‘The Good Place’ producer Joe Mande on how Jacksonville Jaguars fandom became part of the show

The best storyline in sports and entertainment right now is the love affair that Jason Mendoza, a character on the TV show The Good Place, has with the Jacksonville Jaguars and their quarterback, Blake Bortles.

Jason, played by actor Manny Jacinto, is the dumbest, most endearing, and maybe only Jaguars fan in the history of television. Part of the running joke in the first two seasons is that the team is terrible. At one point Jason — who is dead because the show takes place in the afterlife — asks another character, Michael, if Jacksonville has won the Super Bowl since his death. Michael just laughs.

“Oh you’re serious,” he says, when he realizes that Jason expects an answer. “No.”

“Will they ever win the Super Bowl?” Jason asks.

“Jason, I can’t predict the future. But no,” Michael says, laughing. “They won’t”

BUT WAIT, THERE’S HOPE! Jacksonville made it to the playoffs this year! Last week, fiction became fact when comedian Joe Mande, one of the show’s producers, and Jacinto went to the Wild Card Game in Jacksonville and watched the Jags beat the Bills. While Jason might not be alive to see his team advance in the playoffs, at least his creators are.

The Jags play the Steelers in the AFC Divisional Round on Sunday, so it seemed like a good time to catch up with Mande. Here, he talks about what the show will do if Jacksonville wins the Super Bowl, what it was like to eat a cheeseburger with bright blue buns at a football game in Florida, and how perfect it is that The Good Place only follows Blake Bortles and the Jaguars on Twitter.

(This interview has been edited and condensed — there are also a few spoilers, if you care about that sort of thing.)

SB Nation: What was the inspiration for Jason? How did you guys come up with this amateur DJ from Jacksonville who masquerades as a Buddhist monk but actually turns out to be a Jaguars fan who used to sell fake drugs to high school students?

Joe Mande: Well, [show creator] Mike Schur really knew a lot of what he wanted before we got into the writers’ room. He knew the twist ending and a lot about the characters. So Jason, or at the time Jianyu, was underwritten, because Mike knew he wanted the joke to be that a silent Buddhist monk was revealed to be some kind of dirtbag. When we started writing it, we were like, what’s the opposite of a silent, meditative Buddhist monk? I pitched a kind of Steve Aoki, which became that he’s definitely from Florida.

So then it was, what’s the funniest part of Florida? And I had just done a show in Jacksonville with John Mulaney, and everything about Jacksonville was cracking us up. It just so happened that the circumstances were that I had just been to Jacksonville, and it had a very profound impact on me. So we started talking about Jacksonville and just made it completely cartoonish.

Jason Mendoza is a pretty spot-on stereotype of Jacksonville.

Yeah, it was so funny being back there [at the game] last weekend. Because with a lot of the stuff, we’re not that far off. But that said, everyone there was super cool and had a great sense of humor about it.

How did you and Manny end up at the Jags game?

I got a call on Wednesday from someone involved with [The Good Place] saying, “Do you want to go to Jacksonville on Sunday to watch the playoff game?” And they were like, “We’re asking Manny, too.” So I was like, “If Manny’s going, I’ll go.”

It happened very fast. We got our plane tickets, and all I know is next thing we’re laughing as we’re eating a breakfast buffet at 10 a.m. in Jacksonville with all these Buffalo Bills fans. It was very strange.

Did you eat that weird, neon cheeseburger they were selling at the stadium?

Yeah, and I’d read a thing online that said they’d made teal beer as well, so I was trying to get a teal beer. But they ran out. So I had a teal cocktail, and Manny had teal soft serve, and I had a teal cheeseburger.

When I got that press release announcing they’d be selling that I was like, oh my god, this thing looks radioactive.

Oh yeah, no, it did not seem like it should be eaten. I bit into the bun, and it started glowing blue.

Did it taste weird?

It tasted fine, but it was the first cheeseburger I’ve eaten where I was more concerned about the bun than the meat.

How did you guys decide to make Bortles a bit? I mean, his name is Blake Bortles, so, like, that’s obviously already funny.

Yeah, you’ve got that alliteration. I don’t follow football as closely as I follow basketball, but I know that he was sort of drafted because he looked like a quarterback. You know? That’s what it seemed like from the NFL draft. Everyone was like, he was drafted high because he looks like a quarterback and his name is a name you’d come up with for Friday Night Lights before you came up with a better quarterback name.

But yeah, Bortles is a funny name. Blake Bortles, it’s right up there. We shot a thing for my episode in Season 1 where Jason throws a Molotov cocktail at a speedboat, and we ad libbed it. So he says “Bortles!”, the way assholes who play pickup basketball say “Kobe!” when they make a bad shot. So instead of Kobe, it’s Bortles. And I loved it so much.

I might have this wrong, but in my memory, Mike Schur sent me the final edit of that episode, and I watched it, and he’d taken “Bortles!” out. I completely flipped out, and sent Mike, like, 30 texts. I was like, “What are you doing? How can you take Bortles out? It’s the best joke in the episode!” And he told me to calm down and that he cut it for time. And I was like, “There’s no way you cut it for time! It’s a voiceover joke! There’s obviously time for a voiceover joke!”

I was super uncool about this one Bortles joke. I don’t know if Mike was fucking with me or what, but he put it back in. And then in Season 2 there are probably, like, 300 Bortles jokes. It went completely the other way.

I think one of my favorite Jags jokes is a beautifully simple one from the first season, when Jason yells, “Jacksonville Jaguars rule!” as he says his vows while he’s getting married.

Yeah, when I was still on Twitter, I’d get angry stuff because he doesn’t yell the word “Duval!” the way a real Jacksonville fan would. Jags fans were like, “He wouldn’t say Jacksonville Jaguars. He’d just say Duval.” So I’m aware of that and as a purist, I tried to put it in. But to Mike’s good point, no one except people from Jacksonville know what that is, so it’s just nonsense. We only have 21 minutes to put stuff in that people do understand.

l’ll let internet know you’ve tried.

Yeah, tell everyone we know about Duval. It’s funny — if you go to Jacksonville, everyone in the arena does this call and response. Someone chants “Duval!” and everyone around them chants “Duval!” I was like, “What is Duval?”

I thought it was something that goes back to the Civil War or something historical like a regional thing. I asked the woman who was leading us around, “How long has this Duval chant been going on?” And she was like, “Oh, that was this thing this linebacker came up with six years ago.” So this chant isn’t even 10 years old! And it was just completely adopted by this region of the country.

I didn’t know that. It’s like a parody of itself.

But not even! We are making fun of team, and now we have to somewhat recalibrate, now that they’re a winning playoff football team. But I feel for fans, because I’m a Timberwolves fan, so it’s a similar thing. It’s been nothing but terrible basketball for years and years and years. This is the first year the Timberwolves have been good. It’s an exciting time. So for the people there in Jacksonville, they were so happy.

There’s something very funny about you and Manny at the game, but Manny’s there as Jason, but Jason’s dead, but there he is. How are you going to deal now that the Jags aren’t totally sucking? How is the storyline going to evolve?

That’s a great question. There’s a sadness there that Jason was dead, so he didn’t get to see any of this happen. Maybe there’s a way we can remedy that. Maybe there’s somehow a magical TV where he can watch the football game. When we were at the game, Manny and I were like, “Wow, it’s kind of sad Jason can’t see this.”

What was the thought process behind Michael getting Bortles’ name wrong and calling him Derek? Were you like, what’s the funniest name we can pair with Bortles that isn’t Blake?

I think someone pitched Derek, and it just went into the script. I think Mike’s really good at not sweating the small stuff — Derek Bortles made us laugh, so we just kept it in. Some shows might have broken off a splinter group to come up with 20 names funnier, but we just laughed at Derek Bortles and moved on.

Is that what happened when you were naming the almighty judge, Shawn?

Yeah, we were just trying to think of most boring not intimidating name, and we landed on Shawn.

It seems really important that it’s spelled Shawn and not Sean.

It was the only correct thing to do.

So are you personally invested in the Jags now?

Just in terms of comedy, yes. They’re my team now. I grew up a Vikings fan, so for me, the ultimate Super Bowl would be Vikings-Jags.

You’re known for using the internet to mess with people. Are you responsible for The Good Place Twitter account only following two accounts, which are the Jags and Bortles?

Manny told me that and I was like, that fucking rules. I love that. I’m not responsible. That’s just good on whoever does social for the show. I gotta find out who does that and send them a Bortles jersey. I laughed so hard, I was like, that is perfect. It implies that Jason runs the social media for our show. That’s the best.

If they somehow win the Super Bowl, are you going to write that in?

Oh, yeah, we’ll have to. I mean, we’re gonna have to shoot an entire season in Jacksonville or something. That’s so not my call to make, but I feel like nothing would be better than opening the first episode of Season 4 with Jason on a Super Bowl parade float, somehow being beamed down from wherever he is.

On a float, like, chugging Hpnotiq.

Exactly. If that happens, me and Manny are going back for sure. We’ll buy a condo in Jacksonville. On Fred Durst Boulevard.