The Good Place, S1E09 → S3E02

[jayeless]

Over the past week, I have watched much more of The Good Place. I'm still not all caught up, but only eleven episodes away now, which is probably like, two more evenings of concerted watching.

Anyway, as I went, I wrote a bunch of notes into a text file in Code, because I'm a big ol' dork and I had to put my thoughts somewhere even though I was watching alone. I have now tried to rearrange all my thoughts into coherent points of discussion, which you will find under the cut below.

1. Eleanor and Chidi
I don't really buy them as a romantic couple, no matter how many times the show has tried to push this on us by now. All the times we've seen Eleanor “realise” she's in love with Chidi, her rationale seems to mostly be that he's a super-awesome friend who's stood by her side through thick and thin etc. etc. and it's like yeah… ok… but that's what friends do? All you've actually realised is that he's an excellent close friend? (I realise it's apparently canon that they banged in eight separate iterations, but we've never seen the kind of build-up that would be required to make me believe it.)

If anything, I feel like Eleanor/Tahani is a better ship, just because there is the bare minimum requirement of physical attraction (at least on Eleanor's part). To be fair I've also got flashes of Tahani/Chidi too, though. ¿Por qué no los dos?

2. Just how good have you gotta be?!
I don't think there have been any clear answers on this yet. I do know Eleanor spent most of the first season complaining about there being no Middle Place for medium people, and then we find out there is one… but only one person is there, Mindy St Clair. And, realistically speaking, she is not there for being a medium person; she is there for being a terrible human being who happened to come up with a good idea in a drug-fuelled haze which worked well when someone else implemented it. (Don't get me wrong though, she has good moments. “Oh no it's my only copy don't…”)

So like… if the Medium Place is just marginal, where is the dividing line between who goes to the Good Place and who goes to the Bad? Michael in the first episode implied that you've got to be, like, multiple standard deviations' worth of good to go to the Good Place – just being moderately good isn't enough – but that sounds, you know, hideously unjust? And as far as I know, it's still never been disproven that he said that only to make Eleanor squirm, to rub it in how out of place she'd be in the Good Place. I mean, Chidi isn't exactly bad – I reckon he's the closest of the four to having made it to the Good Place – but we've still been shown repeatedly how much suffering he caused through his indecisiveness, so he might still have ended up in the negatives. I mean, that thing with the boots guy was pretty mean.

We were also told in season one that your motivations have to be pure to get credit for any good deeds and get into the Good Place (which is clearly why Tahani is not there, even if you think being a rich person throwing over-the-top ritzy parties for other rich people, and then boasting about it endlessly, for the sake of the neoliberal charity industry is actually that good). Also, you have to be alive when you're doing it, which is why they're back on Earth for the start of season 3.

Anyway, I just feel like there's more to tease out here. I like the theory I've read that they're actually in purgatory, going through trials and whatnot before they can enter the Good Place. That actually seems to fit the evidence we've seen better, such as this fake Good Place not actually being that bad. Maybe all the moderately good people (and edge cases like Mindy) have to do a stint in purgatory first.

3. Overall episode quality
OK, so the season 1 finale was amazing. I shouldn't even have been surprised that they were really in the Bad Place, given my suspicions about Tahani, but I still was. That said, I was a bit miffed about the season-ending memory wipe. I was concerned that all the character development we'd seen all season was just gonna be erased. The opening double episode of season 2 reassured me that the writers knew what they were doing, though. After episode 3 (which I didn't like as much, despite some good moments) it became clear that we weren't just gonna watch the protagonists get rebooted again and again – the show would have to do something different. There were definitely some bits of the season I wasn't so keen on, but tons of great moments that I was. Jason had so many great lines, like:

1. There's something messed up with this place. We keep fighting with each other. None of the TVs get the NFL RedZone channel. My soul mate doesn't even know who Blake Bortles is. I know this sounds crazy, but I think we're in the Bad Place.
2. Listen, back in Jacksonville, I was in charge of a 60-person dance group. Whenever we auditioned a new dancer, we would rate them in five categories: dancing ability, coolness, dopeness, freshness, and smart-brained.
3. I think Tahani's just embarrassed I'm not some kind of scientist who forecloses on banks.
4. We got robbed!!! They took the floor, the walls, everything! And we were standing right here the whole time! These guys are good...
5. I can't believe Michael betrayed us again. Why is it always the ones you most expect?
6. I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.

Michael also had a ton of great moments. Just that unbridled glee that came out time and again. When he made Chidi experience a trolley problem simulation, for example. Or, "I was SO WORRIED, YOU GUYS!!!" Or when he gets the box full of random useless human objects! In such a short amount of screentime, he has really changed and he really wants to help the humans now ♥♥♥

As for the first couple of episodes of season 3… well, it does have to be said that Simone's accent is abominable. It's like… her London accent still comes through loud and clear… and the accent she's trying to imitate is… like… it's even broader than the guy who narrates this video on Australian slang, and his is about as broad as real-life accents get. It's way broader than the guy in this interview, who looks much like the kind of guy you'd expect to have her character's accent. It's just so out of place (and also awfully done to begin with) that it is massively cringey. Which is a shame because like… I feel like the show is trying to engineer me into liking her by giving her cute scenes (ahem, the MRI one). What would have been a thousand times more logical, fairer to the actress, and pleasant for everyone watching would be just letting her character be a Londoner. Academia is the kind of field where people move around, you know? And there are loads of Brits, in particular, working in Australian unis.

On the bright side, none of the other Australian accents have been too bad. I saw people on the internet complaining about boots guy (Henry?) and sure, you know, his accent is also broader than you'd usually expect an academic to have, but at least it sounds like a real accent. You know, even Michael's accent (in the library, not when talking to Janet) was less cringey than Simone's – sure it wasn't accurate, but it at least sounded plausibly like he could have been an American who'd been living here 30 years. He wasn't trying to hit all the wildest extremes of phonology that few people have ever dared approach before before like Simone's actress was.

4. Talking about language stuff…
The writers just gave Chidi that whole spiel about how many languages he speaks so internet people would stop being like, "BUT HOW DOES HE KNOW ENGLISH IF HE SPEAKS FRENCH???? 🤔🤔🤔🤔" right?

I mean, it is questionable that he'd have a perfect American accent, even if he went to ~international school~. But idk, do we really want that poor actor to have to try to do a Senegalese accent, all show long? This way is better.

5. A few final words from my notes

1. Eleanor says "jif", that's why she went to the bad place
2. "I shouldn'ta used my one call to prank the police department..." never change, Jason
3. how did Jason even get an Australian e-visa? with his criminal record he would've been rejected in two seconds flat
4. Trevor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!