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andraste... it is actually as good as everyone says it is! Which is one hell of an achievement given all the things I have heard about this show over the past few years.
(If you have managed to get this far into 2019 without having anything about The Good Place spoiled for you: do not pass Go, do not read anything about the premise, just try it. It is less disappointing than frozen yoghurt.)
Anyway, I just watched thirty-nine episodes in eight days because last weekend I got sick. The kind of sick where all I could do for some time was lie on the couch distracting myself from how terrible I felt with a course in moral philosophy disguised as a sitcom. This turned out to be a better use of my time than anything I would probably have done if I hadn't caught a nasty virus, indicating that we may not live in the worst timeline.
(Or maybe there is only one timeline and I was always going to get sick and mainline an entire television show. Who knows? I think the most important thing I learned from The Good Place is what to do if someone keeps talking about Determinism, i.e. pour iced tea on their head until they stop.)
Like basically everyone else on the planet who started watching this show after the first season finished airing, I went into this experience spoiled for the huge season-ending twist. The good news is, this doesn't actually ruin the story at all, although I imagine it's a rather different experience from watching unspoiled. The main effect was that I spent the first thirteen episodes wondering if Michael knew he was in the Bad Place or if he was actually as much a torture victim as the four humans. And, honestly, despite the end of Season One I still think that's a pretty good question. (Even if Eleanor deserved that cold tea shower when she brought up the idea of ever-escalating layers of demons.)
It's not like he hasn't been tormented as much as the rest of the cast at this point. Look at the evidence: he spends three hundred years watching the plan he's waited eternity to implement fail over and over and over again while hiding this cosmic screw-up from his boss and dodging Vicki, then has to join Team Cockroach, then learns about existential dread and guilt and other un-fun human things, then spends a season and a half desperately trying to keep his favourite humans alive and stop them getting tortured forever while also discovering that the system he's been serving in one way or another his whole existence is fundamentally broken and none of the other immortal entities want to help fix it. Then his former co-workers come up with the worst threat he can possibly think of - if he fails again they'll make his humans think he's betrayed them - and he just goes entirely to pieces. And what is Eleanor but an entity seemingly specifically designed to ruin his plans?
Except, of course, that's not all she does - after she's ruined his life by working out that she's in the Bad Place approximately seven hundred and ninety-nine times, she's also instrumental in helping him through the transition to good personhood. Except, in a way, she started helping with that even before the first reboot.
You know what I thought about all the time throughout watching this show? Their shared scenes in What We Owe to Each Other. Eleanor thinks that she's distracting Michael from catching her, while he thinks he's secretly torturing her. Yet what they they actually do is spend the day eating frozen yoghurt, singing karaoke and playing with a claw machine. I think that in some ways, that's one of the most important turning points in Michael's arc even if it completely passes him by at the time. At that point his primary intention is to torment Eleanor and the other three real humans in his neighbourhood - but one of the things he says in Season One that turns out to be completely true is that he's fascinated by humans and wants to learn all about them. Sure, initially his motivation may be that he wants to torture them better, but if he hadn't had all that natural curiosity then Eleanor and the others would have gone straight to being tortured by needles and bees with teeth. And Michael and Eleanor would never have become friends.
There's a straight line between Eleanor pretending to help Michael and Eleanor actually helping Michael and Eleanor finally stepping in for Michael when he just can't keep going at the end of Season Three. I can't wait to see where it goes in the end ...
(If you have managed to get this far into 2019 without having anything about The Good Place spoiled for you: do not pass Go, do not read anything about the premise, just try it. It is less disappointing than frozen yoghurt.)
Anyway, I just watched thirty-nine episodes in eight days because last weekend I got sick. The kind of sick where all I could do for some time was lie on the couch distracting myself from how terrible I felt with a course in moral philosophy disguised as a sitcom. This turned out to be a better use of my time than anything I would probably have done if I hadn't caught a nasty virus, indicating that we may not live in the worst timeline.
(Or maybe there is only one timeline and I was always going to get sick and mainline an entire television show. Who knows? I think the most important thing I learned from The Good Place is what to do if someone keeps talking about Determinism, i.e. pour iced tea on their head until they stop.)
Like basically everyone else on the planet who started watching this show after the first season finished airing, I went into this experience spoiled for the huge season-ending twist. The good news is, this doesn't actually ruin the story at all, although I imagine it's a rather different experience from watching unspoiled. The main effect was that I spent the first thirteen episodes wondering if Michael knew he was in the Bad Place or if he was actually as much a torture victim as the four humans. And, honestly, despite the end of Season One I still think that's a pretty good question. (Even if Eleanor deserved that cold tea shower when she brought up the idea of ever-escalating layers of demons.)
It's not like he hasn't been tormented as much as the rest of the cast at this point. Look at the evidence: he spends three hundred years watching the plan he's waited eternity to implement fail over and over and over again while hiding this cosmic screw-up from his boss and dodging Vicki, then has to join Team Cockroach, then learns about existential dread and guilt and other un-fun human things, then spends a season and a half desperately trying to keep his favourite humans alive and stop them getting tortured forever while also discovering that the system he's been serving in one way or another his whole existence is fundamentally broken and none of the other immortal entities want to help fix it. Then his former co-workers come up with the worst threat he can possibly think of - if he fails again they'll make his humans think he's betrayed them - and he just goes entirely to pieces. And what is Eleanor but an entity seemingly specifically designed to ruin his plans?
Except, of course, that's not all she does - after she's ruined his life by working out that she's in the Bad Place approximately seven hundred and ninety-nine times, she's also instrumental in helping him through the transition to good personhood. Except, in a way, she started helping with that even before the first reboot.
You know what I thought about all the time throughout watching this show? Their shared scenes in What We Owe to Each Other. Eleanor thinks that she's distracting Michael from catching her, while he thinks he's secretly torturing her. Yet what they they actually do is spend the day eating frozen yoghurt, singing karaoke and playing with a claw machine. I think that in some ways, that's one of the most important turning points in Michael's arc even if it completely passes him by at the time. At that point his primary intention is to torment Eleanor and the other three real humans in his neighbourhood - but one of the things he says in Season One that turns out to be completely true is that he's fascinated by humans and wants to learn all about them. Sure, initially his motivation may be that he wants to torture them better, but if he hadn't had all that natural curiosity then Eleanor and the others would have gone straight to being tortured by needles and bees with teeth. And Michael and Eleanor would never have become friends.
There's a straight line between Eleanor pretending to help Michael and Eleanor actually helping Michael and Eleanor finally stepping in for Michael when he just can't keep going at the end of Season Three. I can't wait to see where it goes in the end ...
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-16 04:19 pm (UTC)Like basically everyone else on the planet who started watching this show after the first season finished airing, I went into this experience spoiled for the huge season-ending twist.
Astonishingly, I actually managed not to be! Well, I got some very strong hints and was basically told repeatedly that there was a perspective-flipping twist in there, and I'm pretty sure the possibility for what it was crossed my mind at some point, but I was so utterly engaged with the show (and was watching it so fast) that I was able to just not think about it too much. Which is also remarkable for me. Usually my brain worries and worries at spoilers or semi-spoilers like that until all I can think about is exactly how and when a twist is going to happen.
The main effect was that I spent the first thirteen episodes wondering if Michael knew he was in the Bad Place or if he was actually as much a torture victim as the four humans. And, honestly, despite the end of Season One I still think that's a pretty good question.
I love your analysis of this. Although I think a key thing with Michael and the things he goes through may in fact be that he isn't being deliberately tortured by anyone. Rather, he's discovering the pain of living in a universe whose moral order is just inherently messed-up and broken and unkind. Which is deeply eye-opening, and raises all kinds of delicious emotional and philosophical questions about what one does, or should do, in the face of that. And I love the answers the show comes up with for that, too, namely 1) you help each other out with it, 2) you try to be good, anyway, even if the universe isn't going to reward you, and 3) you try to change things. Secular humanist me appreciates that sort of thing. :)
(And between this and Good Omens, right now I am pretty much all about the idea of supernatural agents of dickish theological systems basically going, "Screw this, I'm switching sides to humanity. Hey, they have cake!" You really have to love these oddly specific tropes...)
There's a straight line between Eleanor pretending to help Michael and Eleanor actually helping Michael and Eleanor finally stepping in for Michael when he just can't keep going at the end of Season Three.
This in particular is a lovely observation. Oh, man, I love this show. Now I kind of want to watch it again..
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-22 08:21 am (UTC)I think it may be the only series ever where I finished bingeing a season and then immediately want back and re-watched the entire thing again.
LOL, same. (Well, so far I have only re-watched the first episode because I have too much TV to get through as it is, but I've mentally committed to a schedule that should get me through the whole thing again before September when Season Four arrives.) My main take-away so far is that there's a whole other layer of jokes when you realise how often Michael must be lurking behind a tree waiting to spring out on cue and upset the humans some more.
And I love the answers the show comes up with for that, too, namely 1) you help each other out with it, 2) you try to be good, anyway, even if the universe isn't going to reward you, and 3) you try to change things. Secular humanist me appreciates that sort of thing. :)/
Yes to all of that! I think we're moving to a conclusion where they reform the afterlife into something that isn't fundamentally terrible and unfair. (Which I hope is going to include the opportunity for ANY soul to learn and grow and find their way out of the Bad Place. Yes, even people who managed boy bands.)
(And between this and Good Omens, right now I am pretty much all about the idea of supernatural agents of dickish theological systems basically going, "Screw this, I'm switching sides to humanity. Hey, they have cake!" You really have to love these oddly specific tropes...)
Between the bow ties and the frozen yoghurt, I am wondering if Michael is actually Aziriphale and Crowley's secret love child somehow.
(I mean, Janet suggested the frozen yoghurt specifically, but 'what food do humans think they like that they actually don't?' is such a Crowley-esque form of subtle torture.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-22 08:44 am (UTC)I think there are so many ways in which this show rewards re-watching, between that and all the blink-and-you'll-miss-it background jokes on signs and things.
Yes to all of that! I think we're moving to a conclusion where they reform the afterlife into something that isn't fundamentally terrible and unfair.
I've been kind of thinking that for a while. It certainly seems like the most satisfying place for it to go. Although how they might possibly get there... Well, I have no idea but I'm immensely looking forward to the ride.
Between the bow ties and the frozen yoghurt, I am wondering if Michael is actually Aziriphale and Crowley's secret love child somehow.
Thank you, you just nearly made me spray water all over my screen. But, OMG, he is exactly what you'd get if you combined the two of them, isn't he? All genuine, smiling, loving happiness and creatively mischievous demonic chaos, and lankiness and bow ties.
Well. There's the crossover crackfic I never knew I wanted. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-16 11:21 pm (UTC)I was spoiled, but then forgot?
BUT YOU'RE RIGHT, IT'S SO GOOD. Season 3 didn't work as well for me, I think because "slightly surreal real world" is maybe less effective a setting than "slightly surreal afterlife", but it was still better than most things on TV.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-22 09:26 am (UTC)I think Season Three also had some pacing problems, although it was hard to tell given the speed I was watching it at. I have high hopes they can completely stick the landing now that they're back in the slightly surreal afterlife, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-17 01:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-23 05:43 am (UTC)Lucky for me, the big twist at the end of Season One was the only thing I was spoiled for. (Well, that and the time Janet could only produce cactuses but that was a lot less important to the plot.) So I still got to be surprised by lots of other things, like Jason's ... everything.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-17 05:50 am (UTC)It's so good. And the Eleanor and Michael relationship is just so complicated and satisfying and good. And I've often wondered if, when it's all resolved, Eleanor might end up taking Michael's job on, because she'd be so damn good at it. If there needs to be a a Bad Place of sorts, and it's going to be run fairly (to presumably help bad people become good people??) then she'd be so good at doing that.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-23 05:45 am (UTC)I think that's as good a guess as any about where the show is going to end up! I certainly look forward to watching her run the experiment ...