The Good Place on NBC

In the second scene, the audition involved me and my buddy Pillboi, who you see in some of the flashbacks of season one. It’s me pitching him a product about an energy drink/deodorant idea.

lmao

jason is good

is this back??

as of last night

derek bortles IS a dumb name

bad janet is my new favorite

Tahani used to present...T4? Some music stuff? I can't remember, but it's something like that.

great interview with irl Jason aka Manny Jacinto here

http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/the-good-place-season-2-manny-jacinto-interview.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t

lol, i never saw this
http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/watch-the-good-place-cast-react-with-shock-to-that-big-twist.html

I just thought about bad Janet's fart joke and started laughing again

Maximum Derek

budhole

i think that's a good joke

I really had “Maaaaaximum Derek!” flashbacks today

here's what jameela sounds like irl, it's not too far off

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01h4g1g

My wife and I have a total affinity for Jason Mantzoukas' shtick.

We too laughed loudest at the fart joke.

Jason's reply to the knock knock joke at the roast, and Ted Danson's reply, got an out-loud guffaw from me.

Any latin scholars? From:

irrisiones infidelium convivia
eius formido

Google translate offers:

ridicule of unbelievers banquet
are terrible

love a good blake bortles joke

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DS92CsMUMAAM-Wg.jpg

Are the first episodes of season 2 not available on Hulu? Or am I blind?

I can confirm I don’t see the first three

NBC has been fucking around with promoting their own app and they’re all in there but I’m not sure what the access rules are

all the jaguars need is a defense and an offense and some rules changes

Season one is even better/funnier on rewatching, esp Ted Danson. It's odd to me nothing about Eleanor's obv miserable depression/alcoholism doesn't get mentioned wrt her being a "bad person" tho

the whole second season was up on hulu before thursday’s episode aired but i guess it got taken down. boo

demons are people too

this show could go on forever and i wouldn't mind..

I just finished season 1. Chidi's approach to teaching Eleanor doesn't make any sense. He's told on the first day that people have been sent to the good or bad place on the basis of a formula that quantifies the moral value of every action. As a moral philosopher, he would recognize that this means consequentialism is the truth. But when the times comes to teach Eleanor how to be a good person, we see him poring over all these books and then teaching her about Plato and Aristotle and and Hume on personal identity for some reason. It takes him days or weeks to even get around to utilitarianism, the earthbound moral philosophy that most resembles the system he's been informed is the right one. And then, when Eleanor is ready to accept it, he tells her it's wrong.

Maybe he thinks that learning about these things could be morally edifying. But no academic philosopher would actually think that this is the best way to become good, or pass for good, in a short time. A better idea would be to ask Janet, the freely available source of nearly all information, what really counts as a good action.

I'm only half-kidding when I say that this is a fatal flaw and the show sucks because of it.

it had to happen sooner or later

it’s the ilx rule of comedy discussions

As a moral philosopher, he would recognize that this means consequentialism is the truth.

Chidi's defining characteristic is that he is completely incapable of making a decision ever about anything, and this characteristic has ruined his chances of getting to the Good Place. It makes perfect sense that he would be incapable of teaching anyone else the right thing except by accident.

I think that's similar to what I was getting at above wrt s2, in my untrained-in-philosophy way, except that I see it as a strength, or at least an interesting perspective:

if we were to know for a fact that there is an afterlife with heaven and hell and immortal omniscient beings who have some kind of absolute system of ethical judgment, what exactly would be the value of studying "human ethics"? The show seems to take the position that human ethics still has its own independent value that the immortal could fail to understand, that these can still [ be ] moral questions regardless of whether you would end up in heaven or hell, which seems radically humanist or something. Curious what j. thought.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Friday, October 20, 2017 8:51 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(I'd ask my philosopher half but she's still on s1.)

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Friday, October 20, 2017 8:52 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm assuming where they're going with it is that the Danson character will eventually rebel against the unethical system he's always served.

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Friday, October 20, 2017 9:03 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The implications of that are p radical imo!: human inquiry can lead to a moral knowledge and system of ethics that are superior to those of heaven and hell, with the potential to revolutionize the afterlife. Basically, a dogmatic religion can still be wrong even if it is factually accurate.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Friday, October 20, 2017 9:12 AM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But, yeah, I guess in the context of s1, trishyb OTM.

Maybe heaven is wrong about what is right or wrong. It's a fairly severe answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, I guess.

There are other things like that, but it's best to suspend disbelief (ted danson's character often seems not to know things you would expect someone who has read every book to know)

Sund4r otm. Also, in that first introduction video, Michael claims that when someone ran a red light at night, even if nobody noticed, it gave them minus points. Or something like that. The point is: The points seem more deontological in nature.

I've got my own issues with this show (and otherwise) but the inconsistency that bugs me the most may be Jason, who is so stupid and innocent and guileless it seems unfair to punish him any more than it would be fair to send small children to the bad place. Even when he means ill in flashbacks he never seems particularly bad or mean. Just ... rock stupid, which is determined at birth.

I will say, considering what the show has done so far, it's only limited by its ambitions. For example, there could be a reveal that the entire scenario is there to test Michael. Or that Jason really is a silent Buddhist monk, and this is all taking place in his subconscious as he wrestles with morality. Or that Chidi is an engineer who tried to defect back to Earth and is being punished. And so on. Hence the most fun I have had with this show has been viewing it as a cute distraction and a modest deconstruction of sitcom tropes, not some even semi-serious dive into philosophy.

I mean, he was an adult who mostly lived off crime, even if he was incompetent as a criminal. I don't really see it as inconsistent with the rest of the Good Place/Bad Place's moral framework that he would be punished. xp

yeah, but he is functionally special needs. it's not fair to punish someone too ignorant to realize what they're doing is bad.

I guess. I haven't really seen much to suggest that the system makes many allowances for compassionate reasons. It's pretty rigid and harsh. Eleanor notes its harshness fairly early on.

"Eleanor notes its unfairness..." - i.e. I agree that it's unfair (which is why we sympathize with the characters who are rebelling against it) but not that it's inconsistent.

When they finally get to the Good Place they're going to find it insufferable.

Eleanor - everyone here is so self-righteous/boring/annoying
Chidi - I question your moral rigidity and lack of self-questioning on a profound philosophical level
Tahani - literally everyone here is trying to upstage me
Jason - OK Jason will probably love it

feel like there are more twists to come. idk if this is the one but in certain Jewish traditions "hell" is a place where you work out the things that plagued you [ethically] in your life in order to prepare you for "the good place." what if the bad place isn't really a bad place at all but a place for ppl (and maybe even demons) to make themselves better in order to move on to the better place. why would a perfect system otherwise allow this much going off the rails? these ppl can create neighborhoods from nothingness and stride the void but they don't know that michael has reset the simulation hundreds of times? they have no systems in place to monitor that kind of thing? or more likely this is all a part of a greater plan?

someone behind the curtain behind the curtain, as it were

It kinda seems to me that a lot of these criticisms are based on an understanding of religion that the show has never actively supported and in some cases directly criticized. Yeah, the system is definitely unfair when it sends Jason to the bad place, and yeah, the system is blind to it's own problems, but that seems of a piece with the idea of the spiritual structure as just some mindless bureaucracy, where everything doesn't happen for a good reason, but just because it always has. It's kinda Kafkaesque.

And Michael is the great destroyer, not because he wanted to, but just because he tried to innovate. When injected with the possibility that things could actually be different, the whole system falls apart.

Fred OTM, tbh

once it was revealed that the entire premise of the show was based on lies and deception, frankly all logic went out the window. which is fine. but we have no idea what is really going on at any time.

Yep. And what does that mean for a show about religion ;)

it's metaphysical but it is not religious imo in any specific or even general sense.

I'd argue it's the other way around. There's very little that's actually about metaphysics, while there's a whole lot about organized bureaucracies like religions. That is exactly my point, Josh.