Which TV characters did Veganuary and which ones are sticking with it?by Randi / February 2, 2021Today’s show is a video stream presented by the Barn Theatre, available from today until March 7.
The Secret Society of Leading Ladies tries to make the pre-recorded multi-performer concert experience a little more engaging and a little more cohesive, by letting viewers decide which leading lady characters and songs will be part of their unique concert combo. Conceived of by Barn Theatre’s Ryan Carter, the show aims to create a world where our beloved (for the most part) characters somehow exist together, know each other, and take turns at the mike. With each viewer deciding their own setlist, the concept lets us make the experience as enjoyable as possible, while also catering to our lockdown-worsened attention spans.
The show definitely succeeds on the engaging front: Choosing what song you get to hear next is almost giddy fun, and exerting that kind of control in a show is pretty rare. (It’s also kind of a gift from the creative team to give us control over anything at this time, like they are doing more than therapists can. Anyway…) The production quality of the choose-your-next-player interactive menu was quite impressive, and you have plenty of time to weigh your options and decide if you’re more in the mood for a song from Ghost or Fame. I also liked that they showed pictures of each performer along with the song title in the choosing menu, so you can also decide based on performers you know and like and want to hear.
As for the cohesiveness, however, that was a disappointment. The idea that all these famed musical theatre characters were somehow at this venue together, aware of who the others were, and part of some secret society didn’t really gel, since – because of lockdown restrictions – they couldn’t really film conversations among the performers. (They tried a little bit to show them chatting (filmed and shown one at a time), but the pacing was as awkward as the commentary.) It would honestly be such a fun show to delve into how these famous characters from all sorts of shows would interact with each other, kind of like the higher-brow version of that Disney picture of all the cartoon princesses having a sleepover that lives rent-free in my head (I want to go to there/be a cartoon princess). But that idea didn’t really gel.
As a plain-old concert, though, it’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing all these familiar faces, some new-to-me faces, and hearing some songs I haven’t listened to in a while in a combination I definitely didn’t hear before.
Because it was essentially a concert, the featured moments favored belting over building characters or telling stories. The sound was a little wonky too, so any pitch problems came through way more noticeably than seemed right. I loved that even where a performance had some issues, the singer always brought it home with a huge belted note at the end, like they knew it almost didn’t matter what came before because most people will just remember a fantastic final note.
Yet as expected in a concert showcase performed by mainly yoots, the show often felt like the belting Olympics in more ways than just big endings, with vocal acrobatics given more consideration than inhabiting a character and telling that character’s story. Of course, it’s difficult to do the latter in just one song, but without much of it, the conceit that these were the characters and not the actors fell flat. “Dyin’ Ain’t So Bad”, performed by Emma Kingston was far and away the highlight, surprising because it’s from a score I’m very familiar with but not toooo fond of (Bonnie & Clyde) and originally sung by one of my favorite clear-voiced performers (Laura Osnes). This was the rare performance that told a story and used belting as a tool to do so, rather than just focusing on belting for belting’s sake. How many times can I say belting in one sentence, wow.
Note that it is quite short – only 5 choose-your-next-performer menus compose the show before the finale; we didn’t even finish eating dinner before it was over. Definitely choose a multi-stream ticket so that you can go back and watch the other performances as well; otherwise, it’s a little too short. Also, since each performer is presented as an option only once per show (regardless if you skipped them in round 1 – they don’t come back in round 4 as an option), the multi-stream ticket would let you watch e.g. two ladies from the same round.
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Daniel Radcliffe in “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, One of the Best Plays of the Season
In Martin McDonagh’s fantastic, heartbreaking comedy “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, Daniel Radcliffe proves that he’s got more in him than Harry Potter. With great respect for the humorous yet depressing subject matter, Radcliffe and an insanely talented ensemble cast give this play its best imaginable incarnation.
Radcliffe plays a poor crippled lad named Billy living on the island of Inishmaan, Ireland in the 1930s or thereabouts. His parents died when he was a baby – some taunt Billy (really ‘Crippled Billy’, as this town primarily full of assholes calls him; Inishmaan didn’t get the memo about bullying) by saying his parents killed themselves to get away from his poor crippled babiness. Billy was taken in by his two ‘aunties’, played by Gillian Hanna and Ingrid Craigie, who are freaking hilarious Irish perfection. Seriously, the play opens with the two of them deadpanning near nonsense and if that went on for 2 hours, with Radcliffe never showing up, the audience probably would have been ok with it.
One of the aunties looks exactly like Marla Hooch and the other talks to stones when things get rough. The aunties get more than their fair share of gossip from Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt), who has the worst name since I thought Conchita Wurst was a real name. JPM comes by the aunties’ shoppe (which is overflowing with canned peas) every day, sharing bits of ‘news’, including such winners as whose cat bit whose rabbit or some such, and in return demands eggs and what not.
One of the bits of news he shares is that a Hollywood film crew is filming on the nearby island of Inishmore and wants to cast locals!! Squee! says the whole town. We all want to be in the Hollywood moving pictures! This kind of random turn of events sets the main ‘plot’ in motion, thought the play isn’t really plot-driven so much as character-driven and it would have been equally effective without this whole, well, plot. Anyway, the Crip hears this news and believes it to be his chance to make something of himself.
Johnnypateenmike seems pretty darn annoying, and not just because of his name, and kind of assy, but of course our first impression is super wrong because this is a play and we have to learn that we’re not always right about red-nosed greasy-haired Irish men who drink a lot. Our first impression is also wrong, though moving from the opposite direction, of Babbybobby, another unfortunately named male considering babby = baby in Ireland speak. He seems pretty sensitive and kind at first, helping Billy get to Inishmore to try out for the film crew. But he shows himself to be a crazy kind of sensitive in that when he is offended he beats the shit out of crippled boys. But he does agree to stop calling him Crippled Billy (before he cripples him even more), so that’s something.
Babbybobby takes Billy across the sea or whatever body of water is legendarily difficult to cross but reasonably doable in a handmade canoe. Although the other characters were laughing at Billy’s desire to try out for the film crew, they actually end up wanting him to come to Hollywood for a proper screen test. Yay Billy! He goes without telling his aunties what he’s up to, and rumor spreads (that Billy himself may or may not have started) that he is dying and left to die in solitude. Prettayyy dire. But then he comes back. But then he probably is dying anyway. There’s a lot of great dramatic irony. You should read or see the play.
The most electric member of this superb ensemble (freal) is Sarah Greene as Helen, who is pretty much the Irish ginger lass version of Reese Witherspoon’s Melanie Spooner from “Sweet Home Alabama”. (Actually, whichever one of these came second may have stolen the character from the other.) Melanie was famous for attaching dynamite to a cat to blow up a bank; Helen kills a neighbor’s cat for money. (Kind of also like Angel Dumott Schunard BUT NOT NEARLY AS AWESOME.) At first, as Helen’s first scene features her recounting how she hit or egged some priests for inappropriate touching, I was like, oh wow this chick ROCKS! Beat those priests! But as we observe Helen, her ballsiness evidences its tendency toward sadism. Maybe it’s a result of her being treated as women were and still are, but like you could adapt to be more Daenarys and less Ramsey Snow.
Anyway, this total crazy bitch eggs things and people any chance she gets. To demonstrate this, the production destroys at least a dozen real eggs during every performance. I almost leapt down from my box to stop her. Ok, so having a young girl throw eggs a lot shows that she is ‘fun’ and ‘rambunctious’ and ‘confident’, but really it’s just sad and wasteful and unnecessary to use real eggs when we already understand the character. They were going to be chickens! And instead of at least being used as eggs so the many lives lost in their production wouldn’t be completely in vain, they are cracked upon another ginger’s head and thrown at bedsheets acting as movie screens. UGH anger. Between this and the eggs Andy Karl drinks every show in “Rocky”, this Broadway season is not cruelty-free.
ANYWAY. That other ginger being egged so much is Helen’s brother Bartley, who is kind of lovable and sweet, but he’s completely incapable of deflecting his sister’s constant need to beat the shit out of someone. All this kid wants is American candies, or in a pinch any candies, which he persistently asks the aunties for in hilarious bits. The best such bit is when Auntie Marla Hooch just keeps repeating “We have what you see!” in tones of increasing impatience. (He calls candies ‘sweeties’ but we will not stoop to such low levels because it’s a terrible, awful, no good word in that awful trend of taking the defining trait and making a noun of it WHICH IS BULLSHIT. Add to my list of verboten words ‘tasty’, ‘brekkie’, ‘choccy’, ‘biccie’, and more we will get to at some point in the future.)
For some reason, Billy is crazy so crazy in love with Helen, which I don’t get unless he believes that shit about how the meanest kids in elementary school really just had crushes on you or something because otherwise he is just a glutton for punishment. I mean she treats him so terribly, making fun of his ailments and telling terrible stories about his parents. God she’s the worst (but the actress is amazing. And looks exactly like Emma Stone.).
Radcliffe’s affectations of the deformities are so well done that, while at first they are shocking, they become so accepted and you get used to it. It’s an amazing physical performance, as he swings one of his legs around and keeps one arm bent at his shoulder. Very strange. Anyway, Crippled Billy goes to Hollywood, and in the second act we wonder if he made it, or if he’s actually dying, or dead. Then we think the question is answered, as Radcliffe’s performs the show’s biggest “Watch Me Acting” scene, in which he convulses and coughs and prays and cries out to his deceased parents and clutches things, as he dies. It’s pretty heartbreaking…yet it seems like a manifestation of a playwright’s manic excess and not like anything the character would do. It was like someone exclaiming in Shakespearean monologues when a train is late (which I do but still). But it all makes sense when we learn later that this ‘scene’ we saw, Billy’s death, was actually Billy’s screen test! And it went badly and caused the producers to send him back home! So, like, knowing this is even more impressive on Radcliffe’s part. He had to act this big huge scene as dramatically as all get out, and expertly do it poorly. No easy feat.
For about two minutes everything seems hunky-dory, with the aunties and Billy reunited, but being a dark Irish play, everything goes to shit soon after. In the span of maybe five minutes, we learn from Johnnypateenmike the truth about Billy’s parents, and it is a doozy. Possibly the saddest thing ever and reminiscent of a part from Benjamin Button. And in that moment JPM becomes like the greatest man alive. Aw. Then, just as the rumors about Billy’s terminal illness are revealed as lies he introduced himself, we learn that lying about having bad diseases angers the gods or something and will lead them to give the liar in question the very disease they lied about having, in an ironic twist of fate. Pretty f-ing sad, Ireland. But none of it seems overwrought or theatrical. The play, so expertly produced and acted, leaves you not feeling dejected but feeling lucky to have witnessed such insight into human emotion and the randomness of fortune. It’s definitely one of the best of the season.
One of the aunties looks exactly like Marla Hooch and the other talks to stones when things get rough. The aunties get more than their fair share of gossip from Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt), who has the worst name since I thought Conchita Wurst was a real name. JPM comes by the aunties’ shoppe (which is overflowing with canned peas) every day, sharing bits of ‘news’, including such winners as whose cat bit whose rabbit or some such, and in return demands eggs and what not.
One of the bits of news he shares is that a Hollywood film crew is filming on the nearby island of Inishmore and wants to cast locals!! Squee! says the whole town. We all want to be in the Hollywood moving pictures! This kind of random turn of events sets the main ‘plot’ in motion, thought the play isn’t really plot-driven so much as character-driven and it would have been equally effective without this whole, well, plot. Anyway, the Crip hears this news and believes it to be his chance to make something of himself.
Johnnypateenmike seems pretty darn annoying, and not just because of his name, and kind of assy, but of course our first impression is super wrong because this is a play and we have to learn that we’re not always right about red-nosed greasy-haired Irish men who drink a lot. Our first impression is also wrong, though moving from the opposite direction, of Babbybobby, another unfortunately named male considering babby = baby in Ireland speak. He seems pretty sensitive and kind at first, helping Billy get to Inishmore to try out for the film crew. But he shows himself to be a crazy kind of sensitive in that when he is offended he beats the shit out of crippled boys. But he does agree to stop calling him Crippled Billy (before he cripples him even more), so that’s something.
Babbybobby takes Billy across the sea or whatever body of water is legendarily difficult to cross but reasonably doable in a handmade canoe. Although the other characters were laughing at Billy’s desire to try out for the film crew, they actually end up wanting him to come to Hollywood for a proper screen test. Yay Billy! He goes without telling his aunties what he’s up to, and rumor spreads (that Billy himself may or may not have started) that he is dying and left to die in solitude. Prettayyy dire. But then he comes back. But then he probably is dying anyway. There’s a lot of great dramatic irony. You should read or see the play.
The most electric member of this superb ensemble (freal) is Sarah Greene as Helen, who is pretty much the Irish ginger lass version of Reese Witherspoon’s Melanie Spooner from “Sweet Home Alabama”. (Actually, whichever one of these came second may have stolen the character from the other.) Melanie was famous for attaching dynamite to a cat to blow up a bank; Helen kills a neighbor’s cat for money. (Kind of also like Angel Dumott Schunard BUT NOT NEARLY AS AWESOME.) At first, as Helen’s first scene features her recounting how she hit or egged some priests for inappropriate touching, I was like, oh wow this chick ROCKS! Beat those priests! But as we observe Helen, her ballsiness evidences its tendency toward sadism. Maybe it’s a result of her being treated as women were and still are, but like you could adapt to be more Daenarys and less Ramsey Snow.
Anyway, this total crazy bitch eggs things and people any chance she gets. To demonstrate this, the production destroys at least a dozen real eggs during every performance. I almost leapt down from my box to stop her. Ok, so having a young girl throw eggs a lot shows that she is ‘fun’ and ‘rambunctious’ and ‘confident’, but really it’s just sad and wasteful and unnecessary to use real eggs when we already understand the character. They were going to be chickens! And instead of at least being used as eggs so the many lives lost in their production wouldn’t be completely in vain, they are cracked upon another ginger’s head and thrown at bedsheets acting as movie screens. UGH anger. Between this and the eggs Andy Karl drinks every show in “Rocky”, this Broadway season is not cruelty-free.
ANYWAY. That other ginger being egged so much is Helen’s brother Bartley, who is kind of lovable and sweet, but he’s completely incapable of deflecting his sister’s constant need to beat the shit out of someone. All this kid wants is American candies, or in a pinch any candies, which he persistently asks the aunties for in hilarious bits. The best such bit is when Auntie Marla Hooch just keeps repeating “We have what you see!” in tones of increasing impatience. (He calls candies ‘sweeties’ but we will not stoop to such low levels because it’s a terrible, awful, no good word in that awful trend of taking the defining trait and making a noun of it WHICH IS BULLSHIT. Add to my list of verboten words ‘tasty’, ‘brekkie’, ‘choccy’, ‘biccie’, and more we will get to at some point in the future.)
For some reason, Billy is crazy so crazy in love with Helen, which I don’t get unless he believes that shit about how the meanest kids in elementary school really just had crushes on you or something because otherwise he is just a glutton for punishment. I mean she treats him so terribly, making fun of his ailments and telling terrible stories about his parents. God she’s the worst (but the actress is amazing. And looks exactly like Emma Stone.).
Radcliffe’s affectations of the deformities are so well done that, while at first they are shocking, they become so accepted and you get used to it. It’s an amazing physical performance, as he swings one of his legs around and keeps one arm bent at his shoulder. Very strange. Anyway, Crippled Billy goes to Hollywood, and in the second act we wonder if he made it, or if he’s actually dying, or dead. Then we think the question is answered, as Radcliffe’s performs the show’s biggest “Watch Me Acting” scene, in which he convulses and coughs and prays and cries out to his deceased parents and clutches things, as he dies. It’s pretty heartbreaking…yet it seems like a manifestation of a playwright’s manic excess and not like anything the character would do. It was like someone exclaiming in Shakespearean monologues when a train is late (which I do but still). But it all makes sense when we learn later that this ‘scene’ we saw, Billy’s death, was actually Billy’s screen test! And it went badly and caused the producers to send him back home! So, like, knowing this is even more impressive on Radcliffe’s part. He had to act this big huge scene as dramatically as all get out, and expertly do it poorly. No easy feat.
For about two minutes everything seems hunky-dory, with the aunties and Billy reunited, but being a dark Irish play, everything goes to shit soon after. In the span of maybe five minutes, we learn from Johnnypateenmike the truth about Billy’s parents, and it is a doozy. Possibly the saddest thing ever and reminiscent of a part from Benjamin Button. And in that moment JPM becomes like the greatest man alive. Aw. Then, just as the rumors about Billy’s terminal illness are revealed as lies he introduced himself, we learn that lying about having bad diseases angers the gods or something and will lead them to give the liar in question the very disease they lied about having, in an ironic twist of fate. Pretty f-ing sad, Ireland. But none of it seems overwrought or theatrical. The play, so expertly produced and acted, leaves you not feeling dejected but feeling lucky to have witnessed such insight into human emotion and the randomness of fortune. It’s definitely one of the best of the season.
Goodbye to The Good Place (Really Bestbye to the Best Place)
Hello, my little chili babies. It’s been almost a week since the 104% perfect finale of The Good Place, and I’m still crying so let’s talk it out. Although everything to say about it has already been said, it doesn’t feel right to not have something about it on my website for posterity. I mean I have a whole thing on the finale of How I Met Your Mother, which was super disappointing, so having that and not anything on the best TV show finale of all time would be point-losing nonsense. If you want to read my writing about my favorite show where I try to sound smart, click here to read my recent article for Tenderly Mag on Medium. If you’re cool with nonsense dribbled out in mostly recap form while I cried for the 1000th time in 5 days, then go ahead – whenever you’re ready. (Hot tip: You are only ready if you have watched every episode of the show.)
If you know me, or you watch television, or you have taste, you know that The Good Place is the best show ever. There isn’t one line that isn’t great, in four seasons. I mean I love lots of TV and have lots of favorites but man alive, even Friends has entire episodes I would cut. TGP was as tight as a drum, with every line, action, even every costume flawlessly committed to telling a coherent full story. I love everyone involved with this show for making it, from each writer (especially Megan Amram and her puns) to Marc Evan Jackson for the podcast (it’s so good and where I got a lot of the inside treats to come) to David Niednagel for the ridiculous special effects to Kirston Mann for the costumes (I agree about the stripes messaging, Marc) to Gay Perello for the amazing props (will never get over Jason’s first philosophy assignment, where he handwrote it and said “By Jason Mendoza, Age 27. Perfection). The cast is uniformly excellent, some of the best acting ever ever ever ever done. (“Acting is reacting. And reacting is pre-acting. And pre-acting, well that’s just being.”) And of course, creator Mike Schur, who might have a lot of annoying ideas about veganism, but he is a gd genius.
Since the pilot, anyone who tried to predict what would happen on this show has looked like a fool LIKE A FOOL. This most unpredictable show, lauded for how it solved in one episode or less what most programs would focus on for an entire season, always kept us on our toes. It felt appropriate that the finale would still be exciting and overwhelmingly emotional and brilliant but not entirely surprising, wrapping up everyone’s story, remarkably, in a way that was, only in hindsight, clear from the beginning. (“Is there a question?” “Don’t you think that’s remarkable?”) Even though the show was constantly surprising, they told us from the start what the end would hold for our heroes, if you paid attention. They each had to conquer their biggest flaws, and once they really and fully did, they would be ready to end this part of their existence. And often, doing so made them come full circle to the versions of themselves they pretended to be, whether on earth or in neighborhood 12358W.
I want to talk about each of my friends one by one.
Let’s start with Jason, since the episode does. After 2,242 Bearimys since we last saw him, Jason decides that his time in The Good Place has come to an end. At first I paraphrased Michael in the season 2 reboot montage and exclaimed, “Jason finds peace first? Jason?! Oh, this one hurts.” It’s no secret that Jason Mendoza (“that’s my boy right there!”) is my favorite character (well everyone is my favorite but I love that goofball so much). He is so dumb and sweet and surprisingly wise and so pure. The kids describe too many things nowadays as being ‘pure’ and it’s getting overused but really it is best used for Jason. I love that my boy is so pure so his is the shortest journey to finding inner peace. It makes sense that he would be the first of Team Cockroach to have that realization of tranquility in your soul that you are ready to be at one with the universe, or whatever you think happens when you walk through the door.
When Janet realizes what Jason needs to talk about, after he makes dinner for her the first time, that seems like the proper starting point for crying during this episode, but that assumes you haven’t been crying since the moment it began, or really since you started gearing up for it the week before. The moment that marked my transition from teary-eyed to heaving bawling was when they showed him playing Madden with Donkey Doug. Donkey Doug was the first new person we saw who had made it through the new system, and that, that broke me. Oh dip Donkey Doug! (“Oh dip…you’re Donkey Doug!” (that’s a deep cut of my favorite blooper ever from the blooper reel of season 3.)) The best thing about this show was on full display – its perfect blend of heavy moments and deep thoughts with ridiculous comedy. Like Jason’s comment that his goodbye party would play EDM all night and Eleanor saying “well now I’m bummed about two things.” My favorite Eleanor moment during Jason’s section was obviously the jalapeno poppers bit (“what is a jalapeno? Also what is a popper? Also what is jalapeno poppers?” will inexplicably forever be my most quoted line from this show): Jason explains that he knows this is his time, because he realized the air inside his lungs was the same as the air outside his body – the same sort of peaceful feeling as when you bite into a jalapeno popper you think will be too hot but then it’s actually the perfect temperature. Eleanor immediately confirms she knows that feeling, as she would, because she is fellow trash. I always loved their connection as two former trashbags with similar experiences, and I’m glad they had another such moment in the finale.
Through seemingly throwaway lines, the writers pack in so much information. When we see Doug Forcett overdoing it on fried chicken (Doug Forcett got in!!), Chidi says “good thing you chose your young body!” So we know that everyone we see from here on didn’t necessarily die at whatever age we see them; you get to pick what age you’ll spend eternity as. Noice. Smort. And when Pillboi (I cried so hard when we saw that Pillboi made it; I love him so much) in his toast that includes the phrase “Caspers the Ghost”, the best pluralization ever, says that Jason is his hero, it makes me believe that everyone who makes it to the Good Place learns about the people responsible for this new system. Thinking about how Doug and Pillboi know that Jason is responsible for saving every soul in the universe, and how Uzo knows that about Chidi, and how Donna knows that about Eleanor, and how Tahani’s parents know, it wrecks me.
But nothing wrecks me more than (well every minute of this finale) when Janet and Michael talk about being sad that Jason’s leaving, because FRIENDSHIP! THE REASON IS FRIENDSHIP! Ever since “Janet and Michael” in season 2, their relationship has been my favorite (they are all my favorite relationships but come on). It’s so special to watch the only two non-humans on Team Cockroach help each other grow during all these crazy experiences.
The most important part of Jason’s section (well, his first) is Janet explaining that she doesn’t experience time like humans do, and that she is living all times at once. We need to hear this so we’re not depressed at the thought of everyone eventually leaving Janet, thinking about how one day all her friends will be gone. For her, they aren’t. WE NEED THIS.
I was a little bummed that we said goodbye to Jason so quickly, but oh dip! We didn’t! The second half surprise that, since he lost the necklace he made for Janet, he looked for it (it was in the other pocket, obviously) and then waited until she came back to the forest – for thousands of years – was the best surprise. He passed all that time pretty chill, just letting his mind wander and thinking about the universe. LIKE A MONK. Jason, having started the show pretending to be Jianyu the monk, ending up monking it up harder than any monk ever has. That’s the kind of full circle Amy Sherman Palladino wishes she could write. So beautiful. Pretending to be Jianyu was torture for Jason, since he had to control his impulsivity, so his time in the forest proved that he had conquered all his worst traits and then some. He was complete, and he was ready.
But not before the greatest line ever on this show full of the best lines ever: Jason says goodbye again to Janet, and runs through the door shouting, “Chidi, wait up!” after Chidi had gone through (more on that soon). It’s so adorably dumb and perfectly Jason – he still sort of has no clue what’s going on, but it also shows how sweet and innocent he is and how much he cares about his friends: no matter what happened to his friend, or what form his essence is in, he’s coming to hang.
Fun facts:
- The passing yards Jason achieved in his perfect game of Madden totaled 12358.
- The actor playing Doug Forcett isn’t really an actor, he’s a comedy writer. So he didn’t know not to really eat all the food he was stuffing in his face take after take. He threw up after filming his scene.
- The subtitles have no idea what Pillboi says at the end of his toast: He calls Jason his ‘Gardner Minshew’, the footballer who replaced Nick Foles after he broke his clavicle (‘FOOOOOOOOOLES!’). This show taught me so much about literally every subject.
“It is I, Tahani.”
Next, 323.6 Bearimys later, Tahani has become an expert woodworker (and is wearing overalls, incredible), along with completing nearly 10,000 other afterlife goals she set. We need to look at her list:
- Land a triple axel (made me realize I would TOTES take up figure skating in the Good Place. You can’t break your head!)
- Solve the Poincare conjecture (lol NERD)
- Perform Il Dolce Suono from Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala (is Tahani’s list my list?)
- Burp the alphabet (I CAN ALREADY DO THIS!)
- Become a master woodworker (okay it’s officially not my list)
- Learn how to repave a driveway (see above)
- Break Graham Gooch’s record of 456 runs in a single test (what are these words)
- Master conducting – orchestra (alright)
- Master conducting – train (lolol best joke for Z)
- Beat NBA Jam on all-star (??)
- Free Solo the Colossus of Rhodes (even when already dead I’d be too scared for this)
- Fix the Jesus fresco that lady messed up (this is the FUNNIEST FORKING THING EVER)
- Tahani al-Jamil’s ‘Borges’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’”” (WTF DOES THIS MEAN)
- Make a vegan dessert that nobody suspects if vegan (ughhh Mikey my boy you still have a long way to go with your unfunny vegan jokes. This isn’t a hard thing to accomplish – if a food is bad, it’s not because it’s vegan, it’s because it’s bad. We’ve all had bad desserts and they weren’t bad due to the presence or lack of milk or eggs. They were bad because the person making it didn’t know what they were doing. Ughhh)
- Invent new musical instrument (I’d rather learn all the existing ones)
- Really nail the Lisa Left Eye Lopes rap from ‘Waterfalls’ (DONE)
- Finish Infinite Jest (NEVER)
- Spend one meaningful day with my parents [and she ending up having thousands! Ughh the best!]
- Defuse a bomb (YES)
- Fly a helicopter (NO)
- Perfect the backhand slice (DONE, BABIES)
When Janet tells Tahani, “the thing you wanted me to tell you when it happened? It happened”, I thought OMG IS IT KAMILLAH OR HER PARENTS, KAMILLAH OR HER PARENTS? The cut to her already being BFF with her sister and them living together (soulmates!) wrecked me so hard. Kamillah already made it and they have the relationship they always wanted. It was too much, and then you realize that that means the parents are coming. When her mother opened by shouting “My darlings!” oh my god if you didn’t gasp cry then you are dead inside. It was perfect, it was too much, it was beautiful. I keep thinking of that moment. It’s some of the best TV ever. How they built up that journey for this family, seeing how much they tortured Tahani, and then how she was responsible for them not being tortured forever but being redeemed so they could all enjoy what they missed out on, it might be the most emotionally meaningful argument for what they’re trying to say.
At Tahani’s goodbye party, she namedrops Frank Gehry (how many godparents does this b have!!) and we get a treat of seeing that John has made it as well, and as always he swans in and out faster than you can track and is at the ready with the funniest g-d line (“Alexander the Fine”) and gone before you catch your breath. He was such a great addition this season. Tahani realizes that she isn’t ready to leave through the door, but she wants to leave the Good Place – and train to be an afterlife architect, like Michael. This is my favorite. I love that not all the humans went through, and I love that Tahani is REALLY committing to helping people, and not just talking about it like she did on earth. On the podcast earlier this season, Jameela talked about how much she loved Tahani’s special growth and journey and we didn’t know what she was talking about until this great decision. Whereas Jason came full circle to how he started as Jianyu, Tahani finally became what she pretended to be on earth: someone who really and truly helps people, as well as an incredibly accomplished woman. She can literally do everything now, and she helped save humanity. (And she “snogged Ryan Gosling. Couple of times, actually.”)
I also loved that she trained all the animals, including the server panda. BUT QUESTION: Is this a magic panda that she trained to wait on her? Or did she train a regular panda to speak, serve, &c, and so she trained him to be magic? IF IT’S THE LATTER, and we know that Jeremy Bearimy works in mysterious ways, THEN MY BIG QUESTION IS GOING TO REMAIN IN ALL CAPS: IS THIS REGULAR PANDA THAT SHE TRAINED TO DO MAGICAL THINGS THE SAME MAGIC PANDA THAT JASON REFERENCES IN SEASON 2 THAT THEY SHOULD CAPTURE AND USE TO HELP THEM????!!!!!!!!! Did Tahani train the magic panda that then somehow was the panda that showed up two seasons ago??!! that’s some ‘Interstellar’ time shit right there.
Tahani and Michael go to the architects offices, and there we get a whole bunch of amazingness in a short time: Brett is on a TV screen in the hallway, being debriefed after another failed test. I like to think that his line of questioning shows he is really trying to think through his actions, and just still has a lot of work to do, but he will make it eventually. Then we see Glenn, my fave, who is super excited to have Tahani on his team! It’s so sweet! And craziest of all, Shawn is there, and although his face and tone still say evil, he’s…he’s pretty much not. It’s so forking good, as is his never-ending ‘ever, ever, ever’ delivery.
Fun facts:
- Nick Offerman (not Ron Swanson) makes it to the Good Place, which is fun (hope he learned in his tests to stop making stupid vegan jokes), but not as fun as knowing that the chair he’s praising, that Tahani has crafted, he actually despised in real life. They couldn’t get the $50,000 chair Nick suggested they get for this scene (wonder why) and he said that the chair they chose was so poorly made that his woodworking friends were going to make fun of him for praising it on TV.
- The al Jamils watch ‘Home Alone’ together on movie night, the movie Tahani was afraid of when Jason first showed her, but now she’s not afraid of her family abandoning her. (“you hear that? I’m not afraid anymore!”)
- Kamillah was painting waves.
- When Michael and Tahani go into the hub where the Doorman sits (now so much livelier and busier due to all the happenings in the universe, I love it), you can see (mostly hear) Trevor screaming as he flies across the space. In season 3, the judge pinged him off the bridge, and he has been pinging around every since. I CANNOT WITH THIS SHOW.
- Michael’s gift to Tahani on her first day as an intern is the peacock bowtie he wore in the pilot.
Chidi Annakendrick time.
When the screen showed that another 661.7 Bearimys had past, I started hyperventilating knowing that this was going to be the Eleanor and Chidi section. We start with the two nerd lovers reading, Eleanor finally finishing Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other (the book she ripped to write the ‘Eleanor – Find Chidi’ note), and Chidi reading The Da Vinci Code, calling it a garbage book. Our favorite pair still seems as happy together as ever, despite thousands and thousands of Bearimys spent together, but Chidi you can tell is weary. They have another fun dinner with their friends – Simone, who I sobbed seeing, along with Eleanor’s old roommates (the dress bitch made it in!), which also made me sob, and UZO, my favorite! I’m vexed, Uzo, truly vexed! Having this group of people together is the best part; this is what the Good Place should be all about. I love that Eleanor’s old friends haven’t had their personalities changed – they are still trash who want a karaoke bar that’s also a tanning salon, so the harder you go at the song the tanner you get (incred) – but they are better people now. It shows that the system really works. You don’t have to be boring or flat to get in; you can be yourself as long as you’re a decent person.
Anyway this group made me so happy and so cry. But when Eleanor says how fun it was, Chidi says yeah, it’s always fun, all the hundreds or thousands of times they’ve gone out with this group. We also learn that Donna and Chidi’s parents have made it in and have met many times. Chidi recounts these facts in a tired manner – everything he ever wanted, he got long ago. Chidi is ready to go, you know right away, and so does Eleanor. Oh my god, the sobbing. How does one leave the other?
I’m so glad I forgot that people saw the show filming in Europe last year, so I got to enjoy the surprise Athens and Paris emergency getaways as intended. This was an incredible section, not just for the views of the acrompolympse (this is how I pronounce it so I may as well be honest in my writing it) but for focusing solely on Eleanor and Chidi’s story. They deserved it after all they’ve been through. They got to go up the acrompolympse before it opened to the public one morning, and the local Greek crew was so emotional that it makes me emotional to think about. I went once and it was packed to the gills with sweaty tourists, so this is nice.
People always point to “Janets” as evidence of how good D’Arcy Carden is (rightly so), but her best performance for me might be the subtle faces she makes during this section. You can see on her face that she is going to help Eleanor, but she knows it’s wrong. If Chidi is ready, then you need to let him go. She does say this eventually, but her face said it first, and continues to show her disagreement with Eleanor while continuing to help.
After Athens, Janet zipped them to Paris, where the weather was indeed perfect for Paris: overcast and chilly. The cut right to Sacre Coeur made me cry too even though my only really strong memory from all my visits is hilarious (my cousin and I tried to buy Invicta backpacks off of Italian tourists on these steps, eventually successfully, and we met a man who kept saying “yes yes I write many books!”). We knew Chidi had lived in Paris, and when he walked to his old apartment, you could feel him saying goodbye to everything he did in his life. Eleanor finally admits to him that she knew he wanted to leave and didn’t want him to because she was always abandoned and alone on earth, and it is heartbreaking. She’s overcome so many of her terrible traits but she’s still scared of being alone forever. But the biggest problem she overcame is her selfishness, and so she quickly realizes that the last selfless act she has to do is let him go. She says she owes it to him to let him go, calling back to Scanlon (and the whole message of the show, really). THIS SHOW IS PERFECT.
If you weren’t crying the entire time already, this really started the unending cry wave. Chidi’s goodbye party was done silently, with just that music that was too much playing, so it was a punch in the gut. It was so well done, so perfect, and so sad. And then it got worse (/better), when Chidi talked about the wave returning to the ocean and hot goddamn, this is the most beautiful idea ever. I’m not going to copy it here because it will cheapen it, but it shares an incredible idea, and the perfect Eleanor and Chidi ending, along with his beefcake calendar. Ugh my heart. With Chidi’s final exit, his journey was perfectly completed, since unlike everyone else, he didn’t need to sit on the bench till he was ready. He was ready, and he strode right through – the biggest decision in the entire universe, he made easily. He was complete.
Fun facts:
- It took Eleanor 2000 Bearimys to finish Scanlon’s book, a joke Schur included because he still hasn’t finished it.
- We learn that Tommy Quine Quine made it in, along with the show’s real philosophy advisors, Professors Todd May and Pamela Hieronymi (seen in Chidi’s class).
- A few episodes ago in the judge’s chambers, Chidi asked for some warm pretzels, because if he was going out, he was going out with a belly full of warm pretzels. In Athens, Eleanor and Chidi walk down the street eating koulouri, a typical snack that is sooort of like a soft pretzel! He’s going out with a belly full of sort-of soft pretzels.
- Eleanor and Chidi are the first people to be together for thousands and thousands of years and still use the terms girlfriend and boyfriend.
- The music played over Chidi’s party is the incredible Spiegel im Spiegl by Avro Part. It broke me.
- Someone translated the calendar that Chidi gave Eleanor, and two of the big chunks of text are lyrics to “The Power of Love”. There’s also a day called Monday2.
Eleanor and Michael
My favorite trashbag and the best demon in the world had the most unbelievable journeys. Michael went from an evil demon wanting to torture humans in a new fun way to helping save all of humanity and truly loving humans more than anything. Eleanor went from a mean loner who was Arizona shrimp horny to saving humanity with her best friends. Her ethical journey, shown from the layman’s perspective, helped simplify the immense concepts of the show, making all the lofty goals palatable and natural. When you think about how much she sucked on earth, it really shows how strong and how smart this new system is, how much it could help nearly everybody and how even people who suck may be worthy of redemption. Eleanor was not a good person before, and now she is our hero.
However, she’s not ready to move on, despite years now without Chidi, even though she wants to be ready. Letting him go was one of her most selfless acts, showing how much she’s grown. But she needs to keep helping the people close to her who remain, so she can be sure she did everything she could to make them happy. First, that means a return to my favorite person in the entire world, Mindy St. Clair. Mindy stayed in the Medium Place this entire forking time, rebooting Derek so many times that now he is, I don’t even know what he is, an all-powerful being that is at once a singular point in space but also contains space itself, whose moment of creation is now the same as the inevitable heat death of the universe. So yeah, he sounds super annoying. Niednagel outdid himself on this new Derek form, with the swirling martini glasses that also have Dereks in them, and those Dereks also have martini glasses. It’s INCREDIBLE.
Mindy is still crabby and blasé about her existence. It makes a kind of poignant, lovely sense that she is the worst case version of Eleanor, if Eleanor continued to always be alone, and that’s why Eleanor needs to help her. It makes me cry all over again thinking about how all their stories connect. Mindy doesn’t want just anyone in charge of her if she decides to go through the system so she can go to the Good Place – but now Tahani is an architect (with the best line, “Mindy St. Clair as I neither live nor breathe”) who could handle her case. It’s beautiful, as is Mindy’s thank you to Eleanor about how she never gave a crap about herself, so it’s nice that Eleanor gave a crap about her. Of course her capper is the hysterical line “I’m really glad I filmed you having sex”. Typical Mindy.
But ensuring Mindy’s eventual salvation isn’t enough. The most important player in this whole epic is still left: Michael. The reveal of what Eleanor realizes she needs to do for Michael is magically done, starting with Maya Rudolph smacking her desk and shouting “COCKAMAMIE” as no one else could. I was in the middle of thinking ‘that was one of the best moments ever’ but then it cut to the one that rips your heart out: Eleanor saying, “Michael, come on in.” That mirroring of his famous first line, plus the mirroring of Eleanor’s 1.13 speech (“it took me a while to figure it out” &c.) absolutely slayed me. That is incredible writing. Michael becoming a real boy, Pinocchio, is of course where his story has been heading the entire time; I just never guessed. Eleanor and Janet warn him that life will be hard (“you have blood now!”) and that they don’t know if the system will still be the same when he dies, and he says “that’s what makes it special. I won’t exactly know what will happen after I die. Nothing more human than that.” That’s it man, that’s the whole thing. Oh man Ted Danson is THE BEST.
The waterworks continue courtesy of the Doorman finally getting a real frog and from another big Janet Moment. She was never sad about the others, because she knew they were ready to be at peace with the universe (and she lives all times at once so won’t be lonely (I’m really holding fast to that)). But with Michael going to earth, she’s really sad, because she will be worried about him the entire time and unable to help him. I love them.
The shots of Michael’s life on earth are hilarious – he does everything he wanted to do as a human, including take guitar lessons. He has a big oafy dog named Jason, with a Jaguars bowtie (of course he named the dog Jason, Jason is a puppy). And you may have noticed he lived in apartment 322 (the number of residents in his neighborhood) at 12358 Blatta Vista (the number of his neighborhood, and Blatta means cockroach. Team Cockroach for life). I don’t think I ever cried as hard as I did during the last five minutes, when Eleanor and Janet say goodbye, when Eleanor walks through the door, and when we finally see what happens. It’s just vague enough that everyone can decide for themselves what they want to believe. All the existing little firefly lights, the essences of people who have walked through the door, are joined by Eleanor’s lights, and they float to earth and inspire humans to be just a little better. I honestly still can’t believe what one of her little lights brought about on earth, to Michael Realman, the stupidest best name. This ending is so gorgeous and so perfect. I’m blown away by what they accomplished. Our humans worked so hard to become better people and they forever inspire others to do the same, regardless of their own form of existence. Some people don’t understand the point of the door, saying that if they had eternity in the Good Place they’d enjoy it forever. Well, bully for you. I get it though. As Chidi says in his philosophy class, “mortality offers meaning to our lives” (“and morality helps navigate that meaning”, the point of the show). All good things need to come to an end eventually, otherwise they wouldn’t be good. I feel that, my little chili babies. Hot diggity dog this was the best forking show ever.
Okay that’s enough crying. Take it sleazy.
