Existential Crisis

The Good Place 2×4

Michael: Here are the torture ideas you asked me to write up for next week...
Vicky: So long. You're not supposed to be torturing me. From now on, make all your memos one page max with pictures.

Michael: It really tucks my nuggets. I worked so hard on my torture ideas, and theirs are so basic. These millennials, they have no work ethic. Oh, sorry, a millennial is someone who has only been torturing people for a thousand years. A millennial.

Eleanor: Is that what we should call you? "Demon"?
Michael: Well, I mean, it's not really accurate, and we consider it to be a little racist. But it's fine.

Chidi: Look, we have to start somewhere. So how about Socrates?
Michael: All right, all right. Let me just get into the mind-set of a human. "Oh, I'm a human, and my breathing tube is next to my eating tube. Oh, and look, my arms end in stupid little sticks..." Okay. Proceed.

Chidi: Maybe the reason Michael can't latch onto the ideas is because he's immortal... If you live forever, then ethics don't matter to you because, basically, there's no consequences for your actions. You tell a lie, who cares? Wait a few trillion years, the guilt will fade.

Chidi: Before I can teach Michael to be good, I have to force him to think about what we used to think about: that life has an end, and therefore our actions have meaning.
Eleanor: That's what you used to think about? I used to think about how it's weird they don't make pants that are just one big pant leg for both your legs.
Chidi: You mean a skirt?

Michael: Searching for meaning is philosophical suicide. How does anyone do anything... when you understand the fleeting nature of existence?
Eleanor: It's pretty easy, man. I mean, you learn about death when you're a kid, and it's just not that big of a deal.

Chidi: No, no. This is worse. I mean, an existential crisis is an acknowledgement that life is absurd. And that absurdity needs to be confronted, but this is just denial. And at any moment that denial could collapse, and he'll be a mess. He is a Jenga tower of sadness.

Eleanor: ...the guy contemplates his own death for one forking minute and completely loses his grip on reality?

Eleanor: Do you know what's really happening right now? You're learning what it's like to be human. All humans are aware of death. So we're all a little bit sad... all the time. That's just the deal.
Michael: Sounds like a crappy deal.
Eleanor: Well, yeah. It is. But we don't get offered any other ones. And if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. I've been there. And everybody's been there. So don't fight it.

Eleanor: In the words of a very wise Bed, Bath, and Beyond employee I once knew... "Go ahead and cry all you want. But you're going to have to pay for that toilet plunger."

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