What I Watched:
The Good Place S1.E8-10: "Most Improved Player," "...Someone Like Me as a Member," and "Chidi's Choice"What I Saw:
The title of "Most Improved Player" certainly sets the tone for what the message is for the episode. Eleanor has come clean about their being a mistake about her being in the Good Place, not knowing what the consequences will be. While Tahani is angry at betrayal, the rest of the group wraps around Eleanor to plead her case. Because despite her "medium/Cincinnati" nature, she has learned a lot since being in the Good Place, and feels like she could earn her right to stay if she keeps trying. Which brings up the question the show has been presenting all along: What makes a good person? Is it possible to have an infallible algorithm created by some unknown deity make that determination? If given enough time, is everyone capable of becoming good person?The quest for those answers continues when they realize "Real" Eleanor was actually in the Bad Place in "Fake" Eleanor's stead. We then get a glimpse of what some of the people from the Bad Place are like, when they arrive to do their prisoner exchange. Michael bends over backward with niceness, letting the Bad People take advantage and do whatever they want in Tahani's house. Tahani helps Michael to see that being a good person does not mean you cannot set boundaries and demand respect from others. If anything, ensuring you and others are respected is essential to being a good person.
Simone de Beauvoir discussed in her book The Ethics of Ambiguity that denying someone their "freedom" to oppress others is not oppression, and that behavior should actually be denied at every encounter. Because if my freedom comes at the cost of denying someone else's freedom, then it is not real. We are all innately free. By limiting my consciousness to say that I need to oppress someone else for my benefit leaves me trapped in my own excuses, thus preventing me from coming to the realization that I am already free.
Meanwhile, Fake Eleanor and Chidi get a chance to see what Real Eleanor is like, and Fake Eleanor does some comparisons with some funny results.
Fake Eleanor tries to use her hardships to explain why she did not come out to be a perfectly good person, while Real Eleanor faced even more challenges and still rose above it all. This suggests that while the challenges we face in life does play some role in who we are, ultimately it is how we choose to face those challenges that determines how good of a person we are. Eleanor then decides that she has no more excuses and is about to give herself up to the Bad Place when Michael convinces her to fight to stay, since she is no longer the same person when she first arrived. Her current choices have been leading her to the side of good.
And of course the episode right before the break is all about choices. Real Eleanor is helping Fake Eleanor get her case together for Shawn as to why she should be allowed to stay, when Real Eleanor helps Fake Eleanor realize she may have feelings for Chidi. Tahani, upon discovering Jason is not really her soulmate Jian-yu, also notices the connection she was starting to build with Chidi. Both declare their love (well Tahani declares Chidi's love for her due to her ego) leaving him with having to make a decision, which he has struggled with his whole life.
While Fake Eleanor had been making decisions without considering the consequences, Chidi wracked his brain over the moral ramifications of every choice. When trying to pick players for a pick-up soccer game in elementary school, he is trying to avoid favoritism (picking a friend), sexism (picking a girl as a token or picking a boy because it may look bad), and other such moral dilemmas. His indecisiveness even indirectly leads to his own demise.
The show is demonstrating that while it is important to think about moral ramifications of an option, you are never going to come up with a decision that is 100% morally correct. If you wait for one, you will never decide on anything and miss out on your own life. All we humans can do is make the best out of the infinitely bad options the world presents us with.
Take for example social consumerism. This is when a person, like Chidi, weighs the options of what it is they are purchasing by how much moral value was considered when making the product. Like a pair of shoes made from recycled/sustainable materials, paying the worker who crafted it a living wage, etc. Many believe having the majority of their purchases which consider those variables will be an incentive for manufacturers to make more socially conscious products, leading to better sustainable world. However, there are several limitations to such a lifestyle, as no matter what product you select, there will always be some kind of moral pricetag attached to it (most have to be ordered on the internet, which requires shipping using fossil fuels). Because while they may pay the worker a livable wage for the region, compared to American standard of living it is nowhere close. Just living in America has a huge moral cost attached to it for several complicated reasons. Now that's not to say you should ignore the moral pricetag entirely, but it takes more than choosing a socially conscious product to be considered a good person, and many people just tend to stop there.
Alright, enough of my tangent on social consumers. I like where the show is going, and hope they manage to keep some of these moral questions going for at least a couple more seasons. I'm hoping hilarious scenes like when the characters kill Janet keep enough viewers in to keep up the momentum. What's your guy's favorite Janet scene? For me her obsession with cacti was a close second, but I couldn't find any clips of it to link to. Let me know in the comments!
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