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S03.E10: Janet(s)


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Very enjoyable episode! I'm glad we're back to peak metaphysical weirdness.

Yes, I never believed the theory that no one was getting into the Good Place because of Mindy's Medium Place existence, but now that's all out the window! Maybe her one good idea was really that great?

The storyline of Bad Place folks rigging the system is weirdly resonant to current news stories.

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2 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

The storyline of Bad Place folks rigging the system is weirdly resonant to current news stories.

I don't think we know yet whether the system is rigged or just broken. The accountant explained how the points for individual actions were calculated and why he believed they were correct. He didn't prove that the recorded total matched the sum of all the individual acts for that person. He didn't say what the threshold was or how they know that it is valid and doesn't need recalibration. And who cross checks to make sure your points are above or below the threshold? There are several places corruption or negligence could be causing issues.

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Agree with everyone about D'arcy.  There were so many times that she'd do something and I could immediately picture the real character doing it.  The two that stick out to me are when Eleanor throws her head back listening to Chidi talk and the way Chidi was standing by the blackboard.   I thought it looked awkward the way she was standing but then I pictured Chidi at the blackboard and it was exactly how he'd stand.

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I'm not even the bad place hacked the system, what if it was the good place that screwed with it? The point totals could still be accurate but over time the good place could have raised the threshold to get in to absurdly high standards because because even good people still have flaws and those flaws could have annoyed the angels. Maybe initially everyone with a positive point total ended up in the good place, everyone with a negeative one in the bad place but obviously someone who only had 12 points would be far from perfect so the good place said "At least 5000 points!" to weed the people out who almost did as much bad as good. Over time they realized 5000 point people aren't that great either from an angels perspective so the threshold became 10.000 points, then 50.000 etc.

 

We saw in this episode that the new weird sex thing immediately lost the guy more than 9000 points, that might explain Mindy, she didn't get the chance to snort and masturbate her points away. If otherwise awesome, generous and heroic people can lose a million points over a few years just because they're into kinky stuff in the bedroom it would explain a lot, maybe other people earned even more points than Mindy but because they didn't die early human nature made sure they lost a ton.

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12 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

If no one has gotten into the Good Place in 500 years then I look forward to seeing the gang interact with 16th century people.

A 16th century PERSON. We don't know whether or not getting into the good place was easier to get into back then or whether or not Saint Watzerface was an anomaly. It would be interesting to see if Jesus or Mohammed made it or not.

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Just give D'Arcy all the awards now. You could completely see each character as she played them. Though I have to guess we did skip over roughly 74 years of Jeremy Bearimy time of Jason enjoying being the proud owner of a pair of boobs (great shape, size, and so close together!!!)

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I'm honestly confused, what would it matter if Doug Forcett is 68, that he won't go to the Good Place? Can someone explain?

I am going to have to rewatch this episode, it just went by so fast!

Also...I've never, ever seen Ted Danson look short!

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5 minutes ago, cpcathy said:

I'm honestly confused, what would it matter if Doug Forcett is 68, that he won't go to the Good Place? Can someone explain?

His 500.000+ points are a good start but him being 68 means he won't earn enough to make it to the good place in the time he has left.

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Like everything else the point system Might have been a good idea at first but when you add total bureaucracy and no room for compassion you end up with a system where eventually no one will be able to make up enough  point to go to the Good Place.

That is my theory.

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According to the podcast, this episode aired in December instead of January (like in previous years) because the creators wanted D'Arcy to make the cutoff for award nominations. If it aired in January, she would have to wait a full year and would likely be overlooked.

Forking loved it. Jason-Janet made me aware that I say a lot of white people stuff. So I'll work on that (but Etsy has some great stuff, you guys!). I was really happy to see them return to themselves at the end though. Oh, and friggin Monica Padman's voice sounded so much like Kristen's (never noticed that before) that I thought she was the only one Eleanor-Janet would transform into before it was Kristen Bell again. 

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13 hours ago, ThoughtAFool said:

I can say that once again I really don't know what to expect from upcoming episodes of this show.  What does a "good place" for people from the 1400's look like?  (Are there food puns?) And what kind of interactions do the Soul Squadron have with people from the middle ages?  I guess some of the action will be Michael interacting with After-life management types rather than Good Place denizens.

Join me at the pub, a "Mead-summer Night's Dream." Then we can grab a bite at "The Flying Chaucer."

11 hours ago, HunterHunted said:

500 years is such a monstrous callous timeframe. In fact, "no one ever" is actually a little less cruel. During the past 500 years, the earth has experienced such a number of massive mortality events: the 2nd and 3rd plague pandemics, decimation of native populations in colonized lands, the slave trade, the Russian Revolution, the Communist Revolution in China, WW1, WW2, the Spanish Flu, the Chinese Japanese War, the Napoleonic Wars, all of the Chinese wars (Qing/Ming, Han, Taiping), the 30 Years War, the Great Irish Famine, and more. Not to mention the tens of millions of people who die every year just because. Fifty-five million people died last year. And we've only had half decent medicine for the last 100 years or so. People had tons of kids because only a handful would make it to adulthood. The infant mortality rate was astronomical. We're talking billions upon billions of people. At least 40 billion. So out of the last 40 billion people who have died, none have qualified for the Good Place and Mindy got into the Medium Place.

The entire system has always been a bit monstrous, right? The idea that you can objectively quantify action, and the (albeit hilarious) moral implications of really ethically neutral decisions?The idea that we are held to standards and rules that are never fully explained to us? But this reveal does make it far more horrifying. 

11 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

Someone needs to get word back to Doug that he's doomed, so he might as well start partying at the bar, peeing on the police car, and giving that snotty kid a fist sandwich.  What are they gonna do?

Ohh, I would love to hear Chidi try to decide whether it is better to tell him and ruin any remote chance he has or not tell him and let him continue to live in such a miserable fashion.

7 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Loved, loved, loved the episode. D'Arcy Carden was fantastic playing the four humans. That being said, the episode did raise some conceptual concerns.

The biggest one is that while it was clear that the points system was forked up for a long time, now that it is confirmed that no one has gotten into the Good Place for centuries, it is kind of hard to avoid the nightmare-fuel thought of what that means for specific, real-world people. Before, there was some plausible deniability where theoretically, we could assume that at the very least young children or great heroes of history were in TGP. But now, we're dealing with a narrative universe in which, canonically, every single person who has existed for half a millennium has been subjected to potentially centuries of horrific torture. That's...really grim.

I also think it dilutes something of the show's premise. The original problem with the points system was that it was excessively rigid, too unforgiving of human frailty and dismissive of people's continual power to change. By most people's moral systems, Eleanor would be deserving of a bad place, but we see that she is capable of genuine transformation under the right circumstances, which argues against the premise of consigning someone like her to eternal torture. Then, there's someone like Chidi, who may have had deep flaws that prevented him from really contributing to the happiness of others, but who was a more or less decent person; it isn't that the system has totally misjudged him, but that a system in which a Chidi winds up in the bad place is pretty merciless. 

That's undermined by the realization that no one gets in, because now we know that a) even if all four of these people had been their best selves, they were completely doomed; being an Arizona trashbag and being Mother Teresa makes no difference and b) the point system isn't just un-nuanced, it is completely broken. And I find the idea of fighting against a system that is just without being merciful a lot more interesting than fighting against a system that is transparently rigged. 

As others have noted, it also makes Mindy St. Clair's existence kind of baffling; her consignment to a medium place made sense only when we thought there were also people getting into the good place.

Agreed it is a grim prospect, but I am not sure that it was ever anything justifiable. Even where it was rare to get in, it was still pretty awful that your choice in music could end up causing you to be tortured for eternity. This show is pretty cynical and has a lot of dark humor, which is why I love it. I suspect the answer is going to be less about rigging and more about some sort of failing in The Good Place. More on that below. 

3 hours ago, Grischa said:

I'm not even the bad place hacked the system, what if it was the good place that screwed with it? The point totals could still be accurate but over time the good place could have raised the threshold to get in to absurdly high standards because because even good people still have flaws and those flaws could have annoyed the angels. Maybe initially everyone with a positive point total ended up in the good place, everyone with a negeative one in the bad place but obviously someone who only had 12 points would be far from perfect so the good place said "At least 5000 points!" to weed the people out who almost did as much bad as good. Over time they realized 5000 point people aren't that great either from an angels perspective so the threshold became 10.000 points, then 50.000 etc.

 

We saw in this episode that the new weird sex thing immediately lost the guy more than 9000 points, that might explain Mindy, she didn't get the chance to snort and masturbate her points away. If otherwise awesome, generous and heroic people can lose a million points over a few years just because they're into kinky stuff in the bedroom it would explain a lot, maybe other people earned even more points than Mindy but because they didn't die early human nature made sure they lost a ton.

I wonder if it isn't going to end up being some impossibility in building a good place for anyone, or that essentially building a Good Place requires too much work because people are unpredictable and they tend to cause problems with each other as well. In the way that Michael's neighborhoods constantly failed, one can imagine a comparable problem when trying to actually make a Good Place. If there are other people, they would be constantly interacting with one another and things could turn into a bad place. If the other people are angel actors, they still might not hit the right notes, etc. Imagine: we tried to make a place with all her favorite foods, but she got sick of them. We gave her unlimited puppies, but there were too many puppies. Her "soul mate" was too perfect and she started picking fights with him because of it. We had to suspend Good Place protocol or we had to raise the points to get in because all of our people are currently maintaining like 10 good places, and we can't add another.

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4 hours ago, ally862 said:

Agree with everyone about D'arcy.  There were so many times that she'd do something and I could immediately picture the real character doing it.  The two that stick out to me are when Eleanor throws her head back listening to Chidi talk and the way Chidi was standing by the blackboard.   I thought it looked awkward the way she was standing but then I pictured Chidi at the blackboard and it was exactly how he'd stand.

D'Arcy was spot on practically every second, but, as someone pointed above pointed out, except when she needed to be just a little off. Which was when Janet!Eleanor was trying to imitate Janet!Tahani. That was Tatiana Maslany level acting.

 

1 hour ago, BoogieBurns said:

According to the podcast, this episode aired in December instead of January (like in previous years) because the creators wanted D'Arcy to make the cutoff for award nominations. If it aired in January, she would have to wait a full year and would likely be overlooked.

But the Golden Globes nominations came out earlier this week. And for the Emmys, you need to be just prior to next May, ir June, so which awards are they talking about? `

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15 hours ago, festivus said:

Let's say white people stuff. "I got it on Etsy." I can't find any parking." "Did you refill the Britta?" I can't remember the first one but that was brilliant. I laughed so hard. Janet as Jason was the best. This whole episode was just a gem.

The first one was Billy Joel LOL

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2 hours ago, Ivydoom said:

It was hilarious seeing 'being from France' causing people to lose points, but when you start to think of it the so called Good Place seems to be very discriminating and how good can a place be that discriminates like that?

It has been a plot hole for me since episode one. It seems like the kind of person who would deserve The Good Place would never be happy knowing people were tortured and not trying to fix it. So the more screwed up the whole system is, the less of a plot hole that actually becomes.

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I agree with others that this implies that Mindy St Clair has been the best human to live for the past 500 years.  Which based on what we've seen of her is kind of disillusioning.

Personally, I think the problem is with Good Place high standards, not Bad Place tampering.  The accountant was initially proud of Doug Forcett's score until he realized Doug was 68.  It's as if a person needs to average 10,000 points / year to be on track for the Good Place.  If Doug had been 40, he'd be doing great.  But he's 68 which means he's behind schedule.  I suppose someone could argue that because Doug is a bit of a recluse, he is doing good deeds, but they're not having a large enough effect on other people.

And +1 on D'arcy's acting in this episode.  She even sounded like Jason with her voice getting deeper.  She played 6 different characters in this episode.

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I think the existence of Mindy St. Claire proves that Judge Gen is not involved in any shenanigans, and the system is supposed to work a certain way.  She said she had not had a case in 30 years, which was presumably Mindy. The odd way Mindy’s points could have been accounted for meant that someone had to interpret the rules, and make a decision about how to award points.  Leading to the Medium Place.  But if someone like Mindy can get even rate a visit to the judge, but someone like Ghandi or Bea Arthur is just thrown to the Bad Place no questins asked shows there is a problem somewhere in the system.  But Accounting is not the problem, since I imagine they were the ones to send the case to Gen. (ie: “We got this weird case, we don’t know how to apply the points, Gen please help us.”) She got the case before the relevant saboteurs got to it to ship Mindy to the Bad Place.  I’m guessing it is someone in both Places colluding together, finagling the system to require way more points to get to the Good Place than the system originally planned.  Maybe even making the changes slowly so nobody would notice.  That’s how I would do it at least.

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1 hour ago, Loandbehold said:

But the Golden Globes nominations came out earlier this week. And for the Emmys, you need to be just prior to next May, ir June, so which awards are they talking about? `

I just say what I hear. But there are other awards, Critic's Choice and SAG awards are often important to getting on Emmy lists. The SAG more than the GG in recent years. SAG nominations and Critic's choice ballots are currently out. 

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So everyone has pretty much beaten me to the punch praising the brilliance of this episode and the talent of D'Arcy Carden. There's no justice in the world if she doesn't at least get an Emmy nomination out of this. Not only was she able to play all of her co-star's roles but her "neutral Janet" was easily the most hilarious thing about this episode.

And let me just say that as someone who is scheduled to attend a destination wedding, nobody laughed harder than me at the points against the couple who were planning one, and how the points against them accumulated when it turned out to be a destination theme wedding, and then when the theme turned out to be Lord of the Rings. "They're basically doomed."

I think this episode kind of highlighted what's been wrong with most of this season though. Once it shifted back into a supernatural world it regained the whimsy and charm that's been largely absent while all the characters were on earth. 

Corner piece!

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29 minutes ago, BoogieBurns said:

I just say what I hear. But there are other awards, Critic's Choice and SAG awards are often important to getting on Emmy lists. The SAG more than the GG in recent years. SAG nominations and Critic's choice ballots are currently out. 

Thanks. I just couldn't think what other awards they were referring. It makes sense now.

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24 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

And let me just say that as someone who is scheduled to attend a destination wedding, nobody laughed harder than me at the points against the couple who were planning one, and how the points against them accumulated when it turned out to be a destination theme wedding, and then when the theme turned out to be Lord of the Rings. "They're basically doomed."

That part does show how messed up the whole point system is. I can understand why a destination wedding can give you negative points. But why would the afterlife care if your wedding has a theme? How does that add evil to the world? And why would being inspired by Lord of the Rings give you enough negative points that you're basically doomed? The point system is bullshirt. Just let nerds have the wedding they want.

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Quote

Like I said, I get why the Destination wedding is worth negative points, but I don't think that having a theme wedding* should cost you any points.

I would perceive a theme, on top of the destination, to be further aggravation thrust upon the guests. 

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I recently discovered this show via Netflix and I forking love it! It’s so unique. I’m not a religious person, yet I find TGP take on the afterlife surreal and fascinating.

Specifically to this episode, the part where two of the Janets turn into Eleanor and Chidi was a thing of beauty. Chidi is now one of my favourite characters on television. I sometimes struggle with decision making myself, so I empathize with him. William Jackson Harper is adorable.

Edited by marinw
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19 hours ago, vibeology said:

The most impressive moment for me was when Janet!Eleanor was pretending to be Janet!Jason because D'Arcy played it just a little off. Not so much that it was obvious right away but the accent wasn't exactly the same and she held her face and body differently. The amount of work she must have done to get that just right is astonishing.

I noticed that it sounded off/a bit unlike Jason, and it was an incredible bit of acting!

19 hours ago, AnnaRose said:

Yes!  D'Arcy truly was amazing in this episode!

Did anyone else have a Buffy flashback during the kiss? (Season 7 - Kennedy kissing Warren/Willow who turned back into Willow during the kiss?)

I try to repress most of season 7, and everything Warren-related ;)

 

I wonder how, if your points are determined by the effect on the number of people (good effect on many people is more than a good effect on few people) how nobody could have gotten into the good place. What about Alexander Fleming, or Louis Pasteur? Michael himself mentioned Jonas Salk. They all did things that prevented millions of deaths.

I can deal with not having all the answers now, but I do hope these questions are all satisfactorily answered before the series ends. Also - it's great that it was renewed, but this seems like a show that should have a defined end point, rather than continuing on until people stop watching.

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1 hour ago, marinw said:

Specifically to this episode, the part where two of the Janets turn into Eleanor and Chidi was a thing of beauty.

I loved that moment, and squeed like crazy. The thing is, in the hands of a lesser show this would probably be disappointing, that the first moment wasn't between Real Chidi and Real Eleanor, but the way this show handled it, it was forking brilliant and had all the emotional impact, for me at least, as if it had been the originals the whole time. 

D'Arcy blew me away this whole ep. Brilliant performance. I bet the rest of the cast loved watching her be them. 

I am in the group who think that it isn't the Bad Place sabotaging things to get all the people but that the system itself is fundamentally flawed without any tampering necessary. The standards are just too high. 

I love how this show never goes where I expect it to even though, in the grand scheme it seems to be going exactly where I hoped it would. 

I am pretty sure that if I had Janet's powers the first thing I would conjure would be a puppy so when Jelinore conjured up a puppy for Jeiti I was downright giddy. When that puppy kept multiplying, I realized that Janet's void is my good place. 

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3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I would perceive a theme, on top of the destination, to be further aggravation thrust upon the guests. 

I think my confusion comes from the fact that the only two theme weddings I've attended, the theme (Star Wars and Circus) only applied to the decorations and the outfits the wedding party wore. The rest of us just wore clothes we would wear to any other wedding. So while I rolled my eyes internal when I got the invitations, they were no more aggravating than the super generic and bland Pinterest weddings that everyone else had.

 

And as it turned out, the Circus wedding was really cool. At the reception, there were jugglers, a guy who ate fire, and face painting for the kids.

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Because the gang has already been dead for 300 years and factoring in Jeremy Bearemy- perhaps Lincoln died more than 500 years ago and was one of the last people to make it to The Good Place?

 

That kiss and everything D’Arcy did were Amazing 

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Was just watching 30 Rock's "Plan B" and recognized the credited writers' names as the writers of this one, Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan. Looked up their credits on IMDB, and while I'd remembered their names, I never realized how they'd been responsible for some of my favorite TV episodes--30 Rock's "Argus," "Plan B" and "The Tuxedo Begins;" Kimmy Schmidt's "Kimmy Gives Up!" and "Kimmy Meets a Celebrity!"; last season's "The Trolley Problem." Pretty good track record, and "Janet(s)" is another impressive piece of work from them. (I did a search of the thread to see if their names had been mentioned, and they hadn't, and it seemed like they should be.)

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2 hours ago, Melig8r said:

Because the gang has already been dead for 300 years and factoring in Jeremy Bearemy- perhaps Lincoln died more than 500 years ago and was one of the last people to make it to The Good Place?

Ah, but you're forgetting two things - time isn't linear, so we don't know exactly where the time spent in Michael's version of The Good Place falls on the Jeremy Bearimy scale. And, that doesn't matter so much since they were returned to the point just prior to their deaths. With the time spent in class in Australia, we're about a year after they returned, so poor Abe still only passed 150 years ago. 

 

4 hours ago, Rockstar99435 said:

And as it turned out, the Circus wedding was really cool. At the reception, there were jugglers, a guy who ate fire, and face painting for the kids.

I guess that's better than juggling kids with painted faces while they were on fire. 

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Darcy was extraordinary!  I worry about her nomination potential since so few follow the show to begin with it would be hard to comprehend how well she pulled this episode off without understanding the other characters. Here’s to hoping it can be explained to voters. 

As to destination weddings/themes, here’s a batshit post that I saw shared on twitter, which I think helps justify all the deductions!

 

2EEF15C3-ABFD-490F-A264-DC3F82074974.jpeg

Edited by pennben
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D'Arcy's getting some well deserved love online:

What I like about this episode is about halfway after being impressed by how good D'Arcy's impressions were, you just accepted them as the characters. You felt Eleanor's frustration and Chidi's denial as if they were still being played by Kristen Bell and William Jackson Harper.

Loved Stephen Merchant's guest appearance. I think the last time I'd seen someone tower over Ted Danson was when Kevin McHale guest starred on Cheers!

Poor, poor Matt.

Edited by VCRTracking
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21 hours ago, companionenvy said:

That's undermined by the realization that no one gets in, because now we know that a) even if all four of these people had been their best selves, they were completely doomed; being an Arizona trashbag and being Mother Teresa makes no difference and b) the point system isn't just un-nuanced, it is completely broken. And I find the idea of fighting against a system that is just without being merciful a lot more interesting than fighting against a system that is transparently rigged. 

As others have noted, it also makes Mindy St. Clair's existence kind of baffling; her consignment to a medium place made sense only when we thought there were also people getting into the good place.

To be fair, Mother Teresa was not exactly perfect, but that is not a discussion for here.

The only explanation is that Mindy St. Claire's charity was going to be something that impacted every life in earth positively (or most lives).

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12 hours ago, futurechemist said:

I agree with others that this implies that Mindy St Clair has been the best human to live for the past 500 years.  Which based on what we've seen of her is kind of disillusioning.

Personally, I think the problem is with Good Place high standards, not bad Place tampering.  The accountant was initially proud of Doug Forcett's score until he realized Doug was 68.  It's as if a person needs to average 10,000 points / year to be on track for the Good Place.  If Doug had been 40, he'd be doing great.  But he's 68 which means he's behind schedule.  I suppose someone could argue that because Doug is a bit of a recluse, he is doing good deeds, but they're not having a large enough effect on other people.

 

Also, we don't know if Doug started off in the negative, and at what age he started to gain points. 

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If D’Arcy Carden doesn’t get an Emmy nomination for that brilliant performance, there will be rioting in the streets.  Not really, but it really would be a shame. The way she perfectly mimicked the speech patterns and body movements of all four characters, particularly Chidi, was masterful. 

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On 12/6/2018 at 9:40 PM, RainbowBrite said:

Best episode of the season!

 

Edit: if the last person to make it to the good place was 500 years ago, could we extrapolate to say the one person makes it every 500(+) years? That's a pretty empty afterlife. 

Alright history nerds, who was the best person in the world who died 521 years ago?

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