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The Good Place - S04E13-14 "Whenever You're Ready" discussion thread
It's been an honor and a privilege to make these threads for you all. Take it sleazy.
It's been an honor and a privilege to make these threads for you all. Take it sleazy.
Well, it was pretty much what it said on the tin. It was the last ride with our human cast, and the start of a new chapter for Michael. As I see it, all of our characters become one with the universe in some form or fashion, Michael as a human, Janet as a sort of Charon, Tahani as an Architect, and the rest as the amalgamated interest of goodness that strikes every once in a while. I was consistently teary eyed, and any impressions I got from it are going to be impacted by it being the end. It was what it was and I was content.
Yeah, that was about as good an ending as one could hope for, IMO. I teared up quite a bit throughout too. What a truly wonderful show, and bittersweet but thoroughly satisfying ending!
p.s. At some point I would love to discuss the ideas behind the concept of the perfected afterlife they envisioned. I honestly can't think of a better one myself, but I am curious what others think about it and if they see any major shortcomings to it.
I disagree. I interpreted it less of a hint system and more of a reincarnation or a memory reminding you how you could better handle yourself during a given situation. Assuming people have an instinct towards alturism, this would exercise and strengthen it. And Brent is free to shoot himself in the foot tens of thousands of times, and if he could autopilot his way to goodness, he probably would.
This was a very fitting end for the series. Touching, thoughtful, and didn't leave me thinking they really missed much. An excellent end to an excellent show.
I thought it was a nice ending from a story point of view, although I'm still kind of waffling on it philosophically. I feel like the "in the Good Place" arc could have also been one episode longer, but overall I liked it and it got to me a couple times, especially Jason. "Take it sleazy" was great.
I think my favourite ending was Chidi's - he starts his life plagued by problems with decision-making, and ends his existence decisively. Of those that we see going through the door, he is the only one to not sit on the bench. He just walks casually through with his hands in his pockets.
I also like that the end is in a forest. I think there are very few places where the relationship between life and death and decay and life again is so openly evident.
I'm satisfied with that ending. What got me tearing up wasn't them going through the door but all the characters spending time with the people who were important to them. It just makes me so happy that everything turned out alright even though we all knew it would. I love that Jason ended up doing the monk thing, I love that Eleanor acknowledged she needed to let Chidi go. I was kinda hoping Michael would get spit out into the future.
Wasn't Jason called Mr. Music earlier on and not DJ Music, or am I remembering it wrong?
Yup, his DJ name is "Mr Music the DJ" but it's shortened to "DJ Music" on his merch. In S1E04, around 11:40, he introduces himself while putting on a hat that says "DJ Music".
Oh gotcha, thank you.
Tahani's list included "Fix the Jesus Fresco that the lady ruined"
For those curious what this is in reference to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez,_Borja)
This show's ending marks the first time a comedy has hit me with an existential aftershock.
The only other things that do that for me are typically sadder things like SOMA, The Last of Us, No Country for Old Men, Annihilation-- but for a comedy to do it was just... wow. What a smart, wonderful, delightfully charming yet insidiously dark series. I loved it. I'm gonna need a bit to let it marinate, but I think this could easily take the #1 spot for my favorite show of all time.
The Good Place ends up touching on a lot of transhumanistic themes, bearing an odd resemblance to Greg Egan's Permutation City.
I like that.
edit1: I just learned that was the series finale. You know what? This was not some cryptic science fiction novel, but rather a fantasy/romcom with interesting philosophical overtones. I demand emotional satisfaction. Not cool. Not cool at all.
edit2: it also kinda glorified suicide, but whatever...
edit3: and resolved the dilemma of identity by dissolving identify itself. Not very enticing, to be honest.
Even supposing that the motivations that you ascribe to real-world suicides are true in every case, the concept remains entirely compatible with the act of going through the portal.
Suicide's motivation is usually some kind of dissatisfaction with identity/existence with the goal of escaping it. Beautiful or not, calm or not, going through the door is equivalent to suicide, which means that it is suicide. And The Good Place glorified it.
It is certainly not as problematic as 13 Reasons. But it is still depicting suicide as something that ranges from harmless from positive.
But that's pretty much exactly opposite of the door's purpose, right? People aren't walking through the door because they're dissatisfied with existing; they're walking through the door precisely because they're satisfied.
I agree with /u/sinyavitsa's assessment that the show's insistence that "death gives meaning to life" was a bit of a cop-out. Nevertheless, faced with eternity, it's perfectly conceivable that people might want to quit existing eventually, if not for any reason but sheer boredom. It's certainly debatable as to whether you should call that suicide, but the context here matters: infinity fundamentally changes the dynamics, especially the morality of the matter.
Quoting myself from Reddit:
Sure, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are foils, so in some sense it doesn't make sense to talk about the one without talking about the other. That said, if you were to ask if the mindset of someone walking through the door out of a sense of completeness is tantamount to someone killing themselves out of desperation, people would crook their heads and look at you funny. Intuitively, the two situations are different. To wit, the difference is their mindsets (being in a good place vs being in a bad place).
But that kinda sidesteps the underlying issue here, which is whether the depiction of "suicide" in the Good Place is actually problematic. Plenty of people find assisted suicide in certain circumstances to be ethical, so it would seem rather extreme to suggest that any depiction of suicide is inherently problematic, for example. The question becomes, therefore, where do you draw the line? Or alternatively, to what degree is this particular depiction problematic?
Sure. That is not something I'm terribly concerned about, I just wanted to point out that it does present suicide in a very positive light and this ought to be acknowledged.