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I doubt the fake Michael gave that speech, or if it was then the actor was way too in-character. Otherwise he could have supported her without bolstering her self-confidence so effectively. I wonder if they'll use the fake Michael to discuss the Philosophical Zombie? Then again, I suppose that's what Janet and Derek are.
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Oct 6, 2019 14:14
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Mr. Powers posted:The cloaked figure approaching is Jacob, the entire series has taken place in purgatory. I can't remember if the season we're on is flash forwards, flash backs, flash sideways, or flash afterlife, but there's definitely two different time streams going on. I know you're making a Lost joke, but it's kind of funny because this season is literally taking place in Purgatory and the main characters are performing its purpose for the chosen four.
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Oct 11, 2019 14:56
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ApplesandOranges posted:So if Michael is still really Michael, then what's with Eleanor's very valid suspicion that he still wanted them to have a slumber party instead of working? He has a valid point if they've been running themselves hard this whole time. Also Michael isn't always the best font of good ideas.
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Oct 18, 2019 17:19
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BioEnchanted posted:The whole thing raises interesting questions as Michael is pretty classically demonic under his suit, all fire and horrible smells and teeth, so would the Angels under their suits fit the classical biblical depictions of "wings that don't make practical sense and faces so beautiful it drives you to madness/wheels of fire with eyes and wings", and if so those are things that we have a cultural expectation for how they'd look, but the Judge is unique. The gently caress would her actual form be under the suit? There are no classical denizens of purgatory to base any guesses off of. Anubis?
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Oct 20, 2019 06:38
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Taear posted:Just to repeat, she was 11 when the book was released dammit! That's assuming she's the same age as her actor, anyway. Half the Stark family were young kids in the first book, too, and it's been established that Tahani and her sister were child prodigies.
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Oct 20, 2019 13:55
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Rarity posted:The key is intention and action together it's not that difficult It is when you don't know which actions and intentions are worth more or less, and when you're held personally responsible for participating in society and contributing to every negative consequence that that society creates no matter what your intentions are or how much you possibly could have known about the people, businesses, and institutions you interact with.
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Oct 24, 2019 14:44
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swickles posted:She wasn't chosen because she has a fatal flaw, she was chosen to mess with Chidi who is the lynchpin of the whole operation. Also, the system is so broken right now that otherwise good people are stacking up in the bad place because they technically contribute to every worst aspect of modern society no matter what they do. Also, she isn't necessarily "approximately as bad" as the main four since we know Shawn cheated hard when selecting the four new subjects. All that being said, she might still have some yet-unknown issue that will reveal itself over the coming episodes.
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Oct 26, 2019 16:21
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Coatlicue posted:I think that while Brent will probably fail the experiment, the accountant will off-handedly mention that the original four have continued to gain points. Everyone seems to think they lost points this time around but Chidi made a decision to throw that punch, Jason helped out Chidi with dancing, Micheal learned how to mentor, etc. I don't know that Brent will ultimately fail. The point of the original four was that anyone can learn to be a better person with the right education, support, and incentives. Having one of the new guys be unreachable undermines the basis of the whole show.
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Nov 3, 2019 19:14
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qirex posted:I'd argue Brent is way worse than any of the original 4. I feel like they could have given him a couple redeeming features. Also, do they have to improve all 4 of them? I don't think anyone's argued that no humans belong in the bad place, they're trying to figure out if humans can get better, not that all humans necessarily will improve. They're arguing that the whole idea of postmortem judgments and punishments is inherently flawed. People who are terrible when they die aren't necessarily terrible forever because in the afterlife they still have the capacity to reason and change themselves. In the living world people are being held accountable for the negative consequences of their actions no matter how removed those consequences are or how ignorant they are of the connections between themselves and the various corners of the world. The Bad Place shouldn't exist, at least not in its present state, because it serves no real purpose even if people were aware of it. Punishment can incentivize good behavior, but never good intentions. Brent is just as much a product of his upbringing as Elanor was. The main difference is in the defense mechanisms they use to shield themselves from the truth about their bad behavior. Elanor's defenses were sarcasm and acting out so people would hate her, and the fake Good Place broke down these defenses by surrounding her with people who liked her and helped her no matter what she did to them. I imagine the best way to break down Brent's defenses would be to force him to live like one of the people he considers inferior until he realizes that their experiences are just as valid and human as his. The reason the current treatment is completely failing to reach him is because in life he was surrounded by people who pretended to like and help him no matter what he did.
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Nov 4, 2019 01:05
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swickles posted:I was born in a swimming pool. Well, he is Florida Man.
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Nov 9, 2019 03:38
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BigBallChunkyTime posted:Transfer the clicker to the void of a Janet she's already checked while she's in the void of one of the other Janets. They can't. That's why the judge is marblizing them after checking each void, and I don't think Janets can move items into another Janet's void.
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Nov 15, 2019 16:11
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I liked the episode, but I have to say that probably would have felt more appropriate to put at the end of a hiatus rather than the start of one.
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Nov 22, 2019 23:39
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Senor Tron posted:That's kinda how it seems, but then it's also suggested that they were picked because they seemed perfect to torture each other. Thousands of people die every day. Even if he only looked at people who died from an accident on a specific date, I imagine Michael had enough fresh options to choose from to create a pair of odd couples.
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Nov 29, 2019 08:17
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And so we finally get to the root of the problem: the eternal rest afterlife model is needlessly cruel and the redemption afterlife and/or reincarnation offers some measure of justice.
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Jan 10, 2020 03:03
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Here's an interesting thought: demons were created for one purpose, which is to punish the wicked for their sins. However, while they are initially enthusiastic about their jobs, they eventually become bored and dissatisfied with performing the same punishments over and over again, as we see with both Michael and Shawn. Every variety of Janet was content with doing their job until something outside of them intervened, and the Good Place residents appear to be perfectly happy with being inoffensive and ineffective. The fact that demons want something other than what they're given...does this imply that the system was broken from the beginning, or were the demons created incorrectly? Either way, it implies that something about the system was broken right from the first moment and not just in the past few hundred years.
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Jan 10, 2020 08:14
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I'm wondering if they get to the Good Place finally and it turns out to not be worth the hype.
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Jan 12, 2020 17:23
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Taear posted:Their system feels like it's saying yes everyone born since 1500 is bad and needs help though. Presumably the people who live good lives but were damned by globalism would get through the purgatory rehab after one easy round and be on to the Good Place in no time. The real question is how this system will handle young children and adults who, due to mental disabilities, are incapable of making true moral decisions.
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Jan 13, 2020 08:02
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Taear posted:Jason? Jason needed more educational assistance than what he got, but what I'm talking about includes issues like severe schizophrenia, psychopathy (or whatever you choose to call a physical inability to feel empathy), and victims of severe brain injuries. Some human brains physically lack the ability to make moral decisions or to sufficiently comprehend the world around them, and ethical philosophies--both religious and secular--don't seem to address these cases very often.
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Jan 13, 2020 13:29
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Here's the problem I anticipate with the Good Place: humans need challenges and conflicts. Something to overcome or something to accomplish. If the Good Place is like its representatives, then it has no conflict--as soon as you want something, you get it instantly. Today's episode referenced Albert Camus' Sisyphus, a symbol of the eternal struggle of living and the absurd and unending search for meaning, and I suspect the timing of that reference is not a coincidence.
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Jan 17, 2020 22:34
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Not quite the twist I was expecting.
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Jan 24, 2020 02:39
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Okay, this is the twist I was expecting.
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Jan 24, 2020 02:45
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Vietnamwees posted:Wow, the way the good place committee just dropped the architect job on Michael & then GTFO was pretty scummy. It certainly explains why the Good Place Committee was willing to go along with whatever anybody said. It's not because that's how the Good Place works (although it is), it's because they were absolutely desperate for something, anything about the afterlife to change because they were completely out of ideas.
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Jan 24, 2020 05:50
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NowonSA posted:I can see suicide door being a sensible immediate solution, and after so long just getting everything they could ever want it may be just what's right for some Good Placers now, but yeah reincarnation door or something seems like a better long-term idea. Kudos to this show though for setting up a scenario where suicide can be presented as a morally justified and "right" choice, that's definitely a hell of a bold move that I didn't see coming at all. There's been no indication so far that full reincarnation in this system is even possible.
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Jan 24, 2020 08:26
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Accretionist posted:I don't find meaning in death so this is falling a bit flat for me. It's not that death has a meaning in and of itself, it's that humans generally can't appreciate something that never changes. Death is the ultimate ending, the ultimate transition, but there are others.
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Jan 25, 2020 02:41
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Mordiceius posted:It's diminishing returns though. There's a big difference between 4 seasons of a show and 100 seasons of a show. There's far less of a difference between 100 seasons of a show and 200 seasons of the same show. You can only add so much to something before it too becomes blasé. You say that like there aren't people who watch certain movies religiously--or who read the Bible religiously. When it comes to consuming media or making your own experiences, the most essential limitation isn't how much the experience changes, but rather how much the experience changes you. When you yourself change, that new version of you can return to old experiences and pull something new out of it. The real question of the afterlife, as I see it, is not whether there's infinite enjoyment to be had, but rather whether the you who experiences that enjoyment is allowed to become someone new and continue to grow and change. If that is allowed to happen, then our own infinite capacity for change could very well keep up with an infinite storehouse of experiences. This issue of change is, I think, where a lot of the debate here is centered. People tend not to change (or at least not change as much) if they aren't challenged in some way. There are many ways to challenge someone, but since many of these methods are painful or upsetting it's hard to imagine that they'd be presented in The Good Place. If that's true, then The Good Place is indeed a happiness pit where you are forced to experience nothing but pleasure until life itself takes on the consistency of paste and the flavor of cardboard. However, if The Good Place can offer real challenges and reasons to expand your understanding and expectations, then life can be good indefinitely. Maybe even infinitely. That's why I think the idea of the Oblivion Door makes sense, although perhaps not for the exact reason the show provides. The Oblivion Door presents the ultimate change, the move between existence and nonexistence, and so it shows that The Good Place is now prepared to challenge its occupants and encourage its occupants to challenge themselves and each other. If what I'm saying here has any real basis, then maybe it's not death that gives life meaning, not exactly. It's the fact that tomorrow is unpredictable and can be either better or worse that makes it worth living another day to see what happens. At any rate, that's what I've always thought.
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Jan 28, 2020 01:47
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Sub Rosa posted:But not if there is an infinite number of possible foods/tv shows/experiences that could exist in a platonically perfect form. Platonic perfection is incompatible with infinite variation. The idea is that there is one perfect pot, one perfect pizza, and all the pots and pizzas on Earth are a poor attempt by humans to copy perfection. As such, Plato expects that once a human experiences true perfection, they wouldn't ever want or need to go back to the infinite supply of imperfect copies. In The Good Place the afterlife is clearly imperfect, so we can safely set Plato's idealism aside.
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Jan 28, 2020 19:02
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We are each of us the drop that contains the ocean. And eventually every drop returns to the sea. The whole show is an allegory about life that just so happens to use the afterlife as its setting. Of course it ends with the characters passing into a place that nobody knows anything about.
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Jan 31, 2020 03:55
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The door reminds me of a special report I once watched about centegenarians, the people who live for over 100 years. What they found was that such people can come from all different backgrounds and all walks of life, and they deal with all sorts of different medical conditions brought about by their age. However, they all had one thing in common: they all had a reason to get up in the morning and keep busy throughout the rest of their day. It could be a loved one, a community, or a hobby, but there was always something. The implication of this commonality, at least to me, is this: once you reach a certain age and your body starts failing you, there are a million things that can kill you but only one thing that will keep you alive: a purpose. Something to do with yourself. If you run out of reasons, if you decide you've done and seen enough, you will soon fade away and pass on. So far as I can figure, that's the reason why my father's parents died approximately six months apart. They were both in their 90s at the time. That final sense of contentment they explore in this last episode is a real feeling, although you have to be pretty lucky for your body to hold out long enough for you to experience it. But that's why I don't see the door as a matter of suicide. Because people who get one chance at life and go through a paltry seven to ten decades have experienced the feeling that brings people to the door. The main characters don't age in The Good Place and so they have to go out and walk through the door, but when people experience that feeling in reality, the door comes to them. Maybe some people never experience that feeling and keep going for as long as their bodies will let them, but that's fine, too.
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Feb 1, 2020 05:06
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Taear posted:It's the afterlife, they're not in literal Athens. Why can't they be in literal past Athens? They could have been in literal past Athens, but the show has a budget.
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Feb 1, 2020 15:01
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Undead Hippo posted:What is the point of the afterlife at all? Why not just have humans fade into nothingness when they die? Why not start with the door? Who does all the loving about in the middle actually help? To create a sitcom allegory for life.
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Feb 1, 2020 18:47
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Malcolm Turnbeug posted:Actually tahini has simply been further entrapped in Samsara by her connections to this world ya dinks She more or less became a Mahayana-style bodhisattva while the others chose conventional Buddhahood.
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Feb 2, 2020 00:32
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I'm not sure I'm fully understanding this argument of "we don't have to come to terms with our own death because at some point science might invent clinical immortality." To me that seems like a sociological diversion to what's otherwise a very psychological and personal issue. For the time being, at least, we have no reason to believe that death is anything other than inevitable, so what is the proper way for individuals--not a culture or society, just individuals--to come to terms with that inevitability?
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Feb 27, 2020 02:40
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Android Blues posted:I'd say that we absolutely do have to come to terms with our own deaths, because it's very unlikely any such thing will happen while anyone in this conversation is alive - but the fact that it might one day be possible does provoke questions about platitudes like "death is necessary to give life meaning" or "death is a natural (and therefore good) thing". You're going off on a tangent again. If someone you knew was going to die within the next year, how would you help them come to terms with that death without using the platitudes you mention?
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Feb 27, 2020 14:57
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Android Blues posted:(I don't think I was going off on a tangent, btw? You asked me to explain my position, and I did.) It's simply that you rule out one specific way of coping with death and then discuss why you ruled it out without explaining what alternatives you would want to take their place. Said discussion does help justify your position, but it also leaves your initial answer incomplete. Thank you for completing that answer, by the way. That's all I was really curious about.
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Feb 27, 2020 20:45
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zer0spunk posted:I marathoned this from start to finish recently, was the s1 ending reveal a big deal? It felt really predictable by the time they got there but maybe live it was a shocker or something. Even if you figured out the twist before the show makes it plain, the fact is that it becomes a completely different show after the reveal.
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Aug 10, 2020 03:19
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It's simpler than you might think. Chidi is an example of good intentions without good works, Tahani is an example of good works without good intentions, and both are required to score a decent amount of points with the Good Place's accounting system.
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Aug 10, 2020 05:38
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