I forking hate this forking character. His sole personality trait is “asshole Boomer.” Every choice he makes traces back to this singular personality trait with no further motivation. I’d call him “one-note,” but the comparison to music implies that a modicum of artistic finesse went into the crafting of his character. He was only added so Michael Schur could make Important Political Points (read: “political commentary” based on straw man arguments) and his presence transforms the whole of the cast into forking morons who don’t realize they had a MILLION solutions on their hands to the idiotic problems he creates for them. Why did they just not tell him “Yo, Brent, Janet is super forking important to this neighborhood, and if you make too many requests you’ll be locked out of your account because the other residents need her too”? Why did they not assign him Derek? Why did they not tell him “So yeah, there’s a Best Place, but there’s also a Bad Place, and if you don’t shape up that’s where you’re going”? And don’t even get me forking started on how he’s treated as worse than Judge Gen, even though she was completely ready to commit forking genocide because she couldn’t be arsed to think up a reform to the points system.
I’m skipping his scenes in my rewatch and I fully predict this will prove he was an entirely unnecessary addition to the cast that nearly ruined a nearly-perfect show.
What I love about this is its acknowledgment that Jason had no intentions at all
this is all 100% true but it always made me really mad that Chidi’s “crime” was having a severe anxiety disorder like he needed understanding and therapy, sending him to the Bad Place for something he had literally no control over was incredibly fucked up
I feel like a less-surface theme of the show is that they’re all in a situation where they have been forced into bad patterns by forces outside their control - Chidi has SEVERE anxiety; Eleanor was forced by abuse and neglect to adopt a self-centered attitude from early childhood and, like many people with traumatic pasts, responds by not dealing with difficult emotions; Jason was very overtly raised in an environment where he got no education and all his models for behaviour were criminal and/or self-destructive; and Tahani has been raised in an environment where everything is performative and she is shot down for any genuine expression of unhappiness or non-material want. Just as Michael and Janet are made one way but changed by their experiences, the moral of the story is that things outside your control shape you but you can move away from them. That could easily be really insulting, in a sort of ‘just get over it’ way, but the idea isn’t that they change solely because they decide to be better - all six of them change because their circumstances change and give them the OPPORTUNITY to be better, because they’re finally given the support system they lack.
I like The Good Place because the whole show has since day 1 been predicated on the idea that black and white moral judgements made in a vacuum are bullshit, and that moral choices are informed by things outside our control, whether that be education, behaviour modelling, unfair treatment or mental health issues. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for our actions but it DOES mean we have to understand morality in the context of people’s varied experiences AND asks for the possibility that if their environment is improved, their ability to function as moral agents also improves.
