Auchtoon!

Spoiler Alert: If you have never seen the television series, The Good Place, consider reading no further. It’s best to watch it from the very beginning, and the reveal I’m about to, well, reveal is so much better experienced as intended.

So there are four main characters, modern-day human beings who have died and think they have gone to the good place (heaven). They haven’t. It’s a massively arranged hoax to torture them in a unique way (not exactly the bad place but a satellite operation). For three of the characters, it’s pretty clear why they are not in the good place — they were objectively terrible people on earth. For the fourth one, Chidi, it’s not so obvious.

Chidi was a professor of ethics. He is kind and earnest and giving. But it’s his striving for perfect morality that is his undoing. He overthinks every choice to the point of incapacitation and ultimately drives away loved ones and fails his friends. He is not at all evil. Just super, super annoying.

I’m trying not to be a Chidi with college football. I recognize that there is LOTS wrong with it, particularly the big D1 version. And, yes, recent developments have accelerated it toward awfulness. But, God help me, I still occasionally enjoy watching a game.