arc

Larry’s schtick is funny but doesn’t seem to have a real motivation behind it. To me, that makes him way more of a joke machine than a real-seeming character. Though I think this is also true to some extent of everyone in Tahani’s circle, from her sister to her parents. But those people are really just there to set Tahani up for a joke, while I think Larry feels less real than he should.

Everything I said about the season premiere having too much meddling by Michael, but times 10.

Vulture interview with Alan Yang. Vulture interview with Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard. THR talks with Alan Yang and Hubbard about the season finale and the show in general. (despite the headline, there are no real details shared about a potential second season.

She plays Gen very big, but her role as June on Forever (which also shares some Parks and Rec DNA as both co-creators were Parks writers) is much more subtle.

Sure, that's possible, but she also saw him bite into a raw egg like it was an apple. I think that's more of a mornings at home thing than breakfast at work.

I bought that June and Oscar were happy together. It was a very low-key happiness and ultimately a more boring one than June could accept for forever. But their thing of riffing on the best way to sit, or whatever, showed they were often of one mind. And she seemed to really like the salmon almandine the first few times. I wonder what their afterlife would have been like if June had had a year or two to settle into that dream job before dying.

Simone seems almost too good to be true. She has a sketchy Australian accent, possibly by design and possibly not. She has a romantic connection with Chidi. Who else fits all those points? Vicki. I have this theory -- and it probably won't pan out, but it is truly speculation and not based on any spoilers -- that Simone is secretly Vicki in disguise.

Chidi and Simone are sleeping over! He can move pretty fast once he gets over his indecisiveness.

Jason didn't just get bitten by a spider, he got bitten by an Australian spider! Man should be dead by now. =(

On second thought, and especially after rewatching the clip where Chidi first asks for Simone’s help, I now think KHB was attempting an Australian accent.

Those Bio dept names are some of the most Mike Schur show names ever.

Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Simone) is British in real life and I'm pretty sure that was her real accent, so I never thought Simone was Australian.

Maybe Trevor snuck a ride to Earth with Michael. Like, became a piece of lint or something. But it sounded like they also needed the key to get back to the afterlife dimensions so who knows.

How did Trevor get to Earth? Michael needed authorization. (Which he improperly reused). I know the Bad Place breaks laws but if they could forge papers to go to earth you’d think they’d constantly be doing that and eventually the doorman would require some unforgeable papers.

The AV Club is doing annotations for the episodes to note every in-joke, callback, and possible clue and whatnot. A commenter noted that in 3x02, Tahani showed up to the monastery in cargo pants just like the ones she reluctantly wore in "Dance Dance Resolution" (2x03). And I know it's long been established that Chidi was a professor at an Australian university, but I do like that in 2x03 Vicky talked about how she'd spent weeks perfecting her Australian accent and even threatened Michael with "going Down Under" if she didn't get her way, and now it turns out that's where (at least the first part of) season 3 takes place.

I feel like this happens on other shows too, like in the LA Complex (a Canadian show!) where struggling Canadian actors just relocated to LA and never once sweated any kind of visa issues. And it always bothers the heck outta me. TBH while I realize Ted Danson is core to the show, I didn't like how basically the entire plot was his machinations. That's wayyyyyy too much meddling. I know they already did some last season when he stepped in to nudge Eleanor to find Chidi, and I know it would have been next to unimaginable for Tahani and Jason to leave their lives to go to Australia, so I don't have any better ideas. But even so.

I really wanted to see a revival. But as of this past summer it might not happen:

Zach Cowie, the music supervisor, tweeted a list of all licensed music used in the show:

I think there’s certainly more themes the show can explore if they want. As I see it, Riverside is a place for the dead to spend their afterlife in a monument to their former lives*. Oceanside is a place for the dead to, I guess, have an eternal resort vacation, a never ending retirement party to leave their old life behind. It makes sense that Oscar (and June) started out at Riverside, and that Kase ended up at Oceanside. I wonder what the place across the ocean is for. * well, their former lives besides their jobs, anyways. It is interesting that June took up pottery for the first time in Riverside. I wonder why she didn’t keep up with it in Oceanside.

Hong Chau and Jason Mitchell acted the hell out of the “Andre and Sarah” episode, and the writers (Alan Yang & Colleen McGuinness) wrote the hell out of it. It's like the "Before" trilogy in 35 minutes, and "Before Sunset" is my all-time favorite movie. There are beautiful little things I only noticed on repeat viewings, like the first moment Andre meets up with Sarah for the second time. He's straightening out his suit, but as he recognizes Sarah he moves his right hand to cover his wedding ring on his left. There's also the bigger things, like Andre coming home to Sarah making a wonderful dinner echoing what Sarah said the first meeting, about having someone to come home to, and then the heartbreak when it's revealed they're sneaking around rather than being actually together for real.

In the movie, the Young family are mega-rich developers and famous around the city-state. (Which makes it a little harder to believe Rachel's never heard of Nick's family and wealth.) In the book, the Young family are as mega-rich as in the movie but they're super secretive about their wealth; other old money families know who they are but the hoi polloi don't, not even new money rich like the Gohs. And about Nick's dad Philip Young and the Young clan (real spoilers for the second and third books, mostly about the structure of the family wealth of the Youngs): It's not so much the question of where Nick lives physically, but that Rachel is too Americanized for Eleanor's taste. Not that Rachel doesn't know what a finger bowl is, but deep-down cultural issues like following your passion vs sacrificing for your family. I know Americans also sacrifice for the family, but consider what Eleanor's calculus with Nick was: she sent Nick to live with his grandma so that he would earn his grandma's love. Eleanor sacrificed a lot of closeness to Nick for Nick's sake, that he could be assured of a good position in his grandma's will and thus be set for life. A similar situation in America might instead have a mother like Eleanor sacrifice their standing in the family matriarch's eyes, and forego the hope of a rich inheritance in favor of preserving (nuclear) family bonds. But the latter would be unthinkable for Eleanor because she would rather trade her own happiness for the sake of her son's future. To Eleanor, then, Rachel represented an unacceptable, incompatible set of values.

My headcanon for now is that most people don't wind up in either place. Many other people in Riverside had spouses and none of them besides Oscar and June were reunited. Also, where did dead people go before the neighborhood was condemned? And shouldn't an abandoned neighborhood decay? There's that one guy who mows his lawn, but how in the world does that work? Would Currents see the grass being cut? (I also have this question to a lesser degree about when Formers open and close doors.) And there are a lot of threads one could pick at if one wanted. Why can't Formers drive? Could they at least have human-powered vehicles like bikes? Mark got a skateboard, after all. But I liked the whole vibe of the thing and -- like everyone else said -- the "Andre & Sarah" episode was really amazing. I do agree with Alan Sepinwall that maybe this role wasn't quite right for Fred Armisen, though.

If you’ve read Jeff Yang’s mahjong scene explanation and you would like even more depth about what message each player’s hand conveys, check out this piece.

Rachel must have confronted Nick about it at some point in the deleted scenes, because there's that "You should have told me you're the Prince William of Asia" / "Don't be ridiculous, I'm much more of a Harry" exchange from the trailer that ended up getting cut from the movie. I rewatched the trailer, and that moment was at the mansion (Tyersall Park). (I think they said they ended up cutting it because Nick's line came off a little too self-complimentary.)

This review got to why CRA mattered to me so much: