{"id":2542,"date":"2019-12-17T21:28:48","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T21:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/?p=2542"},"modified":"2020-08-17T00:19:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T00:19:24","slug":"the-good-place-beware-of-spoilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/2019\/12\/17\/the-good-place-beware-of-spoilers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Place? (Beware of Spoilers)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You wake up, and find that you are sitting in a leather chair in a strange room that looks a bit like a physician\u2019s office.\u00a0\u00a0A pleasant bespectacled man tells you that you have died, and are now beginning your afterlife.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWelcome to The Good Place,\u201d\u00a0he beams. You soon emerge into a sunny, pleasant \u201cneighborhood\u201d filled with saintly seeming people milling about and eating frozen yogurt. Yet not all is as it seems. For one thing, you clearly know that you don\u2019t belong.\u00a0\u00a0You were a terrible person in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the opening premise of the entertaining and thought provoking show, \u201cThe Good Place\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Somehow I missed this on NBC and am now binge-watching reruns on a streaming service.\u00a0\u00a0I will confine my remarks to the first season, but will directly discuss the shocking twist of the season finale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleanor, a self-absorbed, semi-alcoholic woman whose life\u2019s work was selling a fake product, finds herself dead and consigned to \u201cThe Good Place\u201d, but she knows that she doesn\u2019t deserve to be there.\u00a0\u00a0A mistake has caused her to switch places with another who shared her name.\u00a0\u00a0She decides to try to earn her place anyway and begins ethics lessons with a former ethics professor named Chidi.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile she has a troubled and catty relationship with her neighbor, Tahani, a tall glamorous former philanthropist, who seems too good to be true, and has some subtle narcissistic traits.\u00a0\u00a0After doing the right thing in the midst of numerous ethical dilemmas, Eleanor finally realizes something shocking: \u201cThis is actually the Bad Place, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show has been compared with the play \u201cNo Exit\u201d by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, and this is apt.\u00a0\u00a0The first season unfolds much like the famous scenario in Sartre\u2019s book.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNo Exit\u201d describes a version of Hell. Sartre, who was famous for saying, \u201cHell is other people\u201d drafted a play in which three main characters are trapped together in a pleasant room. They are dead, and have been consigned to Hell.\u00a0\u00a0They have been assigned to spend eternity together. It dawns on them that they are to be each other\u2019s tormentors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

INEZ: Wait! You\u2019ll see how simple it is. Childishly simple. Obviously there aren\u2019t any physical torments\u2014you agree, don\u2019t you? And yet we\u2019re in hell. And no one else will come here. We\u2019ll stay in this room together, the three of us, for ever and ever. . . . In short, there\u2019s someone absent here, the official tortur<\/p>

GARCIN [sotto voce]: I\u2019d noticed that.<\/p>

INEZ: It\u2019s obvious what they\u2019re after\u2014an economy of man power\u2014or devil-power, if you prefer. The same idea as in the cafeteria, where customers serve themselves.<\/p>

ESTELLE: What ever do you mean?<\/p>

INEZ: I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others.
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The three characters proceed to do just that, until finally Estelle cracks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOpen the door! Open, blast you! I\u2019ll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes\u2014all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears\u2014I\u2019ll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These parables accord with a more modern version of Hell, in which psychology replaces fire and brimstone as a metaphor for its torments. I think of C.S. Lewis, who wrote \u201cIt\u2019s not a question of God \u2018sending\u2019 us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some have objected to this idea, as it underplays the justice and retribution aspects of Divine punishment. In Lewis\u2019 view, and that of \u201cThe Good Place\u201d, Hell is as much a self-inflicted torment as it is divinely appointed punishment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, does it need to be \u201ceither \/ or\u201d? Might it not rather be both?<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p><\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You wake up, and find that you are sitting in a leather chair in a strange room that looks a bit like a physician\u2019s office.\u00a0\u00a0A pleasant bespectacled man tells you that you have died, and are now beginning your afterlife.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWelcome to The Good Place,\u201d\u00a0he beams. You soon emerge into a sunny, pleasant \u201cneighborhood\u201d filled with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[369,146],"tags":[1190,1188,101,1189],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theological-ideas","category-tv-shows","tag-no-exit","tag-the-good-place","tag-hell","tag-jean-paul-sartre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}