The Good Place Season 4

[typeforty]

The only thing that bothered me about it, apart from the fact we didn't get to spend more time with them as an ensemble, was that

Spoiler alert

Eleanor's story never felt finished. I was never convinced that she was ready.

[close]

[tookish]

That absolutely ruined me. What a beautiful ending to a beautiful show.

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I didn't really expect to see what happened when they went beyond the door, and thought I didn't want to, but seeing them floating around, influencing people to grow and make better choices, made me absolutely sob.

[close]

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I also didn't expect Jason to be the first to be ready, but when I think about it, it makes perfect sense. For an extremely chaotic character, I think he has always had the most inner peace.

[close]

[tookish]

The only thing that bothered me about it, apart from the fact we didn't get to spend more time with them as an ensemble, was that

Spoiler alert

Eleanor's story never felt finished. I was never convinced that she was ready.

[close]

I can see that. I think there were perhaps a couple of pacing issues; I felt as though her stuff was wrapped up quite quickly, and although I think it was very tightly written, I wanted more of a journey. To be honest, they could have made a few episodes out of the events of the finale.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

If you get a version that streams on Netflix or that was sourced from the web, you get the closing credits (which were otherwise printed at the end of the Seth Meyers after show special). Backed by a studio performance of the psychedelic song with "the marshmallow cat" that Michael was busy writing.

[Nowhere Man]

God I fucking love Ted Danson so much. I wish he could live forever. Also some people will probably shudder at the thought but I think he would make a great Dr. Who. (YES AN AMERICAN ONE)

[Bereft Isabella]

The only thing that bothered me about it, apart from the fact we didn't get to spend more time with them as an ensemble, was that

Spoiler alert

Eleanor's story never felt finished. I was never convinced that she was ready.

[close]

I wasn't either. She felt to me to be the least at peace.

It absolutely destroyed me, I spent yesterday crying.

[Small Man Big Horse]

God I fucking love Ted Danson so much. I wish he could live forever. Also some people will probably shudder at the thought but I think he would make a great Dr. Who. (YES AN AMERICAN ONE)

Likewise, and I'd love him as the Doctor as well, and have no issue with that in the slightest.

[alan nagsworth]

This has had a real profound lasting effect on me. I've never really seen a show deal with death like this, least of all a light-hearted colourful comedy with Teddy Bear Danson at the helm of it. It's not just a regular show that goes from season to season figuring itself out as it goes along, it's a (near) perfect whole which feels as succinctly realised from the very first episode to the last. Quite remarkable really.

[Better Midlands]

Yeah. Ted Danson has been extraordinarily lovely throughout this show, the most joyful, infectious performance. Just his fucking face and little gasps, I was crying like an idiot, and when his

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guitar teacher

[close]

appeared, it did me in. Wrecked. What a champion Michael is. What a show to be able to take him from being the surprise villain to being the nicest, loveliest person on TV.

I was going to point out that your spoilered character was his his real life wife, then it occurred to me that you probably knew this (hence the spoiler).

Is it implication that Michael finds love?

[oy vey]

Great to see her, given she was written out of Curb.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

They played the very same trick in the finale for The Shield.

Dutch Wagenbach was the "playing by the books" detective, a socially inept character, who nevertheless becomes more endearing when you realize the amount of crimes and corruption that the Strike Team is responsible for.

In the finale,

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Dutch and Claudette manage to dismantle the Strike Team, by doing proper police work, and he manages to get rid of his partner, Billings, who now has an ongoing lawsuit against the police department. He meets Billings' lawyer, a woman who's unusually cosy with him and leaves him with her card, implying she'd like to meet him outside of her case.
The lawyer is Julia Campbell, who's married to Jay Karnes.

Mary Steenburgen also played Ted Danson's singing teacher turned girlfriend in the third season of Bored to Death.

[close]

[selectivememory]

I just finished watching Season 4 last night. I quite enjoyed it, a bit of a return to form after the lacklustre Season 3 (where it seemed that suddenly they didn't know where to take the plot and the material was stretched incredibly thin). Still probably not as good as the first couple of seasons, although it's been a while since I watched those.

Have to say that the sentimental/emotional stuff was never what was interesting about this show to me[nb]I always enjoyed this most as a comedy of ideas and I loved its unique (for a sitcom) approach to the plot, tearing through material at an incredible pace and always keeping you on your toes regarding what's going to happen next in the way they'd establish a new norm for the characters and then throw it away an episode or two later.[/nb], and always seemed heavy-handed, and it felt like in the final two seasons that stuff was a bit too predominant at times[nb]And also perhaps because I've recently watched the last few episodes of BoJack Horseman, which tends to treat these things in a much more subtle and interesting way that actually does feel realistic, The Good Place maybe didn't hold up so well in comparison.[/nb], but having said all that, I eventually did find the Chidi-Eleanor relationship quite touching, and the conclusion to their story was just perfect. I think the finale actually was brilliantly conceived but maybe not executed as well as some of the better episodes. But I like the idea of them finally finding peace and all choosing to stop existing. Hard to think of a better way for it to have ended really unless it was something really dark, but I don't think the show was ever going to do that to these characters.

[sirhenry]

I keep coming back to the idea that it ended with an episode where all the major characters, one by one,

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committed suicide

[close]

. I'm impressed that they could get away with it and that no-one seems to have mentioned it , here or elsewhere.

The Good Place was delightful and oddly powerful; it was the only sitcom that has ever made me re-evaluate my life and how I was living it. After the Happiness Pump/Michael McKean episode I changed the way I worked with other people - for the better, mostly. Very odd.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

The Good Place was delightful and oddly powerful; it was the only sitcom that has ever made me re-evaluate my life and how I was living it. After the Happiness Pump/Michael McKean episode I changed the way I worked with other people - for the better, mostly. Very odd.

Indeed. Not many comedy shows leave you thinking about who you are and your affect on the world. What a fantastic show, one that will be talked about for years to come I think as it's unique.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I keep coming back to the idea that it ended with an episode where all the major characters, one by one,

Spoiler alert

committed suicide

[close]

. I'm impressed that they could get away with it and that no-one seems to have mentioned it , here or elsewhere.

The Good Place was delightful and oddly powerful; it was the only sitcom that has ever made me re-evaluate my life and how I was living it. After the Happiness Pump/Michael McKean episode I changed the way I worked with other people - for the better, mostly. Very odd.

Likewise. But I'm not happy about it. I understand what Schur's getting at (and wouldn't want an afterlife that went on forever either) but on a strictly personal level I can't say I enjoyed

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watching these characters kill themselves.

[close]

I also wrote a review for my site talking about it, and how it didn't quite work for me personally.

[notjosh]

I loved that aspect of it. But then I love anything which shows characters with a peaceful acceptance of the end. Soylent Green is another good one. It's something we should all aspire to I think.

[McChesney Duntz]

Soylent Green is another good one. It's something we should all aspire to I think.

Remind me to never accept a dinner invitation to your house.

[sirhenry]

Sorry, Small Man Big Horse. I had seen your post but it didn't pick up on the relentless, one after the other, 'this is the whole point' aspect of it that I found so unusually in tune with my sense of humour. Sorry, but I really liked it, not just because that was one of my complaints about Heaven from when I was a kid, because it makes any eternity seem like punishment.

Anyway, speaking of Soylent Green, I'm a patient representative for a cancer research group that is looking to find ways to improve the MRI scanning experience for patients. They tend to be all tensed up the first time so internal bits and bobs aren't in their normal places and exact measurements are needed.

So at the last meeting we had a Powerpoint proposing that they play inoffensive, calming classical music to help people relax, which seemed fair enough. They have also started to get patients and ex-patients to send in their favourite photos of the lovely Yorkshire landscape which they project to fill the large wall you can see while you're there. Apparently they have very high hopes for it. Or did until I asked if anyone had seen Soylent Green. The speed with which the presenter's face fell was a delight. I also had to point out (because that's my purpose in the group) that their target audience will almost all be older than 50 and so will be more likely to have seen the film.
People having heart attacks in the MRI room isn't good for the stats, apparently.

[Icehaven]

I've mostly been watching this on my phone on buses and have had to stop watching twice so I wasn't bawling my eyes out in public, but I've seen it now, and I'm going to miss it a lot.

[Famous Mortimer]

I just finished watching it, and wanted to bump this thread so people could revisit some of the brilliant writing about it from all the other CaBbers. It really was something rather special.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Strangely fitting that the series ended just before we all entered The Bad Place.

I'm not sure if it came up while the show was airing, but the bit about people's brains turning to mush in the real good place didn't entirely made sense to me. It works as a metaphor for the idle rich or whatever, but you can't apply physical rules to the metaphysical plane. Going too far down that path risks picking holes in the whole series though.

[markburgle]

That whole "the gang snap their fingers and fix heaven" plot felt really tacked-on and unnecessary. Their solution of

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a door that lets you leave

[close]

is hardly so brilliant that the committee couldn't have thought of it themselves.

[Famous Mortimer]

The committee aren't, and never were, human (I think).

[phantom_power]

And they are ineffectual, red-tape obsessed, status-quo accepting Democrats