The Good Place

Maybe Janet not knowing how Doug was doing form before she came to Earth isn't a Plot Hole. Maybe it's another sign something is wrong with the system!

I speculate that the next episode will involve Janet conversing with other Janets to find out the problem.

EDIT: oh no I'm sad

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:03:43 PM

Janet's knowledge of everything in the universe seems to be more a store of information that she can access at will, rather than something she automatically knows. There have been a few occasions where she mentions consulting a wide breadth of writings on a particular subject within a fraction of a second, indicating that she doesn't always have the facts about everything immediately at hand.

Since Michael made the decision to go see Doug Forcett without consulting with Janet, and was obviously very excited about getting to meet such a celebrity, I can easily imagine Janet chose not to access the information she has on Doug Forcett so as not to ruin Michael's trip.

She also was more surprised at how miserable he was than how he was living in general.

I had a theory about Gen secretly being a demon or something but it'll be really interesting to see what the actual big reveals are XD I bet the 8% Doug didn't see is important too.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:21:14 PM

I'm surprised Michael was surprised at Shaun's assertion that Doug's screwed. Doug is absolutely 100% totally screwed by the points system as we understand it.

The whole reason the Soul Squad is convinced that they can never get into the Good Place is because deliberate point-grinding, the same kind of point-grinding that Doug's doing, constitutes a corrupted motivation that devalues any good deeds that one does. Being a Happiness Pump solely for the sake of getting into the Good Place isn't doing shit to improve Doug's accounting.

EDIT: As an aside, while I expected the show to explore the idea that an absolute morality system is pretty f*cked, I was surprised at the assertion that even within the bounds of Black/White morality, the point assignments themselves are f*cked.

The idea that the Good/Bad Place system doesn't even work correctly as a Black/White system is a direction I didn't expect, and it makes all those jokes about the point totals in past episodes - "Oh, he's from Florida? Yeah, he belongs in the Bad Place." - into clever foreshadowing instead of one-off gags.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 18th 2018 at 10:51:49 AM

Michael had a case of hero-worship going on cause Doug got 92% correct.

The difference between Doug and the Soul Squad, though, is that Doug doesn't know that the afterlife is real. He is taking everything on faith. Of course, he's still point-grinding for the sake of getting into the Good Place, but Michael and Janet probably thought he was smarter than that (after all, he did get 92% right).

They were also really surprised at how miserable it made him :< Poor Doug.

I thought it was funny how they got Michael McKean to play the same role and the exact opposite role he played on Better Call Saul.

Remember, Shaun didn't just claim Doug Forcett was going to the Bad Place, but also all the Soul Squad's families, seeming quite confident that their efforts to redeem them won't work.

Here's a thought: what if the demons weren't just on Earth to recapture these four humans (and Michael and Janet) but to expose the truth about the afterlife to the whole world, dooming everyone to the Bad Place the same way the Soul Squad was doomed?

New theory about the upcoming episode's title! What if all the 802 Janets from other reboots plus the already-existing 25 previous versions are there too? That's 828 Janets!

I LOVE this theory.

That would be cool.

I predict some existentialism. The uncertainty in the title as to whether Janet is plural or singular suggests to me a question as to whether or not our Janet is this one specific incarnation of Janet or if she is the sum total of all Janets involved in Michael's experimental neighborhood.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 19th 2018 at 2:06:26 AM

I think the best theory I read is that going to the void will make everyone look like Janet so D'arcy plays everyone as well as Janet.

EDIT: Found some interesting info about the latest episode via the podcast! (Paraphrased from Reddit ^^;) The clause that dooms the Soul Squad does not apply to Doug because that would imply that literally every person who believes they'll be judged for actions on Earth after they die will go to the Bad Place. Since he doesn't know for certain he's right, Doug's points are not being voided just because he believes he's getting points.

Also, while Doug is making himself miserable over trying to be good and seems to genuinely care about things/people, Tahani did good things to earn the praise of her parents and to stick it to her sister, and by her own admission had no actual concern for the people she was helping.

Of course, according to Shawn it doesn't matter cause they're all Bad Place-bound for some other reason. o.o

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 21st 2018 at 8:01:29 AM

So, assuming that the real Good Place resembles the fake one where possible; the explanation video shows you don't just need a positive score, you need a very positive score. The freeze-frame bonuses we see have some pretty petty examples of negatives. So the kind of occams razor theory is that you can still be what we'd consider a good person and still just not be good enough for the Good Place.

You know what, why not. The Good Place is actually pretty barren, with only a few neighbourhoods, because there aren't enough people who meet the points total.

We learned in "The Worst Possible Use of Free Will" that the soul mates bit was something that Micheal made up to make his humans miserable. So IDK how much the real Good Place resembles Micheals fake one.

There wouldn't be any reason for Michael to model his neighborhood on the real Good Place. The only people that his neighborhood needs to impress are the four humans who wouldn't have a frame of reference by which to know the difference.

Besides, we already know that Michael built the place for the specific intention of appearing appealing while actually being underwhelming or annoying in ways that won't necessarily be obvious at first glance. So, for instance, that's why there's frozen yogurt shops everywhere; per his conversation with Janet, frozen yogurt is a food that humans think they enjoy but is actually kind of a bummer.

The whole thing was built from the ground up to be an aesthetically-pleasant torture chamber.

EDIT: Incidentally, season one is a trip to rewatch. Tahani having one of the lowest point totals in the entire neighborhood and Michael "accidentally" letting her discover that in the course of researching the sinkhole is a particularly clever twist of the knife. Michael made her the Tahani to Eleanor's Kamilah!

Michael managing to spend an entire episode totally badmouthing Chidi's life's work to his face without ever dropping his guise as Helpful Angelic Benefactor also holds a special place in my heart.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 22nd 2018 at 7:36:34 AM

Michael mentioned in the second season that he made it as close to the real Good Place as possible because a lie is easier to tell if it's closer to the truth. So it wasn't for fooling the humans, at least not directly; it was to reduce the chance of the demons slipping up and revealing something. For example, while he needed a Janet because they're responsible for the stability of the neighborhood, he could have gotten away with never letting the humans see the Bad Janet. The humans wouldn't have known anything was missing. Except the demons would have quickly gotten annoyed at not having instant access to everything, which would cause problems.

I'm curious what the exact problem with the points system is going to be. Maybe Shawn recently took over the entire afterlife, and this becomes an aesop of leaving bad people in charge of things? Except he said the humans legally belonged to the Bad Place, which is quite different from a coup.

I'm still not sure how much we're supposed to credit Shaun's remark there. On the one hand, Michael believed it when Shaun said that all their loved ones and Doug were going to the Bad Place, so that conveys to the audience that we're supposed to believe it as well.

But then Michael inquired for details, Shaun was just like "Blah blah f*ck you", and Michael abruptly decided that Shaun actually had nothing to say worth hearing. So it's ambiguous as to whether or not Shaun was talking out of his ass.

Maybe there isn't a Good Place No, that'd be stupid. The existence of Good Place Janets is concrete evidence that the Good Place is a real thing, plus we've heard demons talking openly about the Good Place like it's real in situations where there were no humans around to deceive.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 23rd 2018 at 12:49:12 PM

I was watching the season 3 promo now that it's almost over, and one thing I noticed that I hadn't before is how Kristen Bell describes what happens. "But how much can they meddle with things on Earth before they truly disrupt the entire timeline of the planet?"

At first I thought it was a throwaway thing like when Gen brings up her list of weird stuff that happened on Earth thanks to Michael, and that it seemed to have been forgotten as the season went on, but given the titles of the last season 3 episodes that haven't aired yet I think it's more sinister. What if they really are breaking the timeline somehow, maybe just by being alive at all or not dying when they 'should' have?

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 28th 2018 at 6:34:00 AM

For reference, the revealed titles of the last four episodes in season 3 are:

• Janet(s)
• The Book of Dougs
• Chidi Sees the Time-Knife
• Pandemonium

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 28th 2018 at 8:05:43 AM

Oh dang.

Between all of them, I am super intrigued by what the Time-Knife is supposed to be. And how pandemonium arises not from Chidi stealing the Time-Knife or Chidi possessing the Time-Knife or even Chidi using the Time-Knife, but from him seeing the Time-Knife. I'm going to guess that it's probably not a literal knife.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 28th 2018 at 12:44:29 PM

My first thoughts on what a time-knife would be is the subtle knife from His Dark Materials but it's likely something more out there.

Also Pandemonium's the capital of hell in Paradise Lost, so might be a double meaning with that title.

Time-Knife is that company that has those obnoxious ads for mail-order videocassettes, right?

Remember: episode titles often don't mean what you might think they mean. "The Worst Possible Use of Free Will" was actually just Michael saying he's going to pick up their friends from the airport. "Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent" were just the fake names that the gang picked for themselves. "The Burrito" was...a burrito.

So I wouldn't get too worked up over "Chidi Sees the Time-Knife." It probably means something completely different than what you think. Or maybe it doesn't.

Edited by alliterator on Nov 28th 2018 at 8:43:03 AM