- Recent episode was a nice rebuttal to the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror. People acted like San Junipero was an exception to most of Black Mirror, but I found it more depressing as the other episodes — an eternity of hanging out at lame dance parties in one little town (with none of your family!) is a pretty crummy afterlife. Depressing on a cosmic level IMO. Makes more sense to me to read as a rebuttal to tech evangelists, whose utopian visions and solutions can never match religion's, whether or not the writers intended it that way.

- Their idea of optional existential suicide as solution to eternal ennui was pretty weak IMO. I liked the way Forever handled this better — on to the next unknown adventure.

- In some ways, the show reminds me of Hollywood's take on Christmas. Every Christmas movie goes on about "Christmas spirit" etc. while assiduously avoiding any mention of Christ. Somewhat analogously, it's funny that the Good Place was totally avoided any questions of who built any of "this." Nobody has asked "where do we come from? Who put us on earth? Who made the judge? Where are the 'good'/angelic answers to the demons?" It asks what it means to be good, but not so much why it matters. So much discussion of secular thinkers' conceptions of "good," but not of religious thinkers'. The writers have done a pretty nimble job of making us/the characters forget to ask really obvious questions about religion and who built the structure of existence.

- Still intrigued to see how they end it. Are they actually going to redesign the afterlife, or is it all a test after which they get to go to the real good place? If their redesign is really it, how does it end? They all enjoy their new good place for a million years and then finally decide to end their existence as there's nothing left to experience? Do things continue to run without them? Do they outlast everyone else in the afterlife (again, where do people come from?) and then turn out the lights on their way out?