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The Good Place S3 |OT| Stick a Fork In It We're Ready - Thursdays 9:30/8:30c

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W-00

W-00

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,434
BarrBarr said:
Does anyone else think that the Janet that came out of the portal isn't the same one that went in? She was oddly quiet when she came out, and I swear that Shaun was about to out her right before Janet kicked him through that portal.
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That was my immediate suspicion, but considering that Janet got her powers back immediately upon any part of her going back through to the other side I don't know what they could have had available to disable her so they could replace her. It's not like a Bad Janet can pretend to be a good one for very long.
 

mclem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,417
Right, I've been thinking a bit and I have an idea why Doug might not be eligible for the Good Place:

It was established early on with the points system that there were huge, world-changing things that got you an awful lot of points, and *also* that the points threshold for entry to The Good Place is particularly high. We've heard - possibly true, although Michael could be lying - that Abraham Lincoln made it to the good place, and Mindy St. Clair could have done so had her master plan been carried out before she died. It's been suggested that hardly anyone gets into The Good Place, but what hasn't quite been explored is why that's the case.

What I'm thinking is this: we're looking at a (loose?) metaphor for privilege: the way The Good Place is functionally unfair is that the average person simply does not have the opportunities in life to get enough points to merit getting in. A president has the power to do so; a (presumably reasonably wealthy) lawyer can seed enough capital to get a plan under way, but a person like Doug, well-meaning though he might be, while he might be able to do hundreds of thousands of small +point actions, just doesn't have the life opportunities to get any large-scoring awards under his belt.

If you're poor, if you're powerless, if you're underprivileged, you have no chance.

I could see that working as a moral stand the show wants to take through the use of metaphor.
 
BarrBarr

BarrBarr

Member
Oct 25, 2017
734
W-00 said:
That was my immediate suspicion, but considering that Janet got her powers back immediately upon any part of her going back through to the other side I don't know what they could have had available to disable her so they could replace her. It's not like a Bad Janet can pretend to be a good one for very long.
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I was thinking that she has either been replaced with another good Janet, or when she went through the portal she got rewritten.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the good place just doesn't exist? We never see it or anyone from the good place, it could be that the good place is so difficult to get into because then the demons use the idea of the good place as a way to punish people in the bad place. For all we know Shaun and the other higher ups might be the only people who know that the good place is a scam.
 

mclem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,417
BarrBarr said:
I was thinking that she has either been replaced with another good Janet, or when she went through the portal she got rewritten.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the good place just doesn't exist? We never see it or anyone from the good place, it could be that the good place is so difficult to get into because then the demons use the idea of the good place as a way to punish people in the bad place. For all we know Shaun and the other higher ups might be the only people who know that the good place is a scam.
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I've thought about that a bit, but I'm not convinced by that answer, there's too many inconsistencies if The Good Place doesn't exist. We saw a representative of The Good Place in Mindy's induction video - and we've not seen anything to contradict the notion that her story is pretty much true. On top of that the Judge did suggest that Eleanor had fulfilled the requirements to end up in the Good Place, which can't happen if it doesn't exist! Finally, there's the simple fact of the existence of Good Janets, what are they for if there's no Good Place?
 
BarrBarr

BarrBarr

Member
Oct 25, 2017
734
mclem said:
I've thought about that a bit, but I'm not convinced by that answer, there's too many inconsistencies if The Good Place doesn't exist. We saw a representative of The Good Place in Mindy's induction video - and we've not seen anything to contradict the notion that her story is pretty much true. On top of that the Judge did suggest that Eleanor had fulfilled the requirements to end up in the Good Place, which can't happen if it doesn't exist! Finally, there's the simple fact of the existence of Good Janets, what are they for if there's no Good Place?
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In my mind the Middle Place is still the Bad Place, I mean look at it Mindy is forced to be in isolation and it is driving her crazy. That doesn't sound medium to me at all, in fact I'd say that even when the gang were in "the Good Place" they had it better than Mindy. To say that we have seen a rep from the Good Place in that video is also suspect, the first season showed us that the demons can pretend to be from the Good Place and be pretty convincing about it too.

When it comes to the Judge suggesting that Eleanor had fulfilled the requirements to end up in the Good Place, I'd say she is just messing with her. The Judge is supposed to be all knowing, so if that is true then she knew that Eleanor wouldn't leave her friends and go to the Good Place without them.

Finally when it comes to Janet, when Michael steals Janet there are a couple things that jumped out at me, first of all the warehouse just says Janet there aren't any markers about her being good or bad, and secondly Michael says that he didn't need to go to the Good Place to get Janet because "they keep their Janet's in a neutral pocket dimension beneath a shapeless time void, it's right next to accounting" not only that there was no one there to guard the Janet warehouse. Michael says that is because the Angels are too trusting, but I say that there was no one there to guard the place because there are no Angels.
 
Pluto

Pluto

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,407
BarrBarr said:
In my mind the Middle Place is still the Bad Place, I mean look at it Mindy is forced to be in isolation and it is driving her crazy. That doesn't sound medium to me at all, in fact I'd say that even when the gang were in "the Good Place" they had it better than Mindy. To say that we have seen a rep from the Good Place in that video is also suspect, the first season showed us that the demons can pretend to be from the Good Place and be pretty convincing about it too.
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Why would anyone put Mindy in the medium place and pretend there's a good place if it wasn't true? As a creative way to torture Mindy? Maybe but why would the demons keep up the charade among themselves, why would it be kept secret from the lower level demons, what would Shawn etc. gain from that?

When it comes to the Judge suggesting that Eleanor had fulfilled the requirements to end up in the Good Place, I'd say she is just messing with her. The Judge is supposed to be all knowing, so if that is true then she knew that Eleanor wouldn't leave her friends and go to the Good Place without them.
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The judge is very obviously not all knowing, she had to read the files of the four humans to learn anout their lifes on earth and she was fooled by Michael and Janet for some time. Why would she mess with them in that way? Shawn was already annoyed with Michael's fake good place experiment so why would he be part of an even more convoluted plan inatead of just throwing them into a lava pit?

Finally when it comes to Janet, when Michael steals Janet there are a couple things that jumped out at me, first of all the warehouse just says Janet there aren't any markers about her being good or bad, and secondly Michael says that he didn't need to go to the Good Place to get Janet because "they keep their Janet's in a neutral pocket dimension beneath a shapeless time void, it's right next to accounting" not only that there was no one there to guard the Janet warehouse. Michael says that is because the Angels are too trusting, but I say that there was no one there to guard the place because there are no Angels.
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The demons outright confirm our Janet is a good one when the bad one's head melts from pretending to be good if it wasn't obvious enough.

The theory of the good place not existing is nonsense. It must exist or the entire show falls apart because there's no reason to make one up when it's just eternal torture for everyone. Again, why would the higher level demons lie about the good place to the lower level ones?

What does make sense is the idea that the good place is mostly empty because the angels just let the demons walk all over them when it comes to what gains and looses humans points.
 
Z-Beat

Z-Beat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
31,827
BarrBarr said:
In my mind the Middle Place is still the Bad Place, I mean look at it Mindy is forced to be in isolation and it is driving her crazy.
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Here's the thing: psychological torture wasn't an avenue often traveled in The Bad Place. Michael's whole experiment was based on the idea of self-sustaining psychological torture. The demons in the bad place prefer a more hands on approach and that's what Mindy is avoiding by being in the medium place. The medium place in general exists because of the systems failure to accurately quantify redemption.

On top of that, a lot of Mindy's suffering comes from the parts of her personality that probably aren't factors to the people in the good place because of it's high standards (so tons of sex and cocaine wouldn't appeal to them as much). We have an idea of what good place citizens are like because of how Janet helped model the fake one.

Off topic but back before I started watching this show I saw the good place set as part of the studio tour at universal studios.
 
BarrBarr

BarrBarr

Member
Oct 25, 2017
734
Yeah I see where you guys are coming from, anyways it would be a very annoying/bad reveal if it turned out that the Good Place didn't exist at all. I think that there is a better chance that the Good Place has been abandoned though. Maybe the only person who was ever good enough to gain entry was Lincoln, and he is just chilling there by himself with only a Janet to keep him company.
 
lorddarkflare

lorddarkflare

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,245
mclem said:
Right, I've been thinking a bit and I have an idea why Doug might not be eligible for the Good Place:

It was established early on with the points system that there were huge, world-changing things that got you an awful lot of points, and *also* that the points threshold for entry to The Good Place is particularly high. We've heard - possibly true, although Michael could be lying - that Abraham Lincoln made it to the good place, and Mindy St. Clair could have done so had her master plan been carried out before she died. It's been suggested that hardly anyone gets into The Good Place, but what hasn't quite been explored is why that's the case.

What I'm thinking is this: we're looking at a (loose?) metaphor for privilege: the way The Good Place is functionally unfair is that the average person simply does not have the opportunities in life to get enough points to merit getting in. A president has the power to do so; a (presumably reasonably wealthy) lawyer can seed enough capital to get a plan under way, but a person like Doug, well-meaning though he might be, while he might be able to do hundreds of thousands of small +point actions, just doesn't have the life opportunities to get any large-scoring awards under his belt.

If you're poor, if you're powerless, if you're underprivileged, you have no chance.

I could see that working as a moral stand the show wants to take through the use of metaphor.
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That would be beautiful, but the show has not really built enough of a foundation to allow for this to be true. Not yet anyway.
 
Anthony Mooch

Anthony Mooch

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,791
I think what happens is some how they get the entire world to learn about the bad place/good place point system thus everyone would get sent to the bad place and it forces the rules to be changed
 
HP_Wuvcraft

HP_Wuvcraft

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,267
South of San Francisco
mclem said:
Right, I've been thinking a bit and I have an idea why Doug might not be eligible for the Good Place:

It was established early on with the points system that there were huge, world-changing things that got you an awful lot of points, and *also* that the points threshold for entry to The Good Place is particularly high. We've heard - possibly true, although Michael could be lying - that Abraham Lincoln made it to the good place, and Mindy St. Clair could have done so had her master plan been carried out before she died. It's been suggested that hardly anyone gets into The Good Place, but what hasn't quite been explored is why that's the case.

What I'm thinking is this: we're looking at a (loose?) metaphor for privilege: the way The Good Place is functionally unfair is that the average person simply does not have the opportunities in life to get enough points to merit getting in. A president has the power to do so; a (presumably reasonably wealthy) lawyer can seed enough capital to get a plan under way, but a person like Doug, well-meaning though he might be, while he might be able to do hundreds of thousands of small +point actions, just doesn't have the life opportunities to get any large-scoring awards under his belt.

If you're poor, if you're powerless, if you're underprivileged, you have no chance.

I could see that working as a moral stand the show wants to take through the use of metaphor.
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I've had it in my head for a while that they will change fundamentally how the Places work, and it looks like this season is leading up to that.
 
Joeku

Joeku

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,474
HP_Wuvcraft said:
I've had it in my head for a while that they will change fundamentally how the Places work, and it looks like this season is leading up to that.
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Once again, this seemed like a thing for a final season, but if they do this in the last third of the third season they are running this car at mach 5, especially for network TV. It's nuts.
 
Anthony Mooch

Anthony Mooch

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,791
I think this show goes to 4 seasons because Michael Shur nbc contract is up in 2020 and then watch him go to netflix and make kristen bell have a new netflix show
 
Mulciber

Mulciber

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Aug 22, 2018
5,217
mclem said:
What I'm thinking is this: we're looking at a (loose?) metaphor for privilege: the way The Good Place is functionally unfair is that the average person simply does not have the opportunities in life to get enough points to merit getting in. A president has the power to do so; a (presumably reasonably wealthy) lawyer can seed enough capital to get a plan under way, but a person like Doug, well-meaning though he might be, while he might be able to do hundreds of thousands of small +point actions, just doesn't have the life opportunities to get any large-scoring awards under his belt.

If you're poor, if you're powerless, if you're underprivileged, you have no chance.

I could see that working as a moral stand the show wants to take through the use of metaphor.
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That really seems like it's not the case, though. If the powerful make it easier than everyone else, then why is Lincoln the huge exception to the rule for presidents? Remember, he's the only president to make it in. Also, Tahani's wealth and acts of charity were meaningless, because she did them for the wrong reasons, thus showing it's not the wealth and what you do with it; it's your intentions behind your actions.
 
Monkeyball

Monkeyball

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Aug 19, 2018
725
I was watching a few episodes of the last season earlier and asked myself "Why am I watching this? It's not funny or interesting." The story just seems to repeat itself, is aimless and there are no good jokes.
 

mclem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,417
Mulciber said:
That really seems like it's not the case, though. If the powerful make it easier than everyone else, then why is Lincoln the huge exception to the rule for presidents? Remember, he's the only president to make it in. Also, Tahani's wealth and acts of charity were meaningless, because she did them for the wrong reasons, thus showing it's not the wealth and what you do with it; it's your intentions behind your actions.
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My point is that power/wealth gives you the ability to perform good high-scoring acts - you still have to actually carry them out. Doug can't abolish slavery.

That doesn't in any way also invalidate the notion that the intention of your acts may matter.
 
Prototype Viktor

Prototype Viktor

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
11,953
Houston
I think I figured it out. Doug is the accountant of the system due to Jeremy Berrimy. He came up with the system in the 1970's but they've been using the system since the dot above the I.
 
AtmaPhoenix

AtmaPhoenix

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Oct 25, 2017
4,001
The Internet
Prototype Viktor said:
I think I figured it out. Doug is the accountant of the system due to Jeremy Berrimy. He came up with the system in the 1970's but they've been using the system since the dot above the I.
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It's getting to the point in the season where everything ramps up and all the little things that you thought were just throwaway jokes come back to matter. I'm guessing Jeremy Bearimy is going to be one of those things.
 
Kyberpunk

Kyberpunk

Member
Oct 28, 2017
127
Someone posted a theory on the Good Place subreddit that the points system might continue to work in the afterlife, so given enough time, everyone in the Good Place gets complacent (since they already got their reward for being good on Earth) and eventually loses enough points to go to the Bad Place. Which is why Shaun is so sure that everyone will be sent to the Bad Place in the end. In season 1, there was the whole "Elanor tries to earn points in the Good Place to prove she's good" storyline - that could just be one of Michael's inventions, or it could be based in truth and you really can earn/lose points in the Good Place.
 
Kalor

Kalor

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Oct 25, 2017
19,620
I finally got round to the most recent episode and it was so good. Michael McKean was great as usual as well.
 
Cat Party

Cat Party

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Oct 25, 2017
10,392
I don't know where the show is going, but I am certain the ultimate ending will not be nihilistic like some of these theories.
 
platypotamus

platypotamus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,333
My cursory internetting indicates that I don't get a Thanksgiving Good Place episode? I am thankful for NOTHING! NOTHING!
 
Antrax

Antrax

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,262
Someone shared this article about Jodie Whitaker and Chris Chibnall possibly leaving Dr. Who next year, but it featured this gem of a quote in it:
Chibnall's planned departure may also be causing some creative improvising around how Doctor Who Season 12 will be structured. The BBC currently demands that a full series of 10 episodes a year be released. Chibnall reportedly believes that schedule is untenable.
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which reminded me of that joke Tahani made in like the first season:
Tahani said:
It ran for 16 years on the BBC. It did nearly 30 episodes!
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OP
OP
StarCreator

StarCreator

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,853
Actually, it's worse than I thought, with the December 6 episode being the last one to air in 2018. Per Sepinwall:
NBC has previously broken each Good Place season into two completely uninterrupted chunks. That approach would have made this the final new episode of 2018 before the season wrapped up early next year. Instead, the show will be off for a couple of weeks due to Thanksgiving and other things, then air a single episode (titled, intriguingly, "Janet(s)") on December 6th, then go on a brief hiatus until the home stretch begins on January 10th.
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It's weird scheduling, but the plus side is that when the show returns, it'll be part of a brief but wonderful double-feature with Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
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Zubz

Zubz

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Oct 25, 2017
6,565
no
Wack about the scheduled. Agreed on the episode name being interesting.
Maybe that "A different Janet left the Bad Place portal" theory holds water? Then again, we're picking things back up in the Janet void, so this was going to be a Janet Lore heavy episode regardless.
 
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