Still, Janet did identify the location as the Good Place several times, didn’t she? Her programming must have been altered, or at least her inputs, since she seems to “think” she’s in a Good Place neighborhood.
I remember in one of the first episodes that Eleanor and Chidi were having yogurt and asked Janet what the Bad Place was like, and she opened her mouth and broadcast the traditional torturing and screaming hell sounds. But I guess she was broadcasting the normal Bad Place sounds, and no one had any reason to ask her about where specifically they were.
I do want to go back and watch the season and see what indications there were. I thought there were some scenes without any of the tortured four that Michael still acted like good Michael, but I guess he still needed to keep up the charade in front of Janet.
I hope we find more about how the actual system is set up. It sounds like there really is a point system from what Michael said to Chidi, just they were lied to about how many points they actually had. It does seem a bit unfair that Chidi was put in the Bad Place considering his motivation was always to do good, and do the right thing, just he was paralyzed by indecision. I guess his sin was being too self absorbed to notice how much he was torturing everyone with that?
Well, any place she “boots up” in, maybe. Janet can travel to the Medium Place, apparently, and the Janets can move around a little, i.e. that Bad Janet can operate in a Good Place (we were led to believe), though of course we later found out Bad Janet was just moving from one Bad Place neighborhood to another Bad Place neighborhood, albeit an experimental one.
Good Janet being “real” is partly supported by how, after she escorts Eleanor and Jason to the Medium Place, she’s absent from the Neighborhood. If she were a fake and not a unique item Michael had stolen for his experiment, they’d just call up another fake Good Janet in the interim.
But then again, when Michael uses the Truth Cube to question Tahani, and one point he says “You’ve been a big help” (after she’s actually been elaborately evasive) and the cube shows “False”, suggesting he is lying. I guess we have to assume the Cube is calibrated to reflect truth and falsehood within the definition of the Neighborhood being a Good Place and Michael actually wanting to be helpful to the residents.
Normally I hate big reveals in which we find out a major character has actually been working for the other side the whole time, because it creates inconsistencies like these. This show is funny and charming enough for me to forgive it, though.
The points system is influenced by the effects of your actions, not just your intent. Chidi made everyone he ever cared about completely miserable with his inability to make a decision. That makes him a bad person even though he didn’t make them miserable on purpose.
Unless there was something that I misheard or misremember, then that means Tahani should be in the Good Place since the effects of her actions was that she raised a huge amount for charity. I don’t think we heard what specific charities, but she was doing it to impress her parents, so I’m assuming that it was all for good, real causes that ended up doing real good, not all raising money for plastic surgery for dogs or to teach children semaphore or something. It seems that generally Tahani’s motivations were bad but her actions were good, while Chidi’s motivations were good but his actions were bad, it just seems inconsistent to me.
I’m guessing that there’s more to the points, and maybe Tahani’s name-dropping and condescension and other things we haven’t seen canceled out her good, but it just makes me curious.
Since Tahani didn’t qualify for the Good Place after all it seems like both intentions and actions do count. In Mindy’s case, if what she had to say about herself was true then her actions included writing up a workable plan for a charity that was successfully implemented by her sister after her death. So Mindy didn’t merely have good intentions, she got the ball rolling in a way that did make a practical difference.
I dont buy Tahani and Chidi not qualifying, since it was clear they really were Good people, even with some faults. They didnt do any of the bad things Eleanor or what’shisname did.
It’s hard to know how much of what we’ve been told about how the Good Place works was true, but according to Michael only the very, very best people get into the Good Place. Just being a regular nice person apparently isn’t enough.
Yes, but we clearly can’t trust Michael on that. Saying only the best of the best go to the Good Place can easily be interpreted as just a way to increase the pressure on Eleanor (who would take it to mean she really didn’t belong in a Good Place neighborhood, as it was originally presented) which gets transferred to Chidi when she reveals this to him and he has to cover for her.
While we have very good reason to distrust Michael, this is the only information we have about how people are selected for the Good Place. As things stand, it’s not a plot hole that Tahani and Chidi didn’t get into the (real) Good Place. It’s consistent with what we’ve been told about how things work.
I am confident that the conclusion was planned from the start, and wasn’t compromised for the sake of a good joke if we were to rewatch the show. They would’ve thought this through carefully.
It was definitely planned. I started (re-)watching it with my wife (who left off on episode 5), and I’m spotting so many dropped hints that it’s actually just as fun to watch as the first go around.
I suspect that one way to think about this show is to realize that with our human minds, anything over a few hundred years of eternity in ANY place would be very hard for us to enjoy.
I realize that Eleanor missed a chance. The note in Janet’s mouth should have read “This is the Bad Place.”
For the next season to work, however, the four will have to figure out things much more quickly. This season hinged on being able to reveal the situation, but now that the situation is known, dragging out the discovery by the four will quickly get boring. It can’t take 13 episodes again.