Thanks Mitch. I know I’m in the minority in being bugged by this! Olsen is so good though!

Annie’s Disney face is so funny. “oh don’t worry about me, i can only connect with people through…movies”

dude i wanna watch this movie with you know and get the full ‘idiot premise’ treatment.

the shallow, transaction-heavy, Fortnite-skinned nightmare of a dull, repetitive “paradise” engineered by middle managers.

“occasionally saccharine in a pleasant, old-fashioned way.” will win me everytime.

Great piece of writing love the set up first line and pay off finish.

I definitely should give The Good Place another shot. And I hope Eternity works better for you than it did for me; may my sour grapes become your wine!

You really should. IMO, the series finale earns every bit of the hype around it. Though I did prefer S2-3 to the first, so maybe we like different things about the show.

(Eternity has just good enough reviews for me to see it, given the premise and my love for Olsen as an actor, but I’m not letting myself get too excited).

Vaguely! I said vaguely interesting!

It is now occurring to me that the Lubitsch aside I read was probably a reference to Heaven Can Wait, which I have not seen, that I just didn’t pick up on.

The Good Place lost a little bit of its magic in my eyes a bit after the first season (well, really after the mop-up of the first season from the first handful of episodes of Season 2), and my wife and I never finished it, but we really ought to. I’ve been meaning to watch it again, as it’s been awhile.

I did feel like I was being a grump about a good-natured original story, so maybe follow your instincts and give it a shot?

But yeah, I’ve been curious about this and will probably check it out, but I’ve heard basically nothing good. I wouldn’t expect it to be as good as The Good Place (which is one of, what, three pieces of 21st century American television that’s full-on great? and the only thing I’m aware of that understood how to actually do “long-form storytelling” via episodes of television), and I suppose I’m not shocked to find it confused. There’s really not that many celestial bureaucracy stories that are particularly great; might be a list as short as It’s a Wonderful Life, A Matter of Life and Death (though don’t let Archers fanboys tell you its climactic celestial courtroom scene isn’t incredibly stupid), and The Good Place. I do have a bit of a presumption I’d side with the “oh, heaven enforces monogamy?” takes even if they’re undoubtedly being overly literalistic.