(no subject)
Dec. 1st, 2019 07:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI have been listening to the Good Place official podcast and thinking about what would qualify as a satisfying ending to the series, with the show now five episodes from the series finale.
I think the thing I have come to a realization about is that I have always had the tacit background assumption that there is a Big Guy behind the order of the show's universe. In Jewish theology the idea of Olam Haba flows directly from the existence of the monotheistic God. If there is a unitary omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who created the universe, then it stands to reason that there is an order to the universe that results in true and just reward and punishment. And since it is just as apparent that there is much that is unjust in this world, the true justice must come in the World to Come.
Without God underpinning it, the idea of there being a Good Place and a Bad Place doesn't really make obvious sense to me. Which is why I've always felt a little uncomfortable with the way people talk about the Big Season One Twist qua Twist. I did not predict while watching the first season that it would turn out that they were in Hell being deliberately punished, but it was equally clear that this Good Place was flawed and not working the way a Good Place should, and that the point of the show was that at some point this would get worked out in some way. So talking about it as being this completely out of nowhere Twist seems to miss the whole point of the first season.
I listened to an interview with Mike Schur on the podcast in which he very clearly said that the show is not about religion, it's about ethics, though. For Schur, Michael's line in the pilot about how every world religion got about 5% of the afterlife right except for Doug Forcett is an essential worldbuilding foundation of how he thinks about the series. So I think it is unreasonable to expect the finale to bring us to any sort of Big Guy with the ability to set things right. The Good Place/Bad Place/Jeremy Bearimy universe of the show is not a theologically sound emanation of divinity, it's a (Doylistic) thought experiment about what is Good and what is Bad that is (Watsonianly) operated by incompetents who lack the Omniscience of any sort of True Judge about what is Good and what is Bad... because Mike Schur believes that the idea of there being an actual True Judge is impossible. Ethics are relative and situational and there is never one right answer to how to behave in any given situation. And Doing Good is hard and what is most important is Doing the Work and getting better.
I feel most strongly, though, that the final episodes need to address in some sort of serious metaphysical mechanics way the question of what happened 500 years ago so that nobody has gone to The Good Place since then. Without an answer to that question that actually works, a lot of the show's worldbuilding is silly. Mindy St. John becomes the only person in the past 500 years not being tortured by demons. Also, a lot of the show's jokes about Janet or Michael saying who is in the Bad Place stop being funny. At the end of episodes of the podcast, Janet says "Did you know the person who invented the paperclip is in the Bad Place, because of tax evasion?" I think there are similar jokes over the course of the show. But this is a nonsense joke given that everyone goes to The Bad Place, because the points system is broken. The person who invented the paperclip isn't in the Bad Place because of tax evasion, they're in the Bad Place because they're a person, and people who aren't Mindy St. John go to the Bad Place, every last one of them.
But deeper than that joke not working is the Problem of Janet. Which is that in this world they have built where Omniscience about True Justice is not a thing, Janet doesn't make sense. Janet is quite precisely the Babelfish of the show, the thing that by its existence proves both that God must and cannot exist. And so my stretch hope for the final 5 episodes is that we get some more grappling with what it means for the universe that Janet exists.
But mostly what I want for the finale is an ending for Chidi and Eleanor and Jason and Tahani that is, in some satisfying way, Good. I want the four of them to end up together in Eternity, whatever that Eternity looks like.
I think the thing I have come to a realization about is that I have always had the tacit background assumption that there is a Big Guy behind the order of the show's universe. In Jewish theology the idea of Olam Haba flows directly from the existence of the monotheistic God. If there is a unitary omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who created the universe, then it stands to reason that there is an order to the universe that results in true and just reward and punishment. And since it is just as apparent that there is much that is unjust in this world, the true justice must come in the World to Come.
Without God underpinning it, the idea of there being a Good Place and a Bad Place doesn't really make obvious sense to me. Which is why I've always felt a little uncomfortable with the way people talk about the Big Season One Twist qua Twist. I did not predict while watching the first season that it would turn out that they were in Hell being deliberately punished, but it was equally clear that this Good Place was flawed and not working the way a Good Place should, and that the point of the show was that at some point this would get worked out in some way. So talking about it as being this completely out of nowhere Twist seems to miss the whole point of the first season.
I listened to an interview with Mike Schur on the podcast in which he very clearly said that the show is not about religion, it's about ethics, though. For Schur, Michael's line in the pilot about how every world religion got about 5% of the afterlife right except for Doug Forcett is an essential worldbuilding foundation of how he thinks about the series. So I think it is unreasonable to expect the finale to bring us to any sort of Big Guy with the ability to set things right. The Good Place/Bad Place/Jeremy Bearimy universe of the show is not a theologically sound emanation of divinity, it's a (Doylistic) thought experiment about what is Good and what is Bad that is (Watsonianly) operated by incompetents who lack the Omniscience of any sort of True Judge about what is Good and what is Bad... because Mike Schur believes that the idea of there being an actual True Judge is impossible. Ethics are relative and situational and there is never one right answer to how to behave in any given situation. And Doing Good is hard and what is most important is Doing the Work and getting better.
I feel most strongly, though, that the final episodes need to address in some sort of serious metaphysical mechanics way the question of what happened 500 years ago so that nobody has gone to The Good Place since then. Without an answer to that question that actually works, a lot of the show's worldbuilding is silly. Mindy St. John becomes the only person in the past 500 years not being tortured by demons. Also, a lot of the show's jokes about Janet or Michael saying who is in the Bad Place stop being funny. At the end of episodes of the podcast, Janet says "Did you know the person who invented the paperclip is in the Bad Place, because of tax evasion?" I think there are similar jokes over the course of the show. But this is a nonsense joke given that everyone goes to The Bad Place, because the points system is broken. The person who invented the paperclip isn't in the Bad Place because of tax evasion, they're in the Bad Place because they're a person, and people who aren't Mindy St. John go to the Bad Place, every last one of them.
But deeper than that joke not working is the Problem of Janet. Which is that in this world they have built where Omniscience about True Justice is not a thing, Janet doesn't make sense. Janet is quite precisely the Babelfish of the show, the thing that by its existence proves both that God must and cannot exist. And so my stretch hope for the final 5 episodes is that we get some more grappling with what it means for the universe that Janet exists.
But mostly what I want for the finale is an ending for Chidi and Eleanor and Jason and Tahani that is, in some satisfying way, Good. I want the four of them to end up together in Eternity, whatever that Eternity looks like.