jennegatron

The Good Place

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I think you, dear reader, should check out The Good Place if you haven't already! It takes a handful of episodes to really hit its stride, but when it does it's truly remarkable. it's a great, funny show with a delightful cast. Ted Danson is the best, and quietly has a diverse and charming cast. if Mike Schur has earned any good will with you, give it a chance!

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+1 on the Good Place even if you had never heard of Mike Schur before. Season two just finished and I've very much enjoyed it all so far.

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Another +1 to the Good Place. Enjoying it a hell of a lot.

 

Also hoping that against the odds it's a show that ends itself in a timely manner instead of dragging beyond where it needs to be.

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The Good Place is sooo good.

 

For me, what I am enjoying is how the show does what Chris Remo described about Trine's final levels. I mean that by the end of the first season it seems to have written itself into a corner that could only be followed through by going bigger and better, or by using Sitcom tropes to shut it back down in a boring fashion. It opts for the former and the way that season 2 ends it feels like they are about to take another step into something else even more diverse and odd.

 

Honestly, if they had wanted to they could have just milked the one-note idea of a woman in Heaven, who wasn't supposed to be there, but they have gone way beyond.

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Yet another +1 for The Good Place, which I started watching this week, totally coincidentally.

 

I don't watch a lot of currently-running TV (now or ever), both due to the daunting prospect of catching up ("there's already 10 hours of this show!"), and the fact that it usually takes several episodes for any show to really make its worthwhile qualities apparent to me. I felt the same way watching the first few eps of The Good Place that I usually do with well-recommended TV, the sorta-ambivalent "I can tell this is probably good" feeling, and I'm so glad that I arbitrarily decided to keep watching anyway.

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Where were all these The Good Place recommendations before jennegatron recommended it? J/K, started watching and starting to like it after 2nd episode.

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9 hours ago, Erkki said:

Where were all these The Good Place recommendations before jennegatron recommended it? J/K, started watching and starting to like it after 2nd episode.

what can I say Erkki, I'm a trend setter

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+1 to Jenna being a trendsetter, also to The Good Place, which I've now binged through. This has been a really refreshing series.

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I've now seen 6 episodes of The Good Place. At what point did it click for most people? There are parts I like but other parts I really don't. I really don't like either of the neighbor characters (particularly the DJ guy who is maybe the worst flattest actor I've seen in a sitcom, his mumbling line deliveries killing every joke) and the premise of the afterlife really annoys me, especially as a moral center to the main character's quest to be a good person. So goodness is determined purely by volume of acts and only the top 1% get to go to heaven while the rest burn in hell forever? So if you're a child who dies of an illness tough shit, you don't deserve heaven as much as the rich person who donated a lot to charity?

 

The only thing that's keeping me watching, other than the overwhelmingly positive reception, is the hope that the nature of The Good Place gets subverted and addresses this stuff. I have some faith in that, but my fear is they'll keep stringing along the nature of the place too long and I'll run out of patience before it does.

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My understanding is that The Good Place starts shifting into gear around episode 7, and the show is very intentional about what's implied by its version of the afterlife. Minor spoilers:

Spoiler

It begins to foreground this from episode 8.

 

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7 hours ago, Patrick R said:

the hope that the nature of The Good Place gets subverted and addresses this stuff.

 

Yeah, it does this to various degrees.

 

I agree with you on the neighbour characters, and while the problems with them haven't really been fixed yet, they do become a little more sympathetic.

 

I'd say give it to the end of the season and see how you feel.

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The Good Place becomes a show that's properly about ethics and learning that what makes a good person is doing good things without the expectation of a reward, afterlife or not. It's a show that seems like it'll introduce a thing and take the rest of the season to build to it, but actually within the next episode it's completely turned its premise upside down, and it does this over and over. 

 

If you don't like it, you don't like it, but I would recommend sticking through the first big turning point, which I would agree happens in episode 7. My favorite turning point in the show happens in the season 1 finale though. I grew to really appreciate Jason, the DJ character, especially after episode 11 when you get the story of how he died. He continued to win me over in the course of season 2.

 

It's a show that's hard to talk about without undercutting the surprise of some of those story pivots.

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3 minutes ago, jennegatron said:

The Good Place becomes a show that's properly about ethics and learning that what makes a good person is doing good things without the expectation of a reward, afterlife or not.

 

Glad to hear it because, up through episode 6, it is decidedly not this, or at least not in anyway that's clear given the available information. Everything I've seen so far is "learn the arbitrary rules of Good Place glitches and base behavior on avoiding those because those increase your chances of getting caught and going to hell forever".

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43 minutes ago, Patrick R said:

Glad to hear it because, up through episode 6, it is decidedly not this, or at least not in anyway that's clear given the available information. Everything I've seen so far is "learn the arbitrary rules of Good Place glitches and base behavior on avoiding those because those increase your chances of getting caught and going to hell forever".

 

Also known as, "how most people think that ethics and morality work." I watched all of it while I was sick with the flu, the week before last, and it was very rewarding to see how far the show complicated that.

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In the absence of MORE GOOD PLACE, I started watching Brooklyn 99, Michael Shur's previous show. It's very funny, but it's also interesting to see how much more restrained and more specific The Good Place feels. Brooklyn 99 is a pretty by the numbers cop comedy show, lifted up by all-round great performances. But I rarely feel like I'm watching something with an identity of its own. Going from that to TGP is a massive leap for Shur for sure.

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I mentioned Brooklyn Nine Nine in relation to 30 Rock here:

 

 

 

and got a few responses. Apparently I might need to skip forward a bit in B99 to avoid my issues with it, but from what I saw, I agree TGP is far superior.

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Maybe today! Or maybe tomorrow. Or maybe he already has it figured out, but is unaware. Ow, my stomach hurts.

 

Another +1 to both this series and Jenn. My wife loves it as well.

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I finished season 1 and 

 

BIG SEASON 1 FINALE SPOILERS

 

 

So the swerve certainly addressed some of my problems and made me more interested to continue watching season 2 but I can't say an entire season based on a false premise was worth it for me or that it really ever explored ethics in a way that was meaningful to me. I don't think I'd have a big problem with any of this if I thought this show was funny but, every single thing that Janet did aside, I rarely laughed. My partner is all in after that so I'll probably end up watching Season 2 anyway. Hopefully it will be more about the ludicrous premise (the most interesting part of the show to me) and less about pat morality tales (the stuff that bored me most the first season and that prevents me from caring about most sitcoms).

 

I think part of my problem is this show follows the pacing philosophy of prestige drama shows where there's some big cliffhanger at the end of every episode. Having a big central mystery to be endlessly teased out is the number one thing a show can do to make me feel like I'm wasting my time. OH BUT WAIT, HERE'S A PIECE OF INFORMATION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING. Just tell a good story, stop promising me that as long as I learn THIS ONE IMPORTANT THING THAT IS SURELY JUST AROUND THE CORNER it will become one.

 

Anyway, we'll see how I feel about season 2. It's certainly not unheard of for a show with a disappointing first season to turn it around later.

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I am curious if anyone has gone back and rewatched the first season knowing where it ends up and seeing if that changes how individual scenes or episodes play in subtle ways? Maybe I'd like it more with that knowledge layered on top.

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I rewatched it and it was lovely to see all the little hints, but then I also loved it the first time around so I can't speak to what it would be like for you. You seem rather grouchy about the whole thing so I doubt you'll like season 2 significantly more.

 

Ted Danson's performance is a marvel.

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