Discussion YMMV / TheGoodPlace

I believe Narm is being misused here. Pulling for discussion (Note: I also posted this in the Narm cleanup thread:

• Narm:
  • From his first moments onscreen, Brent was a fairly obvious Hate Sink. Casually racist? Check. Misogynist? Check. Running a business that damages the environment? Check. Constantly talking up his golf game, which is objectively not very strong? Check. As such, some fans felt he came across less as a character and more as a collection of traits, making his final unfinished apology to Chidi feel unearned and false.
    • These aren't dramatic, they're jokes. Only the final confession could even qualify as Narm, and the entry isn't claiming that it's unintentionally funny, just criticizing it.'
  • Similarly, Brent commits one big, awful act in the afterlife that turns his teammates against him and causes Eleanor and Michael to doubt he can be reformed. What is this act, you ask? He writes a book that offends Simone and Tahani, and gets angry when they criticize him for it. A shitty thing to do, yes, but contrasted with Michael—an actual demon who gleefully tortured decent people for thousands of years—and his Heel–Face Turn, treating his poorly written book as a Moral Event Horizon seems a bit silly.
    • Again, played for laughs the whole time through, up til the end which isn't addressed in the slightest. Though I have to say, the desire to defend Brent reeks of Wants a Prize for Basic Decency by proxy. The point is that constant little shitty behaviors are bad, and not calling them out makes them worse.
• Narm Charm:
  • Eleanor's breakdown over toothbrush holders coming in family packs. For context: she was shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond after her father died and had assumed the multi-pack was for someone as rich as Bill Gates After learning they're for a family, she starts talking about how the parent toothbrushes protect the little ones and keep them safe, allowing them to talk about feelings, before bursting into tears. It keeps swinging between sad and hilarious as she cries into a toilet plunger and the poor employee helping her tries to switch her to tissues instead.
    • This is absurdity played for hilarity. I don't think it's Narm Charm so much as... a joke landing.
  • Michael bursting into tears when he sees Team Cockroach is safe in "Leap to Faith". Silly? Maybe a little. So, so sweet? Absolutely.
    • This might count. Michael's reaction is laughably cheesy but it makes the scene even better.
  • Jason asking a series of typical Jason questions to Chidi on learning the other will sacrifice his memories of the Soul Sqaud and Eleanor, ending with, "Will you still remember pizza?" In context it's very silly and poignant because Jason is tearing up, and it's his way of expressing fear that he's going to lose his best guy-friend.
    • Honestly not sure on this one.
  • "Oh no, no no no. I made God cry." Hilarious line, but a mind-wiped Chidi says it to Eleanor, believing she's the architect of the neighborhood, after she attempts to torture him and make him better with the Jianyu plot.
    • Again, it's a joke landing. Not unintentional hilarity

Edited by Larkmarn Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them. Hide / Show Replies

Under "Narm: Similarly, Brent commits one big, awful act in the afterlife that turns his teammates against him and causes Eleanor and Michael to doubt he can be reformed. What is this act, you ask? He writes a book that offends Simone and Tahani, and gets angry when they criticize him for it. A shitty thing to do, yes, but contrasted with Michael—an actual demon who gleefully tortured decent people for thousands of years—and his Heel–Face Turn, treating his poorly written book as a Moral Event Horizon seems a bit silly. Characters' digs at Baby Boomers, non-vegetarians, white male leaders, Arizonans, and so on have struck some fans as unsubtle attempts at pandering to the Tumblr crowd."

It wasn't that Brent wrote a book that made him irredeemable; it's what followed. Cardinal rule of writing is to not put blatant expies of people you know as racist caricatures and broadcast your creepy crush on a woman of color. This is a no-no for fanfic and original fiction. That isn't bad, but what is bad is when he gets in a fight with the rest of the cast for calling it "racist, sexist poppycock" and refusing to apologize for offending them and demanding complos. Then he shoved Chidi who accidentally brushed him with a book and apologized. Seriously. Eleanor and Michael switched gears because it wasn't the book but that he remained a jerk even when everyone was telling him what he could do to make things right.

Obviously Michael was a demon who did wrong by torturing everyone for three hundred years. The difference was that Michael took the initiative to change when he realized that his methods weren't working, and he never actually physically tortured the humans. We could argue the cruelest thing he did was taunt Eleanor and Chidi about their love not being real in the Pet Reboot, and Michael makes up for it by convincing Eleanor he was wrong. Also, need we mention that he defected and was prepared to be tortured for eternity in turn to save four people and later all of humanity? Brent hasn't done anything so selfless even when given milder opportunities.

Also, what about the Good Place has been about "pandering"? It's a show about morality that features a lot of people of color but many of the main cast is Gen X or Y respectively, at least the humans; Janet and Michael are as old as time. The second episode had Janet mention lightheartedly that Columbus is in the Bad Place for raping and pillaging, and season two had Michael decrying millenials, that is millenial demons. Everyone is a target; even Eleanor when trying to become vegetarian said that she got ill and that's a good reason to eat meat.

There have been multiple additions about John, the gossip columnist who harassed Tahani on Earth, that specifically address the fact that he's white and Tahani is Pakistani as problematic because of his "privilege."

Tahani Al-Jamil was raised in the 1% of the 1% and had every single door in the world opened to her. She's friends with more celebrities and people of influence than most people have even heard of. She had her every whim granted and her only difficulty in life came from her own family.

How is she less privileged than a guy online who says mean things and happens to be white?

Don't worry, I wiped my shoes before stepping into your echo chamber. Hide / Show Replies

Removed:

• Accidental Aesop: The fact that demons and bad people (starting with Eleanor, continuing with Jason and the Bad Place delegation) are almost always portrayed as crude and into "trashy" elements of pop culture, while good people are well-dressed, well-groomed and devoted to the finer things, gives the moral stance of the show a hint of snobbery that is probably not intended - it's easy to get the impression of "upper-class good, lower-class bad." This is somewhat softened by the revelation that Chidi and Tahani (who are both "classy" characters) are in fact bad people too, but that only goes so far given that nearly every demon and every reference to sin we see after that continues the theme of embodying Eleanor's and Jason's bad traits rather than Chidi's and Tahani's. The impression ends up more like, "upper-class sometimes bad, lower-class always bad." Still, Eleanor isn't actually a trashy person, she's got middle-class sensibilities and also despises reality shows and other things, though that could just reinforce that those trashy things are much worse, and might even set up a ranking system where "upper class mostly good, middle class divided, lower class mostly bad" is enforced.

This entry seems to be arguing with and contradicting itself too much to form any conclusive statement.