#i did a lot of googling for this only to ultimately decide idgaf if its right or not

[termagax]

[nothingneverforever]

The Good Place (2016)

I chose to start watching this only because I was at a very low point in my life in terms of facing a dearth of TV-derived entertainment, having just finished Virgin River (2019) and Sweet Magnolias (2020). Both Virgin and Sweet are not what you'd call .. uh... productions of any real calibre or value or perhaps worth at all, like you can be certain that no niches were filled when they were realsed into the Netflix ether... But they also happen to be epic masterpieces by sheer fact of how banal and predictable and PG and saccharine and inconsequential they are, the best of the suburban vanilla Hallmark Movie genre, and basically they rock af ok?? and so when I finished both first seasons of the two series I was left empty and thirsty. And it was in this lostness that I turned to The Good Place, thinking it would be as enriching in it's simplicity, as palatable in it's shallow distraction, qualities I generally look for in the fodder to keep my eyes engaged on something that isn't the clock when I do my daily evening indoor cardio.

So maybe I should first set the stage by establishing that I simply fucking hated this series lol. I couldn't get past episode 12 (I know, this makes it sound like i already gave it way more time than it deserved, which is the truth) of the first season, because once I decided I'd had enough, it was really fucking enough and I couldn't give it one more second.

As always, here's my shoddily written premise of the series; I don't want to put much effort into capturing it's essence well because idgaf about this dumb show seriously fucking hate it lol but anyway: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies on earth, and goes to 'The Good Place', where all souls who were much more good than bad while living on earth go to upon their death, as opposed to The Bad Place, where the bad people go. There’s some mathematical calculation for this heaven and hell allocation basically. So the good place (i can't be bothered to capitalize it every time i type it anymore lol sorry), is run by a head architect who has designed and is in charge of the neighbourhood our characters live in, and he has a female robot assistant, Janet, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient right-hand lady who can also be called up by any good place resident who has any question for her, anytime. Anyway Eleanor, after dying on earth, was actually sent to the good place by accident, because she was actually a completely irredeemable asshole but due to some dumb boring never-happened-before error, she was sent to the good place instead of the bad place where she actually was meant to end up. Here she makes a small group of friends, some to whom she is eventually honest about the fact that she does not actually belong in the good place, and it is because of this incorrect placement that the good place is crumbling and its inner workings are going haywire etc and everyone suffers from the consequences. So blah blah blah soon we find out that it is not just her, but also some other guy who is here by mistake, and so blah blah blah etc yupp

So here are the things that suck about this show:

So there’s this other guy who also doesn't belong in the good place and who was also sent there by accident, his name is Jason okay but umm it's complicated because the person he was mistaken as (and the actual 'good person' who was intended to be sent to the good place while Jason was meant to be directed to the bad place) is named Jian Yu, a Taiwanese monk. Jason however is a Filipino-American from Florida and I guess his character is meant to be a stereotypical 'White trash' character, but it's meant to be funny or some shit so we aren't meant to be deeply affected by fact that his life was fucking sad, like how his small-town dreams were meant to be comedic relief for us to laugh at how pathetic he is when ... i dunno, I feel very uncomfortable making a joke out of real-life situations that umm aren't funny at all idk whatever... Oh also the weird (dumb/shitty/lame/thoughtless) thing about the show is how even once it is revealed that Jason is in fact his Jason-y, oblivious, infantile, one-dimensionally-tropey self, the characters who know the truth still continue to call him Jianyu throughout...? But like.... he's not Jianyu lol?

So anyway, Jason is characterised quite disturbingly to be honest as an extremely immature dudebro, to the extent that one could call him child-like. In his unhappiness at being stuck in this weird world where he can't be himself and has to pretend to be Jianyu most of the time (which involves being a complete ascetic as well as silent because the real Jianyu had apparently taken a lifelong oath of silence), Jason latches on to Janet the robot assistant. He says she is the only one who has been kind to him, etc etc etc, and begins ummmm, falling in love with her. But because he's painted as a literal baby with absolutely no rational or critical thinking skills, him falling in love with her is meant to be uhh earnest and sweet or at the very least inconsequential and jokey I guess? But like... this isn't funny...? Not when sex robots are a real thing and will probably lead to the abuse, violation, murder of millions of women in time to come because men will be so used to putting their penises into awfully, scarily 'life-like' dolls whose limbs have been programmed to move and who can even utter words of affirmation to their degenerate users that actual human females will no doubt bear the brunt of being expected to perform in life and in bed similarly to our robotic counterparts...? Yea so the good place disturbingly first makes us almost forced to feel some endearment toward Jason for finding a kindred "soul" in robot Janet, glad that he finally has "someone" to "talk to" (quotation marks cos once again she's a fucking robot), and it's all very "pure" and "wholesome" at first because again, he's portrayed as a fucking kid (one piece I read describes the character as "a sweet ding-dong human"). And then suddenly, about one or two episodes after they fall in love or whatever, Jason says:

You guys have fun. This is me and Janet's honeymoon, so we're gonna go try and figure out how to have sex.

Yeah umm so once again, in case any of you forgot, Janet's a fucking robot. If I use a scale of human consciousness out of 100 where a regular human's sense of self and awareness and independent thinking and authonomy and whatever else makes us human is at 100, Janet is probably at .... 10? at most? So yea.... i guess rape jokes are okay these days? I dunno? Literally how the fuck were there 3 entire seasons of this dumb show after this

Anyway when I attempted to put in *some* effort before I gave up, realising this show wasn't worth my precious weekend downtime, I googled Jason and Janet's relationship to see if there were any other similar voices of dissent but umm apparently, according to the headlines of articles, this is instead public opinion:

The Unlikely Romance of The Good Place’s Janet and Jason

Why Janet And Jason Are The Good Place's Ultimate Love Story, According To The Actors

How Janet and Jason broke the infinite love mold on The Good Place

From these disgusting articles, here are some choice quotes by the actors and crew involved themselves:

And the fact that this should not happen but it does makes it very special. We think that their relationship is really sweet. There's something very innocent and real about their love even though that is insane

Yeah, I always talk about this whenever I get the question, “How does Janet and Jason work?” And my response is always — and I’ve thought about this a lot — Jason is slowly becoming a little bit more aware and intelligent. He’s evolving a little bit, and through Jason, Janet is able to become more emotionally intelligent. She’s feeling these things, whether it be good or bad, through Jason because that’s what Jason is. He’s all these different emotions that he can’t tame, and Janet’s learning that. They’re kind of evolving.

Okay so perhaps I should clarify that Janet the robot goes through a couple of 'deaths' in which she comes back as a rebooted version, and supposedly more 'human' each time. So yeah I guess it's okay to have sex with robots if they actually become 0.0000001% more human-like each time they come back to life though!!!!! Sorry for overreacting guys!!!!!

Seriously though how the fuck are they even using the word 'romance' in good conscience to describe the 'relationship'

Actually as I'm writing this I'm reminded of this video by Pop Culture Detective on youtube, titled "Abduction as Romance". Jonathan the host/video creator goes through various movies through history and from contemporary cinema of this unbelievably damaging and disturbing trope, where women are shown to eventually fall in love with men who have essentially, in some way or another, abducted them, annyway here it is if anyone's interested 

I’m calling up this video because in the shows used as examples in Jonathan’s thesis, the female characters fall in love with the men just because the men happen to be the only choice they have. Okay I actually only managed to get through a quarter of the video because it was too disturbing and too awful to think about how frequently such plot points are used till today and how so much of the shitty love we see on screen is completely abusive in nature (he’s also made another video called Stalking for Love which I’m sure is as eye-opening, i haven’t watched it cos i don’t need to lol, i’m already woke thanks), but anyway the bit that I did manage to watch does remind me of this stupid love story from The Good Place that we’re supposed to be moved by. We’re seriously supposed to believe that Janet, through her reboots and whatever awakenings of consciousness she supposedly has, also has feelings for Jason just because he’s the only pathetic dumbass immature enough to think that he has feelings for her because she’s the only person who’s willing to listen and talk to him properly? When ummmm she’s only listening to you because she’s programmed to...?

Honestly I can't be bothered to talk about freaking Janet and Jason anymore

There are other things that suck about this dumb show

I don't know what kind of character development Eleanor (protagonist) goes through in the seasons that succeed that I shall never be audience to, but she remains unlikable in almost every way in season 1. This is even though the entire premise of the plot is that she learns to become a better person with each day, struggling to distance herself from her past (on earth) where she was every caricature of a selfish, cruel, demeaning, unlikable person ever. The few and short flashbacks we get to her earthly past are so annoyingly annoying that it made it almost impossible for me to continue to care for this charatcer her in her afterlife. I know, being in the profession that i am, i should have a great deal more empathy for her and where she's coming from (and i would if the show was not so fucking shitty), so i'm not hating on the fact that she was such a bad person, more so that the creators of the show did little to give us anything real to hold on to at all. Between boringly unreal dialogue, stilted acting typical of American sitcoms, overly defined character traits again typical of dated, unchallenging and unsophisticated American sitcoms, I honestly can't understand how on earth this is rated 97% on rotten tomatoes... I mean I guess if I actually read the reviews I'd understand but hehe I'm not about that open-minded, balanced POV narrative okie? :)

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Updates: Haha so ummm eventually I was too bored / curious so I decided to give this show like it’s fourth chance or something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire series and yes I cried as fuck and yes this series made me feel many feels and no I shall neither take back anything of what I said above nor clarify how or what made me change my opinion on it nor elaborate on why I ended up rather enjoying it :-) bye bye