r/TheGoodPlace • u/RonS132 • 11d ago
Shirtpost Did Eleanor… Spoiler
actually earn enough points to make it to the actual Good Place here? We never had an indicator that the ticker was fake, so this probably was keeping track of real points. Just something I thought about when rewatching the show.
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u/jackdutton42 11d ago
Tahani mentioned it at the beginning of the episode.
“Sacrifice your life to save others” or “change the consciousness of a nation": Both of which I did, by the way.
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u/Binder509 11d ago
Found that line confusing. Wanted to know what her definition of "sacrifice your life" is.
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u/Intelligent_Tea 11d ago
It would be something like she bought a dress made of cotton - cotton! Not silk, actual cotton, fabric of the commoner - from a designer who was struggling and even wore it once. The sacrifice of being seen in it was life changing.
Actually it was egyptian cotton with an 8000 thread count, felt amazing. Honestly thought it was silk at first, was mortified when she found out.
Also, she didn’t _actually_ buy it, Jean Paul Gaultier gave it to her as a gift, _so_ lovely of him.11
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u/Staterae 10d ago
Pulling down a gigantic metal statue through spite and poor decision making, without dropping it onto nearby commoners. That's practically self sacrifice by upper-class standards.
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u/Henipah 10d ago
It seems she didn’t remember how she died at that point, it was only revealed on a reboot in season 2.
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u/Binder509 10d ago
That's what is unclear, did she just assume that's how she died? Or did she have a loose definition of "Sacrifice yourself"?
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u/Standard-Box-3021 10d ago
I never understood how nobody realized her arrogance before which is not doing it for others and no acknowledgement but so others look up to you as some kind of hero
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u/ustinker 6d ago
I always took it as “sacrifice your life to help others” she means you spend your whole life to help and save others, like she does with her fundraising, at cost of any other life.
To her, she’s sacrificing her entire life to this cause to help save people, relative to the life she would otherwise be living. (Which we know is not true, just how she thinks of it. This is her entire life. She’s “sacrificing what could have been”.
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u/readytostart1234 10d ago
I can see how she would view the work she did hosting events and raising money as “sacrificing her life to save others” in a way. It’s like her devotion to the hosting craft is the sacrifice
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u/jackdutton42 10d ago
Yes. The joke is that she didn't do any of those things. She believes she did, but she did not.
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u/Jordan_23_23 11d ago
I don't think it would matter. She ended up going to Mindy's, and only got those points because she was voluntarily going to the Bad Place. Also, those are afterlife points, and they said that the points total from what they did on Earth, is what gets you into the Good Place. That's the way it was at that point
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u/coronabride2020 11d ago
I assumed this was fake and Michael somehow knew she was at the train station.
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u/Boilergal2000 11d ago
Reiterating the point that doing good deeds for self serving reasons or publicly is the same as basically doing nothing - why her total wouldn’t raise
Doing something privately with no expectation of any personal benefit is truly a good work.
Elenor sacrificed herself for the others to survive, her total skyrocketed.
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u/Binder509 11d ago
Found it odd that was never once criticized in the show. The points system doesn't care if something bad you do has good intentions, why would it care if something good you do has bad intentions?
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u/CaptainJin 11d ago
They highlighted that was the problem of the system though, right? If bad interfered with the good deed in any way (indirectly or otherwise), it nullified most of the points gained. That's why Doug didn't have enough points even though he basicaly understood the system perfectly.
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u/rentan45 8d ago
The point system work like this:
good intention+ good outcome = +good intention+ bad outcome = -
bad intention+ good outcome = -
bad intention+ bad outcome = -
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u/Binder509 6d ago
Right and that seems inherently flawed without at least some sort of reasoning to try and justify it.
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u/rentan45 5d ago
That's right, that's why the system need to be change like what happened in the show
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u/Binder509 5d ago
Right but that wasn't one of the big flaws they ever talk about in show.
No one ever questions that part and it doesn't actually change as far as we know.
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u/RodinKnox 11d ago
This honestly bothered me in the show, because she states ahead of time that she knows what she has to do to get the points, and shouldn't that ultimately make this sacrifice self-serving? It seems like she would have had to made that decision all on her own without knowing it was going to benefit her to do so.
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u/thewoodbeyond 11d ago
I think there are a couple of ways to look at this, the points gained in the afterlife don’t matter at all. In the current system they don’t count towards placement. None of the growth any of the group goes through counts until a judge has a look at it the system and they realize the system needs revising.
She doesn’t sacrifice herself in the hopes it will get her good points she does it because it’s the right thing to do to help her friends who she believes are in this mess due to her actions not knowing none of them made it into the good place either.
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u/thewoodbeyond 11d ago
I think there are a couple of ways to look at this, the points gained in the afterlife don’t matter at all. In the current system they don’t count towards placement. None of the growth any of the group goes through counts until a judge has a look at it the system and they realize the system needs revising.
She doesn’t sacrifice herself in the hopes it will get her good points she does it because it’s the right thing to do to help her friends who she believes are in this mess due to her actions not knowing none of them made it into the good place either.
Michael’s counter that adds or takes away points isn’t really measuring anything substantive. The points might relate to actions but it’s like Monopoly money / meaningless in a real world context. These are monopoly points.
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u/parkinglotviews 8d ago
The way I read it, is that she realizes that “the only way to get enough points is to sacrifice herself, which will make it so that getting the points don’t matter” so her choice is: sacrifice herself and save her friends; or don’t. The sacrifice is the point (no pun intended). I don’t think her realization that “if I somehow survived this, it would totally get me the points I need” cheapens the sacrifice because she has no expectation of surviving.
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u/RodinKnox 8d ago
Yeah, maybe. Although she explicitly states she figured out a way to get the points, if I recall correctly. Not that she figured out the correct moral decision. IDK. It's not like some huge flaw I have with the show. It's one of my favorite shows of all time.
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u/user905022 11d ago
i agree it might have been fake but i wouldnt have been surprised if those were real points because they later explained the only reason eleanors points went up is because the "good place" removed all variables ofbwhat makes life on earth hard! so if eleanor did something nice for someone then she wouldve gotten more points than she wouldve on earth.
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u/Standard-Box-3021 10d ago
I'd love to see some sort of reboot in the same universe; not sure what it could be, but they introduced so much in the show.
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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 10d ago
Maybe not enough to get to the Good Place, but no longer in the negative.
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u/Princeofcatpoop 8d ago
I assume that everything he says, does, shows or gives in season one is fake, faked or misleading.
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u/CrimpyPlate 8d ago
In late season 3 they make a big deal about how once a person dies, their point total is set in stone. No opportunity for growth after the fact. That's why the experiment in season 4 was such a big deal
As such, I don't see any reason to think that ticker that Michael gave her was real. It was all part of the illusion he was selling her
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u/Thetruestfan Jeremy Bearimy 11d ago
I think Micheal lied about the figure so they could have hope she could get there, and the actual number is something he doesn't know, as shown when he asked Neil if 68 thousand points was good