...It didn't give me profound revelations or sobbing breakdowns like a lot of the internet seems to be getting, but it was fun and sweet.
I really, really wish the previous episode had been written differently. It's like they were too attached to the pattern of "there's a Dramatic Twist where our heroes realize that something is Horribly Wrong, and must come up with a cunning philosophical solution to fix it" -- except they were too close to the end of the show to give it any real deep attention, so they whipped out an insta-solution that wasn't well-examined or well-supported and raised too many unanswered questions to be satisfying.
The penultimate episode could've been "our heroes arrive in the Good Place and find it even less-populated than expected, are briefly afraid it's because something is Horribly Wrong, but then discover that the Oblivion Door already exists and reason out why some souls have voluntarily gone through."
That way, the writers don't have to assert that it's the Best Possible Solution, but oops it's the end of the episode, so the audience better just roll with it! They just have to assert that it's Not A Bad Option To Have. That's an idea they would've been able to support in the screentime they had left.
-- and it could've led into exactly the same finale, minus a lot of the implications that left a bad taste in my mouth in the first place.
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...It didn't give me profound revelations or sobbing breakdowns like a lot of the internet seems to be getting, but it was fun and sweet.
I really, really wish the previous episode had been written differently. It's like they were too attached to the pattern of "there's a Dramatic Twist where our heroes realize that something is Horribly Wrong, and must come up with a cunning philosophical solution to fix it" -- except they were too close to the end of the show to give it any real deep attention, so they whipped out an insta-solution that wasn't well-examined or well-supported and raised too many unanswered questions to be satisfying.
The penultimate episode could've been "our heroes arrive in the Good Place and find it even less-populated than expected, are briefly afraid it's because something is Horribly Wrong, but then discover that the Oblivion Door already exists and reason out why some souls have voluntarily gone through."
That way, the writers don't have to assert that it's the Best Possible Solution, but oops it's the end of the episode, so the audience better just roll with it! They just have to assert that it's Not A Bad Option To Have. That's an idea they would've been able to support in the screentime they had left.
-- and it could've led into exactly the same finale, minus a lot of the implications that left a bad taste in my mouth in the first place.