Amph The Good Place - it really is about the afterlife this time

Conversely...

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The whole "test" could be a set-up, since Gen -- as Judge of the Entire Frickin' Universe -- could simply rule that Michael, as a demonic entity theoretically incapable of developing Good habits and true friendships, has certainly passed a certain boundary.

And since his original Bad Place idea likely cribbed actually true information from how the system works like, for instance, the exact +/- points for doing specific deeds and Gen would then know that that's an incomplete (at best) or flat-wrong (at worst) system of morality, they could try and revamp it into a system of symbiosis whereby -- like the theoretical Good Place soulmate system -- Best Influencers for every person are identified and the system tries to measure if people improve/don't improve based upon their proximity to the Influencers then they get sent to the Good/Bad place.

Lotsa options...

 

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The thought crossed my mind that Michael was the one being tortured this time by having to deal with the four random humans.

 

"The Brainy Bunch"

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Adam Scott in "Step Brothers" and "Parks and Rec" - very funny
Adam Scott as a demon in "The Good Place" - not very funny

I know he's supposed to be rubbing the characters the wrong way, but he was also rubbing me the wrong way to the point that it made this episode mostly non-enjoyable. Michael's inability to snap back with a witty comment was also not funny. I did like that Janet got some time on "Earth" and then her "queue" of requests coming back online in that random hallway was a good call back and also served the plot to push things forward which it was much needed.

But now, more than ever, I definitely think this "Earth" is not only the testing place for the humans, but also for Michael as well. I have a feeling that the doorman is the Judge's boss and he let the demon through, again, as a test for the group and for Michael. Michael cares about these humans and back in Season 1 and 2 he didn't care about anyone so I have a feeling at the end of the Season, maybe Michael get to go to the actual Good Place and not be erased from existence. Not sure what will happen to the humans yet; they do seem to learn and get better but still regress as all humans do.

 

Trevor was great in the first season but his "character" here was definitely a lot less fun, if largely on purpose. I agree with AV Club that this was somewhat of a "meh" episode, which for TGP usually means the show will be totally rejiggering its status quo any minute now.

 

Theory: Simone is an immortal. I don't know exactly who or why--Gen's boss? An avatar of Gen herself? She did admit to crushing on Chidi--but she's been a little too useful for something not to be up there. Plus it would save them from a lot of cliché love triangle nonsense down the line, which as JM notes isn't something they're interested in doing.

 

Eh... I don't necessarily agree with that. But I am sort of liking the theories that The Good Place doesn't really exist in the sense that we're told -- that it's so hard to qualify that there are only like three people (Abraham Lincoln confirmed!) in there.

That the bureaucracy of the afterlife is SO bureaucratic that the standards are so high (or have a typo) that it's nigh-impossible to make it in.

Except Simone would qualify on her own.

 

That’s basically my point—what are the odds that in the totally freakish situation the gang is in, they would immediately stumble upon and befriend such a uniquely perfect person? Someone who apparently worked at the same school as Chidi but he was unaware of until that moment?

Granted, either way we barely know her—remember that we spent several episodes believing Chidi himself belonged in the Good Place before getting a fuller understanding of his personality. Whatever Simone’s full deal is there are bound to be depths we haven’t explored yet. What worries me is that I don’t see a way out of the love triangle that’s fair to her other than “she’s not human”.

In other news, I had the completely random thought this morning that Jason needs to meet Kamilah.

 

FINALLY!!!

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But for serious, this explanation actually works pretty well. The thing that's been bugging me for *checks date* a year and 13 days is that Mindy St. Clair seemed to have been in the Medium Place for thirty years, which wouldn't make sense it the entire afterlife existed in some sort of endless "present" moment. But if it's a closed loop of some sort (even if the workings of it are pure handwavium) that allows them to keep telling jokes "set" in the present--"when Jared from Subway gets here", etc--while still having an infinite amount of time to work with.

 

Look at you Coop, getting a shout-out on AV Club...

https://tv.avclub.com/the-good-place-annotated-the-ballad-of-donkey-doug-1829978914

 

Occurs to me I might be getting my other wish in the next episode.

 

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It's kind of weird that Jason didn't really meet Kamilah has he hung with Janet the whole episode. Maybe they were briefly introduced but I don't recall it happening. I suppose Tahani wouldn't really brag about her new husband to her sister as he's not much to brag about. I'm glad the sisters got over their issues. Hopefully we'll leave that storyline behind because the two sisters fighting was very catty and uninteresting.

As for the other storyline with Michael and Eleanor, I didn't think that story was as strong. I don't know why Michael was trying to be an authoritative father figure in a story that was about supposed to be about mothers and daughters.

The best line of the episode was Michael talking about using the bathroom.

 

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WE WERE SO CLOSE!!!

I was actually pretty touched by the sisters' hug at the end, moreso than Eleanor's stuff with her mom--their parents being the real problem has been such an obvious thing hanging over Tahani's character all this time that it was very satisfying to see her finally get it--and get a human response from Kamilah in return. It's a perfect follow-up to Tahani's confrontation with her parents last season and suggests she really is banking some moral growth despite all the reboots imo.

In related news, today I learned that Rebecca Hazlewood (Kamilah) is freaking 41! Jameela Jamil is 32 and they play characters almost the same age--if anything I would have guessed Kamilah was younger.

Thanks Obama.

 

Lots of fun stuff this week!

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Firstly, I don't think I ever put it in writing but I totally knew we'd see more of the "I love you" reboot someday.

Secondly, when Eleanor does her little spiel about a megademon who's secretly torturing/testing regular demons--well, at the very least that's a huge wink toward the theory that this season hasn't been quite what it seems. Earth or no Earth, I definitely think Gen, or her boss, is still running an experiment of some kind and isn't genuinely unable to stop everything that's been happening all this time.

Lastly, something I didn't even consider until a second ago--if Eleanor's memories of all the reboots still exist somehow then that seems like yet another nudge toward my banking theory. All that's left is for someone to outright say it.

 

So your banking theory is similar to how Drew Barrymore's character in 50 First Dates, with no short term memory, was somehow able to retain memories with Adam Sandler's character?

 

I haven't seen it but sounds about right.

I guess my view of it is that if you have amnesia you don't become a totally different person--there's still a core of personality in there that you retain, and if the show's premise is that Eleanor and company can become better, that's presumably happening in their cores. Where I'm less certain is that the current system doesn't really care about your core personality versus all the little trivial obnoxious things people do--your actions are all that matters, not whether you know better. But I definitely don't think they started this season "morally reset" even if they weren't earning points the past two seasons.

 

So how many iterations were there in Michael's "Good Place"? Over 800 right? So you're thinking they accumulated points on each iteration so by this time they should have more points than anyone else in the world since they've lived 800 mini lives to do good where we on Earth we humans only technically only get 1 life/chance?

 

Theoretically no, since the entire concept of the afterlife is explained to them at the beginning of each iteration each time -- which stops point accumulation.

 

Right, so to @CooperTFN 's point, it doesn't matter that their points reset, their "cores" aka "souls" don't "morally reset" so they are getting to be better people over time.

 

I also wholly disagree with the "personality core" from amnesia -- as isn't that the entire determination between nature and nurture (which in academia, unless biologically deterministic, usually shifts towards nurture)?

 

I'm not sure I follow, dp--I do lean toward nurture broadly speaking but I was reading something the other day about the differences between long-term and short-term memory, and they appear to only be losing short-term memory. Every time they rebooted Eleanor & co didn't forget who they were, or the details of their lives on Earth, only the last few months (or days, or minutes). The question is whether they're retaining anything from that time--and if even the memories themselves were still accessible by, admittedly, Janet's Magical Device of Narrative Convenience, that tells me that anything she gained from those memories, morally, instinctually, whatever, could still be there as well, and shaping her actions in the present.

This is what I'm saying, yes--the show has been very clear that they can't earn points while being aware of the stakes, so at the most their totals only ever went up during the first handful of episodes this season, which given the extremely high threshold for the Good Place probably didn't make much difference.

Beyond the matter of the main characters' moral evolution I think the show's big-picture story is the system being BS--so I suspect the endgame is going to look less like Eleanor suddenly qualifying for the Good Place and more like the rules changing.