r/TheGoodPlace • u/WandersFar Change can be scary but I’m an artist. It’s my job to be scared. • Dec 07 '18
Season Three S3E10 Janet(s): Episode Discussion Spoiler
Airs tonight at 8:30 PM, ESCL. ¹ (About an hour from when this post is live.)
Last episode Janet pulled everyone into her void, marking the end of their adventure on Earth.
This is the last episode before the mid-season hiatus. The final three episodes of the season will air in the new year. (The dates are posted in the sidebar.)
¹ ESCL = Eastern Standard Clock Land
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
Who pushed the button for Michael and Janet to go through the tube? Someone had to be the last one…
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u/skushi08 Dec 07 '18
Was Michael still holding the book? I thought that was why he picked it up at first, to throw at the button. At least that’s what I would have done if I were a fugitive needing to press a button while standing a couple feet away.
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Dec 08 '18
Michael is still clinging to the idea that Doug forcett should be the ideal good place candidate and is banking on it helping his case...either that or it’s just a souvenir
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Dec 10 '18
huh. But it kind of felt like Doug's whole episode was about how someone shouldn't need to do all that stuff just to get in the good place.
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u/tkelly260 Dec 07 '18
Does anyone even need to push for Janet? Couldn't Michael just verbally summon her once he goes through?
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
I guess Ricky Gervais wasn’t available.
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u/AnnaK22 Dec 07 '18
That was my exact thought when I saw the mug. Or at least even Steve Carell.
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
I guess Gervais and Carell are too animated to play a staid, eternal accountant.
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u/trimonkeys Dec 07 '18
Gervais wouldn't have fit that role. I was expecting some sort of cameo with whoever played the accountant. Merchant did not disappoint.
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u/Whatnow81 Dec 07 '18
Does that mean Mindy St Clair was the best person in 521 years since she at least got to the Medium place?
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
That’s a really good point.
You could help kids all over the world, advance human rights, revolutionize agriculture, and improve every nation and every society in every possible way…
But snort a couple rails of coke and you’re stuck in the afterlife equivalent of Cincinnati for eternity. And that’s the best possible outcome.
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u/TheBriarPipe Dec 07 '18
She said
I only cared about making money and doing cocaine, and I was pretty crappy to my family as well.
So definitely more than just the drug problem. From the face of it she sounded even worse than Eleanor.
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
Making money and doing cocaine, yes. She didn’t say anything about being crappy to her family. S1E12:
So I was a hotshot corporate lawyer in the 1980s. I only cared about making money and doing cocaine. One night, I had an epiphany, right? I needed to do something good with my life. So I drew up plans for this foundation that would help kids all over the world, would advance human rights, revolutionize agriculture, and just improve every nation and every society in every possible way.
You were pretty coked-up, huh?
Oh, yeah, man, I was flying high. It was so awesome. But you’re not gonna believe this—I followed through. Yeah, I woke up the next morning, I went straight to the bank, I withdrew my life savings, and I was gonna start that charity.
Good for you!
And then I immediately fell into subway tracks and was electrocuted by the third rail. Honestly, not the type of rail I thought was gonna kill me. ’Cause I love cocaine. Do you have any? I’m just… I shouldn’t… Do you?
No.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was just—I was just kidding. It was just a joke. I mean, who would want to do cocaine right now?
Are you okay?
Anyway, so after I died, uh, my sister found my plan, and she used my money to start the Mindy St. Claire Rescue Alliance, yeah. It’s actually the largest relief aid charity in the world.
She honestly doesn’t sound that bad to me. The worst thing she did was probably the cocaine, which supports a terrible industry. Chidi’s almond milk x1000.
But, you know, recreational drug use? The ethics on that are a bit iffy, imo. The only one you’re hurting, arguably, is yourself. Can you score points against yourself? Seems like the points system reflects the consequences of your actions on other people.
Besides the drugs, she was a corporate lawyer [insert lawyer joke here] so maybe, just like being French, that was enough to cancel out all the good she did. What else is there?
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u/FertilityHollis Dec 07 '18
This explains a lot, thanks for pointing it out! I don't have the slightest forking idea how to process this episode, but I think you touched on something important. Maybe she did get all the points, or a lot of them, but it still wasn't enough to get her anything but a medium place?
Steven Merchant was a perfect pick as a head accountant. He's the original prototype for The Office's "Gareth" which became "Dwight" in the American version. A reason why McKenzie Crook was a great casting choice as Gareth, they're both creepy tall and thin.
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
Maybe she did get all the points, or a lot of them, but it still wasn't enough to get her anything but a medium place?
That’s what I’m thinking, too. Back in S1E12, we were led to believe the case Gen decided was whether Mindy deserved the points the charity her sister started in her name earned.
But the unspoken question is, even if she did get all those points, is the rules system so forked she’d wind up in the Bad Place or (at best) Medium Place anyway?
Mindy’s greatest sins were fairly victimless, imo. She was a corporate lawyer who enjoyed her recreational substances.
Now, you could make a strong case that supporting Columbian drug cartels by partaking of their product is a million times worse than Chidi’s almond milk dilemma, and there are plenty of jokes about all lawyers immediately winding up in the Bad Place (and presumably arguing in French) but could you honestly claim that those two things alone should cancel out all the good that “the largest relief aid charity in the world” ever did?
According to the Accountants’ calculation, the answer is yes.
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u/trankhead324 Dec 07 '18
You could help kids all over the world, advance human rights, revolutionize agriculture, and improve every nation and every society in every possible way…
But Mindy never actually did do any of those things. She had the idea to do them and died before she could.
There's a lot of great people who've lived in the last 521 years but Mindy isn't high on my list.
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
She withdrew her life savings, though, which shows she wasn’t all talk.
Oh, yeah, man, I was flying high. It was so awesome. But you’re not gonna believe this—I followed through. Yeah, I woke up the next morning, I went straight to the bank, I withdrew my life savings, and I was gonna start that charity.
And the charity her sister started in her name is:
… the Mindy St. Claire Rescue Alliance, yeah. It’s actually the largest relief aid charity in the world.
So on a purely utilitarian level, her money really did put more good out into the world than probably anyone.
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u/happygot Dec 07 '18
you’re stuck in the afterlife equivalent of Cincinnati
Oh man, just send me to the bad place instead
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Dec 07 '18
She also only came up with that idea because she was so coked out, and the only reason it came to fruition instead of her sobering up and never executing it was that she literally died several hours after writing the whole thing down. Her death was kind of perfect timing when you consider that she probably wouldn’t have done anything and would have gotten no points for her idea if she had lived.
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u/TheBriarPipe Dec 07 '18
Eh, she would have. She not only devised detailed plans for that foundation but also went straight to withdraw her life savings. But I agree that the timing is perfect - Otherwise Mindy could continue to do tons of crazy bad stuff that eventually cancels out her one good action.
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u/heytaradiddle Dec 07 '18
If the Bad Place is fudging the books, I wonder how Mindy even slipped through their fingers? Or like... demon claws, I guess.
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Dec 07 '18
What if it isn' the Bad place goosing the numbers? What if some nefarious good Placer decided the good place needs to stay as pure as possible.
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u/miggy372 Dec 07 '18
I was thinking about this. The only explanation I can think of is that the bad place is purposely hacking the points of people they know are good so as to give them bad points. But Mindy was bad her whole life so they never felt a need to mess with her points. And then that one last good act happened right before she died and it was too late to mess with her score? I don’t know. I’m trying to make sense of it.
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u/fallenmonk Dec 07 '18
I'm thinking that because of her posthumous good deed, she slipped through the bad place's hack.
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u/Fanatical_Idiot Dec 07 '18
I'm thinking the point of this episode was that there isn't really a hack.. its a systematic screw up that compiled over time until nobody could get in.
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u/Kinuika Dec 07 '18
I mean it makes sense doesn't it? I know it's used mainly for jokes but benign actions like having vanity plates or reading a trashy magazine deduct a decent amount of points. On the other hand the only way to actually gain points is to do truly selfish actions and opportunities to perform such actions rarely show up and when they do aren't worth that many points.
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Dec 07 '18
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u/artuno Dec 07 '18
I think the system is essentially arbitrary points assigned to each aspect of an action not because it's good or bad, but because each individual part of an action could be good or bad.
Someone might sharpen a knife, and then stab a squash.
Sharpening a tool? Plus one point.
It's a knife. Minus one point.
It's used to stab. Minus another point.
It's a squash. Plus two points.
Total is plus one point due to the individual numbers run by the accountants, when in reality it should be just 0 points because it's not a good or bad action, it's just an action.
Why would they do it this way? To avoid the complications that moral philosophy causes. This way they dont have to second guess themselves on a ruling.
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u/gonzolady Dec 07 '18
Hi I’m Elenor! I’m Arizona shrimp horny 😂😂😂
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Dec 07 '18
NO ONES GOTTEN INTO THE GOOD PLACE FOR 521 YEARS
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u/milkisklim Dec 07 '18
That's 1497
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u/GrumpySatan Dec 07 '18
I looked up deaths in 1497 and one stands out - Elia Del Medigo, a philosopher.
Did a moral philosopher go to the good place????
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u/UbunChu1999 Dec 07 '18
You sure he's not going to school naked, then taking a test in a class he's never been to, then being smashed with a hammer?
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u/sagen11 Dec 07 '18
Omg! That’s why everyone hates moral philosophers!
One of them died, went to the good place, joined the committee and made it impossible for anyone else to get into the good place!
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u/SeaWerewolf Dec 07 '18
Since there were so few deaths on that list, I browsed through the Wikipedia pages for each person, and one more stood out to me: Antonio Manetti, an Italian mathematician.
He is particularly noted for his investigations into the site, shape and size of Dante's Inferno. Although Manetti never himself published his research regarding the topic, the earliest Renaissance Florentine editors of the poem, Cristoforo Landino and Girolamo Benivieni, reported the results of his researches in their respective editions of the Divine Comedy.
Maybe not a coincidence that he spent a ton of time researching a version of Hell? Maybe Dante got something right?
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u/GrumpySatan Dec 07 '18
... Maybe he was the old "Doug Forcett" and the Bad Place sabotaged the point system after him?
Unless the bad place didn't sabotage it at all, and in fact the Good Place sabotaged the point system because they didn't want to do anymore work. That seems like the kind of twist this show would do.
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u/freon Dec 07 '18
Wait, did a moral philosopher manage to talk the Final Arbiter of the Good Place or whatever into changing to a more stringent points system based on their logical arguments? A moral standard so strict literally NO ONE lives up to it?
Is this why 'everyone hates moral philosophers'?!
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u/justcellsurf Dec 07 '18
Even the good place hates moral philosophers so changed the point system just to makr sure they never get stuck with one again. Dooming all of humanity is just the price they pay to not hear another damn moral philosophy lecture.
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Dec 07 '18
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u/Yglorba Dec 07 '18
Doesn't the moral desert problem apply to her, though? She believed in an afterlife with absolute certainty, therefore none of her good deeds counted.
(In fact, although the show has tiptoed around real-world religion for the most part, a logical conclusion of the rules we've learned so far is that anyone who is a genuine, complete believer in Christianity, Islam, or any other religion with judgement for your actions after death is automatically damned to the Bad Place because their good deeds have impure motives.)
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Dec 07 '18
But then, Eleanor said that Michael has been lying to them for the past 300 years
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u/wordyfard Dec 07 '18
It could be earlier than 1497 if the file wasn't processed the same Earth year in which the person died.
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u/Notjoelle88 Dec 07 '18
No it's sometime in the 1800s because now that they're back in the good place they're inside of the Jeremy Bearimy timeline which means 300 years of reboots (2300 minus 500 years in the past)
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u/vexorian2 Dec 08 '18 edited Dec 08 '18
when they checked Doug Forcett's file, he was still 65. (Edit: 68)
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u/TheBriarPipe Dec 07 '18
Oh this actually makes some sense, IF Michael's (or Janet's?) season 1 comment about Lincoln not in the bad place is something to go by.
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u/armcie Dec 07 '18
Is the show in 2018? I suppose Jeremy Beremy means we probably are, but I think the Earth timeline would suggest we're about 12 months after their original deaths in (presumably) 2016
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u/GreekGeek4 Dec 07 '18
We're in 2018 because a year after they die is when Eleanor meets Michael in the bar in 2x13. Then they spend at least a year in Australia which puts us in this year.
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u/RollyPalma Dec 11 '18
I was thinking the same thing, but then I wondered how we could know it's "2018" in the accounting department. It could be any number of years on earth due to Jeremy Bearemy. E.g. it could be 2386 on earth and Abraham Lincoln was the last human to get into TGP in 1865... Just a thought.
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u/redalastor Dec 07 '18
That explains why Michael could so easily steal a Good Janet. Why would the Good Place guard them? They are not needed.
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u/Stormtide_Leviathan Dec 07 '18
:( We all need Janet though, so it's okay!
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u/redalastor Dec 07 '18
I'm curious to see her interactions with a good place Janet that hasn't been rebooted a hundred time.
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u/ohbuggerit Dec 07 '18
I think I've figured it out: it was inevitable. Consider these 2 factors...
The accountants aren't, uh, accounting for how fast humans (and, by extension, human values and society) progress. Like, how many people today would survive long enough to get a single Good Place Point in 1497? Because, frankly, anyone interesting enough to be worth paying attention to would probably be branded a witch. and be very proud of it.
The sheer number of things that accrue bad place points increases at a ridiculous rate. It may have started as 'Hey, maybe don't do too much killing' but it's escalated to the point where there's unwritten rules governing every second of existence
And those two things were always going to collide, in such a way that only an accountant could be boring enough to overlook. So what we have is a system where someone could be pretty great... albeit by 1400's standards... and still have a billion reasons to end up in the Bad Place
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u/nathanielatom Dec 09 '18
I think this is the most likely theory - especially since at its core is moral relativism vs moral universalism. I'd be surprised if we didn't come across these topics in a show about moral philosophy...
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u/Inequilibrium Dec 07 '18
Wasn't it implied back in season 1 that Abraham Lincoln is in The Good Place? I'm surprised they'd contradict themselves, the writers are usually pretty on top of continuity.
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u/wormhole222 Dec 07 '18
I don't specifically recall who said what, but pretty much everything in season 1 was a lie.
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u/wordyfard Dec 07 '18
Michael was the one who heavily implied that he was, but in the context of the situation, it can now be assumed he didn't know and made that story up.
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u/strople17 Dec 07 '18
NO ONE CAN GET IN THE GOOD PLACE!!! I FORKING KNEW IT!!!
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u/TheCavis Dec 07 '18
It makes perfect sense that Michael (who had to make up fake point totals for everyone during the reboots) would be the one to notice something was a bit weird.
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u/Hormisdas Dec 07 '18
Good call, and this episode confirmed my "collusion-level information" comment, seeing as Michael openly tells the head accountant that he thinks the Bad Place hacked the system.
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u/OneGoodRib Dec 07 '18
I was wondering if there was something like that happening, and that’s why the Janet warehouse was so easy to get into. Nobody needs any new Janets so nobody’s bothering to guard them! Or the afterlife just has terrible security.
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u/OMGEntitlement Dec 08 '18
The way I hand-waved it was that Good Place people wouldn't even dream of stealing, so....
This makes way more sense, though, since we've seen that lower-level functionaries appear to be susceptible to human-like emotions. No reason to think ennui wouldn't be one of them.
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u/himym101 Dec 07 '18
This has been going around in my head after hearing the writers talk on the podcasts but I was switching between there being no good place and no being able to get in
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u/heytaradiddle Dec 07 '18
D'Arcy Carden kissing D'Arcy Carden!
D'Arcy Carden kissing Kristen Bell!
Kristen Bell kissing William Jackson Harper!
What other show has a kissing scene like that?
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u/hubwub Dec 07 '18
I still need my Kristen Bell kissing Jameela Jamil.
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u/SkippingPebbless Dec 07 '18
And I eagerly await my Jackson Harper kissing Manny Jacinto.
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Dec 07 '18
The first person that Eleanor-Janet turned into was a shorter brown girl with long hair - almost like an Eleanor-Tahani.
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u/AnnaK22 Dec 07 '18
I was honestly so happy when Kristin Bell Eleanor kissed Janet. She's had the hots for Janet for 300 plus years.
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u/PiesRLife Dec 07 '18
D'Arcy Carden kissing D'Arcy Carden!
When I saw that I thought that's a ship probably nobody shipped, but there is going to be a lot of shipping of now.
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u/Mo0man Dec 07 '18
I would be shocked if that didn't immediately happen when Bad Janet showed up for the first time.
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u/muddyGolem Dec 07 '18
Jason saying white people things
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u/Yglorba Dec 07 '18
It didn't occur to me until that point that (outside of this episode, obviously) only one out of the four humans is white.
Of course, if you count Michael and Janet, the main cast is 50% white.
(Yes, I know what Janet would say to that.)
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u/peanutsandfuck Dec 07 '18
I noticed that early on, we have a very diverse cast (including the demons!) I was trying to think of any other show that has 4 main characters each of a different race.
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Dec 10 '18
And that's a hallmark of doing a diverse cast right. There's nothing bringing your attention to how a diverse cast they have. They just are and play is as normal, which is the best thing to show diversity as normal.
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Dec 07 '18
Your favorite movie is that clip of John Travolta saying Adele Dazeem.
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u/mntfr Dec 07 '18
Ok so I have a weird theory, I think that inflation has killed the good place system, the head accountant said that the points are revised and then set the first time someone does something for the first time ,so then that means that the action has a fixed value forever, so if you gave a rock you earned 10000 pts, but then you end slavery which earns you a billion points but at that time of your life everyone has given so many rocks to each other its basically worthless.
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Dec 07 '18
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
Matt was my favorite character of the episode. Filing a request to commit suicide, lol.
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u/WandersFar Dec 07 '18
Aw dip, Pillboi!