My review from when I watched it: A douchey woman, played by Kristen Bell, ends up in heaven due to a clerical error and has to pretend to be the person everyone thinks she is to avoid hell. She has the help of her nerdy ethics professor "soulmate", cue lots of cute odd couple/fake dating moments. I knew a REALLY BIG SPOILER going in that actually made the show way more fun for me, will probably make a spoilery post for anyone else who's interested, but will just say here that I thought it would run out of steam but instead it stayed interesting and the full season makes for a good story. It's made by the same people as Brooklyn 99 and Parks and Recreation, and has that mix of humour and drama, plus some exploration of the nature of good and evil, the possibility of redemption etc. AND instead of having a fat guy everyone is mean to, there's no fat people at all!
I knew there was a twist going in, but not what it was. So even though I was expecting something to happen, I was really blown away by the reveal. Ted Danson's evil grin was such an incredible moment.
Although I'm glad for myself to have been unspoiled, I bet watching it with the knowledge that they were really in the Bad Place was also an interesting experience! I have to imagine they were dropping clues the whole way.
C and I just finished it a few weeks ago. ^_^ I'm really intrigued and excited for season 2.
I think about halfway through it occurred to me that they might actually be in the Bad Place, so I was pleased to be right about that, but I had no idea how it would play out if I was right (and didn't try to work it out while we were watching the second half--I was just enjoying the ride).
Me too! I had wondered at various points during the season how they would sustain the premise -- although as I told sqbr, I knew there was a twist but no details about it. It never occurred to me that they might already be in the Bad Place, though. Like you, I tried not to think too hard about what was coming next, just have fun with the story being presented to me, and it was so worth it.
I enjoyed it a lot! I'm very curious about season 2 and how the show will change: a big reason why the big twist worked was because it was a different show than most viewers thought they were watching, and it won't work like this a second time. However I'm not looking forward to meeting beginning-of-the-show!Eleanor again, I really disliked her and even thought about not continuing before she started to change.
I didn't mind Eleanor because I knew she was supposed to be a terrible person, but I can understand how she might make others nope out. I'm hopeful that, by getting her message to find Chidi from her first time around, that she can get back to trying to become a better person faster. But we'll see how it works out.
One of the things that I found interesting was that the things cited as reasons we should have known this was 'the bad place' were, a lot of them, invisible because we, the viewers, knew we were watching TV! Like, misfit who doesn't fit in, forced to pretend? Classic! Odd couple? Classic! Saved by a wacky coincidence? Classic!
Yes! I came across an article that made that point in my thirst to read everything about this series I could get my hands on, and I thought it was really telling. Because we expect conflict and wacky shenanigans and uncomfortable situations from television, especially from sitcoms -- I don't think the trick would have worked nearly as well in any other genre. So, are all the sitcom characters living in hell? It's a fascinating way of looking at the question, anyway.
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Although I'm glad for myself to have been unspoiled, I bet watching it with the knowledge that they were really in the Bad Place was also an interesting experience! I have to imagine they were dropping clues the whole way.
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They were! As I saw someone else say, Michael booting a dog into the sun was a pretty big red flag :)
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I think about halfway through it occurred to me that they might actually be in the Bad Place, so I was pleased to be right about that, but I had no idea how it would play out if I was right (and didn't try to work it out while we were watching the second half--I was just enjoying the ride).
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I'm very curious about season 2 and how the show will change: a big reason why the big twist worked was because it was a different show than most viewers thought they were watching, and it won't work like this a second time. However I'm not looking forward to meeting beginning-of-the-show!Eleanor again, I really disliked her and even thought about not continuing before she started to change.
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