page_title: Janet(s)
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: Janet(s) / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: Stephen Merchant in November 2009.
context_page_description: "Janet(s)" is the tenth episode of the third season of the American fantasy-comedy television series The Good Place. It is the thirty-sixth episode overall and originally aired in the United States on NBC on December 6, 2018 as the show's mid-season finale. The episode was written by Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan and directed by Morgan Sackett.
  The plot picks up from the end of the previous episode, with the four humans entering Janet's "void" to escape demons from the Bad Place. However, upon arriving, they find themselves transformed into versions of Janet. While there, Eleanor tries to address her romantic feelings for Chidi; when he denies any feelings for her, she has an identity crisis that threatens to destroy Janet's void. Meanwhile, Michael and Janet visit Accounting, the section of the afterlife that calculates point totals for people's good and bad actions during their lives, and try to figure out if the Bad Place is manipulating the points system.
  The premise of the episode originated during The Good Place's second season, and planning for it began earlier than normal due to filming challenges.
context_section_description: For the episode, Janet's void was represented by an entirely white set, though director Morgan Sackett decided to add furniture to prevent the audience from becoming bored by the setting. Filming required significantly more planning and visual effects than normal; Schur later called it "the opposite of how [they] usually make television" due to the precision required. Though some scenes used stand-ins in costumes and wigs, many were filmed with only metal poles to represent the other characters. Carden remarked that "you kind of lose your mind a little bit" in those situations and called it the hardest part of filming for her. To film the kiss, Carden had to kiss a pair of wax lips placed atop a pole, which was a particularly difficult shot due to how her body had to be positioned and the alignment of the shots. After combining her multiple roles, Carden spent about 40 minutes performing in the episode, which was only 22 minutes long.
  At one point, Eleanor transforms into a series of different individuals as she loses her sense of self. Morgan and Siegal credited the idea to Schur and explained that they carefully scripted what each new person said for both emotional impact and humor based upon who would say the line. In the same scene, visual effects producer David Niednagel used special effects to simulate the void and the furniture breaking up as Eleanor's struggles continue. Carden, Schur, and Siegal all remarked that there were instances during filming when the crew wondered if the final product would make any sense.
  Stephen Merchant, co-creator of the British version of The Office, makes a guest appearance in the episode; Schur worked as a writer on The Office's American adaptation. In the episode, Merchant holds a mug reading "Existence's Best Boss", an allusion to a similar mug used by Michael Scott. The mug was printed with this slogan, but Merchant held it the wrong way during filming, so the words were reapplied using special effects during post-production.
  In one scene, Janet accidentally sings an excerpt of Cher's "Believe" as her void becomes unstable. Carden sang a version of the song for the episode, which was then auto-tuned, but Schur explained that they ultimately went with the original version because it was easier to get permission to use it that way.
caption: Stephen Merchant guest-stars in the episode as Neil, the head of Accounting.[8]
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