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Were there ever any employees in that bar?
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Nov 17, 2018 14:18
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I'm not convinced that what Doug has been doing wouldn't get him in to the good place. I think the purpose of his character is to demonstrate what it means to take the criteria to the extreme and maximize point gain to the expense of everything else. If Doug had not been bound for the good place before Michael and Janet came to earth, I think they would have been aware of that (at least Janet would). The theory that it's their meddling that is affecting things seems more plausible to me. But the overall lesson from Doug I think isn't that his actions wouldn't get him in, but rather that they would, and that's a terrible system if this is the kind of life that it idealizes.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:26
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InsertPotPun posted:I like this show, the fight scene was surprisingly well shot for a network sitcom (though there's a solid 6 second shot of Shaun's stuntman's face). I kept trying to catch a glimpse of Janet's stunt double, and that hairstyle must be a huge benefit to anyone shooting an action scene, it was always flying around obscuring her face. InsertPotPun posted:It's shown Janet sometimes has to "look stuff up", she doesn't have EVERY bit of information in her head. Good try, but I don't know if it's really accurate. Did Janet download the numbers on a roll of lottery tickets sent to a random convenience store? I think it's more likely that she knows everything, but sometimes the writers slip up or have to ignore that to make a scene work. My personal unsubstantiated working theory is that she's a bit like a computer, and she's got a perfect knowledge of the area she's in loaded into RAM, but would have to access her cloud drive to get more than general info on stuff she doesn't have loaded.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:39
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I also think it's more likely that Janet did know about Doug but didn't grasp what it meant for his quality of life until she actually saw it for herself.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:42
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They've also been talking about seeing the "accountants" lately. I think that episode will shed some light on precisely how the system is hosed.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:42
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BioEnchanted posted:A clever thing the show does is the only tortures it actually describes are fairly cartoonish in how extreme they are, like wasps in nostrils and just ripping people in half - however there are other things that are implied but aren't described because it would conflict with the shows tone. Like the Museum, where Michael warns them to stay in the foyer, because beyond there there are rooms full of poo poo that they would never be able to unsee. I like how it toes that line. It allows hell to be funny-hellish, and the demons to have some humour with them, without letting the viewer forget that "Yeah, this is literal hell. it's only funny til your in it." You needed examples and picked ripping people in half over the penis flatteners or butthole spiders?? Janet's audio clip from the first episode maybe fits into the other category though, apart from the bear with two mouths. The museum episode has one of my favourite lines which your phrase at the end reminded me of: quote:Chidi: I don’t think I can change what I believe just like that. While I'm being positive, instead of futilely trying to guess where the plot is going, I also love the bit of background music that plays for suspenseful scenes, like the end of The Snowplow. Wish I could find a clear version. Edit: Actually lots of those little tunes are great, one of them isn't but I can't remember which off the top of my head
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Nov 17, 2018 14:51
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Regy Rusty posted:I'm not convinced that what Doug has been doing wouldn't get him in to the good place. I think the purpose of his character is to demonstrate what it means to take the criteria to the extreme and maximize point gain to the expense of everything else. I like what someone said earlier: The reason Doug or anyone else isn’t getting in, is because no one does. That was what Sean was about to say when Michael Noped him outta there. Maybe The Accountants all are from the bad place, and they just send everyone there, regardless of points? The Good Place does work on an honour system, after all. They don’t even lock up their Janets! Of course, Mindy/The Medium Place seemingly nullifies this whole cockamamie theory.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:57
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uvar posted:You needed examples and picked ripping people in half over the penis flatteners or butthole spiders?? Janet's audio clip from the first episode maybe fits into the other category though, apart from the bear with two mouths. Yeah, I forgot about the butthole spiders.
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Nov 17, 2018 14:59
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Yeah I just don't think the idea that no one gets in holds water for all the reasons we've discussed in the past.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:00
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pwn posted:I like what someone said earlier: The reason Doug or anyone else isn’t getting in, is because no one does... The Medium Place could be her personal Hell, despite looking like a step-up for other people.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:14
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The idea that seems most plausible to me is that you need an **absurdly** high point total to get into the Good Place and because Doug spent his first 20 or 25 years living like a normal person he was in too great a hole when he started his ascetic lifestyle to make it over the line.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:19
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Phenotype posted:I kept trying to catch a glimpse of Janet's stunt double, and that hairstyle must be a huge benefit to anyone shooting an action scene, it was always flying around obscuring her face. When Janet was giving relationship counselling to Jason and Tahani she had to take a moment to process all the information about it and slip into a mode where she could properly use that information so it makes sense that even if Janet knows a bunch of facts about Dougs life she wouldn't put it all together into an understanding of what those facts actually mean in terms of a day to day human experience until she experienced it herself.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:20
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Regy Rusty posted:I also think it's more likely that Janet did know about Doug but didn't grasp what it meant for his quality of life until she actually saw it for herself. I agree with this. Janet knows everything about Doug (and on paper only his lifestyle is the “correct” blueprint), but doesn’t understand the implications until she sees the effect of his choices in person.
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Nov 17, 2018 15:31
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Regy Rusty posted:Yeah I just don't think the idea that no one gets in holds water for all the reasons we've discussed in the past. I think it’ll be the wrong people that gets into the good place. While there will be some people who gets in because they meet the criteria perfectly and are the ideal people to be in the good place, like Abraham Lincoln, there will be others who lived a relatively inconsequential life, like Doug Forcett, but live terrible afterlives due to the lack of apparent consequences. I think that’ll be a major twist on who is actually in the good place. It’ll be a flaw on what this system awards.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:18
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drunkencarp posted:The idea that seems most plausible to me is that you need an **absurdly** high point total to get into the Good Place and because Doug spent his first 20 or 25 years living like a normal person he was in too great a hole when he started his ascetic lifestyle to make it over the line. I was also thinking along these lines. Perhaps post-trip Doug has been net good, but his actions are so small and personal - rather than the big social changes that get lots of points - he's still unable to make up that deficit.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:23
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Pigasus posted:I think it’ll be the wrong people that gets into the good place. While there will be some people who gets in because they meet the criteria perfectly and are the ideal people to be in the good place, like Abraham Lincoln, there will be others who lived a relatively inconsequential life, like Doug Forcett, but live terrible afterlives due to the lack of apparent consequences. I think that’ll be a major twist on who is actually in the good place. It’ll be a flaw on what this system awards. Yeah this is what I think it's heading for.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:29
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Michael McKean is still paying off all of his characters bad actions in Better Call Saul, dooming all characters acted by him to the Bad Place.
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Nov 17, 2018 16:36
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Did anyone else think Michael might know more than he's letting on, or might have something to do with the point system somehow? "He shouldn't get to sit there and say mean stuff" isn't much of a reason to kick Shawn through the gate when Shawn was saying cryptic things about how Doug wouldn't get into the Good Place. I think Michael was worried about Shawn implicating him in something.
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Nov 17, 2018 17:19
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I'd more expect Shawn to claim no one gets to the good place to gently caress with them more than anything.
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Nov 17, 2018 17:34
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I'm just going to put out there that doing whatever the local sociopath kid asks is earning Doug bad place points rather than good ones.
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Nov 17, 2018 17:40
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Thranguy posted:I'm just going to put out there that doing whatever the local sociopath kid asks is earning Doug bad place points rather than good ones. Doug's isolation also meant that he hasn't been put into a situation where he has to choose between helping two different people. If he had to choose between making the sociopath happy, or someone else happy, then he'd actually have to confront a dilemma. Also, being an enabler isn't necessarily good, either, something that he forgot to take into account.
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Nov 17, 2018 17:56
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Isn't it worse though if helping the kid is getting him points and the system doesn't distinguish?
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Nov 17, 2018 18:00
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Have we considered that the "making himself miserable" aspect of Doug's life is itself part of why he wouldn't make it in to the Good Place? Like, one of the examples of point-getting behavior we saw in the first episode was "ate a sandwich." +1.04 points for keeping yourself alive and enjoying how something tastes. Doug gets points for sustainable eating, but loses out if he ever gets sick of radishes and lentils, because he also factors into the utilitarian calculus. "Debased self before unpleasant pre-teen" would, I think, earn Bad Place points because you're not being ethical - that would be something like looking for an effective (but not cruel) way to teach that kid not to be a dickhead - but it also gets you Bad Place points because you're actively and deliberately doing harm to your own dignity and emotional well-being. Feeling guilty about crushing a bug is one thing, but working yourself into an state of anguish because of it, then holding a funeral that said bug will have absolutely no way of appreciating... that's not helping anyone. Doug gets the basic concept, but he doesn't actually understand the idea at the center of what they're looking for, regardless of whether the metrics are valid to begin with.
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Nov 17, 2018 18:03
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Doug is an ascetic who doesn't really help anyone, he doesn't deserve to go to the Good Place. If instead of moving to the woods and growing a garden he had gotten a job making 30k a year working at a warehouse and tithed 10% of what he made every year for 50 years to good charities like the Against Malaria Foundation, he'd have saved at least fifty human-life equivalents. Much like how Chidi wasn't a "bad person" per se, Doug is not really a good person, just a neutral person who deserves at best a medium place.
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Nov 17, 2018 18:05
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Gobbeldygook posted:Doug is an ascetic who doesn't really help anyone, he doesn't deserve to go to the Good Place. If instead of moving to the woods and growing a garden he had gotten a job making 30k a year working at a warehouse and tithed 10% of what he made every year for 50 years to good charities like the Against Malaria Foundation, he'd have saved at least fifty human-life equivalents. Much like how Chidi wasn't a "bad person" per se, Doug is not really a good person, just a neutral person who deserves at best a medium place. Ah, but he's interacting with capitalism, which is a lot of negative points.
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Nov 17, 2018 18:08
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Doug never got it 100% right, he just came closest, so of course he's loving up Also nobody new gets into the good place because the accountants got tired of the paperwork and hosed the qualifications to make their jobs easier. There's people there, just nobody new for a while.
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Nov 17, 2018 19:58
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Whalley posted:Also nobody new gets into the good place because the accountants got tired of the paperwork and hosed the qualifications to make their jobs easier. There's people there, just nobody new for a while. I like this theory. People hate standards. Standards reduce flexibility, like doing your job wrong on purpose to make your life easier. Immortal beings probably hate standards, too. Standards reduce flexibility, like doing their jobs wrong on purpose to mitigate their Sisyphean toil.
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Nov 17, 2018 20:20
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Possible theories for how the system is more hosed than we knew: No one ever gets into the Good Place: I don't like this one, there's enough indication it exists, and Janet can't have lied about the people that got in. Pascal's Wager disqualifies you: Doug is obviously Pascal's Wagering hardcore, and a great deal of other good people may be too, unfairly nullifying their points. This seems very possible, but they've already explored the theme of intention/motivation with Eleanor and Tahani in S1, and I'd like to think there's something less repetitive than that keeping Doug out. Shawn has somehow rigged the accounting process through scheming/bribery/coercion: Shawn is a naughty bitch, and you know he must have been dreaming of a scheme to funnel everyone into the Bad Place for a looong time. The team is on track to disqualifying the entire planet by revealing the points system: This one's fun because of the potential timey-wimeyness of it (and could tie into the above). Maybe Shawn knows they're on the path to doing something really drastic that fucks over everybody, or that they already have. And there's that manifesto Michael and Janet wrote a few episodes ago, still undiscovered...
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Nov 17, 2018 21:24
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Supercar Gautier posted:timey-wimeyness
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Nov 17, 2018 22:03
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Supercar Gautier posted:Janet can't have lied about the people that got in Who has Janet identified as going to the Good Place? It was Michael who mentioned Abraham Lincoln in the pilot, and otherwise they've mostly named people who went to the Bad Place. In the podcast intro she says the most popular podcast in the Good Place is Mozart and Jimi Hendrix talking about music, but it's a bit of a stretch to count that as part of the show. Besides, it could just mean that the Good Place has a podcast that simulates those two, not that they are themselves in the Good Place.
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Nov 17, 2018 22:25
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Robot Hobo posted:I thought about this the other day. Mindy loved her exciting life of big business, cocaine parties, and wild sex. When she died, she was stuck in a suburb-rear end house, utterly alone. It's a bland, boring place, with neither the coke or people needed for drug-fueled orgies. pwn fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 17, 2018 23:42
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pwn posted:While that is a salient point, so to is the objective fact that the absence of Butthole Spiders is preferable to Butthole Spiders, owing to not having spiders coming out of your butthole. They’re enormous I want you to know that your point could have been made in many different ways, but this is objectively the best one. I want to thank you for the delivery style you picked, for delivering your point.
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Nov 17, 2018 23:50
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PostNouveau posted:Eh, English is weird. Plus no one ever sees this written out so it's a mute point Regy Rusty posted:Isn't it worse though if helping the kid is getting him points and the system doesn't distinguish? Maybe it's some kind of zero sum game. Doug gets points for making the little jerk happy, but each time he does the kid racks up more bad points. Like, you get 10 billion points for curing cancer, but an equal amount of negative points are distributed to everyone who could have cured cancer but didn't. Doug gets 10 points for trying to make amends for killing a snail, and now everyone on Earth who didn't try to make amends for killing a snail gets 10 bad points. So even if you try and do your best it only helps doom others. That'd be diabolic.
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Nov 17, 2018 23:52
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1glitch0 posted:Maybe it's some kind of zero sum game. Doug gets points for making the little jerk happy, but each time he does the kid racks up more bad points. Like, you get 10 billion points for curing cancer, but an equal amount of negative points are distributed to everyone who could have cured cancer but didn't. Doug gets 10 points for trying to make amends for killing a snail, and now everyone on Earth who didn't try to make amends for killing a snail gets 10 bad points. So even if you try and do your best it only helps doom others. That'd be diabolic. If the accounting gets too hung up on casual chains of events, that would be an interesting systemic failure. But that seems to contradict the focus on intentions & motivations. From what we know, if you intended a good act, had a good motivation to do it, reasonably expected it to have a good result, and performed the act to the best of your ability, that's supposed to be enough. If it's not-- if there's always a nitpick about motivation or causal effects, and an actual qualifying good act is vanishingly rare-- then maybe that's the problem that Michael's about to discover.
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Nov 18, 2018 00:11
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1glitch0 posted:Um, it's not a "mute point". It's a "mute punt", meaning a punt that doesn't matter because no one heard it happen. 
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Nov 18, 2018 00:21
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Gobbeldygook posted:Doug is an ascetic who doesn't really help anyone, he doesn't deserve to go to the Good Place. If instead of moving to the woods and growing a garden he had gotten a job making 30k a year working at a warehouse and tithed 10% of what he made every year for 50 years to good charities like the Against Malaria Foundation, he'd have saved at least fifty human-life equivalents. Much like how Chidi wasn't a "bad person" per se, Doug is not really a good person, just a neutral person who deserves at best a medium place. Do monks get Good Place points for their lifestyle? Was Tahani actually on track to getting to The Good Place before that random TV crew discovered her and swung her back into doing good things for corrupt reasons?
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Nov 18, 2018 00:33
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I mean "Jianyu" was supposedly worthy of the Good Place
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Nov 18, 2018 00:39
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My guess is to square that circle is that Janet and Michael have access to point totals but not the crucial info on where someone goes (other than not to Michael’s Neighborhood). They assume Doug has enough points, because he has some large number of them, more than anyone else on Earth at the moment... but it’s not enough
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Nov 18, 2018 00:40
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SirSamVimes posted:I mean "Jianyu" was supposedly worthy of the Good Place That's assuming Michael based that on a real person and it wasn't just an elaborate insult to Jason.
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Nov 18, 2018 00:42
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Gaz-L posted:That's assuming Michael based that on a real person and it wasn't just an elaborate insult to Jason. I feel like Michael operates under the "best lies involve truth mixed in" policy, so I don't think he lied about the actual system. After all, it's confirmed that his description of retirement was 100% accurate.
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Nov 18, 2018 00:45
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