Pools of Venetian Blue

KRISTEN BELL as ELEANOR SHELLSTROP THE GOOD PLACE (2016—2020) S02E03: Team Cockroach

THE GOOD PLACE | 1.06

#mood

Top 10 Episodes of The Good Place (as voted by my followers): #10 “Somewhere Else” (32 votes)

“So why do it then? Why choose to be good, every day, if there is no guaranteed reward we can count on now or in the afterlife? I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. At the intersection of empathy and ethics is the realization that we not in this alone.”

Top 10 Episodes of The Good Place (as voted by my followers): #5 “The Answer” (42 votes)

“If soulmates do exist, they’re not found, they’re made. People meet, they get a good feeling, and then they get to work building a relationship.”

I need you to do me one last favor.

Started watching The Good Place the other day.

op how does it feel being the funniest person on this site

why none of them got into The Good Place

What I love about this is its acknowledgment that Jason had no intentions at all

this is all 100% true but it always made me really mad that Chidi’s “crime” was having a severe anxiety disorder like he needed understanding and therapy, sending him to the Bad Place for something he had literally no control over was incredibly fucked up

I feel like a less-surface theme of the show is that they’re all in a situation where they have been forced into bad patterns by forces outside their control - Chidi has SEVERE anxiety; Eleanor was forced by abuse and neglect to adopt a self-centered attitude from early childhood and, like many people with traumatic pasts, responds by not dealing with difficult emotions; Jason was very overtly raised in an environment where he got no education and all his models for behaviour were criminal and/or self-destructive; and Tahani has been raised in an environment where everything is performative and she is shot down for any genuine expression of unhappiness or non-material want. Just as Michael and Janet are made one way but changed by their experiences, the moral of the story is that things outside your control shape you but you can move away from them. That could easily be really insulting, in a sort of ‘just get over it’ way, but the idea isn’t that they change solely because they decide to be better - all six of them change because their circumstances change and give them the OPPORTUNITY to be better, because they’re finally given the support system they lack.

I like The Good Place because the whole show has since day 1 been predicated on the idea that black and white moral judgements made in a vacuum are bullshit, and that moral choices are informed by things outside our control, whether that be education, behaviour modelling, unfair treatment or mental health issues. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for our actions but it DOES mean we have to understand morality in the context of people’s varied experiences AND asks for the possibility that if their environment is improved, their ability to function as moral agents also improves.

Make Me Choose: @bidoctor asked Eleanor Shellstrop or Tahani Al-Jamil

I think everyone should watch the good place. Especially people who are like the real life Brent. Or just anyone really. Maybe it could plant a seed somewhere in your brain to realise that life isn’t all about self preservation, or that your actions have consequences for other people. I would just love it if people watched it and it just made them Think. Also, it will make you feel good because it’s one of the most well-written and funniest shows I’ve ever seen.