Or alternatively, Why The Good Place Failed (but that would be deemed spoilers)
You guys may be familiar with that shock of a season finale back in season 1. Eleanor proved to them all that this was actually the Bad Place and Michael had been manipulating her, Chidi, Tahani and Jason this whole time. Too bad for them, Michael gets one more shot at making it work. So he does... and proceeds to have the entire plot fall apart within one day. Here, I will analyze why his arrangements were doomed to fail.
So going by the current arrangements, Michael correctly figured that Chidi had a greater influence towards Eleanor than he thought, so he isolated the two this time around. He did the same to Tahani and Jason, giving them different soulmates this time around. This would also lead to the fall of the second attempt, but we'll get back to them.
First off we have Eleanor. Michael decided to play into her fantasies and have a mailman as her soulmate to make her think she's in the Good Place. Yet she believes that things are not right, so she tries to tell her roommate. Said roommate refuses to even give her the chance to confess, and herein lies the first problem. Eleanor was willing to give a bit of leeway for herself because she at least had one person to fall back on when things go south. With no one she can reasonably turn to, she keeps up the good charade for longer than anticipated. This would lead to issues with our next subject.
Tahani is a pompous woman who envied the success of her more successful sister. She is insecure around people she perceives to be superior to her, so in her previous life, she threw parties in order to find others she thought were better than her. In the previous run, that person was Eleanor. That's why it tortured her that she found out she got the lowest score out of everyone. Even then, as long as she believed that Eleanor was a worse person than her, she would be content to play along. This was especially true with a monk soulmate who couldn't comment on her worst excesses. With no one to play the worse cop, Tahani ended up being the one to self-destruct, all against Michael's wishes.
Which brings us to Jason. He may well be the only one incapable of playing along to save face under pressure. Thus when paired with Tahani, she gave him enough space to unleash his true self in his own private room. In this incarnation, Michael decided to up the pressure by giving him a soulmate that just Wont. Give. Him. Space. No where he went, his soulmate would be there at his side, denying him the space he wanted. This made for some prime psychological torture, but remember that he also figured out he didn't belong. In the previous life, he called out Eleanor as a fraud. Finding a new bidding to hang out with, he had no need to end it. But all of this pressure would eventually cause him to give up, even if it meant dooming himself to an eternity of pain. Because he's a spontaneous man and that's how he's been his whole life. All he would need is for someone to act weird in order to suspect something was wrong and thus drop the act.
Chidi is an odd case, in the sense that it would be ridiculously easy to dupe him. Even when pitted against two potential soulmates, he would never have come to the conclusion that the Good Place was a lie. He needed someone to give him that harsh reality, and thanks to that note she gave Janet, it was Eleanor. Once she found Chidi, she found her own suspicions. Once Tahani spotted the others, she would announce her grievances. Once Jason found other people who are just as bad, he blew his own cover. And once Eleanor found four people who are clearly not as good as thought, she solved the case much sooner than the first time.
Again, that's off to the writers for giving the audience the intricacies to theory craft how these characters would interact under different circumstances and who Michael's manipulations would fail all the same. I look forward to seeing how this series concludes.
You guys may be familiar with that shock of a season finale back in season 1. Eleanor proved to them all that this was actually the Bad Place and Michael had been manipulating her, Chidi, Tahani and Jason this whole time. Too bad for them, Michael gets one more shot at making it work. So he does... and proceeds to have the entire plot fall apart within one day. Here, I will analyze why his arrangements were doomed to fail.
So going by the current arrangements, Michael correctly figured that Chidi had a greater influence towards Eleanor than he thought, so he isolated the two this time around. He did the same to Tahani and Jason, giving them different soulmates this time around. This would also lead to the fall of the second attempt, but we'll get back to them.
First off we have Eleanor. Michael decided to play into her fantasies and have a mailman as her soulmate to make her think she's in the Good Place. Yet she believes that things are not right, so she tries to tell her roommate. Said roommate refuses to even give her the chance to confess, and herein lies the first problem. Eleanor was willing to give a bit of leeway for herself because she at least had one person to fall back on when things go south. With no one she can reasonably turn to, she keeps up the good charade for longer than anticipated. This would lead to issues with our next subject.
Tahani is a pompous woman who envied the success of her more successful sister. She is insecure around people she perceives to be superior to her, so in her previous life, she threw parties in order to find others she thought were better than her. In the previous run, that person was Eleanor. That's why it tortured her that she found out she got the lowest score out of everyone. Even then, as long as she believed that Eleanor was a worse person than her, she would be content to play along. This was especially true with a monk soulmate who couldn't comment on her worst excesses. With no one to play the worse cop, Tahani ended up being the one to self-destruct, all against Michael's wishes.
Which brings us to Jason. He may well be the only one incapable of playing along to save face under pressure. Thus when paired with Tahani, she gave him enough space to unleash his true self in his own private room. In this incarnation, Michael decided to up the pressure by giving him a soulmate that just Wont. Give. Him. Space. No where he went, his soulmate would be there at his side, denying him the space he wanted. This made for some prime psychological torture, but remember that he also figured out he didn't belong. In the previous life, he called out Eleanor as a fraud. Finding a new bidding to hang out with, he had no need to end it. But all of this pressure would eventually cause him to give up, even if it meant dooming himself to an eternity of pain. Because he's a spontaneous man and that's how he's been his whole life. All he would need is for someone to act weird in order to suspect something was wrong and thus drop the act.
Chidi is an odd case, in the sense that it would be ridiculously easy to dupe him. Even when pitted against two potential soulmates, he would never have come to the conclusion that the Good Place was a lie. He needed someone to give him that harsh reality, and thanks to that note she gave Janet, it was Eleanor. Once she found Chidi, she found her own suspicions. Once Tahani spotted the others, she would announce her grievances. Once Jason found other people who are just as bad, he blew his own cover. And once Eleanor found four people who are clearly not as good as thought, she solved the case much sooner than the first time.
Again, that's off to the writers for giving the audience the intricacies to theory craft how these characters would interact under different circumstances and who Michael's manipulations would fail all the same. I look forward to seeing how this series concludes.