Put a brown bag on their doorstep and set it on fire.

One of the first things they revealed, other than some of the voice cast, was that they were steering it away from the darkness (unfortunately it looks like they ended up in Mr. McGreggor's garden).

It's probably the first thing that springs to mind for most people when they hear or read the title, an odd decision for sure.  

Review.

Snippet:

Nobody is suggesting the BBC should explicitly set out to unsettle unsuspecting viewers and no doubt there would be an outcry if Watership Down arrived slathered in buckets of blood. But without the darkness is Watership Down really Watership Down? And if you take away that malice and melancholy, what’s left? It’s a question the new adaptation never gets around to answering.

Unlikely wrote:

… the actual twist was that the obvious twist wasn't actually the twist after all.

Yep. That nails it. Good series, I wasn’t expecting it to match up to the first.

I preferred the first.  Second relied too much on "spooky weirdo cult" tropes.  Still compelling stuff though, and I hope there's a third.

A third would be good but I hope they can make Bill Pullman look less like Robin Williams, it's very distracting.

I can picture in my mind's ear exactly how Pullman would say 'spooky weirdo cult tropes'.

One more episode of House of Cards to go. Just glad they had the decency to restrict this season to 8 episodes. It's utter trash.

More and more I feel like The Good Place is hindered by its short run time. For the show it wants to be, more than a series of jokes, it dilutes the number of jokes which might be fine if every joke was a smash hit but about half the jokes are just standard boring repetive crap (chidi has a stomach ache!).

The whole feeling this series has been so meandering and directionless which felt like it was for the purpose of creating har di har situations but they didn’t feel real to me, just kind of OTT to the point of drunkenness.

I thought Chidi's stomach aches were meant to be more a quick short-hand for showing when he's exceptionally stressed than a joke at this point.

Yossarian wrote:

TGP isn’t all that funny, but it may just be the most wildly inventive sitcom ever made. That counts for something, to me at least.

Exactly that.  The standard sitcom formula is "how can we ensure that by the end of the episode everything is back to where we started from?"  Whilst that's changed over time, The Good Place is the only sitcom that (now) seems to actively say "how can we completely tear everything up before the next episode, but still keep the characters true to themselves?"  

It's not "The Most Hilarious Sitcom Of All Time", but it is, as you say, easily the most inventive.

Also agree that Chidi's stomach aches aren't a joke, so much as a signifier, both of his anxiety and latterly...

Not really, TBF. It won’t spoil anything.

RamSteelwood wrote:

dammit Tin, isn't that last bit a spoiler for someone (like me) only on Episode 8 of this series?

Relax, it isn’t what you think it might be.

tin_robot wrote:

RamSteelwood wrote:

dammit Tin, isn't that last bit a spoiler for someone (like me) only on Episode 8 of this series?

The reason it was on another line was because I intended to spoiler tag it.  Then I didn't for some bizarre reason.  Really sorry.

No probs. I didn't mean it to come out quite as 'upset', was initially going for a jokey outrage but also pointing out if it is a spoiler might be best to hide it anyway! But it's too early, and I've not enough coffee and wit to pull it off as intended!

Didn't know a thing about this, but it looks intriguing. Kind of X-Men with a dash of Lemony Snicket weirdness and Watchmen superhero subversion. Could be great. Could be less great. We'll see...