What to do about the Good Place podcast?

November 2, 2018 8:24 PM

The Good Place podcast is great and adds a ton of cool detail to the show. It comes out on Friday morning after the Thursday night episode. But is it okay to post about it in the episode Fanfare?

Personally I go into fanfare immediately after the ep and then check again on Friday. And then I get podcast spoilers and I'm sad.

posted by k8t (17 comments total)

You can’t spoil her podcast it’s another story
posted by Space Coyote at 8:45 PM on November 2, 2018

I don’t see it as much different than quoting a paragraph of an article or an interview about an episode in a thread. I actually appreciate it, because I am not a podcast person and thus wouldn’t get the information at all.

The show is what’s key to me, everything else is gravy.
posted by rewil at 9:02 PM on November 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

I would really appreciate it if people didn’t post updates from the podcast right away. I get that it’s done as a service to people who don’t have time or don’t want to listen to the podcast, but I really enjoy listening to it (almost as much as watching the show, really!) and it kind of bums me out to have it “spoiled” before I can listen.
posted by lunasol at 9:33 PM on November 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I personally like the podcast notes in the episode fanfare post. I just skim over them until I've actually watched the episode, and then I go back to read them. I don't listen to the podcast, so I wouldn't otherwise get to enjoy those details.
posted by zeek321 at 12:26 AM on November 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

If I haven’t watched an episode yet, I skip fanfare until I have. If it’s important to you to hear the podcast in your own time and not receive “spoilers” of the episode behind the scene details, why not just skip the post until you have?

It seems weird to mandate other people not post on a released episode/podcast because you haven’t caught up yet.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 1:10 AM on November 3, 2018 [8 favorites]

Yeah, that's a good point, which I realized later. From now on I'm going to skip fanfare until I have heard the podcast episode...
posted by Pendragon at 2:23 AM on November 3, 2018

I appreciate that people post nuggets from the podcast so I don’t have to listen.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:16 AM on November 3, 2018 [8 favorites]

It’s not a mandate, it’s a request. And I’d rather not skip the thread because I have watched the episode and I love seeing what other people thought about it. I guess I don’t see why it’s so hard for people to wait a few days.
posted by lunasol at 7:45 AM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

True - but why is it hard to wait to read the thread til you’ve had a chance to listen to the podcast?
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:11 AM on November 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

"A few days" is pretty nebulous, better to have something firm in mind probably.
posted by rewil at 8:18 AM on November 3, 2018

I guess I don’t see why it’s so hard for people to wait a few days.

I don't want to be all "Take my ball and go home" about this, but if the consensus is that podcast "spoilers" have to wait a few days, then I'm not going to post them at all. I listen to the podcast on my Friday morning commute and pretty much immediately post what I remember when I get to work. I'm not going to remember what it was that I wanted to highlight on Monday or whenever (more precisely, I'm not going to trust my memory), and I'm not going to listen to the podcast again.

I think that the podcast falls under the general FanFare spoiler rules: If it's aired, then it's fair game. I can put "PODCAST NOTES" in bold and all-caps if that will help people skip it.
posted by Etrigan at 8:36 AM on November 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

Yeah, it seems to make more sense for those who don’t want podcast spoilers to wait a few days to join the thread.

I enjoy the podcast notes in the thread as I don’t listen to it.
posted by sixswitch at 10:20 AM on November 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

I can put "PODCAST NOTES" in bold and all-caps if that will help people skip it.

I don't have super strong feelings here, but this change would be really nice for me, a laggy podcast listener. I would appreciate it! I also love having the podcast notes in the thread, so this is a nice compromise?

Everything is fine.
posted by purpleclover at 2:34 PM on November 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I also really like the idea of very clearly labeling the podcast notes, or using the spoiler tags. I view the podcast closer to finding what happened in the book version of an adapted TV series rather than just another interview - mostly because it's so much more insider information than you'd usually get from just one interview, and it's happens so close to the airing of the actual episode - unlike a comic-con panel or anything like that. The podcast is something that is not part of the episode proper but can be spoiled if you tell me what happens in it.

As it is, I haven't been able to watch TGP until Friday evenings, then the next chance I have to listen to the podcast is my Monday commute. And it's a nice schedule, but it means that the discussion has died down before I can even think to check fanfare Monday evening/Tuesday. Being able to jump in a few days earlier without spoiling a separate piece of media would be nice.

(Honestly, I like the idea of posting the podcast as a separate podcast discussion, but I'd deal with spoiler tags).
posted by dinty_moore at 7:57 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

I also really like the idea of very clearly labeling the podcast notes, or using the spoiler tags.

Spoiler tags don't work on all browsers, in particular on my work browser.
posted by Etrigan at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2018

+1 to appreciating the podcast notes, and wanting them to continue in-thread.
Adding a "PODCAST NOTES" warning seems like a fair compromise to me
posted by coriolisdave at 1:53 PM on November 5, 2018

I like the idea of the PODCAST NOTES warning! Also, I said this in an earlier comment, but I want to reiterate that I think it's cool you do this, Etrigan, and I know you do it as a service to the community. I wish I could listen to the podcast right away, but my schedule just kind of doesn't work out that way.
posted by lunasol at 2:45 PM on November 5, 2018