The Good Place Season 3
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
This is correct.
It was a good start to the season. I love how they keep this show fresh every year and I'm excited to see where this earth storyline goes. Nice also to get Adam Scott back.
Really enjoyed the season premiere. Such great characters...except Jason. All of the other characters are multi dimensional, while Jason has always seemed to have just one. However, I did seem to pick up on what appears may be an expansion of the character. Hoping it continues.
The basic notion of God being mean spirited, keeping a grudge list of demerits like a demented vice principal, hasn't changed from day one. The idea that God would send you to hell if you weren't a vegan who recycled and drove a hybrid may be appealing to some, but that really is a matter of taste. To me, it seems like bad taste. And the longer I watched the more and more offensive it got to think they really thought of Jason Mendoza as competent, and therefore responsible for his own damnation. Refusing to accept diminished capacity as grounds for mercy strikes me as savagely reactionary. The idea that hanging with the cool kids would redeem a demon is flattering if you identify, I suppose. At any rate, the change ups in setting and plot seem to me to be superficial, and the show has been stuck in its brownie points version of salvation, where purity of intent and total self-sacrifice are the essence of goodness. Yeah, right. Didn't bother to watch.
My thoughts exactly. @stj , it's interesting that you talk about your issues with this "brownie points" system, because in my mind that's one of the main messages of the show - that this type of system ISN'T the best way to be judging people. That seems to me to be the very heart of the whole thing, and the ultimate conclusion that we are moving toward.
Real life tells me that "bureaucracy" is a bunch of employees doing things their bosses tell them to do. Whether it's La Migra or a health insurance claim or a bank loan application or credit rating or the cable company, they carry out policies given to them. Blaming "bureaucracy" seems very much to me like calling the secretary who tells you her boss is unavailable is a sleazy liar: It may or may not be true, but it's much safer to despise the little people than to dare defy, if only behind their back, the real boss. I don't think indictment of bureaucracy cuts very deep at all.
As to rejection of the crazy merit/demerit system being the ultimate goal? Possibly...but I can't say that I'm seeing the slightest movement toward the goal, which is why it feels to me like the show has been stuck in a rut in the sense that counts. The big changes strike me as not big at all.
As to rejection of the crazy merit/demerit system being the ultimate goal? Possibly...but I can't say that I'm seeing the slightest movement toward the goal, which is why it feels to me like the show has been stuck in a rut in the sense that counts. The big changes strike me as not big at all.
Yeah, I hate it when people yell at employees for carrying out corporate policy, but that doesn't mean that 'bureaucracy' isn't the problem, it just means that the people whose fault it is aren't the ones in front of you.
I disagree with your interpretation of the merit/demerit system. The show's not trying to be consistent with your idea of what constitutes life after death, but this does match a lot of the way it gets interpreted in many religious circles. If you don't follow these strict guidelines we set out, you're an evil person who will get tortured forever. Lots of people in extremely religious places whether it be the southern US or the middle east live under this kind of strict moral scrutiny every day. And it's not demons who do the judging and punishing, it's other humans.
The show is not trying to make fun of religion or present God as mean spirited. I don't believe in the divine but I think if there is a God, no mortal being should even claim they have any idea what's really on his/her/its mind. The show is trying to argue for the complexity of morality in the real world, and argue against those strict binary conceptions of good and evil.
The show is not about what really may or may not happen in the afterlife, it's about how human beings learn to be moral and judge the morality of others. The afterlife setting is just a way to have zany magical storylines. The demons who torture humans who are evil based on the point system don't represent real angels and demons, they represent humans.
How has there not been movement toward the goal of debunking the merit system? This whole season is about proving that moral behavior is contextual whether or not you expect a reward.
I disagree with your interpretation of the merit/demerit system. The show's not trying to be consistent with your idea of what constitutes life after death, but this does match a lot of the way it gets interpreted in many religious circles. If you don't follow these strict guidelines we set out, you're an evil person who will get tortured forever. Lots of people in extremely religious places whether it be the southern US or the middle east live under this kind of strict moral scrutiny every day. And it's not demons who do the judging and punishing, it's other humans.
The show is not trying to make fun of religion or present God as mean spirited. I don't believe in the divine but I think if there is a God, no mortal being should even claim they have any idea what's really on his/her/its mind. The show is trying to argue for the complexity of morality in the real world, and argue against those strict binary conceptions of good and evil.
The show is not about what really may or may not happen in the afterlife, it's about how human beings learn to be moral and judge the morality of others. The afterlife setting is just a way to have zany magical storylines. The demons who torture humans who are evil based on the point system don't represent real angels and demons, they represent humans.
How has there not been movement toward the goal of debunking the merit system? This whole season is about proving that moral behavior is contextual whether or not you expect a reward.
Well yeah, if the whole point of the show is for them to see that this system doesn't work, they're not going to change the system right at the beginning of the show.
It seems to me that the main characters being horrible people who decide to improve themselves and become better people is a pretty good way to debunk the point system.
It seems to me that the main characters being horrible people who decide to improve themselves and become better people is a pretty good way to debunk the point system.
I think that's going to be the whole point of the show, that even people bound for the Bad Place are capable of changing. Even the demons are capable of changing as well, like Michael did. He's gone from gleefully torturing these people in creative ways to risking his existence to help them. It will be interesting if Trevor begins to change as well since he seems to be one of the worst.
I’d query that the bureaucracy at work in the Good Place isn’t something imposed from above, but the kind of messed up, chaotic bureaucracy for the sake of it that often evolves over time to the point where nobody understands where it came from, like the insane puzzle box in the Cube film series.
Anyway I enjoyed the opening episode(s) of season 3, I’d agree it needs more Janet (and hopefully we’ll get some Bad Janet sooner or later as well) and Jason is still my favourite character. The return of Trevor is interesting.
If I have a problem with the show it is the fact that they keep rebooting everything, so every time the characters grow and change they’re stripped of this growth and returned to their initial flawed state to have to do it all again, as if Sisyphus was pushing morality uphill rather than a rock. This annoyed me a lot in the first half and season 2, and bugged me at the end of the season when it was apparent there was another memory wipe coming. I just hope if there is a 4th season that the characters don’t all get dumped back to their initial states again.
Anyway I enjoyed the opening episode(s) of season 3, I’d agree it needs more Janet (and hopefully we’ll get some Bad Janet sooner or later as well) and Jason is still my favourite character. The return of Trevor is interesting.
If I have a problem with the show it is the fact that they keep rebooting everything, so every time the characters grow and change they’re stripped of this growth and returned to their initial flawed state to have to do it all again, as if Sisyphus was pushing morality uphill rather than a rock. This annoyed me a lot in the first half and season 2, and bugged me at the end of the season when it was apparent there was another memory wipe coming. I just hope if there is a 4th season that the characters don’t all get dumped back to their initial states again.
The point is not to convince someone who keeps enjoying The Good Place to stop enjoying the show, but to remind us that there are reasons to think it's not so awesome that people who don't thinkg so are boobs.
JirinPanthosa The insistence on entirely disinterested motives, that only self-sacrifice without any ulterior motive, is truly acceptable is as black and white as any demerit system can get. I think morality is not a supernatural commandment to individual souls, but a way for individuals to live together.
JD People who decide to improve themselves because they're in hell are not a meaningful critique of narrowminded notions of morality in my view. Also, again, I have no more idea what it means to say Jason decided to be a horrible person in first place, as the show and this defense presume.
Janet Michael becoming good because he becomes friends with the people he keeps hanging with is not an elevated study in morality. It is a very bad person indeed who isn't nice to their friends. Friendship as redemption strikes me as lame, but yes, I agree it is at the heart of this show.They pay Ted Danson the big bucks to sell this. I'm sure no one here watched Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, but that lead was shown to more obnoxious, and----very significantly---much, much less cool than Michael. If you argue that Eleanor is the lead, well, I must admit that's not (*not*) foolishness. But then the hotness and agency and coolness of Kristen Bell takes center stage.
Starkers as an aside in an iotherwise nteresting comment (meaning, probably right) advances the idea of a bureaucracy that just evolves. Don't believe such a thing actually happens. I believe people can have a vested interest in saying it does, though.
JirinPanthosa The insistence on entirely disinterested motives, that only self-sacrifice without any ulterior motive, is truly acceptable is as black and white as any demerit system can get. I think morality is not a supernatural commandment to individual souls, but a way for individuals to live together.
JD People who decide to improve themselves because they're in hell are not a meaningful critique of narrowminded notions of morality in my view. Also, again, I have no more idea what it means to say Jason decided to be a horrible person in first place, as the show and this defense presume.
Janet Michael becoming good because he becomes friends with the people he keeps hanging with is not an elevated study in morality. It is a very bad person indeed who isn't nice to their friends. Friendship as redemption strikes me as lame, but yes, I agree it is at the heart of this show.They pay Ted Danson the big bucks to sell this. I'm sure no one here watched Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, but that lead was shown to more obnoxious, and----very significantly---much, much less cool than Michael. If you argue that Eleanor is the lead, well, I must admit that's not (*not*) foolishness. But then the hotness and agency and coolness of Kristen Bell takes center stage.
Starkers as an aside in an iotherwise nteresting comment (meaning, probably right) advances the idea of a bureaucracy that just evolves. Don't believe such a thing actually happens. I believe people can have a vested interest in saying it does, though.
But if those people prove that they are not all bad and don't actually deserve to be there, then I think it works. If the whole story of the show is Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason causing them to change the point system, or even get rid of it, then we kind of need to see it in action.
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