars.