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ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I'm sure that if Eleanor knows anything, it's life hacks.

Also she presumably made a bunch of money by selling those shirts of her friend.

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ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Kamila ends up in the Medium Place, because she should ideally go to the Bad Place but she's so charismatic that they argued to lighten her sentence.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Michael lied just fine when he was persuading Tahani to go to Australia.

He just needs the intent to power his lies. Being mean just for being mean isn't his style now.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Janet's arc feels like it's in limbo right now? She hasn't really done much other than being Michael's shoulder angel (who might need to get a bit more forceful, she's not used to talking back to her bosses) and having an unrequited crush on Jason. I dunno, there's something about her since the start of the season that makes her feel like she's just 'there' and maybe using occasional wacky hijinks using her omniscience.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
The requirements might just be high to prevent the dilemma of 'what incentive is there for Good People to not stop being good?'. Ergo, they only pick people so good that they wouldn't even seriously consider letting themselves be bad.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
This is like watching that episode of Friends where Joey tells Phoebe that there's no such thing as a selfless good deed.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
My only guess is that Simone finds the manifesto. I'm really interested in where her character goes next. They're dealing with Tahani's ties, so I imagine they'll deal with Simone and Pillboy soon.

I also hope we see more cross-cast interactions now. It's almost been pretty much Eleanor-Chidi and Tahani-Jason this season, which is fine, but let's mix it up again. Hearing Eleanor refer to Tahani by name near the end was weird since it feels like forever since she's done that.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
The bit where Eleanor talks about how this could all be a test for Michael is either meta commentary or a jab at all those people who come up with the same theory, right?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Yeah it seemed very obvious that Doug was doomed because his desires were corrupt. If he was genuinely happy with how his life was going that'd be one thing, but as pointed out he was miserable deep down.

Actually, could it be that as soon as Doug got the epiphany of how the point system worked, he was doomed anyway since his counter would have stopped? Since he 'realized' how the system operated, even if subconsciously.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Didn't Eleanor pass the Judge's test anyway? So we know that there is a legitimate Good Place that people can go to. The barriers might be extremely strict but I don't think it's as hard to get in as people expect. It's still hard, and it seems like it's less about living a good life (like Doug) but to make big, important changes (like Mindy would have).

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Thranguy posted:

I'm just going to put out there that doing whatever the local sociopath kid asks is earning Doug bad place points rather than good ones.

Doug's isolation also meant that he hasn't been put into a situation where he has to choose between helping two different people. If he had to choose between making the sociopath happy, or someone else happy, then he'd actually have to confront a dilemma.

Also, being an enabler isn't necessarily good, either, something that he forgot to take into account.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Gobbeldygook posted:

Doug is an ascetic who doesn't really help anyone, he doesn't deserve to go to the Good Place. If instead of moving to the woods and growing a garden he had gotten a job making 30k a year working at a warehouse and tithed 10% of what he made every year for 50 years to good charities like the Against Malaria Foundation, he'd have saved at least fifty human-life equivalents. Much like how Chidi wasn't a "bad person" per se, Doug is not really a good person, just a neutral person who deserves at best a medium place.

Do monks get Good Place points for their lifestyle? Was Tahani actually on track to getting to The Good Place before that random TV crew discovered her and swung her back into doing good things for corrupt reasons?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I'm curious if we'd ever see people from the current timeline, like Chidi's friends, in the afterlife. The Jeremy Bearemy stuff would make stuff like that plausible, although with them resetting the timeline on Earth I guess a lot of potential deaths could have changed. Does that mean that someone who would have been in the Bad Place could have suddenly had their fate averted, thus ending up in the Good Place instead and suddenly disappearing mid-torture with no memory of what happened?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Or, in accordance that People Can Change In The Afterlife, one of the Good Place residents became bad and just prevented any new arrivals?

I mean if someone like Mindy could have ended up in The Good Place, I imagine not everyone that actually got in were immaculate souls.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
How has Michael been around since the existence of time (or at least the year 0000), and have no idea if the Bad Place is actually messing up the point totals and in fact only now worked his way up to an architect?

Yes yes, Jeremy Bearimy and all that, but maybe Michael's really just not that good at his job after all.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Otherkinsey Scale posted:

So what this means is that no one in the last 500 years has exceeded the moral standard set by Mindy St. Claire.

So Mindy died in the 1980s, and it's been about 300 years since the gang died. That's still about 170 years accounted for, but maybe the moral dilemma of Mindy St. Claire broke the system.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I'm actually anticipating that the angels (or demon equivalent in the Good Place) are also happy with the current state of the system and will resist Michael's attempts at change. Thus the Soul Squad has to contend with an angel/demon teamup who will try to stop them.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
What about warm apple cider, isn't that hot fruit?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Do points of an action change over time or over location though? Weed could be perfectly legal now and harmless when used correctly, but 30 or so years ago it could be knowingly breaking the law which is very likely a loss of points. Honour killing would be utterly reprehensible for most of the western world but for some cultures it's considered a way to 'preserve family honour'.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

FoxTerrier posted:

I could if the standards for getting in weren’t absurdly high. It seems to weed out all but people utterly altruistic down to their core.

In theory anyway

Just a reminder that Mindy almost got in.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
What happens if a Janet tries to reboot another Janet?

Also can neutral Janets even do the failsafe?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Yeah, halfway through the second episode you start to get a sense of 'is this what it's gonna be like every week? Because it feels very episodic'. Luckily the game spins enough cliffhangers for you by the third or fourth episode to start expanding the plot a little, but it is a bit of a slow burn at first.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I'd expected each of the new four to be related to each of the four humans, but maybe New Guy 1 is just an unintended consequence of Eleanor's life or something? Or someone Tahani's charity work indirectly affected.

So we might not see Pillboy, but some old lady Pillboy took care of at his nursing home job.

I was also really expecting a fakeout with Chidi considering how uncharacteristically confident he's been the last couple of episodes, but if neither Shawn/Sean or the Judge picked up on it....

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Isn't the difference now being that the goal isn't to torture the new humans? The Janet babies aren't gonna be able to torture them as well as demons could, Michael is softer, and the original humans mostly only bonded together because their entire universe was conspiring against them to make them miserable. Since the hosts of the new neighbourhood actually have empathy now, this could be trickier.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Andrew_1985 posted:

Elanor gave a little 'Oh?' when she saw the guy. Plus she doesn't know who her dad is!

We've literally seen both her parents during a flashback when kid Eleanor gave them papers so she could legally live on her own.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
The judge is monitoring the whole thing so I imagine she'd notice if the Bad Place tried any switcheroos.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I don't think the demons can actually interfere with people that are alive on Earth. They could go after the four humans because they're already meant to be dead and property of the Bad Place, but willy nilly killing people is probably a no no that'd have higher powers up swooping in.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I feel like I'm ready for the plot to start wrapping up, because I always get nervous when shows get longer than three seasons (because then they almost always start getting tired and spinning their wheels).

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Senor Tron posted:

Here's one I've just been thinking about.

Why did Tahani have no memory of her death in season 1? It's explained as the brain often forgets to protect itself, but that seems like too generous a thing for someone in any variation of the Bad Place. Was part of Michael's original plan that he would introduce it to Tahani down the line if he needed to knock her down a peg?

Yes. He literally told her in season 2 that he was saving the circumstances of her death as a torture option.

Also I think the 'brain protecting itself' bit was just something Michael made up to explain away memory wiping the humans.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

tarlibone posted:

Yeah, this.

I'm not going to suggest almond milk because it was a thing in, what? One episode?

Two, at least three?

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
I think aside from the somewhat lackluster finale, part of the issue was that Tahani and Jason got almost completely sidelined. Tahani got that one episode where she confronted her sister but otherwise she played confidante and rich person jokes pretty much the whole season.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Applewhite posted:

I know this is from back in season 1 but did anyone catch that in the first iteration of the neighborhood, Elanor’s “goodness ranking” was Number Six?

E: and then, in a later episode, was Number One, come to think of it.

Volunteering for trash duty is worth a lot of points.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
'Will the end of the Blake Bortles era in Jacksonville affect the show at all? Or not, because Jason died again before Nick Foles came to town?
You really think, after 300 Blake Bortles references, we’d let the Bortles Era end without addressing it?'

Oh heck yeah.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Zedd posted:

Happy Endings, cancelled show from a few years back.

The fact that it was only cancelled because of ABC's terrible scheduling will always be a sour note.

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ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.

Family Values posted:

I also just caught up on S3 on Netflix. I liked the season overall and am looking forward to S4, but Chidi/Eleanor has tipped over into full on annoying for me. Sitcom romances are at best tedious, and doubly so when you do memory wipes and retread the same 'will they ever get together' routines. But even more than that, I think the two characters are so much better/funnier when they aren't mooning at each other. Chidi being exasperated at what a terrible person she is just works so well for this material.

Yeah the will they/won't they routine is generally the worst part of most sitcoms, especially when it's the 'main' characters that are doing it. Eleanor/Chidi, Ross/Rachel, Ted/Robin, etc.

Emotionally healthy friendships between exes can be a thing!

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