Kristen Bell did an IAmA on reddit to help promote her current sitcom, The Good Place, which is on Netflix. As of this post, all of season 1, and 5 episodes of season 2 are up.
A bit of a spoiler, but not much, as you learn this in the first five minutes of the show: Kristen Bell plays Eleanor Shellstrop, who is dead. She is invited into Michael's office who promptly gives her the news, and informs her that she's in "The good place". He goes on to explain that the good place is divided into a series of neighbourhoods with people handpicked to fit in together. There are different kinds of neighbourhoods for different kinds of people. Some like warm weather, some like cold. Some like cities, some like countries.
No matter who you are, wouldn't you want one of these shops in your neighbourhood?
Michael explains that throughout your life, your actions cause you to gain or lose points.
When you die, your final score determines which place you end up in. I like "Overstate personal connection to tragedy that has nothing to do with you", which is minus 40.97 points.
Eleanor finds out that her work as a human rights lawyer was what got her into The Good Place, and she's introduced to her soulmate, Chidi, who was an ethics professor.
YES! One of the main characters is an ethics professor. He is already my favourite character, and the one I relate to the most. Chidi grew up in Senegal and speaks French, but it seems that The Good Place translates everyone's speech into a language you can understand, so everyone can speak to each other. You also can't swear, so fork gets translated to "fork" and shirt to "shirt".
It seems that soulmates are real, and I don't know how it works if you and your soulmate don't die at the same time (although is that supposed to be what happens with soulmates?), but in The Good Place, your soulmate is the person who is 100% compatible to you. During their first private moment together, Eleanor makes a confession to him: she wasn't a human rights lawyer. In fact, her job was to sell drugs that didn't work to elderly people, and she claimed to be the top salesperson 5 years in a row.
Through various flashbacks, we find out that Eleanor wasn't just a bad person, she is an outright horrible person. It seems that someone messed up and confused her for someone else, so she's in The Good Place, but doesn't think she is meant to be there. Add to this the fact that she gets drunk on her first night there and ruins Tahani's welcoming party, and all the bad things she does manifest as nightmares the next morning.
Chidi is stuck in an ethical bind. Should he keep Eleanor's secret, and do his best to teach her to be a good person, because dobbing her in would be dooming her to spending eternity in The Bad Place, and that doesn't seem like something a good person would do? Or should he dob her in, because obviously, there has been a mistake, and she doesn't belong in The Good Place? Not just that, but it's possible that by her being in The Good Place, she's taking the place of someone who deserves to be there - someone who is actually his soulmate, and who he can have in-depth conversations with. Eleanor asks a good question: why isn't there a "medium" place? Somewhere for people who were good enough to be "good", but aren't bad enough to be "bad".
Today's tangent: I think it is a good question. Talk about the afterlife usually divides it into two, and I think the idea behind it is to try and motivate you to be a good person, so that you don't end up in "The Bad Place". I forgot which philosopher he quoted, but Michael (not from the show) was telling me how from an expected value point of view, no matter how unlikely the likelihood of there being a good or bad place, you are better of trying to be good. If you assume an eternity of paradise has an infinite positive value, then it doesn't matter what the temporary cost of doing good things is. The reward of getting into the good place far outweighs it. I couldn't think of a way to refute the argument.
Which raises the question: Is not doing bad as good as doing good? Well, my initial instinct would be to respond no, it's not. It's easier to not do bad things than it is to do something good, e.g. littering could be a "bad" thing, not littering could be a "not bad" thing, and picking up someone else's litter could be a "good thing". Obviously, picking up someone else's litter takes more effort than not littering, which you could almost say is a non-action - though you could also argue that not littering means you have to hold on to your rubbish until there's an opportunity to dispose of it properly. And bother are more effort than simply littering. It seems weird to define a non-action as a good action.
So why is there never a medium place? What would such a place be like? You don't get to enjoy a life of having your wishes fulfilled all the time, but you can get them fulfilled if you work for it? Maybe the medium place is just you "respawning" back here, and being given the chance to choose sides. Possibly as someone else, as that way you could gradually work your way up. I think if you have a good start in life, it's a lot easier to be a good person than if you had a bad start in life. Someone who has to work three jobs to make ends meet probably doesn't have time to lobby to free the refugees, or volunteer at an animal shelter.
I watched all of season 1 in a couple of days, and it's something great to have on while cooking or playing Stardew Valley as it doesn't require 100% of your focus to really enjoy it. The characters are great, and as much as I like Chidi, I find that I end up loving and hating all the characters, but in a good way. You have Tahani, who was a wealthy philanthropist, who also happened to be a model, but struggled with some gigs because her boobs are too big, and she also spent a lot of time with celebrities, and was the real person who told Mark Zuckerberg to remove the "The" from "The Facebook". I wanted to slap her in the first few episodes, but as the show progressed, I came to like her.
I think it's worth checking out. New episodes are being added on Friday, so I can't speak as to whether the quality of the show will continue, but I've enjoyed what I've seen so far. And with that, I'm going to watch today's episode.
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