The Good Place

I really want a spin-off series of Michael's life on Earth, featuring him, his guitar teacher, and Jason the dog. That would be great if they actually managed to do this.

I feel like Michael kinda got screwed. They should at least have let him go down to Earth as a young man.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 19th 2020 at 8:26:59 AM

Well, the way they phrased the deal they only said he'd be on earth "for a number of years" - they never promised him a lifetime. Plus as far as you know, he might get 50-odd years looking like that and die because of some internal celestial timer rather than old age.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Feb 19th 2020 at 4:16:44 PM

"I have a whole past now! Apparently, I'm someone named Ted Danson."

What's really trippy is that because of Jeremy Bearimy, it's actually possible that Michael's life on Earth is taking place before any of his friends were born.

I assumed that it was taking place in present day or 20 Minutes into the Future.

Be funny if Michael's actually on Earth in tandem with the humans.

Spoiler folder.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 20th 2020 at 8:41:20 AM

That would be funny, but I think that the humans and Michael are not on Earth at the same time.

I'm a new Trooper,and recently finished the show. I really liked it overall(although season 4 was weak,compared to the rest,IMO). That being said,I think TGP didn't deal well with the general theme of bigotry. On the first three seasons, they didn't mention how prejudice would interfere with the four humans' lives(Chidi,Jason and Tahani likely had to deal with racism,Eleanor with biphobia from both straight and gay people - "pick a side" and similar shirt,and there's misogyny as well). Despite the whole theme of the show(people are products of their circumstances), that didn't bother me,since it was clear to me how their lives shaped them. However, the introduction of Brent retroactively shat it all to me. The guy was spewing racism and sexist shirt all the time,and generally offending everyone around. However, I couldn't care less about it,considering how the TGP world didn't seem to be nearly as much prejudice as there's in the real world. And it would've been pretty easy to do so. Why not putting some quick scene of the Team Cockroach being discriminated against, like they did with Tiana in Princess and the Frog(Tiana not being able to buy the restaurant place,even if she had the money,because she was a poor black woman),for example? But no,they just put some strawman(some trooper even put "Strawman Political" in YMMV The Good Place,mentioning Brent). That way,it wouldn't feel as void as it did,to me. Ironically, if they treated bigotry as something more normalized,instead of just saying "people who belong to this demographic are bad", Brent would feel a lot more like an awful person,and less like some bogeyman. On this topic, I didn't like the whole "Haha,Brent is still arguing if it's okay to ask a woman to smile after 15.000+ attempts",and think Brent got the narrative short stick. Like,what did his book have to warrant Moral Event Horizon? Okay,I understand it's very bad,and I have no problem with how the humans reacted(although, that " standing up to Brent" moment felt a bit shallow to me,for the reasons I mentioned before. Racism/sexism are bad,but it doesn't seem to be as serious in that world,IMO). But it doesn't seem much worse than what,let's say,Eleanor did before her development kicked in. Even worse was the fact that Michael treated Brent as irredeemable after the book,IMO. He is a former torture architect,and had seen way worse people(and was way worse himself). Besides,Brent having little to no progress is broken continuity, IMO,because of his last moments on the show. He seemed to start acknowledging how much of an awful person he was. I understand not wanting to have the guy in Heaven that soon,but why not have him asking something more complex,like class,race and social nuances to apply to his behavior? Another issue I had is that they didn't even address Brent's classism much. Like,doesn't matter how much of a "cishet white guy" he was,I'm pretty sure his Earth Life wouldn't be so good without his money and status. Besides, I'm pretty sure that all the afluenza Brent had protected him from consequences. Someone on this forum said Eleanor forked up by not making anyone thinking they're an impostor,and I agree. I'm just bummed that they didn't address it(they should've used Brent's speech saying he earned his place fair and square. If that gremlin thought that,there's something wrong about it). That being said,the experiment was supposed to be very important for the fate of humanity, I wish it had more screentime(that would've benefited especially Simone's character, IMO. She had plenty of potential, but ended up being bland because the writers had too much in their hands to properly write her. And I'd have made her British (the actress is a Brit,ended up with an annoying voice trying to imitate an Australian accent, and the actress has a nice sounding voice) working in Australia because job opportunity or hired an actual Aussie) and development,while elaborating more on

tl;dr, Brent got the shaft, narratively speaking. The writers didn't care enough to make him an actual character, so much as a blatant caricature of Trump.

To me Brent was more of the stereotypical 'boomer' kinda guy. He'll get there eventually—it'll just take a while. His genuine remorse to Chidi at the end really moved me, and so did Michael saying that even though he got 1% worse overall, there's no telling how much he could improve tomorrow. Stuff like that gives me a lot of hope. :)

The Good Place as a whole gives e so much hope, not only for humanity but for myself and people close to me <3

Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 28th 2020 at 3:50:12 AM

To me Brent seemed rather oblivious to what other people thought of him(probably why Chidi finally saying "You're a bad person!" had such an effect), whereas Trump lets all his detractors live rent-free in his head.

Brent isn't a caricature of anything. He's a legit problem with our society. I've met my share of Brents.

I vividly remember, at a company I used to work for, there was a policy where all of the staff would be divided randomly each month into groups, each of which would be taken to lunch by a different member of upper management. So this month you're going out to eat with the VP of Engineering, next month with the VP of Business Analytics, etc.

I was at lunch with the VP of Marketing, and he told an anecdote about a business trip to India. After stepping off the plane, he saw a street performer playing music. He stopped and listened to the music, and he thought it was really great. Then the performer indicated a tip jar he had, and the VP realized that the man wanted to be paid for the music he was providing. So the VP grabbed the guy and told him, "I'm not paying you one CENT, you lousy bum!" and threw him.

That was the end of the story. The story he brought up, mind you, and was telling us of his own volition and with zero prompting. He paused here with a big smile on his face, like he was waiting for applause. In his mind, he was the hero of this tale.

I remember that story vividly because that was the day I became disillusioned with for-profit businesses. It was the day I realized that all my work was doing was putting money in the pockets of the Brents of the world.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:58:15 AM

The guy who plays Brent, Benjamin Koldyke, mentioned in The Good Place The Podcast that he knew a lot of people like Brent, in fact used to be like Brent himself, was glad to have the opportunity to take down that kind of person, and then applauded the writing staff for giving the character more dimension and depth than Koldyke's usually given when asked to play characters like that.

So.

I've seen my fair share of Brents too. (I think most of us have XD)

The two last replies before this do have good points,and I stand corrected(especially because the actor used to be a Brent himself, according to you,and that's the kind of perspective needed to write such characters,since they aren't Jackashes but still have an inner Po V). However, there's still a flaw in worldbuilding to me. Like,the Brent types are bad in the real world, for obvious reasons. But the TGP universe doesn't seem to have nearly as much prejudice and bigotry as there's in ours. Like,when did any of the Soul Squad suffer racism/classism/sexism/queerphobia(Eleanor) in Earth and/or perpetrate it in a meaningful way, due to environmental influences?

Eleanor continued patronizing the coffee place run by a big-time sexual harasser, partly because it was convenient, partly to spite her boyfriend because he did want to boycott it, and that triggered her "you're not better than me!" instinct.

To be fair, Tahani is/was born surrounded by luxury and extreme wealth, to the point that she brags about donating billions. Someone with that kind of huge wealth and status, even being poc and a woman, would experience comparatively less hardships in that regard. She's the epitome of 'I can do literally whatever I want because money.'

And Elanor actually did suffer sexism from the creepy boss at the scam job she had. He flirts with her and I remember him making an out of line comment in one of the flash backs. It's meant to establish him as creepy and pathetic.

Edited by Zanthype on Feb 29th 2020 at 2:50:43 AM

Some things in that episode got a bit of a Strawman Has a Point reaction from me. Like, what's so bad about watching a Roman Polański movie?

One thing I found odd is that even though casual sexism appears to be an important part of the demonic ethos, I don't remember any racism among them.

A lot of shows in general avoid it. That's not a symptom of TGP, that's a symptom of our society. Even disney shows will often completely avoid it whilst tackling sexism.

Also re: Roman Polanski, the show doesn't make the point you should cut off all bad things. They make the point that's literally impossible. the issue was the boyfriend, as he pointed out, isn't it ok to Try sometimes?

I remember when the Bad Place group come to the "Good Place" back in S1 with Trevor, the girls do Karaoke to the Nixon tapes, specifically mocking the Jewish for fun.

All I'll say about Polanski is that he raped a child and never paid the price for it (he even won an Academy Award in 2002 despite having plead guilty), so I'd never begrudge anyone for avoiding his media.

Edited by Zanthype on Feb 29th 2020 at 3:44:02 AM

In terms of "Where's all the x-ism?", Michael deliberately invoked racism when he built his neighborhood. He "accidentally mistakes" a Filipino man for Taiwanese. Y'know. Because all Asians look alike.

Jason even calls it out in the third episode. "Heaven is so racist."

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 29th 2020 at 7:56:35 AM

Other instances of pre-Brent racism: the "first white guy to wear dreadlocks" is commemorated in the Bad Place Museum's Hall of Low-Grade Crappiness in "Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent"; Trevor does a "comical" Jamaican accent in "The Brainy Bunch".

Speaking of Brent, I could use more opinions on the YMMV discussion page; there's discussion on him on Narm and Some A Nvils Need To Be Dropped... the latter of which sounds like there's issues with what's really racist (hint: it's people saying POC shouldn't excuse racism).

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 2nd 2020 at 1:30:22 PM

Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped is wildly misused; it's supposed to be "the story is better because the Aesop is Anvilicious", not "this Aesop is very important".