Spoilers The Good Place Season 4

[Mojochi]

They said he'd start that way. He wasn't born to a human family or anything.

Yeah, that's kind of how I remember it. He just went down as is, no memory wipe, but not possessing the ability to know anything about the afterlife, until it came time to die like a human & come back

So then how long do you think he had before he dies? He looks like a guy in his 70s, so it may be as soon as 10 years or so, or can he just live a very long time looking geriatric... Which wouldn't be very human either

Point is... As a human life goes, he's kind of getting short changed, one way or the other IMHO. It's not the full breadth of the human experience

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I thought he did remember the afterlife but just had no certainty that it would work the same way when he hit back.

 

[Mojochi]

I thought he did remember the afterlife but just had no certainty that it would work the same way when he hit back.

Yeah, that's what I meant. From the point he became human, he no longer had insight into how things might be going there

It's just not as satisfying as I think it could've been, that he either only gets a short time to live as a human old man, or that he spends far too long living as one, than would be normal. I think a short montage of an entire human life might have been more appropriate. It's really my only criticism of the finale

 

[Romulan_spy]

I thought he did remember the afterlife but just had no certainty that it would work the same way when he hit back.

Yes, that is how I saw it too. He would have no way of knowing what would happen in the After Life in between the time where became human and the time when he dies and returns. Maybe in that time, the After Life ceases to exist or maybe Shawn and the other demons take over and trash the Good Place. Whenever Michael dies and wakes up in the After Life, he would have no way of knowing what to expect. He is taking a gamble that the After Life will be the same as he left it.

 

[Tallguy]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture...aces-finale-made-heaven-look-hopeless/606001/

Well worth your time.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Not a bad read. Though I think it misses the core argument that life is made special by its ephemerality. Black Mirror touches on that in San Junipero where the people who have been there the longest start spending all their time in sex torture dungeons just to try to feel something.

Although I wonder if in a real Good Place that worked by those rules if you could beat the ennui by locking yourself in a heroin high that’s eternally as good as your first time.

Side note, I have head canoned that Sean eventually follows Michael’s lead to become human, and there he falls in love with a New York City police officer named Raymond Holt.

 

[gblews]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture...aces-finale-made-heaven-look-hopeless/606001/

Well worth your time.

Yes, enjoyed the article. But I do think that it is impossible to know how you’’d react to eternity without experiencing it, which the article does state. My feeling about eternity has always been about practical activity like continuing to learn new things. Technically, there is nothing you couldn’t do or become. Want to be a theoretical physicist? How about play guitar better than Jim Hendrix? All we need is time.
That’s is the one thing I questioned about the finale. I could not relate to “finishing.”

Was talking to my daughter, and she thought Michael’s neighbor picking the letter out of the trash was a call back to that episode in season 3 when Eleanor retrieved a letter like that for someone who would never have known she had almost never done the good deed.

Also, I was watching the season 2 episode where Michael talks about wanting to one day receive a rewards card and have a brief converstion and end it with “take it sleazy.” So that final scene had several call back elements.

 

[Tosk]

Though I think it misses the core argument that life is made special by its ephemerality.

Exactly! I ain't so good with the fancy words or with being remotely original, so I find myself quoting Vision from Age of Ultron... "A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts."

 

[Scout101]

My feeling about eternity has always been about practical activity like continuing to learn new things. Technically, there is nothing you couldn’t do or become. Want to be a theoretical physicist? How about play guitar better than Jim Hendrix? All we need is time.
That’s is the one thing I questioned about the finale. I could not relate to “finishing.”

The problem is the 'eternity' part of eternity. I'm sure that given infinite time, you could list a billion things you'd have loved to tried if you only had the time to do so. And maybe some of those spawn new interests. But eventually, even if it's billions of years later, you WILL run out of things you want to do. There's no external stimulus giving you new things to react to, and you've got infinite time, so I can see that eventually everyone will just give up or go insane.

Eternity is a really long time...

Think the show had a good idea in that the Good Place is where you can do all the things you wanted to do/learn/see, reunite with old friends/family, become the best version of yourself, etc. but eventually you still pass on into oblivion. Forever is too long.