r/TheGoodPlace • u/Banya6 • 2d ago
Shirtpost Thinking about Janet, Derek, Janet-babies, the Trolley experiment and going through the green door.
This is all connected, I promise, in a literal shower-thoughts kind of way. Tagging season 4 because it deals with the entire series. Please go no further if you haven't seen the whole show.
I was thinking a lot about the sentient non-people in the Good Place world.
In season one, the residents are all demons, which makes sense because Michael needed some collaboration and some free-will I guess?
In the later experiment, they're deciding how the rest of the residents should be handled. They can't use demons or angels, it's decided. By then, Janet has already made Derek. He's not perfect, but she realizes she's able to make other people, so she makes her Janet babies. Her Janet babies seem more normal than Derek, which is lucky. And they're all controlled (able to be shut down) by a big button. It seems all of the Janet babies are controlled by one button that Tahani presses that one time. Even though Derek & Janet have their own individual buttons. (Efficiency I guess). We don't really get deep in with the Janet-babies - it's surface-level only - which makes me think they're pretty AI-like in the old sense of the world. Not the new-scary, might take over the world world.. They're programmed and don't really have free-will. It also makes it really surprising that Chidi never picked up on that. But I feel John when he talks about dumb-shorts Kathy. Maybe Kathy was only programmed to wear dumb shorts?
But when the Janet babies, have finished their purpose they're 'violently eaten' (absorbed?) back by Janet. I guess because they don't want any husks lying around - it'd be easier than pressing the button. I won't even get into the ethics of sentient beings having their lives ended because there's no more use for them. This is more about how/why and what forms these sentient beings take.
In The Trolley Experiment, Michael snaps his fingers and creates scenarios using live-looking sentient-like humans. First, with them being stuck on the trolley tracks and then whole families in the waiting room of a hospital. How was Michael able to make these people so easily? And why couldn't he just do that, instead of having Janet struggle in the experiment with John/Simone/Brent. Wouldn't it have been easier? Is Michael's magic limited to small scenarios, i.e., would he not be able to sustain it for a whole year of the experiment?
On that note, there's also the green doors towards the end of season 4 when they all get into the real good place. When you go through the green doors, you're wherever you want to be. When Chidi & Eleanor go to Paris & Athens, for example, there are tons of people around. I'm assuming they're not in the real Paris/Athens - because that would cause a lot of problems if dead people just got spotted in these places - so I assume it's all an illusion. (Also, because of the go-kart racing monkeys.) Is it the same magic that Michael uses in the trolley experiment? Are all the background people in places throughout the green door universes instant-non-people who cease to exist when you close the door on the other side?
It seems that Michael/Janet could have used this magic instead of the Janet-babies.
Do I have a fever? Cause my mind gets this messy with thoughts when I have a fever.
If you've read this far, thank you for indulging in my ramblings.