The Good Place

Yep. Because while he has seemingly done a good job of avoiding negative points, he's not doing anything to earn sufficient positive points to get in.

The system would be horribly unfair even if it was intended to allow anyone above a "neutral" score to get into the Good Place. But it's intended to only allow the best in, which means the bar is just too high to clear.

We know someone hasn't got in for a while but we still don't really know how many people got in before that. Presumably using stuff with slavery in the supply chain gave then negative points back then too. I guess the amount of people getting in to the Good Place probably declined as globalisation increased?

Word of God was that they chose the date they did because that's when globalization really started, every part of the world touching every other part. So yeah, there were probably plenty of other huge swaths of humanity that got negative points through no fault of their own. I wouldn't be surprised if no one in Rome got in, for example, due to their slavery and imperialism. But while Rome was doing all that, on the other side of the world the Native American tribes were unconnected and were doing fine. Except for everything with the Aztecs and the Mayans.

The Good Place people did say there had been dips before. Presumably they never bothered to take a look at those dips and see what the actual problem was.

Yeah, everyone associated with slavery probably went to the Bad Place...but then there were people who weren't associated with slavery, that were able to live their entire lives without contributing to slavery, and they went to the Good Place. The point is that now, the world is so interconnected, that trying to not contribute to something bad is almost impossible. You have to, basically, do something massively good and then die immediately afterward, so that you don't have time to contribute to anything negative.

Which is what Mindy St. Clair did. Damn, this is show is smart.

The only thing that bugs me about the 'interconnectedness' explanation is that there are still small tribes of people (and there were more in the last few centuries), who still live very isolated from the outside world. No one from those societies got in in the last 500 years?

Edited by Pseudopartition on Jan 20th 2019 at 2:15:35 PM

Slightly weird way of looking at it but it's entirely possible there's more than one systematic problem; we don't really know where the line for getting into the Good Place is. Someone in an isolated tribe might help out with errands or make a gift or something but they won't start a charity or end slavery so maybe that's just not good enough.

I'd say the interconnectedness problem is just drawing attention to the broader systemic problem. The afterlife is making judgements about people's fundamental nature, and is using their actions on Earth to determine that (as Michael says in his neighborhood's welcome video, "You are all, simply put, good people. But, how do we know that you are good?")

The problem with that, as the characters are coming to realize, is that people's actions are determined heavily by their circumstances. That's what this new experiment is about: to see if people who failed to get into the Good Place under one set of circumstances (living on Earth) can earn enough points to get in under different circumstances (living in Michael's Fake Good Place). If they can, then it shows that the point system is not an accurate gauge of whether someone is fundamentally good or bad.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Oh so they actually did go with Eleanor as a fake Architect, there were too many good jokes they got out of this, and since the final two haven't arrived yet, they can probably get some more mileage out of this for at least another episode.

Simone's back yayyyyyyyyy so I guess this puts the final kibosh on whether Simone's human or not

Tragic amnesia just on one side, well there's something that hasn't been done with Chidi/Eleanor yet

Eleanor shouting "I'm a legit snack!" while sobbing caught me off-guard.

God damn you, Good Place. God damn you for making such a good show and only giving us thirteen episodes and then leaving us with that as a cliffhanger.

That was pretty interesting, neat we're getting more Simone.

I'd guess a good chunk of season 4 will be in this neighborhood but with all the plot-movement of season 3 I could easily be wrong.

"One out of three of those things" was a weirdly heartwarming way of using a running gag.

It occurs to me that Shawn seemingly doesn't suffer any repercussions for the illegal backdoor to Earth since the Judge interrupts him having fun torturing Shakespeare and he's still got significant authority in the Bad Place

There's a bunch of explanations in my mind (far enough on Jeremy Bearimy for it to not matter, he blamed it on Glenn, Michael was the bigger priority, etc.) but none of them quite feel satisfying.

Shawn clearly didn't see that ship tease between Eleanor and Simone earlier in the season. What if it had just ended in polyamory instead?

Wouldn't work. Eleanor and Simone might be cool with it, but Chidi would constantly be freaking out over whether he was showing one romantic partner more affection than the other, and the whole thing would just implode.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

But that's where Tahani comes in as the fourth in this poly group. That way, there are four of them, an even number of partners, and it all works out.

Tahani/Eleanor. And yes, I predict Chidi falls in love with Simone and screws up things with Eleanor.

I also predict that the new comers aren't interested in self-improvement.

Eleanor hated herself when she was an awful person.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Eleanor will definitely see Chidi/Simone coming. She's the one who set them up in the first place. Maybe she'll even have them as soulmates. She's done great at overcoming her selfishness, and sacrificing her love for the sake of literally everyone else is a pretty small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

As for the newcomers and self-improvement, the trick is to make them worried that they might lose their spot in Heaven. That will light a fire under anybody. We'll see what happens, but I doubt the lesson here will be "some people just don't want to improve." It seems like we're leading to an ultimate aesop of "most people, when given the opportunity, will become truly good people... but the world is complicated and doesn't truly give that opportunity to anyone."

I'm curious if Eleanor will end up with powers. Technically she doesn't need them since she can just ask Janet for everything, but it would be more convincing if she could just snap her fingers and warp reality.

So, my thoughts on where the season ended:

1 - Simone and Chidi aren't just going to fall in love and cause drama for Eleanor, methinks. Their tag-team of brilliant minds creates a very real threat of puzzling out the ruse here. Simone's already questioning the scenario she's been presented with; she suggested that The Good Place might just be a construct of her dying synapses.

She's willing to go with it for now anyways, but it does demonstrate an analytical skepticism that could be very dangerous for Michael and Eleanor's experiment, especially when she's the one who has Chidi to bounce ideas off of instead of them.

For all intents and purposes, Chidi's playing for the other team right now and that'd be really dangerous even without Simone.

2 - So. This may be a silly question but. This neighborhood is supposed to recreate the conditions of Michael's original neighborhood. But the conditions of that neighborhood wasn't just a fake Good Place. It was specifically the Bad Place masquerading as the Good Place. Everything in it was an elaborately-crafted psychological torture scenario. The protagonists banded together because of Michael's torments.

So. Like. Does this mean that Eleanor actually has to torture the new group? They can't rise to the occasion unless provided with a challenging occasion to rise to. I hope the season four premiere clarifies this point.

3 - I completely expected Shaun to carefully hand-select subjects who had a personal connection to each of the protagonists, but I was surprised by Tahani's. I thought for sure that Shaun would be sending Kamilah, since we've established both that he can choose literally anyone on Earth and that Jeremy Bearimy means we don't have to care about maintaining an exact timeline.

"Why, Tahani, I would expect nothing less! If even you got into the Good Place then of course I would. Ah ha ha!"

So I was surprised that he sent an asshole critic instead. Though John being responsible for inventing countdown clocks until girls become legally f*ckable is a nice touch of total reprehensible heinousness.

I also thought Eleanor's "F*ck You" resident would be her mom and Jason's would be Pillboy. But Shaun was told to stop before he could send the remaining two residents, so who knows?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 31st 2019 at 11:14:30 AM

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I'm a bit concerned about the fact that John seems to think he actually earned his spot here, since Eleanor didn't do the whole "real John Wheaton" bit.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

I expect it will he half new characters and half established ones, to mix it up.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

I suspect so, yes. Tahani's welcome party was mentioned, as well as people going to Chidi for help. It seems like they're going to be following Michael's playbook for the most part, convincing these people that they're causing problems in the Good Place and they need to improve themselves or everything will fall apart.

Maybe Tahani's reconciliation with Kamilah means that Kamilah no longer fits the "roughly the same amount of bad as the original four" rule any more. And the reconciliation would mean she wouldn't be torture for Tahani to have around.

Likewise with Eleanor's and Jason's people. But, as you said, Shawn was told to knock it off, so I think the last two won't have any direct connections to them.

The fact that they only had five minutes to prepare means that was never really an option this time around. But as long as they do the "bad things John says/does come alive and terrorize the neighborhood" thing, he should get the message.

I don't think they necessarily have to do that bit with John anyway. He strikes me as New Tahani, not New Eleanor, so him thinking he totes belongs here fits the archetype.

John is New Tahani, Simone is New Chidi. Now that those two are established, I expect whoever the next pair is will be the ones who have to fake like they belong here. Eleanor was the last to arrive, after all.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 31st 2019 at 12:35:06 PM

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I point out that Elanor only confessed to Chidi that there was a mistake. And that "real!Eleanor" was brought in much later.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

She confessed that she wasn't supposed to be there and someone "royally forked up." And then, once her bad behavior resulted in bad things happening in the Good Place, she asked him to help her become a better person.

True, but they provided plenty of set up, with constantly talking to Eleanor about good deeds she knew she hadn't done, and even the ability to view a whole life of fake memories on the tv. They could probably skip the memory view thing, but it still requires set up.

Edited by Discar on Jan 31st 2019 at 12:56:41 PM