‘God Friended Me’ Season 1, Episode 2 ‘The Good Samaritan’ Recap: Communication is Key

There are always two sides of the story, but every so often one shuts out the other. Different barriers block us from proper communication, and it takes work to get over those hurdles. In the latest episode of God Friended Me, Miles proves that there is always a way to get to people.

The Good Samaritan picks up where things left off in the pilot episode. Miles (Brandon Michael Hall), an atheist and podcast host of “The Millennial Prophet” is still on the lookout of the culprit behind the God account. Cara  (Violett Beane) struggles to reconnect with her mother. Rakesh (Suraj Sharma) is in the middle of dating drama with his previous date Jaya. And of course, God sent a new friend suggestion: Katie Brooks.

Divine intervention

Miles closes a deal with satellite podcast company Frequency, which causes the God account to change its profile picture from a happy sunny cloud to a thunderstorm. And if it weren’t passive aggressive enough, the Katie Brooks friend suggestion Miles has been trying to ignore keeps popping up. Good news is Rakesh could use the picture swap in the God account to track where the account came from. In the meantime, Miles decides to bring Cara along to meet Katie Brooks.

The two meet in the diner where Katie works as a waitress. Katie arrives late for her shift, which causes a public spat between her and her boss. Miles steps in, but it only results in her losing her job.

They head to the bar where Miles’ sister Ali works to see if he could convince her to hire Katie. She needed a bartender, so she said no. Ali did, however, mention that she wanted to throw a party to celebrate Miles’ success. The catch was she wanted to invite their dad. Miles agrees but doubts that she could, but Ali tries to anyway.

Cara heads out to meet her mother and Miles finds Katie to help her find a job. Katie accepts his help and introduces him to her son Nate, who is Autistic and nonverbal. She leaves him with Miles while she got on with the interview. Meanwhile, Rakesh finds God’s signal in Hell’s Kitchen. He calls Miles, but he doesn’t pick up. He calls Cara, who is in the middle of an awkward conversation with her estranged mother, to pick up Miles. Rakesh heads over to Hell’s Kitchen, where he sees Jaya on a date with someone else.

“God” luck

Nate runs off to a music store with Miles following him. He takes an interest in the piano. Miles plays him “Lean on Me,” and Nate smiles at him. Cara and Katie find them there and is surprised to see her son happy and smiling at Miles. She lashes out on Miles for leaving the diner and takes her son home. Cara tells Miles about Rakesh’s call, but he could care less at that moment. He was heading over to the podcast studio to meet producer Eric to try out his show.

In the studio, a set of balloons arrive for Miles that said “GOD,”  at first, but it meant to spell out “GOOD LUCK.”  When they were about to start, the studio encounters a problem. The system needed to be rebooted, and Miles needed to come back later.

Miles calls Cara to apologize for yelling at her. Cara, however, is at Katie’s place where she reported her son missing. Miles rush over right away and helps Katie find her son. She opens up that she was hurt to see her son connect with Miles easily when she couldn’t see him as his mother. They find him at Central Park where there was a stage with a piano that Nate was playing on. He was playing “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon, a song his mother sang to him every night.

The episode ended with Katie Brooks finally making a connection with her son, Cara trying to connect with her mother through morning runs, Rakesh and Jaya clearing things up in their relationship, and Miles’ father finally giving his podcast a listen. Miles ended up not taking the deal with Frequency because he wanted something else for his podcast than what they’re looking for. Rather than picking a side and ranting, he wanted to open up conversations.

‘God Friended Me’ Season 1, Episode 2 ‘The Good Samaritan’ Overall Verdict

This episode tries to establish that the series aims to inspire people through universal messages rather than specific spiritual teachings, which is quite a stretch from what went on in the pilot. The cathartic story of Katie Brooks and her son Nate has a universal bearing, and the way Miles decided to help was out of good nature and not necessarily out of faith. The good takeaway from this episode is that one word that can solve almost anything: communication. Picking a side and condemning the other shuts out the possibility for open dialogue, so both sides need to be open to hearing each other out to have an actual conversation.

It doesn’t help, however, that this message isn’t something you realize about the episode but is told to you at the very ending when Miles shares it in his podcast. Now I love good dialogue as much as the next guy, but back stories and revelations just seem boring when they are just spat out of the actors’ mouths. The series displays predictable “twists and turns” and the God account, which the show appears to be low key confirming that really is the holy guy, just sticks out like a passive aggressive ex with nothing better to do but intervene with people’s lives. Much of the series still spoon feeds the plot. The series definitely still has miles to go to establish its main plot clearly, but it’s looking a little bleak as to how far it can stretch its creativity.

God Friended Me continues next Sunday, October 14th, with “Heavenly Taco Truck” at 8:30/7:30c on CBS.