The Good Place spoilers . . . . . . . . . The one weakness of a visual medium vs a verbal one is not being able to do cool tricks with things like narrative tense and person to create immediacy The one thing I really wish TGP had done was make it clear Michael is alive right now
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But Michael popped out of Jeremy Bearimy into the straight line He doesn't know who will win the Super Bowl or the election He doesn't know if a bus will hit him next Tuesday or he'll live into his 90s And he doesn't know what happens after he dies Just like you and me
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If The Good Place were a novel I would have written most of it in traditional third person limited POV past tense The first line would be "Eleanor opened her eyes" But the ending would switch to present tense
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I know this particular trope ("Somewhere, there is...") is very twee but I hope you'll indulge me anyway:
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There's a neighborhood in Arizona where, most days, if it's not *too* hot, you can find an old man walking his dog around three or four in the afternoon (He always makes it home before five on weekdays because he never misses the reruns of Friends on channel 12)
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He's retired, no one really knows from what, but he just moved here a few months ago -- for the cheaper rent and the sunshine, he says A surprising number of people know him -- he's the kind of guy who signs up for things to keep busy, bowling, bar trivia, book clubs
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He could be anything between a somewhat weathered 65 or a very spry 80 He talks about watching his cholesterol and his sodium, a "promise I made to my old lady" He lives alone and wears no wedding ring; when people ask he just laughs and says "I'll see her again soon enough"
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He's a total silver fox, some say, but it never goes past flirting, even the one time Dave's sister was throwing herself all over him at the New Year's party Some people assume he's still in mourning over his wife; others think the wife is just a story to stop people asking
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One time in the hot tub at the Y, Tim from his swim class asked him to his face if he liked men or women He gave that same easy grin and said, "At my age, I like everybody. It's easier than disliking them" And that was that
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That's the one thing people notice about him He laughs At other people's bad jokes, at his own Whenever there's a TV on he laughs at all the jokes even when he's not really watching
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When he's walking his dog and almost runs into someone and they spend thirty seconds each trying to get out of the other's way and get tangled in each other's leashes He doubles over laughing at that, and it's so genuine your anger dissipates and you end up laughing too
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Everyone's sure he must be throwing his bar trivia games on purpose because the drunker he gets the more questions he knows He's surprisingly well read, though he often derails book club conversations into racy details of the author's personal life rather than the story
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Rosario from his book club thinks he must've been a professor did catch him in a slip-up once - he once quoted "To love another person is to see the face of God" from Hugo's Les Misérables When she told him that was from the musical, he made a face and said "I don't read French"
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He does speak Spanish, though, very well -- and Mandarin, and Tagalog He just shrugs and says he spends a lot of time listening, he has a good ear When there was that ugly business with Dolores' insurance he spent all day at the office to translate for her
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He gets surprisingly heated about it "You can't let bureaucrats intimidate you and you can't let them hide behind their job description Every single one of them is a human being who is responsible for the consequences of their actions" Dolores is sure he's an old union guy
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He's not much for politics most of the time though He's willing to talk about whatever you're willing to talk about, if you'll tolerate the constant dad jokes and puns He's a loyal supporter of the Suns and the Diamondbacks, though football isn't really his thing
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(He says it's over the TBI thing, although a bunch of guys at the bar say he got a lot of dirty looks cheering on the Rams against the Cardinals in December, although it wasn't even over a touchdown but their new backup QB throwing a completion)
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He likes the Chiefs over the 49ers for the Super Bowl, although he says he's only coming to the party for the nachos He likes Little Women for the Oscars He doesn't like talking about the election, he mutters about feeling like 2016 was "his fault", but we've all been there
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He's not one of those retirees who's helpless with the Internet, but he's not online much He makes a weird joke all the time about getting a Facebook account "for the ads" He makes that same weird face if you try to talk to him about trendy Netflix shows, or podcasts
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If you come over to his apartment sometime you'll find the TV plugged into rabbit ears and tuned to trashy reruns while he reads through his junk mail or folds his laundry He can't get enough of those old school shows David and Maddie, Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel
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But it's generally hard to get opinions on anything serious out of him People who've known him a while realize they don't know much about him because he asks all the questions Some dotty old people talk, but he's the kind who listens Always hungry for news of people's lives
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It can be a little much to take sometimes No one who knows him really hates him, but he's... an acquired taste Still, if you're ever in Phoenix and you're okay with big dogs, I'm sure he'd love it if you came over just to chat
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(Do you like frozen yogurt? Not really? Neither does he There's a great old fashioned ice cream parlor downtown if you'd like to meet up there, his treat Yeah, yeah, cholesterol, but... you only live once)
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End of conversation
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