Sorry for the late post, folks -- this week's gotten away from me a little. But here's a reaction post for all your thoughts and questions, with spoilers welcome as always!
I like the way the episode divided itself between the courtroom and the humans with their ideal funerals. There were lots of lovely bits in their words about one another, though of course one wonders what Chidi might have said if he could.
It was rather funny about the Weekend at Bernie'fication of Chidi, especially given the episode was about funerals and death!
The ending was great with the surprise of all the Janets (who are now all communicating!) It rather makes sense that the Judge wants to start all over because given that some people must have been in hell for hundreds of years, how do you review and correct all those cases. Plus, if people learn and grow better from good treatment, surely all those people in hell are doomed by now.
But I have to think that the changes in Michael and the Janets should also count for something.
Given all the memory-wiping this show has done, it shouldn't be that hard to reset all the Bad Place souls back to the moment of their deaths, and launch them into the new system from there. Maybe keep them time-frozen for as long as it takes to work out the details...
Lots of good emotional beats! Lots of excellent acting! Lots of logical holes :(
The "funerals" were sweet and funny. Nothing groundbreaking, but it felt like the writers' last-ditch effort to squeeze in all the character-based jokes they hadn't used, before the plot amps up. I liked Eleanor's shirt. And the idea of dragging Chidi to all of them, even though they had to pose him like a mannequin.
"Earth is cancelled" was a nice understated Wham Line.
I don't feel like the emotional setup for Bad Janet's turnaround was really there, but they sure acted the heck out of the payoff. And by "they" I mean "D'Arcy, D'Arcy, and D'Arcy." Excellent visuals! Good editing work with multiple Janets interacting. I don't know who '80s Dance Party Janet was supposed to be, but she was fun.
Eleanor turning to the administrative authorities who are supposed to be defending her from dire and imminent threats, only to have them respond "okay, we'll speak out against it, maybe, but our main concern is not sounding too confrontational" was painfully real. Where is Angel Elizabeth Warren when you need her?
Okay, logical gripes:
-- Brent didn't even manage to hold steady, he was going down the whole time? Depressing. And his half-finished apology in the final minute earned so many points that it still made up for all of that? Bizarre. Since when is "sincerely repent of your sins and they will be washed away, no follow-up action required" the mechanic here?
-- If "6 humans getting better" is too small a number to count as "overwhelming evidence", then why did you only do this experiment with 4 (new) humans? Besides, within the sample size, the improvement rate is 86%! Even if you accept Brent as unfixable, that still only makes the points system 14% accurate! Sounds like an overwhelming failure to me.
-- I wish the writers would try to sell Janet/Jason based on how they interact now, not on trying to retcon Jason's early interactions with Janet as "he cared so much about her feelings." This was the Jason whose reaction to "two people that tried to help you are going to be tortured forever" was "yes! we get to stay, baby, we did it!" His consistent theme was being oblivious, not caring :/
-- Rebooting humanity with the exact same system doesn't solve the problem, just kicks it down the road a few billion years. So you have to change the system. So why not just make those changes without the reboot? There's no good reason for this not to occur to the Judge!
-- The characters with their memories have been anticipating this for a whole year. Didn't they ever think about what would be their ideal outcome if they won? What kind of replacement system they'd be aiming for? (I'm sure anyone who's been watching the show for a year in realtime has a list!) In-universe, sounds like Michael thought of "weight the points for good actions so it's easier to earn more," and that was it.
-- Here's where I agree with Michael: this is way too much to put on Chidi. Even with all his character development restored, including the lessons he's learned about decisiveness and spontaneity, "design a new moral framework for the universe in 45 minutes" is too much :(
Back on an emotional note -- the previous episode was so satisfying, with all the reveals and fast-paced interactions between the new humans, it felt like a letdown to have them all offscreen and unaware the entire time.
Cute as they were, I would trade any of the "funeral" scenes for the conversation between Simone and John as they drove away in that car. Two people who just realized they're being experimented on by wildly-powerful beings with unknown motives, not even knowing whether it's possible to flee to safety, but trying their damnedest anyway, just in case -- that sequence would have so much horror-movie tension, and so much indomitable human spirit. Echoes of Eleanor's "Our fates are sealed. But I think we have one move left...we can try."
Agreed with pretty much your whole comment! This episode was enjoyable, but man were there some head-scratching things about it. Considering Eleanor spent so much of the first season complaining about the lack (or at least, serious underutilisation) of a Medium Place, I was expecting that to come up well ahead of points boosts for eating apples. But maybe I was conditioned to expect that from reading the fandom subreddit where people talk about purgatory all the time, idk.
I'm also not sure why Gen expects rebooting humanity to fix the problem, either. For a start, it seems really dismissive of all the people who are trying to stop the kind of environmental destruction and global exploitation that's causing all the negative points. But then also, since she didn't mention anything about actively interfering to prevent that economic system from coming about… how exactly will rebooting everything result in a different outcome? Why would anything be different the second time around?
You made lots of other good points too. After the awesome developments with the new humans in last week's episode I want them to come back!
Hey, yeah, that's a good point -- G1 Eleanor thought of the "Medium Place" idea, on her own, almost immediately after learning that the system existed!
And it's not just Reddit, by this point Eleanor has had on-screen conversations about Dante, so both she and the writers should be able to whip out the word "purgatory" any time. As a description of their experimental neighborhood, and as a thing they might want to create in general for the future.
I actually really loved that Brent's point total kept going down after he was dead -- with all the coddling his ego was getting, I think that's an entirely reasonable outcome. And while mileage clearly varies on this, the Judge's "turn the universe off and on again" seemed to me like about the right level of sophistication for what we've seen of her/the general afterlife apparatus so far.
But it would have been amazing to get a scene like that between Simone and John. And your comment makes me wish that Tahani had gotten a chance to dramatically clear her throat and reveal her plan for a morally improving post-life afterparty or something. That could have been totally her thing! She could even have gotten Chidi's help with it without giving the game away if she said they'd been asked for their help designing a new pilot program for people who didn't quite make the cut for the Good Place or something. That would have been fabulous!
I spent a minute being so excited by the line about humans getting too complicated for the points system to keep up with. Much more eloquent people than I have talked about how this series keeps flirting with a real critique of capitalism, and for a moment I really thought they were going there! What's that, Gen -- a system theoretically intended to measure the good that people provide to others has gone massively haywire and everyone is suffering as a result? Golly, I've never heard that one before!
Unfortunately, it seems like I really jumped the mark there. Well, at least we'll be getting Chidi back. It was really disconcerting to have his unconscious body hanging out with the rest of the team...
Other high points for me: Tahani's speech about Eleanor, Jason joking about his mother dying of cancer (he breaks my heart), and Pewdiepie as Shawn's final choice of terribleness. Plus the Janet army, obviously! D'Arcy Carden is a delight.
Other high points for me: Tahani's speech about Eleanor, Jason joking about his mother dying of cancer (he breaks my heart), and Pewdiepie as Shawn's final choice of terribleness. Plus the Janet army, obviously! D'Arcy Carden is a delight.
no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 02:06 am (UTC)It was rather funny about the Weekend at Bernie'fication of Chidi, especially given the episode was about funerals and death!
The ending was great with the surprise of all the Janets (who are now all communicating!) It rather makes sense that the Judge wants to start all over because given that some people must have been in hell for hundreds of years, how do you review and correct all those cases. Plus, if people learn and grow better from good treatment, surely all those people in hell are doomed by now.
But I have to think that the changes in Michael and the Janets should also count for something.
no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on Sunday, November 17th, 2019 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 03:51 am (UTC)The "funerals" were sweet and funny. Nothing groundbreaking, but it felt like the writers' last-ditch effort to squeeze in all the character-based jokes they hadn't used, before the plot amps up. I liked Eleanor's shirt. And the idea of dragging Chidi to all of them, even though they had to pose him like a mannequin.
"Earth is cancelled" was a nice understated Wham Line.
I don't feel like the emotional setup for Bad Janet's turnaround was really there, but they sure acted the heck out of the payoff. And by "they" I mean "D'Arcy, D'Arcy, and D'Arcy." Excellent visuals! Good editing work with multiple Janets interacting. I don't know who '80s Dance Party Janet was supposed to be, but she was fun.
Eleanor turning to the administrative authorities who are supposed to be defending her from dire and imminent threats, only to have them respond "okay, we'll speak out against it, maybe, but our main concern is not sounding too confrontational" was painfully real. Where is Angel Elizabeth Warren when you need her?
Okay, logical gripes:
-- Brent didn't even manage to hold steady, he was going down the whole time? Depressing. And his half-finished apology in the final minute earned so many points that it still made up for all of that? Bizarre. Since when is "sincerely repent of your sins and they will be washed away, no follow-up action required" the mechanic here?
-- If "6 humans getting better" is too small a number to count as "overwhelming evidence", then why did you only do this experiment with 4 (new) humans? Besides, within the sample size, the improvement rate is 86%! Even if you accept Brent as unfixable, that still only makes the points system 14% accurate! Sounds like an overwhelming failure to me.
-- I wish the writers would try to sell Janet/Jason based on how they interact now, not on trying to retcon Jason's early interactions with Janet as "he cared so much about her feelings." This was the Jason whose reaction to "two people that tried to help you are going to be tortured forever" was "yes! we get to stay, baby, we did it!" His consistent theme was being oblivious, not caring :/
-- Rebooting humanity with the exact same system doesn't solve the problem, just kicks it down the road a few billion years. So you have to change the system. So why not just make those changes without the reboot? There's no good reason for this not to occur to the Judge!
-- The characters with their memories have been anticipating this for a whole year. Didn't they ever think about what would be their ideal outcome if they won? What kind of replacement system they'd be aiming for? (I'm sure anyone who's been watching the show for a year in realtime has a list!) In-universe, sounds like Michael thought of "weight the points for good actions so it's easier to earn more," and that was it.
-- Here's where I agree with Michael: this is way too much to put on Chidi. Even with all his character development restored, including the lessons he's learned about decisiveness and spontaneity, "design a new moral framework for the universe in 45 minutes" is too much :(
Back on an emotional note -- the previous episode was so satisfying, with all the reveals and fast-paced interactions between the new humans, it felt like a letdown to have them all offscreen and unaware the entire time.
Cute as they were, I would trade any of the "funeral" scenes for the conversation between Simone and John as they drove away in that car. Two people who just realized they're being experimented on by wildly-powerful beings with unknown motives, not even knowing whether it's possible to flee to safety, but trying their damnedest anyway, just in case -- that sequence would have so much horror-movie tension, and so much indomitable human spirit. Echoes of Eleanor's "Our fates are sealed. But I think we have one move left...we can try."
no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 05:55 am (UTC)I'm also not sure why Gen expects rebooting humanity to fix the problem, either. For a start, it seems really dismissive of all the people who are trying to stop the kind of environmental destruction and global exploitation that's causing all the negative points. But then also, since she didn't mention anything about actively interfering to prevent that economic system from coming about… how exactly will rebooting everything result in a different outcome? Why would anything be different the second time around?
You made lots of other good points too. After the awesome developments with the new humans in last week's episode I want them to come back!
no subject
on Saturday, November 16th, 2019 11:26 pm (UTC)And it's not just Reddit, by this point Eleanor has had on-screen conversations about Dante, so both she and the writers should be able to whip out the word "purgatory" any time. As a description of their experimental neighborhood, and as a thing they might want to create in general for the future.
no subject
on Sunday, November 17th, 2019 01:30 am (UTC)But it would have been amazing to get a scene like that between Simone and John. And your comment makes me wish that Tahani had gotten a chance to dramatically clear her throat and reveal her plan for a morally improving post-life afterparty or something. That could have been totally her thing! She could even have gotten Chidi's help with it without giving the game away if she said they'd been asked for their help designing a new pilot program for people who didn't quite make the cut for the Good Place or something. That would have been fabulous!
no subject
on Sunday, November 17th, 2019 02:17 am (UTC)...and Tahani would be constantly getting distracted with superficial aesthetic decisions, but in between those she'd be great.
no subject
on Sunday, November 17th, 2019 01:23 am (UTC)Unfortunately, it seems like I really jumped the mark there. Well, at least we'll be getting Chidi back. It was really disconcerting to have his unconscious body hanging out with the rest of the team...
Other high points for me: Tahani's speech about Eleanor, Jason joking about his mother dying of cancer (he breaks my heart), and Pewdiepie as Shawn's final choice of terribleness. Plus the Janet army, obviously! D'Arcy Carden is a delight.
no subject
on Sunday, November 17th, 2019 10:56 pm (UTC)Agreed.