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So far I remain on board, but these last couple episodes felt a little bit more... ragged and rough than previous seasons. My guess is because they have a place they wanted to get to (the humans seeing the door, it looks like) and wanted to get there as quickly and gracefully as possible. I'm excited to see where this is all going, though, and the episodes are still funny. The transition to Earth just hasn't worked as well for me as I'd hoped. JossiRossi posted:I really hope Simone is not a Good Place agent, but yeah definitely possible. They've said on the podcast that they think they might have earned some points with standards and practices thanks to all the swear replacement words in the first two seasons. They talked about not really understanding how they got away with "blowing beefers while you're down on Earth boning us in the meathole" from last episode, for example. Harrow fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 02:36
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Dick hasn't been verboten for a while. Hell, The Judge said it earlier in the episode. Last season, Shawn also told Michael that the other demons sometimes call him "that dick"
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Oct 12, 2018 04:22
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Argue posted:I really hope Simone is just a human. If she were a Good Place agent it would go against the thesis that humans can improve each other without divine intervention (granted, Michael already screwed that up but having Simone be a permanently installed Good Place agent would taint it way way worse). The only way I could see a twist like that working is if it's because the Good Place recognizes that the rules are massively stacked against humans and that they need to intervene or nobody will get in. Like it turns out what Michael and Janet are doing is what the Good Place folks have been doing all along, because if they didn't, almost nobody would actually make it into the Good Place at all. Though at the same time, that could get a little too "guardian angels" for my taste, but then again I'm sure if any show can twist something like that into an actually complex story then it's this one. The biggest hurdle for this theory being even remotely true, though, is that we've been pretty directly told there's only the one door down to Earth, so unless the Good Place agents on Earth have been there embedded for ages and don't go back and forth (which I guess could be the case?), that could get sort of awkward. Harrow fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 17:41
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precision posted:Janet seems like Janet to me; if anything is off, it's that Michael seems to have leaned way too hard into being good I think he still struggles to be good himself. This whole episode has him doing some very ethically dubious things, up to and including considering arson. He cares deeply about these four specific humans, but his default is still to lie and cheat.
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Oct 12, 2018 20:46
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Hawkgirl posted:You might be right, but it seems pretty cruel for the tone of this show. It’s much more believable to me that innocent Good Place types would just misunderstand the human condition enough to accidentally set up an impossible task for them. It would line up with how little the demons understand humans as well. My own read is that the rules are sort of above the pay grade of either Place’s management. Neither the Good or Bad Place crews made the rules—they’re just another part of the system. We know that there are “impartial” players here like Gen the Judge and Jeff the doorman, so it might be that the rules are made by another neutral party.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:00
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Oasx posted:Either there is a twist to the story, or the requirements are actually really high if you want to get into the good place. I think the requirements are just really, really high. Ultimately I think this show, like all of Mike Schur’s shows, is really optimistic about human nature. I don’t think a dark twist would really work here. My guess is that it’s just super hard to get in and maybe even the Good Place architects/staff/etc agree with Michael’s belief that the system is deeply flawed and unfair to humans, but it isn’t up to them.
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Oct 13, 2018 15:28
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Lutha Mahtin posted:there are accepted teachings in all of the world's major religions that are similar to this Well, right, and I think that's sort of why it'd be an odd fit for this show. Like it's all very Touched by an Angel, y'know? But I do think if any show could do a story like that without it being the kind of cloying "angels watching over us" plot we've seen before on other shows, it's The Good Place. Though, one other thought about the "Simone is a Good Place agent" theory. I hope she isn't--I like the idea that she's just a really cool human--but if she is, I like what that says about what the Good Place (the place) is. Simone isn't cloyingly nice and boring and sweet all day long. She's sort of... aggressively well-adjusted. She's funny and smart and though she's very kind, she's kind in a no-nonsense, "the truth hurts" kind of way. She's self-assured and confident, and she's accepting of other people's foibles even as she helps them avoid hurting themselves by going too far down those paths. If she's an indication of what the Good Place is like, then it's not the boringly "everything is fuzzy and warm and don't think too hard" nice place that Michael's facsimile Good Place was. It'd be something a lot more interesting and a lot more human. Another possibility is that the Good Place is boring and full of the sort of empty niceness that it looks like it might be, and Simone (again, if she's a supernatural being in the first place) is a rogue Good Place agent the same way Michael is a rogue Bad Place agent, who recognizes that the whole system is flawed and nobody is truly happy. That could be an interesting plot, too. But again: I'd prefer it if Simone was just a regular human who happens to be a very good and cool regular human. Harrow fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Oct 13, 2018 |
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Oct 13, 2018 15:55
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Regy Rusty posted:And don't get me wrong, both I and the good place representatives who argued on her behalf agree with you. But the bad place argument based on the strictest interpretation of the rules was enough to convince the Judge to take the middle road. That's why I generally assume that the rules were designed by a being (or beings) outside of the Good Place or Bad Place groups, which also suggests to me that it's entirely possible the Good Place folks aren't happy with how things are any more than Michael is. I don't think there's any indication that they're doing something about it, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Michael ends up with someone from the Good Place joining his "this system is extremely broken" cause at some point.
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Oct 15, 2018 14:57
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This is already the funniest episode of the season and I’m so happy
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Oct 19, 2018 01:46
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So... this all counts for points, right? They all know that none of this can save them from the Bad Place so they’re doing all of this with no expectation of reward.
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Oct 19, 2018 01:52
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Arist posted:I'm not sure whatever Chidi's doing qualifies. I don’t even think it can be quantified. It’s just random flailing and it’s great.
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Oct 19, 2018 01:53
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nooneofconsequence posted:What happened to Chidi's girlfriend? I was really hoping we would see Simone’s reaction to off the rails Chidi
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Oct 19, 2018 02:01
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So what are the chances someone finds the manifesto?
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Oct 19, 2018 02:16
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Your Taint posted:That was the best episode of the series thus far. Yeah I think it might just barely edge out Dance Dance Resolution as my favorite episode of the series. God drat that was good
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Oct 19, 2018 03:10
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Two things: 1. It occurs to me that Megan Amram is the credited writer on almost all of my favorite episodes of this series so someone get her that goddamn Emmy already. 2. I was a little worried about the series' ratings--it's dipping below last season, which was lower than the first season--but then I took a look at Brooklyn Nine-Nine's ratings, which were something like 1 to 2 million fewer viewers than The Good Place per episode, and remembered that NBC actively picked that show up for more episodes. So I'm pretty confident The Good Place will get as many seasons as it needs. Really, NBC has a history of being pretty nice to its sitcom lineup. They kept 30 Rock around for a super long time and probably gave Community more second chances than it really warranted towards the end there. LividLiquid posted:This show is always an exercise in writing yourself into a corner and then being a goddamn magician about getting yourself out of it, but this really feels like the final arc. The last season felt like the final arc, too, with them charging straight into the actual Bad Place to argue their case in front of the Judge. I can think of at least one way for another arc to come out of this (something having to do with actually trying to disrupt the unjust afterlife system) but I haven't been able to successfully predict anything this show has done yet so I'm not exactly confident I've got it this time, either.
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Oct 19, 2018 13:59
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Regy Rusty posted:What I'm wondering about is that it seems inevitable that at some point we'll go back to the afterlife. But I can't see the show killing them again or showing them live to old age. My guess is there's gonna be cause to infiltrate the afterlife through Michael's door and really start messing things up. I think it's either that, or we do get some sort of "the rest of their lives" montage at some point. But Michael does still have the key, and that manifesto is just sitting there waiting to be discovered by someone, so poo poo could go pretty far off the rails. Also, side note, but the title of the next episode has me real excited: "The Ballad of Donkey Doug"
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Oct 19, 2018 14:12
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If I'm gonna take this too seriously: Afterlife beings still seem to perceive a subjective passage of time and it appears that they measure that using Earth time, even when talking to other afterlife beings. Even dead humans still experience time in a linear fashion, even if that's not actually how the timeline of the universe they're in works. Anyway I'm going to stop myself before I write a treatise on the law of Jeremy Bearimy Harrow fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Oct 19, 2018 |
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Oct 19, 2018 16:31
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This is the rare show where I just don't even want to speculate out loud (or on a forum) all that much, weirdly. It just feels like I'm definitely going to be wrong. It's kinda fun. I have a few hypotheses about what could happen that a) pays off this plot in a satisfying way and b) propels the show forward rather than ending it (what if Eleanor figured out the loophole and gets everyone else into the Good Place but not herself, and the others voluntarily leave it to save her? What if the system doesn't allow for this loophole but it provides leverage to start a revolution in the afterlife? What if...), but I also know there's basically no way I've thought of even most of the possibilities.
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Oct 19, 2018 17:24
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Azhais posted:Was that Spam? Haven't seen it in that style of container, figured it was manwich or something They're cans of chili I think Harrow fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Oct 19, 2018 |
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Oct 19, 2018 20:14
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inthesto posted:It slightly bothers me that Chidi fell so hard into nihilism, because existentialism exists largely as an answer to that and as a philosophy professor of any stripe, he should have some familiarity with that. I think the difference is that Chidi isn't faced with a universe that is indifferent to him. He's faced with a universe in which he doesn't just not know his future--he knows for a fact that he is doomed and nothing he can do could ever possibly change that. It's harder to turn to existential self-determination when you don't just know that you're in an indifferent universe, but that you're in a universe that isn't indifferent at all, but that your own fate is sealed.
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Oct 19, 2018 21:56
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Doltos posted:I wonder if the writers ever think huh should we flesh out this points system concept nah no way will people over analyze our light hearted take on the after life After listening to a bunch of the podcast, I don't think the writers are all that opposed to people overanalyzing the points system. I think we're supposed to think about the system and notice the holes and come to the same conclusion as Michael (it's fundamentally broken and unfair).
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Oct 21, 2018 19:12
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Screw ethics lessons. Manny Jacinto's here to teach us what we really want to learn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFm7Ryd98rI
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Oct 30, 2018 18:54
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As soon as Andy Daly showed up on screen I actually said aloud, “Oh poo poo, it’s Andy Daly!” Which I learned from the podcast is exactly what Marc Evan Jackson also did so that means it is the correct reaction. I’m just happy to see that dude in anything and he was hilarious here. Totally made the episode for me.
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Nov 4, 2018 15:09
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Arist posted:Please don't tell me there's a hiatus after this One more episode before the hiatus. Also hell YES Vicki is back
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Nov 9, 2018 03:01
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21 Muns posted:Assuming that we don't get some kind of huge bombshell twist that this was really a fake Earth (which would admittedly be awesome and classic Good Place), I definitely think that this season has been a big step down in quality from the first season and certainly the second season, which is really too bad because for the most part it's just as good; it's exploring such interesting ground in terms of character development and thematic development, but it just has so many nagging completely unnecessary suspension-of-disbelief-piercing moments that seem to come from the writers not knowing how to handle so much Earth. I don't remember any problems like that in the first two seasons. I think we're just supposed to accept that their version of Earth is a very wacky one. I mean, go back and listen to all of the things Jason says about Jacksonville in seasons 1 and 2. He says some outlandish poo poo that we're never really led to believe is incorrect. Most of what we're seeing this season is totally in line with Jason attending Lynyrd Skynyrd High School, a school that consists of a bunch of tugboats lashed together in a junkyard and where most of the classes are just selling dirty magazines door-to-door. I thought they ran that "everything in Australia is <something> Nemo" joke into the ground, though. C'mon, you can do more Australia jokes than that.
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Nov 9, 2018 16:07
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:but she didnt know doug's situation somehow pwn posted:The first two seasons were so damned tight, I’d hate to see it become a cartoon. I think part of it might just be Janet's increasing humanity. She knew how Doug was living and she knew that he was miserable, but she didn't know what that actually meant until she actually met him and connected with him on a human level. If she seemed surprised by the idea that Doug might be doomed now (if Shawn can be believed, of course), it might be because it's due to something that happened while they were on Earth, after she was cut off from her knowledge updates--maybe, as others have suggested, it was her and Michael's intervention that doomed him, for example. Gobbeldygook posted:Also Doug did not put as much thought into his diet as he could've. Jainism is a religion practiced by several million people that is famous for their utter dedication to non-violence. For example, Jainist monks carry a broom with them at all times for sweeping away the ground before they sit down so as to not accidentally crush any minute life that might be there. Wikipedia on their diet: What I find interesting her is the prohibition against eggs but the allowance of milk. Cows, like any other mammal, only lactate when they need to do so to care for their young. That means that for a dairy cow to continue producing milk, that cow needs to continue producing more calves. If those calves are male, they can't produce dairy. These days, a farm doesn't need that many bulls, so the majority of them are raised for slaughter--so even though a cow didn't need to be killed for you to get that cow's milk, the necessity of continuing to produce offspring means that, inevitably, cow slaughter will result from dairy farming. I don't know enough about pre-modern methods, though, and maybe things were different somehow? Meanwhile, a chicken is going to produce eggs whether or not those eggs are fertilized. They're going to lay those eggs whether they're fertilized or not, and an unfertilized egg will never become a chicken, so there's no harm in taking them and eating them, right? Harrow fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 17:33
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Gobbeldygook posted:
This is a very clear and understandable explanation and that makes a ton of sense, thanks!
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Nov 16, 2018 20:32
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This is incredible holy poo poo
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Dec 7, 2018 02:34
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What is Season 4 going to be It is impossible for me to imagine what the hell Season 4 could possibly be
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Dec 7, 2018 03:01
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The entire cast is on fire this episode, it ownsLutha Mahtin posted:We just got preempted in the Twin Cities. A girl in Wisconsin who has been missing for weeks under creepy circumstances has been found alive!! I can't even be mad because this is such good news. Same here in Madison. I feel terrible I didn't even know the story--I'd wondered why they kept her picture up for so long. Jesus that's a horrific story 
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Jan 11, 2019 03:53
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The villain is capitalism
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Jan 11, 2019 03:58
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Piell posted:My guess is Michael gets to set up a neighborhood as a "temporary Good Place" for people with positive scores (but not good enough to get into the actual Good Place) while the problem is looked into. Everyone gets dumped into Mindy's Medium Place and she's miserable
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Jan 15, 2019 22:49
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So who's gonna be sent to mess with Jason? Pillboi or Donkey Doug?
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Jan 25, 2019 04:01
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Notably, this is the first time we're going into the next season without everyone's minds getting wiped. Just, y'know, Chidi's 
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Jan 25, 2019 04:30
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I felt a really interesting sense of mounting dread as they realized that one of their exes could be the next person and it slowly dawned on me that it'd be Simone. It was such an interesting feeling because I speculated last week that the Bad Place would specifically choose people who would be torturous for the core four, so the fact that John ended up being someone who'd torture Tahani was an "a-ha, I knew it!" moment. And yet Simone never crossed my mind. As soon as it became clear it would be her sitting out there, I had this, "Oh no, I didn't think of... oh no..." feeling. Anyway it's kind of fun to think you have the whole thing figured out and then get blindsided anyway. tin can made man posted:I was really hoping this season that Simone wouldn't die and show up, it paints a very sad picture for anyone on Earth or the dot in the i who knew her, or especially both of them. Serious boyfriend breaks it off and disappears with no warning, dies in a mystery accident in canada, then she dies later. Aw, and they had all reconciled with family, too, I hadn't thought about the effect that had on those survivors Given the Jeremy Bearimy, it's entirely possible she died later in life and the Bad Place just slotted her into this part of afterlife time. It occurs to me that we have little to no information on what age people are in the afterlife--all of the older people we saw in seasons 1 and 2 were demons, after all. Maybe you're just always in your physical prime or something. Or maybe she died young like everyone else and it's going to be really
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Jan 25, 2019 15:19
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oh jay posted:From her point of view, she died the second before she met the Soul Squad. So pretty young I guess. I got the impression that they just cut out that specific chunk of her life, not that they erased all of her memories to just before she met the Soul Squad. Like they just chopped out Chidi and the rest of the Soul Squad but left the rest intact. I mention this because the reason Michael gave for being unable to erase just Simone from Chidi's memory is that his memories of her are all tangled up with his memories of everyone else. He can spot-erase memories--Shawn threatened that, too, when he threatened to erase just the humans' memories of Michael telling them it's not going to really be him torturing them--but if he only erased Simone it would be very obvious to Chidi that something was wrong and might have a lot of unintended consequences. Oasx posted:Besides messing Chidi, Simone seems like an odd pick. From everything we know she is a nice and kind person, and doesn't seem like the type who would need moral philosophy lessons. Well, we do know she was definitely going to go to the Bad Place anyway, just because the unintended consequences of living in the modern world were dragging down her point total no matter how kind, patient, and insightful she was. For all we know her point total ended up roughly around where Chidi's was, not because she did anything bad, but just because it was nearly impossible to gain points. So that would make her roughly "equally bad" to at least one of the original four and therefore a legal pick for Shawn to make.
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Jan 25, 2019 16:55
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This all depends on how involves Schur is going to be in this new show. He's not very directly involved in Brooklyn Nine-Nine anymore, for example, but he is with The Good Place. He might be creating the new show but then stepping back to producing after the pilot or something. Or maybe he's going to leave more of The Good Place showrunning to one of the other writers, who knows.
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Jan 30, 2019 20:27
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Your Taint posted:I must have missed where Chidi was in the Bad Place because of almond milk. Which episode was that in? It's a running gag from the finale of Season 1 through episode 2 of Season 2 where each time he finds out he's in the Bad Place, he thinks it's because of almond milk (until he finds out the real reason).
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Jan 30, 2019 20:31
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Ohh, okay, I am not very bright and cannot follow conversations 
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Jan 30, 2019 21:41
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Senor Tron posted:In the latest podcast he talks about how his attitude towards writers when it comes to bug scenes is to avoid giving them more direction than necessary and is very complimentary towards Megan Amran and her writing. I wouldn't be surprised if we see her taking on more creative control. Yeah, I was gonna say if they announced Megan Amram was taking over showrunning I wouldn't be too worried. Well I might be worried because we'd definitely all die in the resulting flood of puns but honestly that's not a terrible way to go Harrow fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 23:06
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