I loved the twist, however the note was stupid. Some better things to write... Michael is a liar.... You're in the bad place. Mike erased your memory. But it better get a 2nd season. I'm not sure how many it can get but I think 2-3 would be great.
Separating the only four real people in the bad place defeats the purpose of getting them to torture each other.
I've thought about the note, and I think it depends upon her priorities. She may have decided that holding onto her new self and friendships was more important than knowing the truth. Other notes (such as "you're in the bad place" or "Michael is a liar") would have just left her suspicious and untrusting, and it would have meant giving up on all the things she learned had made her happy. From the perspective of wanting to regain what Michael was taking: the simple note she left was actually rather brilliant.
A note that said "Michael lies, this is the bad place" probably would have also led to Eleanor making a scene letting Michael or one of the hundreds of bad place actors know she knows. Early in the season Eleanor was only able to keep up the facade (barely) because she was afraid of being kicked out, had she learned that everyone was forking with her she would have gone nuclear which wiser Eleanor knows wouldn't help her one bit.
That definitely seems like it could be the end game for the show, considering that she has definitely shown improvement while in there, and i doubt the "timer/counters" were part of the charade.... Still leaving me the question of whether or not the Medium Place was real or just part of the act. Janet was malfunctioning at the time, so I'm leaning towards all of that being real and legit. Eleanor already seems "better" then the woman in the medium place, as far as comparisons in marking growth go.
They will still torture each other, but with less bonding and closeness, less promises made to each other, less proximity to speed things up and give them connection. This time will be a "slow burn" as Michael put it.
Medium place lady is awful. She got mad points for something she might have hypothetically have done if she hadn't died. There was no knowing if she was going to commit. 50/50? Fortunately her sister, in her name and memory, did all the pointsworthy heavy lifting after Mindy passed.
The Medium Place is real because Janet isn't in on Michael's plan, plus they had no idea where she went.
Which is probably why in the training video that Michael wasn't there representing the Good Place... Although if this is Michael's first community, and Mindy had her #### negotiated in the 1980s, of courseroonie he wouldn't be in the tape.
I have to say, the twist in the season finale may well be something that's unrivaled in all of TV history (at least, as far as I know...plenty of shows I've never seen, so can't say I know all of TV history). It upends the entire premise of the show at the end of the first season. How often does a series successfully pull off a Shyamalan-esque twist like that? I mean, there've been plenty of well-plotted shows like Babylon 5 that executed surprise events in ways that were logical, and properly seeded with foreshadowing and all of that. But "surprise events" aren't the same as Shyamalan twists, that reframe the very premise of everything you've been watching up until that point. And this isn't being done on a show like "Lost", where the fact that there are big mysteries that you're supposed to hunt for is something that's made clear from the outset. This is a half hour sitcom (albeit a high concept one), so we, the audience, aren't really aware that we're supposed to be looking for such twists, which is how they were able to surprise so many of us.