Now that you’ve seen the final, I thought I’d just give a little low down on how we landed on all of it [for anyone interested in really getting into the weeds].
(Also, spoiler alert both on The Good Place, and on our presentation. If you wanna just watch the video without all the spoilers, you can see it here.)
So. Here’s how the year went (to the best that I remember it now, some time later).
You can write any moment of the show for any character you want throughout the year. The only rule is that the first song has to be for your main character. (I actually think it’s supposed to be the first song your main character sings in the show, but I’m not 100% sure on that anymore.)
Anyway, so, our first song was Eleanor at the party where she messes everything up. It’s called “I Absolutely Belong Here,” and it’s her being sarcastic and making fun of people, and Chidi trying to keep everything in check.
It went over fine, but not great. People ultimately didn’t think it was a moment worth musicalizing, or doing it in the way we did. So we just threw that one out and went on.
The next one was Chidi’s “What Is Ethical?” A good moment for a major character. An indecisive guy. I worked really hard researching philosophers and stuff, which was fun for me!
And overall, they really liked it. They did want some comedy infused if possible, and the stakes to rise a little if we could. So, in the first draft it was basically just Chidi doing all the wondering, and in the second draft, we added more from Michael to help with the urgency/raising the stakes. And we added impatience from Eleanor to try to up the comedy.
The notes were great, straightforward, and doable for this one. So, we just quietly did them and didn’t re-present, because we felt confident. This went in the pile of ones we were doing.
Okay, so then we musicalized “Don’t Kill Me!” – which was Janet begging not to be shut down. I don’t fully remember why we picked this moment. The song went over fine in class. They generally liked this song, although they thought instead of it mainly being panicked about her not wanting to die that it should be more super dramatic in an almost melodramatic way. And we moved on with that being a strong maybe to go after the new direction (though in a perfect world, we’d find better).
Then, we tried “You Know Where You Belong,” which was Trevor talking to Eleanor, basically telling her kind of what’s the point in fighting it all. You know you belong in hell with us.
On that one, they wanted us to take an entirely different direction (which is fair). They didn’t think it should be the idea of “this is your fate,” but insteeeeead, “Look how cool hell is! You can drink! You can smoke! Have a fun time!” And that is a more fun idea for a song, to be sure.
So, we will get to it. And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.