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S03.E10: Janet(s)


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15 hours ago, secnarf said:

What about Alexander Fleming, or Louis Pasteur?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-02-16-9303182573-story.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6454155/Discoverer-penicillin-Sir-Alexander-Fleming-KNEW-threat-antibiotic-resistance.html

There's also lots of dirt on Gandhi and Mandela. Mindy St Clair's could have just been the closest "Medium Place" to where the faux good place was.

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14 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

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

Prince Edmond Tudor, younger brother of Henry VIII, who died at the age of four. Even though he was barely past being a toddler, he was dedicated to charity and goodness.

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8 hours ago, pennben said:

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

 

Wow. Is this post a joke? If not, the bride doesn't need to go to the bad place, she's created her own. Perhaps that is one of the themes of the show: although there are millions of things we can’t control (unless you have an infinite void all to yourself), to some extent the good and bad places are the places we create for ourselves.

So did people suddenly become worse 500 years ago? History suggests not. So perhaps the critera was changed.

Edited by marinw
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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.  

Unfortunately, network shows are being ignored and snubbed by all the awards lately. They only seem to nominate cable and streaming shows anymore. I think a high-profile star like Ted Danson or even Kristen Bell might get an Emmy nod but that's about it. It's a real shame too. Everyone associated with this show should be honored.

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14 hours ago, pennben said:

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

 

 

5 hours ago, marinw said:

Wow. Is this post a joke? If not, the bride doesn't need to go to the bad place, she's created her own.

 

Yes, I would like to know if it's a joke too.  If it's for real, that would earn the bride and groom a spot in the Bad Place for sure, even if it had a fair and just point system.  Wow.  Just, wow!

Edited to Add... I meant to also say that I too am worried about what I bolded in the first post above - that the award voters may not appreciate D'Arcy's performance as much as they should, if they are unfamiliar with the show and the characters.

Edited by AnnaRose
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11 hours ago, Johnny Dollar said:

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. 

 

4 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Unfortunately, network shows are being ignored and snubbed by all the awards lately. They only seem to nominate cable and streaming shows anymore. I think a high-profile star like Ted Danson or even Kristen Bell might get an Emmy nod but that's about it. It's a real shame too. Everyone associated with this show should be honored.

Agree 1000%! If this was streaming it would have like 30 Emmys by now. Although it might actually be appropriate in a meta sort of way if D'Arcy is overlooked and proves that the system has broken down and even the most deserving are not rewarded...

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It would be an interesting long term story arc to have Michael be the hero of the story.  An...upward spiral instead of a downward one (which is among my favorite story arcs FYI).  Michael going from torturer to savior.

Edited by Chaos Theory
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8 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Unfortunately, network shows are being ignored and snubbed by all the awards lately. They only seem to nominate cable and streaming shows anymore. I think a high-profile star like Ted Danson or even Kristen Bell might get an Emmy nod but that's about it. It's a real shame too. Everyone associated with this show should be honored.

Sorry for the double post but I just saw this.

I do agree that this so deserves all the love but there are very few network shows that are at this shows caliber anymore.  The problem is there are way too many cable and streaming shows that are getting snubbed as well.  So unless the category gets split to best network / cable  maybe even add a best streamed show  I think that there are maybe a handful of network shows that deserve award honors.  

This just happens to be one of them  

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9 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Unfortunately, network shows are being ignored and snubbed by all the awards lately. They only seem to nominate cable and streaming shows anymore. I think a high-profile star like Ted Danson or even Kristen Bell might get an Emmy nod but that's about it. It's a real shame too. Everyone associated with this show should be honored.

Emphasis mine b/c you're correct. Ted was nominated for an Emmy this year. Which is why MEJ always refers to him on the podcast as "Emmy-nominated Ted Danson."

D'arcy definitely deserves at least a nomination for not just her work on this episode, but for the entire series. 

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

But all destination weddings aren't like that. There are lots of good reasons in this day and age for destination weddings, too, given how many people move around and end up living far from family/significant groups of friends. 

It was a funny sequence, but it did highlight what's wrong with the point system as presented even before this episode's revelations. It's arbitrary, not connected to any actual harm, and weirdly discriminatory (what's so bad about a Lord of the Rings theme?). 

I liked the twist, but I agreed with the poster upthread who said that having no one get into the Good Place in 500+ years is less interesting than having the original s1's level of unjustness. At the very least, there should be way more Mindy St. Clair-esque Medium Places.

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15 hours ago, Notwisconsin said:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-02-16-9303182573-story.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6454155/Discoverer-penicillin-Sir-Alexander-Fleming-KNEW-threat-antibiotic-resistance.html

There's also lots of dirt on Gandhi and Mandela. Mindy St Clair's could have just been the closest "Medium Place" to where the faux good place was.

But none of those things in the articles negates the benefit to millions of people from their work. Especially Alexander Fleming - so he knew about the dangers of misuse of penicillin, how does that change anything for the millions of people who have benefitted from it or other related antibiotics? So if the number of points relates to the number of people affected by an act, this can't be right.

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On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 10:22 PM, pennben said:

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

Wow. I can't even imagine having friends who would be the type of people to make demands like that. If they were related to me, I would be declining the invitation. Very narcissistic.

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On 12/8/2018 at 12:22 AM, pennben said:

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

This can't be real. I don't think these people will make to the good place for other reasons.

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9 hours ago, secnarf said:

But none of those things in the articles negates the benefit to millions of people from their work. Especially Alexander Fleming - so he knew about the dangers of misuse of penicillin, how does that change anything for the millions of people who have benefitted from it or other related antibiotics? So if the number of points relates to the number of people affected by an act, this can't be right.

Apparently, it does. According to St. Augustine, getting a boner while looking at a pretty girl is a major sin in and of itself.

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10 hours ago, secnarf said:

But none of those things in the articles negates the benefit to millions of people from their work. Especially Alexander Fleming - so he knew about the dangers of misuse of penicillin, how does that change anything for the millions of people who have benefitted from it or other related antibiotics? So if the number of points relates to the number of people affected by an act, this can't be right.

Keep in mind that in the world of The Good Place, motivation for good works also matters. Maybe Alexander Fleming did all that work discovering penicillin because like Tahani he had a sibling that his parents liked better.

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On ‎12‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 11:17 PM, Amarsir said:

So here's a theory: What if your points are adjusted with a basis on what percent of the population they affect? Easy for a caveman to get 10,000 points.  Nearly impossible for anyone once we reached half a billion. (Which would be around 500 years ago.) Mindy's unstated idea might have helped literally everyone.

That's a thought

Maybe has something to do with age and how long you live as well, since Doug Forcet the accountant indicated had a good score, until he learned how old he was, then he stated it was bad. 

People did live to be old in the past, but not as often

It does come down to the question of whether modern society somehow has made the "Scoring" system obsolete or if the bad place people are manipulating things to bring down scores. 

I did like the lines about the point system and destination weddings.  And new things being done being mostly sexual fetishes

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14 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

Sorry for the double post but I just saw this.

I do agree that this so deserves all the love but there are very few network shows that are at this shows caliber anymore.  The problem is there are way too many cable and streaming shows that are getting snubbed as well.  So unless the category gets split to best network / cable  maybe even add a best streamed show  I think that there are maybe a handful of network shows that deserve award honors.  

This just happens to be one of them  

I agree.  THe probelm with the Emmys goes way beyond the streaming and new mediums

The problem has always been the voters seem to get stuck on certain shows for way too long and ignore others. 

Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been consistently great for a decade, never nominated for anything.  They even did a show ABOUT THAT VERY TOPIC. 

And ironically now in probably its weakest season ever, IMO, it might get nominated for going way outside its typical humor and doing a serious turn in the last episode of this past season. 

And it doesn't help in the "comedy" category they often nominate the dreaded "dramedies".  Even shows I like that get nominated, just shouldn't be there.  GLOW for one.  Yes, its a great show, but one of best comedies last year?  No, not really.  Same with Atlanta.  Good show, not the funniest show though, I am not even convinced its a comedy at all.  Ditto for prior seasons of Louis CKs show.  It was .....weird, at times funny.  A comedy?  not really.  Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, has an offseason and gets nominated.  Wasn't even a whole season, was like a half season. 

ANyway it all creates obstacles to shows like The Good Place. 

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12 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

But all destination weddings aren't like that. There are lots of good reasons in this day and age for destination weddings, too, given how many people move around and end up living far from family/significant groups of friends.

That's a very good point!   I'd rather travel somewhere nice and have a vacation if I have to travel for a wedding.

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45 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

Wait a minute here.  Haven't they been dead for 300 years?  If so, the 521 year lapse would only go back to 1797.  Plenty of people in that pool, now.

But Jeremy Bearimy means that afterlife years don't always progress in the same direction as earth years. Because of that and to make things simpler I figured they meant 521 years since the main characters left Alberta for Janet's void.

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For those who missed it: the very first person Jealanor turned into, when she started changing into other people, was played by Monica Padman. Padman is Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's personal assistant, as well as Dax's co-host and producer of his podcast. She is also an aspiring actress, and has appeared in several commercials.

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On 12/7/2018 at 2:27 PM, iMonrey said:

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.

I totally agree.  Now that the characters are back in the afterlife realm, the show has its ambiance back.  I just did not like them being alive again!  And didn't care about them trying to get points for others.  It just didn't have the same feel at all, but now it's back.  Yay!

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4 hours ago, Notwisconsin said:

Apparently, it does. According to St. Augustine, getting a boner while looking at a pretty girl is a major sin in and of itself.

As far as I know, St Augustine's opinion has no bearing on the Good Place's point system. The only guideline we have is that of all the people and institutions with theories about what it takes to get into the Good Place, no one was 100% correct. 

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Alright, that wedding list of demands was insane and I can see why that couple would earn negative points, but it does raise the idea of how much culture ties into the point system. Quinceaneras involve the court (similar to a wedding party) buying expensive, fancy dresses and learning multiple dances that they perform at the event. Indian weddings are 3 day affairs. Do all the people who fully participate in their cultural and traditional events go to the Bad Place? In an earlier episode, Eleanor lost points for lying about farting, but in my super uptight WASPy culture, forcing me into a conversation about your bodily functions is way ruder than telling a polite fiction that allows us both to move on. I have definitely wished the Bad Place on coworkers who can't eat or drink anything without making a ton of noise, but in other cultures, eating noisily is a sign of respect to the cook. 

Maybe that's why no one gets into the Good Place anymore. Back in the day, we only ever were exposed to the people who lived in our villages so everyone was following the same cultural rule book, but now that everyone is interacting with people from all sorts of places, there is no one list of rules to follow so everyone fails because everything we do is against the rules in someone else's culture.

Edited by Rockstar99435
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7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Padman is Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's personal assistant, as well as Dax's co-host and producer of his podcast. She is also an aspiring actress, and has appeared in several commercials.

Oh, I would say she's a working actress. Not aspiring. Not trying to split hairs, she met Kristen on set of House of Lies. She didn't get the job (on HoL) because of her relationship with Kristen as she hadn't met her yet. Also I love Monica and just never ever want to sell her short.  

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Fabulous episode - in addition to the various Human as Janets, I want to point out how great receptionist Janet was. Getting that dead eyed look must be really difficult.

The accountants’ process was interesting - I wish Michael had asked him when they last added a new positive point category. It does seem skewed to the negative. 

Given the number of mailbags and files laying around the good place office, I’m super curious what’s been going on there. That kind of, sort of implies there are people who qualified and yet were not admitted? I guess the committee the head accountant referenced will give us some answers. 

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23 hours ago, iMonrey said:

For those who missed it: the very first person Jealanor turned into, when she started changing into other people, was played by Monica Padman. Padman is Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's personal assistant, as well as Dax's co-host and producer of his podcast. She is also an aspiring actress, and has appeared in several commercials.

I swear I saw Amy Pohler in there, too. 

D'Arcy FTW. ALL THE EMMYS! Mrs. WAnglais1 called it on how she did it, having the actors film it so she could watch it over and over to get the postures, inflections, etc. just right. 

Maybe the thing with Doug being screwed is the longer you live, the more points you need? Life expectancy has gone up a lot, so it's impossible to pile up enough points to get into TGP?

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53 minutes ago, WAnglais1 said:

Maybe the thing with Doug being screwed is the longer you live, the more points you need? Life expectancy has gone up a lot, so it's impossible to pile up enough points to get into TGP?

Or, it may be a set number of points, like 3,141,592. Doug was in the positive, and, had he been 50 years younger, he'd be on his way, but at age 68, he'd have to do truly amazing things to accrue enough points.

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Oh, I would say she's a working actress. Not aspiring. Not trying to split hairs, she met Kristen on set of House of Lies. She didn't get the job (on HoL) because of her relationship with Kristen as she hadn't met her yet. Also I love Monica and just never ever want to sell her short.  

I love Monica too and I'm a big fan of the Armchair Expert podcast, but I've searched for Monica's on-screen work and she rarely has any dialogue. So working/aspiring? Yeah, toss-up kind of. For what it's worth, she doesn't appear to be able to live exclusively off her earnings as an actress. 

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There's a few ways to explain Mindy St. Claire: She may be in a bad place especially designed for her (but maybe belonging to another bureaucratic division so that Michaels Boss couldn't get in), there may have been a glitch when she did that one positive thing (as it was a new category, it could have gotten an insane amount by the accident of 8 billion accountants being wrong?) or it could be anything else really. They've done so many loops that the success of the narrative of this show doesn't hinge for me on every detail being correct. As it is a show that only gradually reveals its secrets, they may have had to tinker with the scenario a bit in the earlier phases. We learned a lot with Mindy that we would miss if she didn't exist, didn't we?

I did however see that "nobody got the Good Place" thing coming, but it's interesting where they take it from here. Will it be empty? Will the angels be arrogant stuck-ups or naive do gooders that can't get anything done? Will there be angels or is it just an empty world? 

And finally, yes D’Arcy Carden was awesome. At first I thought: Will they really do a bottle episode with one actress playing 5 of 6 main characters? (I hoped the other actors would not get paid by episode... ;-)). But again, she deserves every praise.

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On 12/8/2018 at 5:28 AM, Johnny Dollar said:

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. 

I don't know much about the Emmy process. How much of the show do decision-makers actually see? My concern is that if you only saw this episode, it's hard to realize just how well D'Arcy is doing at capturing the others because you haven't seen their characters. Only if  you've seen a lot of the show can you really appreciate how Chidi that Janet was.

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On 12/7/2018 at 8:33 AM, Chaos Theory said:

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.

That’s also my theory. The exact reason the accountant was so certain that the system could not be rigged is why it is flawed. The system is too bogged down in the need to quantify every action. I mean what difference does it make if some guy stuffs a pepper for a weird sex act. Each day there are far more opportunities to lose a small number of points on inconsequential things than there are to gain a large number of points.  

 

On 12/7/2018 at 2:24 PM, secnarf said:

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

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.

With beneficial advancements it could depend on how much you take into account the ripple effect of any one action. If you get positive points for saving one life could you get negative points for saving someone who will go on to be a mass murderer? The smaller the world gets through technological advancements the farther reaching the ripples. 

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7 hours ago, WAnglais1 said:

I swear I saw Amy Pohler in there, too. 

Okay, rewatching and pausing through the credits...

Eleanor-1 Monica Padman. 2 Michael Hagiwara. 3 Mac Jarman. 4 Carol Herman. 5 Lauren Speights . 6 Sean Riley Smith. 7 Garrett Nichols.  I don't recognize any of those , (expect the previously mentioned Monica) but I really though I recognized some as well. Could have sworn I saw Bernie Sanders (or possibly Larry David).

Updated to add: Carol Herman was a recurring character on Better Call Saul (the Alpine Shepherd Boy woman), and Michael & Garrett have each been in one episode of just about everything.

Edited by SoMuchTV
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On 12/7/2018 at 5:38 AM, 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.

Yeah, I know this show is fiction, but it has been bothering me on and off for days that Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and Elise Wiesel are not in The Good Place.

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What if it is just bad accounting?   

Over the last five hundred years more things were added that deduct points then add them.  Anyone would be doomed with the sheer number of sex acts.....

Mindy St Claire and that one crazy potential act of goodness might have put the whole system in flux so they medium placed her.  

Edited by Chaos Theory
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3 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

What if it is just bad accounting?   

Over the last five hundred years more thinks were added that deduct points then add them.  Anyone would be doomed with the sheer number of sex acts.....

The motivation thing I imagine is part of it. Based on what we saw with Tahini good acts that aren't for completely pure altruistic reasons get you negative points.

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20 hours ago, Ragingviolet said:

Or Mr Rogers, Bob Ross and Steve Irwin. How are none of them in the good place?

And not a single Golden Girl?

5 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The motivation thing I imagine is part of it. Based on what we saw with Tahini good acts that aren't for completely pure altruistic reasons get you negative points.

Could be, although all of that is now in question too. The altruism question made sense when we thought she  was just under the threshold. But when literally no one makes it in, her motivation wouldn't have  made a difference anyway.

Edited by Amarsir
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On 12/12/2018 at 9:24 AM, Chaos Theory said:

What if it is just bad accounting?   

Over the last five hundred years more things were added that deduct points then add them.  Anyone would be doomed with the sheer number of sex acts.....

Mindy St Claire and that one crazy potential act of goodness might have put the whole system in flux so they medium placed her.  

I thought I heard Michael or Janet suspect that the Bad Place demons had somehow rigged the system so everybody ended up there.

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On 12/15/2018 at 9:36 PM, Soobs said:

I thought I heard Michael or Janet suspect that the Bad Place demons had somehow rigged the system so everybody ended up there.

Yes, the show was pretty clear that the Bad Place folks are doing this. It's not a statement about legitimate morality or impossible standards. The system has literally been rigged. 

But that means the Mindy St. Clair thing makes zero sense. Unless Mindy is what prompted them to do that. (With Jeremy Bearimy the 1980s can happen before 521 years ago and also at the same time.)

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