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

[enemyofperfect]

Well that was... a take.

I loved maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes of this episode. Shenanigans, clever little signs to read, Chidi's nerdtastic Neoplatonic joke, the Good Place folks having no idea about anything, I was having so much fun!

And then Eleanor decided that what heaven really needed was no-strings euthanasia, and I... have complicated feelings about that?

Like, I'm not saying that infinite existence definitely would be rewarding for humans. I don't imagine it's something we have a lot of data about. If infinity's long enough to learn every language, read every book, and meet every person, then maybe it's too long. How would I know, really?

But from a human psychology/utopia design perspective, I feel like Team Cockroach ignored a lot of low-hanging fruit while they made their beeline for Actual Permadeath. Patty said that what saved Chidi was his friends: so do the other humans in the Good Place have their friends and family with them, or were they separated by the binary morality of the afterlife? Would it help to be reunited? The Good Place architects are canonically pretty clueless about how humans work: did anyone ever consider just not letting them fry their brains with orgasms that last centuries? Like, would capping that at around half an hour or so lead to any gains in overall contentment?

Underneath all my logic chopping, I found this episode unexpectedly troubling for some personal reasons. If you'd like to read about how Eleanor's solution collided with my mental health history, I've got an entry about it up on my journal! And for everyone else, please enjoy the complimentary stardust milkshakes. (They're vegan, lactose free, and probably only mildly habit forming!)

[st_aurafina]

I'm not ready omg!!

[thatwasjustadream]

I had to miss this epi due to a work function - and I also managed to put my Hulu on hiatus a couple of weeks too soon, so...right now I can't watch it w/o paying $2.99. And this season isn't inspiring me to pay $2.99, so.....

I take it the epi went went straight for 'the only real freedom in the afterlife is oblivion," yes?

It would make sense- they've hit on most of the commonly held possibilities: heaven, hell, purgatory, evolution of the soul via reincarnation. I guess maybe it's a good sign that they went for oblivion the episode before last - there's still time for a twist of some sort.

I can't imagine what it'll be. I guess I'll have to make sure to be home to watch it. :)

[yourlibrarian]

Given that our time in the actual Good Place was going to be short since the season had a lot that needed to be wrapped up, it clearly wasn't going to end in simply everyone-being-happy-in-it-the-end. I figured they were going to run into some surprises.

My first pleased reaction was to realize that they filmed this at the Getty Museums in L.A. Although about half of it would have been on a soundstage, this would have involved several days there of shooting -- I wonder how they managed that without closing down the whole place?

I found myself unsurprised that they noticed issues pretty quickly (even without Patty spelling things out). I felt that the real crux of the problem was spelled out when Michael reviewed the solutions the designers were mulling over on their whiteboard (wait until Beyonce arrives was amusing). But things like "more hoverboards" and "fewer hoverboards" kind of spelled out the problem -- other than seesawing between more or less of something, when you have all eternity to deal with, how can anything be novel? Plus, of course, this was a group of people that had had no one new to interact with in a very long time.

My first thought was wondering why the people in the GP hadn't simply formed friendships and long-term ties like our heroes have, if that was considered the key to long-term happiness and fulfillment? We don't see any of them connected to anyone else. Surely part of the reason they were there was because they had done so much good for other so selflessly in their lives to begin with?

And then that's when I realized that such people would be particularly unfulfilled in GP, at least long-term, because they were never built to be the sort of people who could simply think of themselves non-stop. And while this still didn't explain why these doers couldn't have banded together to have reformed the GP on their own (which is why, I suppose, the whole brain deterioration thing was brought in), it did suggest why they never formed the same sort of deep connections with others. Because the reason our four plus eventually Michael and Janet formed such a tight team was because their initial meetings all involved having to overcome a major problem together. Even when they didn't, at first, realize they needed help, they always did better when they began working together.

So our team has spent hundreds of lifetimes trying to solve problems together and overcoming some really spectacular odds. No matter how delightful the GP seemed at first (and Michael's enjoyment was certainly short lived) they were going to start seeing the cracks quickly because it's part of what made them a team to begin with.

As to the solution, it seems like what it was -- a short-term fix. If the biggest problem is the never ending of a life without challenges, then the solution is to provide an ending. But it can't be the only solution and I suspect that Michael, whose personality has been established as someone who always wants to keep fiddling with and creating things, is not going to find that a solution for long either. By comparison with the challenges of his neighborhood, he's going to need a lot more to do.

So I'm waiting to see what more is yet to come.