The Good Place on NBC

V good

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

it didn't really work for me overall and I'm not quite sure why

That's kind of my overall statement about the last couple seasons really

Clara Peller!

Lacking cable and uninterested in legal streaming options, I haven't seen S3 & 4. The UK has had single season blus which I passed on. For cord cutters like myself, there will be a US blu-ray set released May 19.

it didn't really work for me overall and I'm not quite sure why

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Friday, January 31, 2020 7:32 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

eleanor/chidi imo

i was still often devastated and felt like it was a solid ending but michael schur's romantic couplings really alienate me from his shows

This did pretty much what I expected it to and it was perfectly satisfactory in achieving that. So fine, but otherwise underwhelming (a bit like the whole final series).

Lacking cable and uninterested in legal streaming options, I haven't seen S3 & 4. ...For cord cutters like myself

This show was on broadcast television, and also available via illegal means.

I liked what they did with Michael at the end. I was feeling pretty underwhelmed by the last episode's vision of heaven - like, really, this is all it is? But after watching this one I thought maybe that was the point. Because, you know, all these people are actually dead. And even in this universe where there's an afterlife that gives you everything you've ever wanted, nothing beats getting to actually live your life.

michael's ending was great, as was tahani's, i like that she essentially became an afterlife party planner

my favorite part was cosmic derek

Schur pointed out an (I think) important detail about Chidi's exit. Everyone else took a seat on the bench, but Chidi, who spent his whole life tying himself in knots to make decisions, walked through without any hesitation whatsoever.

that was lovely. I mean the decisiveness of chidi’s exit specifically, but also the whole thing.

The Mary Steenburgen cameo <3

Also the fact that she was a guitar teacher:

In 2007, Steenburgen underwent minor surgery on her arm, which required a general anesthetic; shortly thereafter, she began experiencing "music (...) playing in her head day and night".[12] She subsequently took music lessons so that she could write down what she was hearing, and by 2013 had almost 50 songwriting credits.[12] She has collaborated with musicians from Nashville and was also signed to Universal Music as a songwriter.

I teared up a bit during that.

I had no idea she was Ted Danson's wife. I was thinking "oh, another Justified connection"

I’m going through an amicable ish divorce and the Eleanor-Chidi part fuckin destroyed me.

Feel like this episode accidentally romanticizes suicide.

hey it also jokes about eternal torture

I disagree that it romanticizes suicide. They step through the door not to escape their life, or because they feel something missing from it, but the opposite: they feel like it is complete and they are at peace. It's more about acceptance of death and the unknown.

That’s why I said accidental. Because I worry people might feel like if they perceive they are at peace with the decision to go- which is not the same as needing to escape, but it’s an easy shift in interpretation to logically apply, and many times suicidal people DO feel a huge relief when they’ve decided that they are going to do it so it might feel similar to the way the characters “knew” (felt a calmness). I know it was different and that it applied uniquely to the afterlife scenario in the show’s universe. Just had some parallels.

They step through the door not to escape their life, or because they feel something missing from it, but the opposite: they feel like it is complete and they are at peace. It's more about acceptance of death and the unknown.

Suicide is suicide no matter the motive!

The show is very heavily tilted toward viewing everything through the lens of philosophy, where suicide has been treated as an existential moral and ethical subject for centuries. And like much of philosophy, the handling is strangely detached from the sensate and emotional reality most of us experience as "life".

That's kind of my overall statement about the last couple seasons really

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Friday, January 31, 2020 7:34 AM (yesterday)

Personally, I mostly disliked the last couple of seasons was because the show let its saccharine tone (which was always there) overtake everything else at the expense of its initially adventurous storytelling (and I'm not talking just about plot twists), not to mention everything felt so pat considering the show used to focus so much on grey areas - I felt the episode with Michael and Bad Janet was the show's absolute nadir

That all being said, I liked the finale more than I expected

I definitely found S3&4 a decline from the very high baseline of 2 and even more so 1 but this show is like wings, even when it's bad it's pretty good

Where by "wings" I mean wings as in Stupid Nick's, not the sitcom Wings, which I think was always bad

Suicide is suicide no matter the motive!

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, February 1, 2020 1:28 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Good point.

I think the show is trying to present it as, essentially, ghosts moving on when their last mission is completed, loose ends are tied up, etc. That's something we're all used to seeing in supernatural stories, and we usually see it as fundamentally different from suicide because we're very aware that an afterlife is not a life. It comes across as different here because up to now the show has presented the afterlife as essentially the same as real life - you change, you grow, you meet new people, you're afraid of what comes next, etc. It makes sense that they'd do that - a show where we're constantly reminded that the characters are well and truly dead would be pretty depressing. But they are dead, and they've already had their one shot at life, and everything else is just - tying up loose ends.

I think Michael's ending really underscored that. His joy at getting to tell a stranger to take it sleazy was lovely, but it's also a reminder of what the Good Place doesn't have - the ordinary, everyday delight of just being alive. So while I can see why it could look like romanticizing suicide, I saw it as just the opposite: a reminder that what we all have right now - just being alive and breathing and getting junk mail - is worth more than a universe full of free-flowing shrimp.

Great post. I was hoping they would edge a little closer toward a heaven-is-a-place-on-earth message, but it’s definitely there if you’re looking for it.

Thanks! I do think they confused the issue a little in "Patty" with the way they introduced the door. I would have liked it better if, instead of saying, "Here's this thing that will make eternal existence bearable: a way out!" they'd said, "You know what? Maybe eternal happiness isn't what the Good Place is for. Maybe it's to let you do all the things you didn't get a chance to do in life, and when you've done them, you can move on." Based on the last episode, I think that's where they were going, but initially presenting the door as a solution to existential ennui introduced a suicidal element that didn't need to be there.

I think the show is trying to present it as, essentially, ghosts moving on when their last mission is completed, loose ends are tied up, etc. That's something we're all used to seeing in supernatural stories, and we usually see it as fundamentally different from suicide because we're very aware that an afterlife is not a life. It comes across as different here because up to now the show has presented the afterlife as essentially the same as real life - you change, you grow, you meet new people, you're afraid of what comes next, etc.

This is a really interesting point, and it does make one imagine a version of season 4 that was about Eleanor realizing that she was actually NOT Eleanor the person who lived in Arizona but something more like the ghost of Eleanor, and had been ever since the shopping carts hit her. Making the bonding between Eleanor, Michael, and Janet more meaningful because it would come from Eleanor realizing that she, like them, was despite physical appearance not a person. But that would have been a REALLY different show.

all I know is this:
I experienced fear-of-dying, existential-level panic attacks so bad that they would wake me from my sleep from when i was around 10 well into adulthood. Bad. Really bad. Havent had one in a couple of years & feel like maybe I am finally past it.

But this episode, from the moment Jason said he was ready to go just dug into those fears so deep, i was crying pretty much non-stop. I even winced when the camera followed Eleanor through the door.

This episode was great but man it was hard going. Just grappling with the open conversations about finality. Maybe helpful too? I dunno. I loved the concept of the wave returning to the water, that really stuck w me.

manny jacinto has been a treasure since day 1 but man, his face at the moment he realizes he’s played the perfect game and he’s complete...

'Everyone has the option to die off'.
'I never knew that.'
'No. There are bound to be a few surprises. Did you really want to be able to predict it all?'
'And how do they die? Do they kill themselves? Do you kill them?
Margaret looked a bit shocked at the crassness of my idea. 'Goodness, no. As I said, it's democratic nowadays. If you want to die off, you do. You just have to want it for long enough, and that's it, it happens. Death isn't a matter of hazard or gloomy inevitability, the way it is the first time around. We've got free will sorted here, as you may have noticed.'
...
'And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?'
She looked at me levelly, her glance telling me to be calm. 'Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years, calculated by old time, of course. But yes, everyone takes the option sooner or later'.
'So it's just like the first time around? You always die in the end?'
'Yes, except don't forget the quality of life here is much better. People die when they've had enough, not before."
...
'And who asks for death soonest?'
'I think ask is the wrong word. It's something you want. There aren't any mistakes here. If you want it enough, you die, that's always been the ruling principle.'
'So?'
'So. Well, I'm afraid - to answer your question - that the people who ask for death earliest are a bit like you. People who want an eternity of sex, beer, drugs, fast cars - that sort of thing. They can't believe their luck at first, and then, a few hundred years later, they can't believe their bad luck. That's the sort of people they are, they realize. They're stuck with themselves. Millennia after millenia of being themselves. They tend to die of soonest'.

(From Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters)

Thanks for that, Dowd - I read that book about 20 years ago and feel like revisiting it.

eleanor/chidi imo

i was still often devastated and felt like it was a solid ending but michael schur's romantic couplings really alienate me from his shows

I also felt like Eleanor and Chidi's romantic relationship was the weak point of this whole programme, and I feel like it would have been a much richer series if they hadn't bothered with it and had just been super-close friends. But Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt are the greatest.

man this hit me, but still pretty funny. fav moments: cosmic derek, nick offerman, and everything involving jason.

i was glad that they shouted out the leftovers in the beginning, cause the ep had a type of intense emotionalism that reminded me a lot of the leftovers' afterlife episodes.

uh, kinda spoilers i guess

I thought this was as perfect an ending as you could hope for.

it was definitely an a propos ending for the show it became over the last couple seasons

we liked the finale, there were for sure some tears. the last season might've been hit + miss but i do think they nailed an effective finale. i agree that the final door bit was disquieting but in a good + interesting way. it reminded me (sry for bothering ya'all w/ my own personal beliefs itt one last time) of this idea in some jewish traditions that the afterlife is a process first of shedding all of the impediments and flaws that we worked on in the living world (normally conceptualized in the place of gehennim where ones sins are burnt away) and then heaven being this place of infinite levels of closeness to god. the interesting bit where it coincides imo is that each level that you scale growing closer to god is a level where your own differentiation + distinctiveness is blurred next to the infinite godhead. i don't think there's supposed to be a point where you totally slip away into the nothingness (since afterlife is supposed to be a holding pattern for the resurrection of the dead which is explicitly about differentiation/specificity) but there's definitely this concept of being nullified before the infinite creator such that yr essence and the essence of that which animates all creation becomes porous. that's how i imagined their final door. the show did get me thinking about my conceptions of afterlife and the world to come (as distinct from the afterlife). acc to many kabbalists there will be two messianic periods - one will be within the natural world and the other will be supernatural. the one within the natural world will still include crazy things like all nations of the world being at peace, but the supernatural one will have stuff like resurrection of the dead. i was thinking about some of the more interesting things i've learned about the second period - what makes them interesting is that they're impossible to understand as literally stated. like that we'll slay the leviathan fish and cover a tent with its skin and feast on it for like thousands + thousands of years.

I have said this on multiple other threads, but I get tired of the dramatic payoff of these kind of upper-middlebrow comedy stories being “let’s make the audience care about if these characters get together in s3” instead of “let’s focus on entertaining and surprising our viewers with great plotting and writing.” Feels increasingly like “catching the feels” high concept is the new laugh track.

Obviously this show feels like it does more than just that; I should maybe start another thread.

In any case, once Good Place brought in the judge, I think that was one too many TWISTS for me and I never got completely back on board. Ending was mostly satisfying but various bad choices (take it sleazy?) and a general sense that some corners had been cut (and many added) left me outside looking in for dramatic closure. Tbrr I will still watch the JANET! spinoff though.

srsly - really should not be feasting on any kind of fish after the first day

dammit xpost

Part of what bugs me is how the show wants to have its cake and eat it too. Between the nudge-the-other-person-on-the-couch meta-comedy (Steenbergen! Offerman! Hey look it’s the show runner!) and then the “Don’t wake me when you leave to die forever” bathos, the theme vacillates too much for me to get into a groove. Any emotions I get feel heavy handed and overly directed.

Anyways, pass the Leviathan.

yeah a little bit it felt like crying at a particularly deft manipulative commercial but also you know you watch a show for a certain number of seasons you often catch feels at the end. even ones that overstayed their welcome a little bit. considering how challenging the premise ended up being i think they did a very good but imperfect job.

Yeah I mean that's the thing, mostly when this show failed it failed at trying to do something interesting, which is more than I can say for almost any other show, and a lot of the time it didn't fail.

It's definitely a thing where after a couple seasons, a formerly wry & funny show will just start toying with your feelings for your imaginary friends. That said, this show getting sentimental shouldn't be a surprise.

Ending was mostly satisfying but various bad choices (take it sleazy?)

pobody's nerfect