The Good Place - Season 3

Thanks for posting.

* Looks like they're getting "No, they really are alive back on earth, it's not a simulation" out of the way as quickly as possible.
* Danson could almost be straight out of S1 here. I assume his S2 contempt for humans won't be entirely gone though.
* Just a one-off joke about "Do not duplicate" and frog keyrings, or Chekhov's key? Presumably the latter; it felt more like it, and it's hard to see them keeping Danson and the rest apart long-term, so he'll have to be able to get back to earth.
Nerdy thought of zero plot significance: the Judge has implicitly confirmed that hydrogen was the first element around, so I guess the key is solid hydrogen?

So some thoughts on the solid return of Season 3:

Not a simulation.

I appreciated that they at least handwaved Chidi's American accent.

With his encasing his entire team in cocoons, Shawn seems to have taken a step up in evilness. Previously, he was mostly just a bureaucrat, torturing humans because his job was to torture humans. I know he tried to imprison Michael last year, but that at least was justified. Here, he seems to be torturing his underlings for the sake of torturing his underlings. I wonder if that might come back to haunt him.

I know the Eleanor/Chidi shippers will be disappointed, but it seems to me that Simone/Chidi is a more logical match.

I'm still chuckling that Jason thought a snorkel would help him breathe in the safe. And it's good to see that Manny Jacinto got to put his legit dance skills to good use.

I'm assuming they have more planned with Maya Rudolph besides bringing her back for that one scene cameo. It will be interesting to see what her reaction will be once she discovers both sides are trying to manipulate the results. I'm also assuming they hired Mike O'Malley because they have more planned for The Doorman than just him sitting there and enjoying frogs.

Welcome back, Adam Scott! It's a shame about Ghosted, but if it means Trevor will be making regular appearances now, I'm good with it being cancelled (though I only saw a couple episodes and was underwhelmed).

At some point, I'm guessing that Michael and Janet are going to find themselves on Earth for a bit longer than Michael's previous visits.

My husband pointed out that this opens the door for Eleanor/Tahani.

They escaped.

I'm pretty indifferent to the Judge (eh, she's ok), but see her as a fairly minor character so that's fine.

Also don't really care about characters pairing off, but while anything's possible, anything (within the core 6) other than Jason/Janet and Eleanor/Chidi looks like very strained/wishful speculation.

I do get a lot of enjoyment from all the high-speed plot-burn though, so the end of the episode (after what was presumably a fake-out over meeting up annually) was nice.

Crap. You're right. The funny thing is, I have totally been getting Dollhouse vibes, from the stealth over-arching plot to the memory resets  and info dumps essentially changing peoples' entire beings. 

Moar shirtless Chidi plz

Yeah, I was also a bit underwhelmed.  The show still has the "shake up the status quo" thing going on, but there's a diminished sense of the shakeups heading in any actual direction.  Maybe it's because the original afterlife setting makes the earth stuff seem like more of a temporary sideshow, but I find it hard to care much about things like Tahani giving half her money to Jason, or Larry Hemsworth.  Of course, future episodes could very much change that picture given extra context (I was and still am hoping that something more will come out of the "Jeremy Bearimy" timeline discussion than just a moderately-amusing phrase and image), so I hope they do.

To be fair, I did think the episode did some nice things from the "illustrate moral philosophy" perspective, and the plot implications of that have potential: They're now doing good things not in ignorance of the possible reward, but in firm knowledge that there is no reward for them, which is arguably more moral still, so maybe they do get to the Good Place as a result, or (as the show shows no signs of imminently ending) the fact they don't is the means for questioning/revamping the whole system.

I made a hat:


Now I need to do one for From Schmear to Eternity.

The last episode was quite good and it makes me kind of sad that I am watching in almost real time, so I have to wait until Thursday for the next episode and then another couple months (?) after that. I don't know that I want to have the squad meet Doug -- I liked him better as just a random aside, and don't have the Lucasian need to give screentime to every backstory -- but I have some faith in the writers.
A thing that bugged my librarian brain was that the library they were in obviously used LC call numbers instead of Dewey, and I don't know of any public library that does so off the top of my head (it's usually used in academic libraries). I did like "A Complete Idiot’s Guide To The Cliff Notes To Philosophy For Dingdongs... For Morons (Abridged Edition)".

Mrs B and I are behind, watching it on Hulu on our friends' account, and we missed the episode before "Jeremy Bearimy", but I am still giggling about that, and Chidi being broken by the dot in the "i".

I can’t even regrender my chorf.