One of the greatest forking jokes in The Good Place is that it’s impossible to swear in their analogue of Heaven, with any attempt to use profanity being automatically replaced like they’re living in an 80s action film edited for television.
It’s a legitimately great joke, neatly sidestepping the fact that these characters would definitely swear a blue streak in real life while ensuring that the show would also be able to screen without controversy on mainstream network television.
Or… or so you would think.
It has been claimed on Reddit that E4, the spinoff channel of UK broadcaster Channel 4, has been screening episodes of The Good Place with the “swears” cut out. Which is just bizarre.
And aside from anything else, it makes certain bits of the show inexplicable. For example, the establishing scene where Eleanor Shellstrop – the character played by Kristen Bell – first realises she can’t swear and has this little wrinkle explained to her is presumably missing altogether. How does it even make runtime?
Similarly, the season 3 twist when she and her colleagues finally get to the (actual) forking Good Place, the giveaway that they’ve made it is that they can’t swear. That’s what’s happening in the gif embedded at the beginning of this article and, again, is made utterly unintelligible if she’s arbitrarily announcing it rather than having a sudden glorious realisation based on a thing that’s happening.
Also, the end of season 1 twist. Also, the end of season 2 twist. Also… actually, it happens a lot.
Then again, maybe we’re being unfair and ignorant and maybe “fork” is a proper swear word in the UK.
After all, Australians responded with absolute hilarity when the US president misspelled a very simple word in one of his recent panicked (and then deleted) tweet, in which he replacing “moat” with a very Aussie-specific term for the female front-bum.
If anything, maybe we should follow The Good Place example and censor all words in all things. It’s the only way to be absolutely forking certain.