The Good Place (TV Series, Season 1)
Sep. 29th, 2017 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThis was kind of a spontaneous “I had been hearing good things about it” watch; also thirteen 22-minute episodes isn't a particular commitment (and an easy binge-watch). Kristen Bell as an utterly terrible person is a good start to anything, really. I'm going to warn for spoilers here because I really enjoyed this and recommend watching it, and it'll work better if you aren't spoiled.
I love the fact that shows aren't dragging out the same ridiculous premises for several season before resolving anything. This is a neatly-contained 13 episodes in which characters actually develop, secrets come out and are dealt with, emotional problems eventually get handled like adults, and running gags don't stay long enough to get stale. (The bit with Janet and the cacti is a great example: Hilarious for one episode, but then dropped before it could get stupid.)
Am I wrong for shipping Eleanor/Tahani? Clearly the writers do. And while I doubt that it'll ever be made explicit in words, I appreciate Eleanor being casually bisexual.
I hadn't quite figured out the twist, but all of the details were there. This show can be summed up by, “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice,” and it plays the twist very well based on that. Competent heaven would make for a terrible TV show, because conflict between characters is what makes entertainment work. So instead we're presented with a grossly incompetent, grossly unfair vision of heaven—that's actually a long con likely inspired by a “Got Milk” commercial.
The whole setup, of course, is still within the throes of a very problematic cosmology: Unless the “bad place” is actually a purgatory where people can redeem themselves (and eventually go on to non-torture places), then the system is still fundamentally unjust, offering infinite punishment for finite crime. If people, after death, are still capable of learning, growing and improving themselves, then to judge them solely on their living actions is cruel and malicious. (I realize, of course, that the majority of religions seem to accept this as the case, though at least some of them attempt to mitigate it by not allowing people to learn or change after death. If their adherents are thinking at all beyond revenge fantasies.) Then again, we know nothing about the actually cosmology of this series, beyond “a hierarchy of demons get to torture at least four humans who were unpleasant in life”--everything else is at the mercy of highly unreliable narrators.
I think—though I realize it was done for dramatic purposes so they could get a second season—that the only thing that really irritated me was Eleanor's note to herself. She figured out how to transmit the message, but the best she could come up with was, “find Chidi”? Why not, “Michael is lying, this is hell, find these three real people and don't trust anyone else.” She had plenty of room on the paper and everything she'd learned could be transmitted in just a few words. Oy!
Overall: This was a delight. Watch it.
I love the fact that shows aren't dragging out the same ridiculous premises for several season before resolving anything. This is a neatly-contained 13 episodes in which characters actually develop, secrets come out and are dealt with, emotional problems eventually get handled like adults, and running gags don't stay long enough to get stale. (The bit with Janet and the cacti is a great example: Hilarious for one episode, but then dropped before it could get stupid.)
Am I wrong for shipping Eleanor/Tahani? Clearly the writers do. And while I doubt that it'll ever be made explicit in words, I appreciate Eleanor being casually bisexual.
I hadn't quite figured out the twist, but all of the details were there. This show can be summed up by, “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice,” and it plays the twist very well based on that. Competent heaven would make for a terrible TV show, because conflict between characters is what makes entertainment work. So instead we're presented with a grossly incompetent, grossly unfair vision of heaven—that's actually a long con likely inspired by a “Got Milk” commercial.
The whole setup, of course, is still within the throes of a very problematic cosmology: Unless the “bad place” is actually a purgatory where people can redeem themselves (and eventually go on to non-torture places), then the system is still fundamentally unjust, offering infinite punishment for finite crime. If people, after death, are still capable of learning, growing and improving themselves, then to judge them solely on their living actions is cruel and malicious. (I realize, of course, that the majority of religions seem to accept this as the case, though at least some of them attempt to mitigate it by not allowing people to learn or change after death. If their adherents are thinking at all beyond revenge fantasies.) Then again, we know nothing about the actually cosmology of this series, beyond “a hierarchy of demons get to torture at least four humans who were unpleasant in life”--everything else is at the mercy of highly unreliable narrators.
I think—though I realize it was done for dramatic purposes so they could get a second season—that the only thing that really irritated me was Eleanor's note to herself. She figured out how to transmit the message, but the best she could come up with was, “find Chidi”? Why not, “Michael is lying, this is hell, find these three real people and don't trust anyone else.” She had plenty of room on the paper and everything she'd learned could be transmitted in just a few words. Oy!
Overall: This was a delight. Watch it.
