 Good Omen's season two. How can there be a season two when season one was about the book and it covered the whole book and there is no second book? What is season two? We were all wondering does this mean that for season two they're just gonna make it up? But then Neil Gaiman, wiser than all of us mere mortals, did point out that the original was also made up so. So Good Omen's The Book was written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It is a standalone novel and it is about an angel and a demon working together to thwart the apocalypse. As I said, season one of the show covered the entirety of book one. Valentine's and Purposes would be expected to be just a mini series, not an ongoing TV show. But it was really really popular, really really successful. People really really liked the main characters so obviously when there is popularity there is money on the table so people are interested they will make it. But was there anything left to tell? So this book is about the apocalypse and spoilers they prevent the apocalypse. So like where do you go from there? Is there is there anything left hanging? Like is there any further story to tell here? Is like a natural story thing to happen that you could be like oh well season two could obviously be about you know that? Not really? But also yes there definitely was. What comes after the apocalypse? A lot of TV shows have this problem. So in the first season they'll have a pretty low stakes but menacing villain and then in the second season they have a more menacing villain with higher stakes and then season three they have even more villains with even higher stakes and then by season four things will start to go off the rails and then season five will just be chaos. Good Omens the book was a standalone novel that was not trying to plan for a multiple season story arc for a TV show. It was just a book that two dudes wrote together. That's it. So they weren't really like trying to pace themselves. They went straight for the apocalypse. Where do you go from there? Do you try to escalate even beyond that? Like something bigger and more impressive, more alarming, more bigger in scope than the apocalypse? I mean I guess you could do that but if you're not going to do that then what are you going to do? So here I want to briefly talk about Game of Thrones. So season eight of Game of Thrones was a disaster. I'm not going to go into any specific so if you haven't seen Game of Thrones or you haven't read those books you don't want to spoil. I was speaking to you but born obviously because everyone else has seen it already. Season eight was by all accounts terrible. I don't know of anybody that thought it was good. That includes the cast and crew. There were there were many reasons that season eight was bad. There isn't just one reason for that but one of the biggest reasons and surely the reason that like was most important probably to me and to people like me, readers like me, is the characters. There was a lot of like world building shenanigans and things like that that did not make any sense, did piss me off were bad but the the most egregious thing I think was the characters. So the characters in the show even while they were still on book there were changes being made and the characters in the show even to begin with were slightly different from their book counterparts and as the show went on and as more and more small changes and tweaks were made to their storylines and to their relationships and then when they went off book then their storylines entirely kind of like shifted and changed based on what the show runners were had in mind. By the time we got to season eight the characters that were in the show were no longer the characters that are in the books and the endings in the show if they are truly endings that were gotten from George RR Martin if that is in fact the case which I don't know for a hundred percent certain that all of them are. Assuming that they are that these are the endings that the writers had heard from George RR Martin that this is how it ends up this is how the story is supposed to end this is where those characters end up this is who does the thing this is who ends up with who this is who dies this is why they die this this is the end point that is in is going to be in the book someday. So assuming that is true that still doesn't work because the characters in the show are not the characters in the books anymore. Having this this the plot of the show again assuming these end points are accurate end points have taken these characters that have kind of like started to off-road from who they are in the books like forcing them to fit into endings that no longer fit those characters that no longer make sense for them just to force them into fitting the endings that are in planned for characters that they aren't them anymore made it feel I mean again there were many problems like pacing and writing issues as well but it wasn't true to the characters anymore like these endings for them or at least not the way we got to them so season eight would have been much better off if they had written different endings if they had written endings that fit the characters that or in the show now which are different characters instead of forcing them into these kind of predetermined end points that have nothing to do with who they are anymore okay so back to good omens why would people want a second season of good omens other than just kind of like generally wanting it so in the book Crowley and Aziraphile the angel and the demon they are friends they are very good friends they work together despite being one a demon and one an angel you know they find common enough ground to work together and to thwart the apocalypse like that's a pretty big deal so so they are quite close friends in the show Crowley and Aziraphile are close friends but they are possibly more than that so good omens of the book it could have a sequel like it's conceivable and I believe Terry Prouchett and Neil Gaiman had spoken about possibly writing a sequel someday they obviously never did but that that that was an idea certainly that they had that they might write a sequel to it the sequel that they've written in the show would not make sense as a sequel to the book when the show originally adapted good omens just the original book into the original first season of the show it was a quite loyal and faithful adaptation but nonetheless there are tweaks made there are changes made there is nuance and color added to things just by virtue of one it's written for a modern audience so certain things are just kind of like updated to kind of suit the technology the sensibilities the humor just everything's for it so it suits a modern audience better but also just like with Game of Thrones the actors playing these characters bring dimension to these characters that goes beyond what is on the page it goes beyond what is even in the script part of the reason that Crowley and Aziraphile have this kind of extra additional something in between them or at least the audience perceives them too a lot of that is to do with simply Michael Sheen and David Tennant how they played the characters and the amount of chemistry that those actors have together playing those characters a show is a visual medium so there's a lot a lot of it is subtext a lot of it is just again simply the way they're playing these characters and it's not necessarily what they say it's not necessarily what they do good omen season one is a quite loyal adaptation of the original book but again the way that they look at each other the way that they stand near each other and the way that the show runners would then even lean into that in the way that they would frames the scenes so the music cues that they would use these are all like subtle things that aren't in the text it is subtext it is it is just like adding coloring and adding flavor to how you are perceiving what is going on it creates this added dimension to the relationship that is really only present in the show so the screenwriters for season two of good omens did not try to write a sequel to the book good omens they wrote a sequel to season one of good omens the show they wrote a sequel for the characters that as they are in the show so um i quickly want to talk about doctor who i want to say this is the last aside but it's not um neil game it has written for doctor who and there are certainly elements of season two and i guess even of season one just sort of of gaming style that are doctor who ask and doctor who frequently has this problem although i would argue it's not really a problem for doctor who but it has that problem that i identified earlier of if you have the apocalypse where do you go from there and the thing about doctor who to be clear i have not kept up with doctor who i i watched like through matt smith and in the beginning of peter capaldi and kind of fell off after that so i'm not talking about like the current iteration of doctor who i have no idea if it's any good i've heard pretty negative things but i don't personally know and don't have any personal opinions about it because i haven't seen it but i'm talking like christopher eccleston my favorite doctor david tenet obviously matt smith and then i did like peter capaldi but not enough to continue because i didn't think the writing was as good anymore anyway that's not what i'm that's not why i want to bring up doctor who doctor who in general from its genesis like the original doctor who all the way through to presumably the president again it the doctor faces like universe ending you know storylines frequently and the doctor faces mortality and there was supposed to be only a certain number of times the doctor could even regenerate because this even this immortal character had you know a shelf life and even then it's able to keep going after that the reason that's possible is because the reason people love doctor who is not because of the world ending universe ending stakes of the episode or the season or of the show people watch doctor who because they like to see the relationship between the doctor and his companion or companions that's the heart of the show and so we can have the apocalypse and then we can come back again for a story about shenanigans where we go meet shakespeare in history and just have a little adventure and that works fine and it doesn't feel like a disappointing deescalation because while the apocalypse was exciting and nail biting we were here to see the doctor and his companions and we're still here to see the doctor and his companions so back to good omens in the case of season two this i think is a good example of fan service when it works it's doing what it's supposed to do just like with doctor who the reason that people loved good omens or at least one of the reasons people loved good omens and one of the reasons people would want a season two of good omens is because they love seeing crowley and aziraphale together just like with doctor who it's not about the apocalypse it's about seeing these characters together it's about seeing the doctor and his companion but the writers didn't just give people what they want they could have just filled it with like lots of cute scenes between aziraphale and crowley and been like that's it that's all we gotta do show those two together and then everyone will be happy instead the writers neil gayman and whoever he worked with i know he didn't write it by himself understood the characters in the world that they had written and established in good omens and the characters that they had established with michael sheen's and david tenon's performances of those characters understanding who it is that they are working with and understanding what kind of a story we could build around that that would feel true to the world and true to the characters and so while we do get a lot of aziraphale and crowley they've also you know built a story that they're going to be dealing with this is another the doctor has a new adventure a new problem to be dealing with a new crisis that needs to be solved but because they know what type of story they're telling and they know what it is that people are here for they have written a story where the the crisis in question the universe thing going on is interesting in its own right but it also works as um a reflection of in concert with the emotional and personal story going on between crowley and aziraphale and so while the like big thing is happening the things about this big thing they are an opportunity to further explore the more intimate story of crowley and aziraphale because as i say it's a reflection of it's an expansion of it's um a mirroring of the the things that are going on internally with those characters and so they've cleverly had this kind of adventure going on which is the thing that they're occupied with handling be the mechanism through which they're able to explore the internal story that's going on between crowley and aziraphale who we are here to see so now i want to talk about marvel this is the last aside i promise so marvel has many problems obviously and um i'm not the hugest fan of marvel with marvel um people loved the big team up the big epic crossover movies where it's like the the big big big big bad the universe ender all the superheroes all at once like it's very exciting it's very epic we love to see it but this made marvel think that that's that's what people love so we have to keep doing that and the reason those crossover stories were so good is because we had to become more intimately familiar with these characters in smaller standalone stories and then even after that when we have still liked these stories it's often been because we've returned to that so much like doctor who where you can have the apocalypse then you still have to come back then and have some smaller stories that are just about the doctor and his companions after that because that's what makes people care so here in their marvel has done something right at least in my opinion so with things like wand division where we weren't doing the apocalypse anymore we weren't doing every single superhero of all time teaming up to defeat like the end of the universe wand division is a really really intimate story a really really small scale and small stakes for the most part people really really responded to it because it was really different in style and tone really different in in scale and scope and it was an intimate character study so we could really get to know this character that we had only really briefly seen in the big crossover epic movie so marvel doesn't seem to understand that the strength of its stories lies in its characters and it doesn't really allow them the room to shine and to grow so back to good almonds good almonds understood that you didn't have to now do keep doing the big things what we're here for is the characters so we can still have some fun times we can still have some adventures but it's actually totally fine to now scale things back and just tell an intimate character story or at least a more intimate character story we don't have to keep going bigger and harder and more and better and you don't have to do that we can bring it in again we did the big apocalypse we can bring it in again we can now talk a smaller story a smaller adventure smaller scale thing because the thing we are here for the thing that we loved about the original it was a zero fail and growling season two oh good omens was it any good i think yes it was never going to be as epic or as good as the original good omens that's not a reasonable standard to set either for the writers of the show or for a viewer watching it but it it didn't try to be it wasn't going to try to outdo the original good omens because that would be a recipe for failure so unlike marvel it did not try to go bigger and harder on stakes and epicness unlike game of thrones it didn't try to write a storyline around characters from the books which aren't the characters in the show anymore like doctor who it understood that you can have the apocalypse and then you could also have a tea time afterwards and that people will like both if they like the characters and i think a lot of other shows and movies writers and producers could take a lesson from good omens and adopt this approach when they are writing their series and sequels and multi verses etc etc etc let me know in the comments down below if you watch season two of good omens what you thought of it if you enjoyed it if you did not enjoy it if you completely disagree with everything that i've said or if you completely agree that's always nice to hear as well whatever you want to let me know i post videos on saturdays other random times well but on saturdays so like and subscribe to my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you in the next video