r/TheGoodPlace

Featuring Michael and Janet for the Ted Danson filter

My friend (who I'm going to call Sydney) and I are currently watching season 1 of the show. I have seen the show multiple times already but this is her first time ever watching it. I convinced her to watch it with me because 1. She's an attentive show-watcher, and 2. She somehow knew virtually no spoilers about this show (I had also known nothing about it going into the show at first) so she was a SEEMINGLY perfect person to show The Good Place to. I quickly realized that this was not going to go well when she started constantly asking questions like "Is Janet actually telling the truth?", "Wait, so Eleanor really belongs here?" and "Is Tahani actually evil?". Like, I obviously KNOW the answers here but I have refused to spoil anything to her because I can't ruin this opportunity for her to be ACTUALLY surprised at plot twists and cliff hangers.
She got increasingly suspicious and asked me to confirm or deny her theories. Eventually I got so fed up that I just replied, "I'm not answering any more questions because literally anything I say could ruin the show for you." She got annoyed and said she thinks I'm being dramatic and that refusing to answer is basically just confirming her theories anyway. I brushed it off but literally the NEXT episode she was asking questions again. I was already feeling pretty fed up so after the 3rd question of that episode I just replied with something like, "Fine. From now on, I'm going to deliberately give you the wrong answer every time." I feel bad about this because she responded with, "Well then I'm going to spend the entire show wondering whether you're lying to me."
While I hope this doesn't ruin the show for her, and I want don't want to lie to my friend, I feel like she was being pretty pushy even after I specifically told her I wouldn't answer her questions. Am I the ash-hole?

I

Just in case, this is a warning that I am going to talk about spoilers. So if you are new to the show.... please move on to the next post (or just leave this community for now)

With that out of the way, hi!

I dont know how many of you are into reaction videos, but I love them and recently I've noticed something.

A while ago (until last year), most reactors were completely blindsided by the twist. They would have some questions throughout season 1, but never go too deep into them.

But lately, a new batch of reactors has started the show and.... most of them seem to have caught on to the fact that something is off. None of them has theorized that this is the Bad Place (yet), but they have different theories as to what is going on instead ("this is not the Good Place as it was presented")

Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I imagining things? Do you think there's a reason for that to be happening? (I don't think they know the twist and are pretending they don't)

On my anual rewatch, I love these two, IMHO I don't get why it's so outlandish when Jason is with Tahani, but he somehow makes sense with Janet? I feel they had better chemistry, looked lovely and discovered and developed things about each other. I know most people are happy Tahani ended up content by herself, but I really think her and Jason could've been great also.

Besides, each time he got back together with Janet it wasn't organic, it always depended on Janet having her glitches or malfunctions, or manipulating the situation so Tahani wouldn't hook up with him in Australia, indicating a strong attraction amongst themselves. That's partly why the 2nd season is my favorite.

It's been a while since I've watched the finale.

I'll save it for when I need to have a good cry.

This is all connected, I promise, in a literal shower-thoughts kind of way. Tagging season 4 because it deals with the entire series. Please go no further if you haven't seen the whole show.

I was thinking a lot about the sentient non-people in the Good Place world.

In season one, the residents are all demons, which makes sense because Michael needed some collaboration and some free-will I guess?

In the later experiment, they're deciding how the rest of the residents should be handled. They can't use demons or angels, it's decided. By then, Janet has already made Derek. He's not perfect, but she realizes she's able to make other people, so she makes her Janet babies. Her Janet babies seem more normal than Derek, which is lucky. And they're all controlled (able to be shut down) by a big button. It seems all of the Janet babies are controlled by one button that Tahani presses that one time. Even though Derek & Janet have their own individual buttons. (Efficiency I guess). We don't really get deep in with the Janet-babies - it's surface-level only - which makes me think they're pretty AI-like in the old sense of the world. Not the new-scary, might take over the world world.. They're programmed and don't really have free-will. It also makes it really surprising that Chidi never picked up on that. But I feel John when he talks about dumb-shorts Kathy. Maybe Kathy was only programmed to wear dumb shorts?

But when the Janet babies, have finished their purpose they're 'violently eaten' (absorbed?) back by Janet. I guess because they don't want any husks lying around - it'd be easier than pressing the button. I won't even get into the ethics of sentient beings having their lives ended because there's no more use for them. This is more about how/why and what forms these sentient beings take.

In The Trolley Experiment, Michael snaps his fingers and creates scenarios using live-looking sentient-like humans. First, with them being stuck on the trolley tracks and then whole families in the waiting room of a hospital. How was Michael able to make these people so easily? And why couldn't he just do that, instead of having Janet struggle in the experiment with John/Simone/Brent. Wouldn't it have been easier? Is Michael's magic limited to small scenarios, i.e., would he not be able to sustain it for a whole year of the experiment?

On that note, there's also the green doors towards the end of season 4 when they all get into the real good place. When you go through the green doors, you're wherever you want to be. When Chidi & Eleanor go to Paris & Athens, for example, there are tons of people around. I'm assuming they're not in the real Paris/Athens - because that would cause a lot of problems if dead people just got spotted in these places - so I assume it's all an illusion. (Also, because of the go-kart racing monkeys.) Is it the same magic that Michael uses in the trolley experiment? Are all the background people in places throughout the green door universes instant-non-people who cease to exist when you close the door on the other side?

It seems that Michael/Janet could have used this magic instead of the Janet-babies.

Do I have a fever? Cause my mind gets this messy with thoughts when I have a fever.

If you've read this far, thank you for indulging in my ramblings.

(Spoilers for all seasons)

I’ve gotten into comic books recently, and on my current rewatch of the good place I can’t help but think about how fun a comic line of the good place would be comprising of a more in-depth look of all the reboots or their time spent in the actual good place.

I think it would be super entertaining to see what they got up to in each reboot, and I already really enjoyed the glimpses we got of some of them in season three. It would also be cool to see what happened during the many bearimys they spent in the actual good place.

That’s it, really. Just a random thought I think would be a cool addition to the series as a whole. Although I know it’s basically over and done with officially, so as a writer and graphic novel enjoyer I’m just daydreaming over here lol.