Season 4 Episode 12: Patty

[enemyofperfect]

We're so close to the end of the series, and I'm not ready, but I'm also really looking forward to tonight's episode! Whenever you get a chance to watch it, please share all your episode reactions with us in the comments right here. Spoilers and speculation welcome!

Comments

[erinptah]

They could have simply said that the Final Door leads to becoming one with the universe- part of the fabric, but not a conscious part.

Yeah, this is how they fix death in His Dark Materials, and it's really fulfilling and believably hopeful. The worldbuilding that led up to it was different, so it wouldn't work the same with The Good Place, but it could've been satisfying in its own way! Definitely more so than Magical Oblivion Mystery Door.

Same re: the heartstrings ending :/

I've been keeping up with the podcast, which has people from all different parts of the show's creation talk about behind-the-scenes stuff, and any time there's a heartstrings-tugging scene they'll talk about how much people cried at the table read.

On the one hand: having writers who care is better than the alternative! On the other: it sometimes feels like their approach is "we're all completely on-board with this thing, so let's just indulge and roll around in it for a while" -- and they stop doing the work to bring the audience on board. So if you aren't there already (even if you're pretty close, and could've been brought the rest of the way with a few more scenes of work), it'll just leave you cold. And that would be a rough way to close the whole thing out.

[thatwasjustadream]

I'm going to have to read His Dark Materials. I think of it as YA, which isn't my first choice to read, but I take it that's not entirely the case? I keep bumping into references to it so maybe it's time to get it read!

Agreed on that last point. I hate to knock the show too much - it'll likely always stand out as a top ten favorite of mine, ever - but like a lot of franchises, I probably won't look forward to re-watching the last season.

There's still hope for the finale being a fun ride. :}

[erinptah]

HDM is more like Harry Potter or The Hobbit, in the sense that it's kid-friendly but loooong. It doesn't have any of what I think of as the stock tropes of YA -- there's no love triangles, there are complex and active/competent characters of all ages, the worldbuilding is extremely dense.

(Our first POV character is already familiar with a lot of it, too -- I was seriously confused when I read the first book as a kid, because there are so many weird concepts and alternate-universe terms that it doesn't stop to explain. Definitely a series that benefits from rereading, at any age!)

It's not a comedy like TGP, but if you want another series that sets up a cosmology for how souls/the afterlife/religion works and then explores the fallout, it's well worth checking out.

...also, I bet Lyra and Eleanor would get along swimmingly.