Did it feature a Bad Janet applying mascara to a Good Janet?
My thoughts at the very start of the episode: “‘V’? The heck?” (And I never pay attention to those stupid letters!)
My thoughts when I found out what the V was for: “Oh…baby.” 
That’s what I love about this show. Every week this season it seems like it’s inches from disaster and at any moment could come crashing into a pit of dreary, rote misery from which it can never emerge…and it always throws me another curveball. It’s over, Mike’s experiment is finished and everyone’s going to the Bad Place…oops, no they’re not! Eleanor got screwed too many times, she’s given up, there’s no way…wait, maybe there is! Crap, the judge found out, and she has a telephone pole and she’s all-powerful, there’s no way anyone’s going to…wait, not quite all-powerful! Sean’s gang found them; there’s no way out unless they can fight their way through, and of course…man, that joint lock looks painful! Now Mike’s going to get to the heart of the stupid, corrupt system, and of course there’s absolutely no way he’s can pull this off. Until he does. Never safe, never boring, never predictable.
In the end, you know what I think this is really going to be about? An indictment of everything. Traditional religion, and “modern” religions that are often just as bad, and a binary afterlife, and nonsensical point systems, and happiness pumps (that reminded me of the uncomfortable discussions about what “lawful good” does and doesn’t mean), and overthinking things, and the idea that doing good is worthless if you expect a reward for it (like, holy crap :rolleyes::smack:), and every single dumb thing about the hereafter we know doesn’t make a lick of sense and foolishly have faith in anyway.
Not sure if this is going to work, but it’s going to be endlessly intriguing seeing if it does.
Might I add, incredible fight scene! I’d listen to a whole podcast about just how the hell they did it! 
I think they’ll keep their memories because they were actually alive. It’s only afterlife memories that are subject to wiping, so far as I can tell. Whatever happens in Janet’s void is fair game for blanking, though. Still, that trick does seem overused at this point.
Took me ages to figure out what you were talking about. You mean the V for Violence in the rating code.
Marc Evan Jackson (Shawn) who hosts the podcast has the fight coordinator Jeff Imada on the podcast episode to talk about the fight and being a fight coordinator. He was the fight coordinator for many great things, including some of the Bourne movies, so Jackson was saying how he was geeking out over that. And funny hearing about getting all these mainly comedy actors to do the fight. It’s always an interesting podcast, but really great to hear for this episode.
I was also thinking Doug should be disqualified for the same reason as the main four for having special knowledge of how the system works. But I can’t find reference to “happiness pump” outside of the show - is there a more official philosophy term, or did the show just make it up entirely?
It appears to be a term invented by one Joshua Greene in a book called Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.
I think the difference is that Doug thinks it’s the truth, he doesn’t know for sure it’s true, he just was high on mushrooms and said what he thinks will happen after death. He has faith that it’s the system, the Soul Squad knows for sure what the system is like.
But of course there are reasons for us all to doubt how the system works, since Michael has been questioning things and we don’t know for sure how the actual Good Place works.
He doesn’t have knowledge; he just thinks it works that way, but no confirmation. So no disqualification.
But the subversion will be that the expectation is not subverted! And never go up against a Sicilian in a battle of wits!
Theory time!
The point system was put into place during prehistory, when humans lived in tight knit communities, and everyone knew each other well. In such conditions, selfless altruism is expected from everyone just for group survival- and things like Chidi’s indecisive nature truly were dangerous and harmful, whereas in modern times it’s merely annoying. It has not kept up with human progress, and the modern system is just a messy kludge on top of the outmoded rules.
Think about this:
In all of the afterlife we’ve seen, we have never actually laid eyes on the Good Place. We’ve seen Michael’s fake Good Place (many versions), the Medium Place, and various backstage areas of the afterlife.
We’ve never met a real Good Place architect, nor have we ever seen any apparently good beings. (Judge Gen can at best be described as lawful neutral.) We’ve never seen any humans in the real Good Place or with knowledge of the Good Place.
The system was corrupted at the beginning to ensure nobody gets into the Good Place, because there is no Good Place. There is only eternal suffering, and the demons are simply told the lie about the Good Place (complete with a curiously completely unguarded Good Janet warehouse) to give them a reason to keep doing their jobs.
That means the whole thing with Mindy St. Claire was a weird setup with no payoff for anybody. If the system is completely corrupt then there would be no need to fight over a soul in that way.
I don’t feel like going back and looking, but was the representative of the Good Place in Mindy’s orientation video later seen as a demon?
Besides, the demons seem to genuinely enjoy their jobs. I don’t think they need any kind of ongoing lie to keep them going.
Agreed. That’s what’s so amazing about the writing in this show. Every week I think I know where they’re going with the next episode, but they do something *completely *different and yet it makes even more sense than what I thought was going to happen.
And Janet just keeps getting hotter and more bad-ass in every episode.
Thank you so much because that led me to this. If that doesn’t brighten your day, well, I don’t know.
I think the Good Place exists, but it’s getting harder and harder to get in. Sort of a point inflation. The ancient Egyptians needed maybe 100 points to get, now you need a billion trillion points to get in. I think Shawn noticed that basically every human is now just going straight to the Bad Place.
Do we know anyone specific that’s in the Good Place? Janet’s named a lot of people in the Bad Place (and she can’t lie, usually). Has she said anyone is in the Good Place?
If this is the case then Chidi’s fear that he would slip up and taint Simone’s ability to earn points was baseless and Michael and Janet let him suffer and destroy a relationship for no good reason. If Chidi were capable of damning Simone, then Doug is just as damned from his vision and so is every person on Earth who does good things to earn a place in heaven. None of them are passing Gen’s moral des(s)erts test.
Chidi knew the truth and was afraid he’d tell Simone.
Doug guessed the truth, but doesn’t actually know it (and only guessed 92% of it, not all).
Didn’t Michael or Janet say that all presidents except Lincoln were in the Bad Place, implying that Lincoln went to The Good Place?
I agree that since Doug doesn’t KNOW about the point system (only guessing) he he shouldn’t be disqualified.
I am curious why Shawn said Doug won’t make it (unless he is lying or Doug did some bad stuff)
Brian