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

Also since the four protagonists know they can't earn points, they really have no incentive to be good because when they die they're going to bad place anyway so since they're choosing to help other people get points and be good people that should mean something to whomever is in charge.

I do have a gut feeling that the door man is more than he appears on the surface so he'll be Michael's saving grace.

 

Your first sentence is what I disagreed with. Your second premise is not what you said in the first.

Clearly when arriving in the Afterlife, they remembered all details of their life on Earth. When reset, they were reset to that point so their personality was already there. Same with the reset back to Earth.

If you are reset entirely (i.e. amnesia) then there's no core personality, you have to relearn everything. That's nurture.

 

Then I guess I'm using "amnesia" wrong; I was never thinking of a complete reset of a person, nor was I under the impression that's what it means in a real medical sense.

 

So...

Spoiler

Everyone's dead again!

And this week's episode seems to be heading us down the path that most of us have suspected for a while: there is no Good Place (or, more likely as I think, it's so impossibly high-standards to get in, there may only be two people in there).

Basically, Doug's lifestyle and Shawn's comments would lead us to believe this. And if one believes that Michael's Big Lie -- the Good Place Neighborhood in the Bad Place -- was built on a lot of truth in order to sell it, there are two confirmed people in the Good Place (Abraham Lincoln and someone else?)... it's possibly that's it.

Also, not for nothing and I know he's with Mindy now, but you know who ELSE was hanging out in Janet's void for some time who I hope we see again?!?

 

Spoiler

Janet just having to be partly in / partly out of the afterlife / real world gives her her powers, while cool, felt kind of convenient for the plot and might have helped if she had known that sooner.

But that minor gripe aside, it seems that the point system is on trial, and if you know someone that is living their life that way, you could be taken advantage of as illustrated in the episode. So you get to be miserable in life just to get to heaven?

It definitely feels more and more that Michael was also being duped and someone is torturing him. It's just nested torture.

 

Spoiler

Oh, BS as the system might be I'm still inclined to believe there is a Good Place. AV Club made a good observation that I hadn't really thought of watching the episode--Doug is going to the Bad Place for the same reason Tahani did. His actions aren't the problem, his motivations are.

Also, if we're counting the podcast bumpers as canon (which of course is silly) that would add Mozart and Jimi Hendrix to the GP roster as well. I really feel like they've named someone beyond Lincoln but hell if I can remember who.

Re: nested torture, I'm open to a wealth of possible versions of this theory but the one big thing I really need explained/justified is the idea that Gen is utterly powerless to stop all of this. For whatever reason, she's letting it happen.

 

Charles McGill really turned his life around.

 

Spoiler

Well, he doesn't technically know that's how things work, he just made a very accurate guess. Knowledge itself isn't the problem, it's how the knowledge taints your motivations--so even if it's a freak coincidence on Doug's part it's enough to screw him. He's not actually a good person, he just wants points.

So come to think of it maybe he was never the paragon or the scathing critique of the system Michael and Janet think he is. We'll see what the accountants say.

 

AND HOW PERFECT WAS THIS

 

I don't know why networks do this, but the show is finally coming back after a two week break to get a new episode next Thursday on Dec 6th. Then we have a 4 week break until the winter premiere episode on Jan 10th, then an episode on the 17th, and then the season 3 finale on the 24th.

 

Yeah, it’s weird—especially when the last two seasons had clear mid-season hiatuses. Hiatii?

 

Yeah, I actually thought they're not coming back until January and giving us four (FOUR!!!) glorious weeks of Brooklyn Nine-Nine + The Good Place back to back...

 

Renewed.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/break-out-the-peeps-flavored-chili-the-good-place-will-1830862734

 

I had to rewind the first few minutes of tonight's episode because I couldn't hear anything over the giant smile on my face.

Spoiler

I have some more complex thoughts, but for now, my big question is--who died 521 years ago? There's a little wiggle room on what year is "now" as of this episode but it should be roughly 1496. I clicked around that area on Wikipedia for a sec but no one jumped out at me--lots of royalty though, so maybe @GrandAdmiralJello can weigh in.

 

D'arcy Carden is definitely the highlight of the show and it's great to see the writers pull off an episode this creative when they've clearly established the personalities of the humans.

Spoiler

When I saw the green tube I thought Michael and Janet would immediately use it, but I guess they needed to save it until the end for dramatic effect.

See you in one month for the last 3 eps of the season!

 

The Good Place is hacking the points, not the Bad Place. Michael just assumes it's the Bad Place. For some reason they don't want anyone else or feel they can't take more people. That's my guess anyway.

 

Spoiler

Looks like a lot of unanswered mail... almost like they can't be bothered any more?

 

So! First of all, re: 521 years, this caught my attention:



...I'm not sure I follow. I could see if the afterlife was some quasi-Amish thing where everybody goes to hell for using electricity but they're perfectly contemporary in their own attitudes and bureaucratic structure, so, huh?

Beyond that, it's really important to me that Michael be wrong and whatever the answer is doesn't amount to the Bad Place cheating. I'm still convinced that Doug shouldn't have gotten into the Good Place per the Tahani Rule, but if nobody's getting in, that seems to have serious implications for pretty much all moral and religious systems--if Doug happening to have guessed the rules correctly is irrelevant, then maybe almost no benevolent actions are really counting, or don't count for enough, because on some level most people are good for some selfish reason or other. That's a pretty cynical way of looking at things (and certainly counter to whatever larger statement the show actually wants to say), but it seems pretty in line with the harshness of the points system as we've always understood it, and it's a much more interesting problem for Michael & Co. to have to confront than "the demons did it".

 

Also, it explicitly contradicts what folks have said both on the show (Lincoln) and on the podcast (Hendrix/Mozart). Michael lying doesn't make sense, but is at least plausible... the podcast folks explicitly lying is more worrisome though...

 

Well, season one Michael said it--and given his attitude in this episode it's within the realm of possibility he genuinely assumed it was the case and didn't care to check. As for the podcast, it'd be nice if every word of that thing was canon but I'm happy to not take it that seriously if they end up not working. The little intro bits are a ways away from the writers saying point blank "Mozart is in the Good Place" imo.

 

Also in Season One, Michael told the humans that Doug Forcett was the closest to getting it right hence why his portrait was in his office. Sure, Michael was always lying to the humans to torture them, but I assumed he was telling the truth about Doug and we get that confirmation when Michael and Janet visit him to get pointers on how to make it into The Good Place because Michael believed Doug he lived his life a certain way and ended up there. Then he just learned even Doug would NOT be getting into The Good Place when he dies.

I find this interesting from the The Good Place wikia: "Before Doug appeared in person, there was some doubt as to whether he was real, or just a story Michael made up. At one point, Mike Schur explained: "It is canon in our writers’ room, at this moment in time — subject to change — yes, Doug Forcett exists and that story is real." This was eventually made canon by the events of Chapter 35."

 

I have to wonder - does the Bad Place know about what's happening? Maybe Shawn is too full of himself to realize that the reason they are getting all the people - and how he walked away with a "Good Place" Janet - isn't because he's some master conniver; it's because the Good Place doesn't care.

 

Oh, so this is my backdoor-Incarnations of Immortality adaptation!

 

*googles*

Ooh, that looks interesting.