The Ringer - Saying Goodbye to ‘The Good Place’2020-01-31T10:56:13-05:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/208800072020-01-31T10:56:13-05:002020-01-31T10:56:13-05:00‘The Good Place’ Sticks Its Landing
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<p>The series finale didn’t try to confound audiences with a twist or a new take on morality, but instead focused on the relationships that always made the show special</p> <p id="DpTmCc">Throughout its four seasons, <em>The Good Place </em>wove between two extremes, twisting and looping itself into a veritable Jeremy Bearimy. On the one hand, Michael Schur’s NBC sitcom explored towering, abstract concepts: morality; justice; the entire structure of the afterlife. On the other, it asked the audience to invest in just six souls, only four of them human. At times, this mismatch between the intimate and the epic could verge on the absurd. Fortunately, absurdity is where comedy thrives.</p>
<p id="BV0Xcj">While <em>The Good Place </em>proved it could capably balance grand stakes with individual quirks, Thursday’s series finale never had to. The supersized “Whenever You’re Ready”—90 minutes with commercials, not including the Seth Meyers–hosted aftershow—began with the series’ big questions already answered. Over the past several episodes, the central sextet proved the design of the afterlife was fundamentally flawed; crafted a better one from scratch in less than an hour, letting souls improve themselves through custom-made trials until they earned their ascent to what’s essentially heaven; and hot air ballooned past a flying puppy to the Good Place themselves, which then proved in need of another hasty reorganization. All matters of plot, however sweeping or complicated, had been resolved. All that was left was to spend time with the fictional people (and not-people) we’d come to care about.</p>
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<p id="a3jyB8">After <em>Parks and Recreation</em>,<em> The Good Place </em>was only Schur’s second effort as creator and showrunner, making any sweeping statements about a signature style of finale perhaps premature. Still, it’s hard to watch “Whenever You’re Ready” and not think of “One Last Ride,” the <em>Parks </em>conclusion that hopscotched decades into the future to show every ensemble member’s full life and career. “Whenever You’re Ready” replicates this epilogue on a more cosmic scale. Instead of decades, it’s countless millennia; instead of a satisfying, if modest, life, it’s an existence filled with the greatest thrills and pleasures one could imagine. Still, the concept remains the same: follow the yellow brick road to each specific happy ending. </p>
<p id="jzZkVL">In its penultimate episode, “Patty,” <em>The Good Place </em>solved one last narrative conundrum by proving there could be an ending at all. The trouble with eternal happiness, it turns out, is that it dulls into mindless monotony if it goes on long enough—so our heroes gave everyone the option of a permanent out, giving the Good Place meaning by making infinite contentment a little more finite. (Strangely, no one commented that the ancient philosopher who pointed out the problem with paradise looked an awful lot like Lisa Kudrow, despite a lengthy <em>Friends </em>analogy mere episodes before.) Naturally, “Whenever You’re Ready” then follows every core character to the voluntary, chosen, peaceful end of their existence.</p>
<p id="d641cq">They go in order of importance, because even a show as congenitally nice as <em>The Good Place </em>has to pick favorites. Jason Mendoza plays a perfect game of <em>Madden</em> alongside his dad in an actual football stadium, as his beloved Jacksonville Jaguars; he decides it’s time to go, then casually meditates his way to enlightenment like the monk he once pretended to be while waiting to say goodbye to his not-a-girlfriend Janet. Tahani Al-Jamil learns woodworking from <em>Parks </em>alum Nick Offerman, enjoys a healthy relationship with her once-withholding, bitterly competitive family, and decides to put her planning skills to eternal good use as an architect. Chidi Anagonye takes one last stroll through Athens and Paris before his girlfriend, reformed “trash bag from Arizona” Eleanor Shellstrop, decides to let him go, showing she’s truly left her selfishness behind.</p>
<p id="jcyuEk">Eleanor and Michael, the demon who once impersonated a Good Place architect before he became one for real, earn the most protracted and heartfelt goodbyes of all. Michael at last gets to experience human existence, the strange, contradictory thing that’s long fascinated him, and delivers <em>The Good Place</em>’s last-ever line of dialogue: “Keep it sleazy.” (An immortal being made flesh delighting in life’s many idiosyncrasies is a not-unconvincing origin story for Ted Danson.) Eleanor only calls it quits after she’s secured a path forward for Mindy St. Claire, the sole Medium Place denizen who Eleanor calls “a version of me if I never met my friends.” Eleanor’s final act on Earth was to drop some margarita mix and get run over by a truck with an erection pill advertisement on its side. Her final act in the universe is to help someone else.</p>
<p id="ga0QBo"><em>The Good Place </em>enjoyed acclaim from the start, but <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/27/21080695/the-good-place-episodes-ranked">earned its reputation</a> with a jaw-dropping twist at the end of its first season: the Good Place Michael once guided us through, and Eleanor thought she’d mistakenly ended up in, was in fact a version of the Bad Place where humans’ tormentors weren’t lava monsters or butthole spiders, but each other. This revelation, inevitably if slowly, widened the show’s focus, from the fate of Eleanor and her friends to the fate of all of humanity under a fundamentally unfair system filled with needless suffering. <em>The Good Place</em>’s finale had no final twist to balance out the series’ arc, but it did return the show to where it started, before the larger considerations began to outweigh the small. Schur may have gotten his audience to consider questions like the title of T.M. Scanlon’s <em>What We Owe to Each Other</em>,<em> </em>but he did so only by building distinct, flawed characters to project ourselves onto. “Whenever You’re Ready” thanks them for their service.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="vG9oxF">Endings are, for better or for worse, when shows reveal their true priorities. In the past year, we’ve gotten a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/12/4/20994172/year-in-television-2019-game-of-thrones-disney-plus">whole lot of them</a>—some better received than others, all indicative of what their series had become. <em>Game of Thrones </em>was a slapdash race to the finish line; <em>Orange Is the New Black </em>was an unwieldy yet earnest bait-and-switch; <em>Catastrophe </em>was all the more romantic for how fucked up its central romance was. <em>The Good Place </em>tied up the macro so it could spend its final minutes in the micro, where it’s always belonged. The show was hardly disingenuous in its exploration of ethics, moral philosophy, and the guiding principles of a just society. It just understood that these broader concepts are an aggregate of a far more granular one: That people can be narcissistic, indecisive, arrogant, or impulsive, but they can also learn and grow when given the chance. I’ll raise one last margarita to that.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/31/21116659/the-good-place-finaleAlison Herman2020-01-30T06:00:00-05:002020-01-30T06:00:00-05:00‘The Good Place’ Has Always Been About More Than Plot Twists
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<p>Over its four-season run, the misdirection-packed show has managed to keep its characters and their personal developments at its center</p> <p id="EUoehk">These days, my sister gives TV shows an uncompromisingly short leash: If she’s not sold within an episode or two, it’s on to the next thing. It’s hard to argue with the process, especially when there’s more scripted television—and now in 2020, more streaming services—than ever before. (Also, keeping track of all these shows is part of <em>my</em> job, not hers.) Still, her approach has yielded some unfortunate casualties; my Number One Boy <em>Succession</em> chief among them. <em>The Good Place</em>, the NBC sitcom airing its series finale Thursday night, has been another—the parade of puns and <a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_6SECveIMX0/hqdefault.jpg">flying shrimp</a> was, for her, an entertaining diversion, but not something worth sticking with in the long term. I don’t relay this to put my sister on public blast, but because it’s easy to see where she was coming from. The hallmark of a sitcom, after all, is familiarity—with the characters and, more often than not, with the setting. </p>
<p id="zMEbJA">But the brilliance of <em>The Good Place</em>’s first season is that it operated less like a sitcom, and more like a mystery-box series—a show that judiciously withholds a key piece of information to later wield it against the audience. The fact that we were inclined to look at the show like a traditional sitcom made the Season 1 finale’s now-infamous twist all the more rewarding: </p>
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<p id="Ty2nKu">Eleanor’s realization that she, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani were in the Bad Place throughout the first season—and “Good Place architect”/actual demon Michael’s sinister cackle when she figures it out—caught a ton of viewers <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/the-good-place-finale-review/513884/">off guard</a>, and threw <em>The Good Place </em>off its axis. It was still a show concerned with moral philosophy and how someone can become a better person, but the twist exponentially elevated its stakes. These characters were going to have pore through the lessons of T.M. Scanlon’s <em>What We Owe to Each Other</em> not in pun-loving heaven, but in literal hell. (It is a downright dystopian twist that the season finale aired the night before Donald Trump’s inauguration.) </p>
<p id="oWnSzF">When a series successfully executes a big twist like this, there’s typically an unspoken rule between the showrunner and the audience that the <em>next</em> twist will need to be exceptionally deceptive—viewers are going to have their proverbial antennas raised. </p>
<p id="RxLcsD">The results for other mystery-box shows have been mixed. Deploying twists mostly worked to <em>Mr. Robot</em>’s<em> </em>benefit, all the way through its <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/12/24/21035730/mr-robot-finale-review">excellent series finale</a>, but creator Sam Esmail made a grave miscalculation in the second season: He had a misdirect prepared, but perceptive viewers figured out Elliot Alderson was actually in prison <a href="https://www.insider.com/mr-robot-elliot-in-prison-2016-8">several weeks before it was revealed on the show</a>. This was, sadly, around the time <em>Mr. Robot</em> had a precipitous <a href="https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/mr-robot-season-three-ratings/">drop in viewership</a>. </p>
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<p id="diEAPd"><em>Westworld</em> is another show that relies on keeping its audience guessing, but it often seems to mistake complexity for profundity, pulling the plug on any emotional investment with the characters in favor of throwing in multiple timelines and twists. (It’s no surprise most <em>Westworld</em> coverage is led by <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/24/17495710/westworld-finale-most-pressing-questions">questions</a> about what the hell is happening.) And perhaps most notoriously—<em>Good Place</em> creator Michael Schur cited the show as a leading influence for his own—<em>Lost’</em>s series finale didn’t solve all the show’s lingering mysteries, and angered some corners of the show’s fan base so much that creator Damon Lindelof had to quit Twitter. </p>
<p id="SIg1HI">That’s how most mystery-box shows operate: on the razor-thin edge between satisfying the audience and making it sharpen its digital pitchforks. (Even if, in the case of <em>Lost</em>, there was some artistic merit in letting the mystery be.) But despite unleashing one of the most impressive plot twists in recent memory, <em>The Good Place</em> has continued to operate in service of its philosophical base and characters rather than try to pull the rug out from under us for a second time, and possibly fail. </p>
<p id="wmbERs">What’s driven <em>The Good Place</em> hasn’t been any ill-fated attempt to outsmart its audience, but the growth of its characters in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. After being placed in an experiment designed to have them torture one another, Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani have instead charted a path toward self-improvement through ethics lessons, owning up to their flaws, and seeing the fundamental decency in just about anything. Even Michael, who went from gleefully torturing his human subjects to becoming their biggest ally, has become a better, uh, demon—his journey feels like a natural extension of the show’s “finding the good in everyone” storytelling. </p>
<p id="LEWJEE">Not to repeatedly dunk on <em>Westworld</em>, but that show set up a similar path to enlightenment—robots living in their own eternal hell loop before rebelling against their demonic human overlords—but failed to maintain emotional investment; too many characters were left intentionally inscrutable. (Some humans are revealed as robots, all Anthony Hopkins did was creepily quote Shakespeare, etc.) <em>The Good Place</em> has never lost sight of what matters—its characters—and never sidelined that in favor of more disorienting plot machinations. All told, <em>The Good Place </em>is telling an engaging story on its own terms, and enjoying the series for the past three seasons hasn’t required fans to scour Reddit for the latest theories. </p>
<p id="3uONbA">This doesn’t mean <em>The Good Place </em>hasn’t had any surprises since the end of Season 1—between frequent memory wipes, “neighborhood” reboots, and the introduction of Maya Rudolph’s all-powerful and burrito-loving Judge (basically God with a penchant for binge-watching prestige TV), <em>The Good Place</em> has managed to keep its audience on its toes. That was definitely true of the show’s penultimate episode, when the <em>real</em> Good Place was revealed to be a flawed institution with zombie-like inhabitants OD’ing on eternal bliss and orgasms. (A marked improvement from the Bad Place’s legendary <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/28/21110896/the-good-place-finale-bad-place-details">butthole spiders</a>, but not exactly paradise.) And, of course, it’s still possible the series finale has one last breaking ball in its arsenal, even after our protagonists appeared to have perfected the afterlife. </p>
<p id="fgn4Mc">Schur’s series was already a peculiar addition to the mystery-box canon, where most entries tend to be dramas with a science-fiction or supernatural bent: the <em>Lost</em>s, <em>Twin Peaks</em>es, <em>The Leftovers</em>es, <em>The OA</em>s, and <em>Westworld</em>s of the world. But <em>The Good Place</em>, with its conceptually daring interpretation of heaven, paved the way for a trippy subgenre of mystery-box TV comedies—like <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/9/17/17868628/forever-amazon-fred-armisen-maya-rudolph"><em>Forever</em></a> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/2/4/18210004/russian-doll-netflix-natasha-lyonne-amy-poehler"><em>Russian Doll</em></a>—examining what happens when we die, the enduring mysteries of the afterlife, and how we can better ourselves from beyond the grave. While full of ambiguity and intrigue, these afterlife-based comedies aren’t beholden to those mysteries, either. It’s what these shows share with the best of the genre (<em>Twin Peaks</em>, <em>The Leftovers</em>): The mystery draws you in, but you stay because you care about what will happen next. Just because a series starts with the trappings of a mystery box doesn’t mean it has to end that way.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="tA9fWS">It’s why any questions I have heading into <em>The Good Place</em> finale—aside from “Will Jason’s hero, Blake Bortles, show up?”—have less to do with the potential revelation of hidden, lingering details of the show’s afterlife than the fate of Eleanor and Chidi’s relationship, or Michael’s contentment in his role as the new leader of heaven. <em>The Good Place</em> might be a good example of a contemporary mystery-box show with an all-time twist, but those conventions aren’t what made it great. Schur’s series excels because we’ve remained emotionally invested in the characters and their self-improvement—even as they went through literal hell and back.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/30/21113933/the-good-place-series-finale-mystery-box-michael-schurMiles Surrey2020-01-29T05:50:00-05:002020-01-29T05:50:00-05:00Words Matter—Especially on ‘The Good Place’
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<p>The show has given us endless food puns and a host of new curse words, but there’s also always been deeper meaning hidden in its language</p> <p id="yznWl1">Choices matter.</p>
<p id="LASpvZ">If you were forced to reduce <em>The Good Place</em> to two words, you could do worse. Of course, no one <em>should</em> force you to do such a thing to a show as multifaceted as the Michael Schur comedy set in a Technicolor version of the afterlife. It’s a show that can be equal parts thought-provoking and side-splitting—with more twists and turns than a Formula 1 track—a feat that may be unmatched in modern television history. (Name another high-concept comedy about moral philosophy, ethics, and life after death that could also be called one of the funniest shows on the air; I’ll wait.)</p>
<p id="qVmqYm"><em>The Good Place </em>argues that what you do matters, that actions have consequences—intentional and unintentional—and that things that appear to be black-and-white often are, on closer inspection, many shades of gray. And if choices matter, then the language of a show about why choices matter must also matter.</p>
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<p id="KOm0Yj">When our protagonist, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), first opens her eyes in the pilot, she’s greeted by a message: “Welcome! Everything is fine.” (As we’ll find out, this is an extremely debatable statement.) She then meets Michael (Ted Danson), who tells her that she’s dead, explains that in the afterlife there’s a Good Place and a Bad Place, and informs her that she’s in the former. Then he takes her on a tour of the neighborhood he’s designed for her and the other residents.</p>
<p id="wjrQ2J">As the two walk through the immaculate streets, we get our first glimpses of a <em>Good Place </em>staple: There is a store called “Infinite Light,” another called “Your Anticipated Needs,” and a third called “The Small Adorable Animal Depot.” A sign for another exclaims “Everything Fits!” From the pilot to last week’s penultimate episode, Schur and his team have delighted in burying these minute jokes throughout the landscape of the show, little visual gags that are gone so quickly you’ll probably miss them unless you pore over the show frame by frame.</p>
<p id="Dae9ho">Take food, for instance. No one in the Good Place cooks; all meals happen in restaurants. (Who knows, maybe spending time in the kitchen on Earth costs people points.) In this version of heaven, dinner is served with a side of puns: “Lasagne Come Out Tomorrow,” “The Pesto’s Yet to Come,” and “You Do the Hokey Gnocchi and You Get Yourself Some Food.” In one iteration of the neighborhood, all the restaurants are stick-themed: “Hot Dog on a Stick on a Stick,” “Bagel on a Stick,” “Caviar on a Stick.” In the background, a woman walks by carrying a bagel on a stick and a sign advertises “Extra sticks.”</p>
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<p id="81m5jM">Before you say, “Oh, who gives a shish kebab,” put down your caviar on a stick and stay with me: These tiny details make the constructed universe of the show feel lived-in, like Michael and his demon coworkers (because, oh yeah, this show is also a send-up of the workplace comedy, complete with lava monsters complaining that the human skin suits itch too much) crossed every T and filled every eye with bees. They also break up the treatises on Kant for the eagle-eyed viewer looking for levity.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">here's an abridged version of the full list of food puns i turned in with my first draft of tonight's <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheGoodPlace?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheGoodPlace</a> episode <a href="https://t.co/x335NYNN09">pic.twitter.com/x335NYNN09</a></p>— Megan Amram (@meganamram) <a href="https://twitter.com/meganamram/status/913642289834090497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2017</a>
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<p id="uV1H9i">Later in the pilot, Eleanor introduces the audience to a recurring bit that may be a sneaky key to the entire show: In the Good Place, language is at once utterly fluent and totally constrained, an idea that in retrospect hints that things are not as they appear. Michael introduces Eleanor to her soul mate, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), a Nigerian professor of ethics and moral philosophy who grew up in Senegal. When she comments on his excellent, and unaccented, English, he explains: “Oh, I’m actually speaking French. This place just translates whatever you say into a language the other person will understand. It’s incredible.”</p>
<p id="SpD4yU">The magical dissolution of the language barrier is a staple of science fiction, of course, and the idea that a person can say anything to anyone and be understood certainly seems to fit the tenets of the Good Place. But the show subverts that rule almost immediately, in an interesting way, when Eleanor confides in Chidi that she doesn’t belong: “Somebody royally forked up. Somebody <em>forked</em> up. Why can’t I say fork?”</p>
<p id="FSVUrp">This seemingly simple joke is the kind that <em>The Good Place</em> excels at, one that works on multiple levels: “Forked” is a silly spin on the expletive that Bell can’t say on network TV; her puzzled delivery is the perfect reaction to the fact that she’s trying to say one thing and her mouth is producing another; and, of course, she <em>can</em> say “fork.”</p>
<p id="e3KDw2">As he will throughout the thornier philosophical discussions at the heart of the show, Chidi fills the audience in. “If you’re trying to curse, you can’t here,” he says. “I guess a lot of people in this neighborhood don’t like it, so it’s prohibited.” </p>
<p id="QzQ6UG">“That’s bullshirt,” Eleanor responds.</p>
<p id="fCAltK">When you really think about it, though, it’s not. As a self-described “Arizona dirtbag,” cursing is a natural instinct for Eleanor—and since she’s really in the Bad Place, not being able to swear is part of her torture. After chaos erupts in the neighborhood when she acts up at the welcome party hosted by Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil) and Jianyu, a.k.a. Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto), she notes that “Things only started going crazy after I was an ashhole to everybody at the party. You know I’m trying to say ashhole, and not <em>ash</em>hole, right?”</p>
<p id="YXgZq9">Yes, Eleanor, we know what you’re trying to say. It’s more interesting to consider what the <em>show</em> is trying to say. Does free speech not exist in the Good Place? (That doesn’t seem ideal.) And if only the purest of the pure make it into the Good Place, would anyone who was meant to be there really choose to swear, anyway? (Judging by the actual Good Place residents Eleanor ultimately meets—one of whom resigns from a committee for the sin of being enthusiastic without prior approval—that seems unlikely.)</p>
<p id="gnAfIL">As the show comes to an end, it’s worth revisiting what it said at the beginning, because Schur and Co. weren’t just messing around: They were embedding a skeleton key to the show’s first massive reveal from the get-go. By the end of Season 1, Eleanor and Jason have been outed as “mistakes” and Chidi and Tahani have been pulled into the muck by association. Michael and Shawn, posing as the Judge, force the four of them to choose two people to go to the Bad Place as a new form of torture. The only problem with that is things get a little too literal, as listening to her three friends bicker (as D’Arcy Carden’s Janet looks on) gives Eleanor a moment of clarity that—spoiler alert for a four-year-old show that’s ending on Thursday night—“THIS is the Bad Place.”</p>
<p id="aC4kUm">All of that leads to an elite, should’ve-been-award-winning evil cackle from Michael, an almost literal heel turn made even more effective by the fact that it weaponizes Ted Danson’s everyman charisma: </p>
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<p id="mUSmZA">And while the twist was incredibly effective, if you paid attention to the little hints from the very first moments you might’ve seen it coming. Consider: If you woke up and the first words you saw were “Welcome! Everything is fine,” wouldn’t that give you pause? You’re told that you’re in heaven … and things are just “fine”? Not fantastic; not splendid; not some as-yet-unheard-of word meaning transcendent mixed with euphoric mixed with the feeling you get when cuddling a fluffy puppy. Imagine the message in another context: You get a text from a friend or loved one that reads “Everything is fine.” I don’t know about you, but those words—punctuated with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/style/when-your-punctuation-says-it-all.html">a period, that most dreaded</a> of punctuation marks—would set off the alarm klaxons in <em>my </em>head. Those four words, sprawled in bright green across a white wall and seen over the protagonist’s shoulder, are a brilliant piece of misdirection, since in truth they mean the viewer (Eleanor and the people at home) is in hell and everything is decidedly <em>not</em> fine.</p>
<p id="twCAUL">The importance of language is hammered home even more once Eleanor figures out Michael’s gambit, as his reboots tweak the greeting ever so slightly. When Eleanor opens her eyes at the end of the Season 1 finale, the text reads “Welcome! Everything is great!” Someone learned modern email etiquette.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="L4LSt2"><em>The Good Place</em> never shied away from its message, and it always understood that the way a message is delivered—the language, both visual and oral—matters.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/29/21112483/the-good-place-use-of-language-michael-schurJack McCluskey2020-01-28T06:00:00-05:002020-01-28T06:00:00-05:00What’s the Worst Thing About the Bad Place?
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<figcaption>NBC/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>As ‘The Good Place’ comes to an end, here is a taxonomy of demons, butthole spiders, Kars4Kids jingles, and penis flatteners</p> <p id="ixmIIQ">Welcome! Everything is terrible. Because we’re talking about the Bad Place, you fat dinks. One of the best things about <em>The Good Place</em> as a television show is, perhaps counterintuitively, the Bad Place, largely because the details we get about it are often gloriously specific and funny. Sometimes they’re just silly, and sometimes they seem perfectly calibrated in their awfulness to how horrible humans can be.</p>
<p id="Xcjq5b">As <em>The Good Place</em> comes to an end, it’s worth taking stock of all we learned about the Bad Place in four seasons and <a href="https://www.nbc.com/the-good-place/video/the-selection-part-1-the-mission/4027739">one web series</a>. The Bad Place contains a whole lot of bad stuff, ranging from physically painful to terribly mundane, from incredibly gross to mentally/spiritually trying. Looking at it all, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/carrie-sex-city-couldnt-help-but-wonder.html">I can’t help but wonder</a> … what’s the <em>worst</em> thing about the Bad Place? To attempt to answer this question, it feels right to employ what is probably a demon’s preferred form of internet content: the ranked listicle. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="Hm1OAZ"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"A Ranking of Every Episode of ‘The Good Place’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/27/21080695/the-good-place-episodes-ranked"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="yH1MVq">A few parameters that I’ve arbitrarily set: (1) Everything that happens (all torture) during the episodes in which Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani think they’re in the Good Place but are actually in the Bad Place counts as one “thing” about the Bad Place, which is that it was masquerading as the Good Place; (2) In considering what was worse, the demons themselves or the plethora of tortures they inflicted, I factored in that most of the demons at least end up on board with the new Good Place evaluation plan (according to the episodes that have aired as of this writing) which means that maybe demons can change for the better. Michael did; (3) The Bad Place’s modifications to Mindy’s Medium Place don’t count, because they exist in the Medium Place; (4) Humans who are in the Bad Place don’t get specific entries on this list because, as discovered in Season 3, all humans for the past 500 or so years have landed in the Bad Place; (5) Fears are subjective, so there are bound to be qualms with this ranking. </p>
<p id="uz82HB">So … what’s the worst thing about the Bad Place? Here’s everything, ranked from least-worst to worst-worst. In the spirit of the Bad Place: [<em>insert Bad Janet fart here</em>].</p>
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<p id="cR0dgC">113. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DZcLh9c1_s"><strong>The threat of watching extremely cute red panda videos</strong></a>: This is how Shawn threatens his demon employees. Doesn’t sound so bad to me.</p>
<p id="lAfVZK">112. <strong>Employee of the Bearimy hall of photos: </strong>History is important.</p>
<p id="u5733j">111. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP1DqABvvN8"><strong>The Eternal Shriek</strong></a>: Retirement for demons involves flaming ladles down the throat, for one; seems like just desserts for all the torture.</p>
<p id="asJ2vV">110. <strong>Shawn’s hand buzzer for handshakes</strong></p>
<p id="GVWPO6">109.<strong> Shawn’s prank call capabilities</strong></p>
<p id="GFS8l9">108. <strong>All Bad Place trains are delayed by three hours, every day</strong></p>
<p id="n9KNau">107. <strong>Playing </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_E2EHVxNAE"><strong>“Right Here Waiting”</strong></a><strong> as the </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciYSbskMkTY"><strong>“deeply terrible”</strong></a><strong> music to inspire the demon hackers</strong>: I don’t totally hate this song. Am I a Bad Place demon?</p>
<p id="CuAHch">106. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfR_5xsKhWE"><strong>The train to the Bad Place</strong></a>: It gets one degree hotter every time you think about how hot it is.</p>
<p id="rGS5Bs">105. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imiGUPwY1JU"><strong>Delayed tweet reading</strong></a><strong> </strong></p>
<p id="ZVL9Xb">104. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL8Y3CCESqk"><strong>Stack of endless </strong><em><strong>New Yorker</strong></em><strong> issues</strong></a>: To paraphrase Michael, you know you’re never going to read them.</p>
<p id="xZ3CrM">103. <strong>Ice-cold yoga</strong>: The point of this class may be pulling “so many muscles,” but it seems to be for demons only—not human torture.</p>
<p id="ARCPrb">102. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJBuxS_DGVQ"><strong>Evil Zumba class</strong></a>: Ditto above.</p>
<p id="LOT36l">101. <strong>Teeth flatteners</strong> (<strong>yet to be invented, just an idea)</strong></p>
<p id="Cey9vU">100. <strong>Bees with penises (yet to be invented, just an idea)</strong></p>
<p id="InMkQo">99.<strong> Jacksonville Jaguars games are constantly playing</strong>: Is this real or just part of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjnTmcitsws">Michael’s Jason roast</a>? We may never know.</p>
<p id="V4pclb">98. <strong>“I was living in what I assume was Eleanor’s worst nightmare: Every day was basically one endless baby shower for a woman I didn’t know, but also somehow I had to organize it and if I didn’t remember everyone’s name I got a very strong electric shock. And then at night it was pretty classic torture: flying piranhas, lava monsters, college improv. And there was always jazz music playing.”</strong> This is Vicky, as “Real Eleanor,” lying about the torture she faced in the Bad Place, but some of the stuff she references is real.</p>
<p id="9nkZpx">97. <strong>Food that turns to spiders in your mouth</strong>: This was Vicky as “Real Eleanor” again, so who knows if this is real, but it’s horrifying to imagine.</p>
<p id="UZA4zg">96. <strong>Beer pong played with Jason’s testicles</strong>: Offered as a suggestion, but is probably also real.</p>
<p id="XTzb0s">95. <strong>Shawn’s plan to choke Michael for eternity: </strong>Shawn can do better than this.</p>
<p id="j0cQwO">94. <strong>Stuffing a globe up one’s butt</strong>: Specifically, Christopher Columbus’s butt. </p>
<p id="tBXdsX">93. <strong>Shawn’s goo cocoon</strong></p>
<p id="mzNSJh">92. <strong>Hangovers</strong>: The demons <em>like</em> them.</p>
<p id="EkIQzo">91.<strong> The old Bad Place rallying cry of, “Dead eyes, eat hearts, can’t lose!” </strong>What would Coach Taylor think?</p>
<p id="opjx4b">90. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS-pa8LJZrk"><strong>Goose turds</strong></a>: Cigars for demons.</p>
<p id="vAiL7c">89. <strong>The box of Dunkin’ Spiders that Todd brings to a meeting</strong></p>
<p id="PlHRUB">88. <strong>Humans pulling out each other’s teeth</strong>: Apparently, it didn’t work very well because humans are hesitant to torture each other.</p>
<p id="QJIlsL">87.<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgl3DFbgA78"><strong>Bad Janet</strong></a>: Bad Janet may be annoying, rude, a terrible DJ, and largely unhelpful, but she really comes through in the end after reading Michael and Good Janet’s human manifesto. She’s still rude while switching sides, but she switched when it mattered.</p>
<p id="GB4Tbc">86. <strong>That demon who offers to bring back a dump from the bathroom for Tahani</strong></p>
<p id="h6wzUX">85.<strong> All the unnamed demons who populate the Bad Place and participate in Michael’s original experiment and Shawn’s schemes</strong> </p>
<p id="sSPZTB">84. <strong>Vicky</strong>: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAyhH8-YCQ">In the end</a>, Vicky just wanted to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqeysPaiPnI">find her actorly purpose</a> in (after)life. </p>
<p id="bylP4n">83. <strong>Glenn</strong>: Glenn, a.k.a. “Snakes Pour Forth From His Anus,” turned away from reinflating flattened penises (to then be reflattened) to try to warn the humans about Shawn’s plan—he just had the details slightly wrong.</p>
<p id="qNhFJH">82. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqrzEDzdqno&t=15s"><strong>Todd</strong></a>: The lava monster who actually seemed kind of OK (can’t blame the guy if his human suit was itchy).</p>
<p id="3I8PtG">81. <strong>Lance</strong>: The maybe-fire-squid?</p>
<p id="QmnoOw">80. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbUn80N2QQQ"><strong>Rufus</strong></a>: Shawn’s bodyguard.</p>
<p id="BY9nPm">79. <strong>Phil:</strong> It seems like Phil was going far in the Performative Wokeness Department. </p>
<p id="vNZTF7">78. <strong>Trevor’s crew of party demons</strong></p>
<p id="XSeuLu">77. <strong>Chris</strong>: Chris isn’t the sharpest demon in the demon box (but all those <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTAww0bk-A4">“trips to the gym”</a> are paying off for his skin suit).</p>
<p id="RtTbvy">76. <strong>Gayle</strong>: She’s just looking for someone to split a baby with … to eat.</p>
<p id="No8BPd">75. <strong>Bambadjan</strong>: In the (meant to be complimentary) words of Shawn: “such an unbelievable dingus.”</p>
<p id="wyWyuT">74. <strong>Val</strong>: In the (meant to be complimentary) words of Shawn: “Who’s a bigger skid mark than Val?”</p>
<p id="GTH48S">73. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yw94O6-DFE"><strong>Chet</strong></a>: The sack-tapping demon in the Toxic Masculinity Department, played by Dax Shepard.</p>
<p id="Eoej6q">72. <strong>Ads for triple-stabby pitchforks</strong></p>
<p id="i5Vs1k">71. <strong>Mirrors in toilets</strong></p>
<p id="2GbWkh">70. <strong>Magnet jail for Good Janet</strong></p>
<p id="MvOFpF">69. <strong>The command to “Axe up”</strong>: Featuring a new Axe scent: <em>Transformers</em>. </p>
<p id="6nKUm8">68. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h93TGV5SOh0"><strong>The Museum of Human Misery</strong></a><strong> (specifically the Hall of Low-Grade Crappiness)</strong></p>
<p id="hamLDN">67. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJoJaRHtwhc"><strong>Shawn’s illegal door to Earth</strong></a></p>
<p id="pv0NBv">66. <strong>Bad Janet’s farts</strong>: The smell lasts 10 million years.</p>
<p id="naDlzo">65. <strong>The Performative Wokeness Department</strong></p>
<p id="lTr1Nl">64. <strong>“Describing the plot to the </strong><em><strong>Entourage</strong></em><strong> movie”: </strong>This is torture specifically engineered for William Shakespeare.</p>
<p id="KkY1RI">63. <strong>Joe Rogan’s podcast</strong>: Shawn made Emily Dickinson listen to it.</p>
<p id="diZR1a">62. <strong>How philosophers get tortured in the Bad Place</strong>: They go to school naked every day, then take a test in a class they’ve never been to, and then they get smashed with hammers.</p>
<p id="YT9GUV">61. <strong>The Children’s Dance Recital Department</strong></p>
<p id="UJUxFY">60. <strong>Holiday Weekend Ikea Department</strong></p>
<p id="ZP0eSR">59. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O98eCfJrj8M"><strong>Welcome farts</strong></a> </p>
<p id="LIr3iI">58. <strong>Four-headed flying bears</strong></p>
<p id="usXonH">57. <strong>Chainsaw bears</strong></p>
<p id="WBx7MS">56. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozh0HVfyl_U"><strong>The phases of demon growth</strong></a>: Larva, slug monster, spooky little girl, teenage boy, giant ball of tongues, social media CEO, demon.</p>
<p id="vjaRHx">55. <strong>Lava monsters</strong>: I mean, they pour lava down human’s throats.</p>
<p id="dZi0n9">54. <strong>Acid snakes</strong>: Vicky’s true demon form.</p>
<p id="COYTHq">53. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoAc7bjtIso"><strong>Fire squids</strong></a>: Michael’s true demon form.</p>
<p id="gYvAj7">52. <strong>Ten-headed dog spider(s) </strong></p>
<p id="JVUa52">51. <em><strong>Pirates of the Caribbean 6: The Haunted Crow’s Nest or Something, Who Gives a Crap?</strong></em>: Now playing everywhere forever.</p>
<p id="tHvuti">50. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjnTmcitsws"><strong>The comedy roast</strong></a>: Invented by the Bad Place. </p>
<p id="oIYp6q">49. <strong>Bad Place karaoke</strong>: Singer’s choice: a Mussolini speech, a Mel Gibson rant, or the Nixon tapes.</p>
<p id="751kJT">48. <strong>Being locked in an unmarked room for eternity</strong></p>
<p id="RvaZIS">47. <strong>Bad Janet’s Void</strong>: Includes: a <em>Pirates of the Caribbean 12</em> billboard, a monster truck, music that gets louder when you say “music off,” trash, tire, and dumpster fires, beer pong, a cannon, toilets, half-empty pizza boxes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofZ2eUyzb0s">the messed up pony Chidi drew during magic Pictionary</a>, a Porta Potty, and a rude computer.</p>
<p id="XjjaYL">46. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DZcLh9c1_s"><strong>A branding iron shaped like Mike Tyson’s face tattoo to use on people’s butts</strong></a> </p>
<p id="9aIfe8">45. <strong>Blood fountains</strong>: Are they for drinking? Making wishes? Either way, not great.</p>
<p id="IJP4QT">44. <strong>Poking sticks</strong></p>
<p id="VNYjiC">43. <strong>Poking</strong></p>
<p id="LCwwRi">42. <strong>Tearing</strong></p>
<p id="yySuU1">41. <strong>Slicing</strong></p>
<p id="vSLPuO">40. <strong>The Toxic Masculinity Department </strong></p>
<p id="BYNxCk">39. <strong>Snake pit</strong></p>
<p id="YkBTN1">38. <strong>Acid pit</strong></p>
<p id="WiC8ii">37. <strong>Butthole flies</strong>: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSM8jflIhgM">Best attracted with oozing pus</a>.</p>
<p id="WWgbJI">36. <strong>Nostril wasps</strong></p>
<p id="zk47q6">35. <strong>Mouth fleas</strong></p>
<p id="dBmdzW">34. <strong>Nine hot dog torture departments</strong>: Including “making people into” and “stuffing people with.”</p>
<p id="mvhiwh">33. <strong>The Twisting Department</strong>: In the words of Chris, “People came in, and I twisted them until they snapped in half, and I moved on to the next one.”</p>
<p id="j0Y5AZ">32. <strong>The Disembowelment Department</strong></p>
<p id="0guWuZ">31. <strong>The Spastic Dentistry Department</strong></p>
<p id="r6O4mc">30. <strong>Turning humans inside out: </strong>Step 1: reach through throat. Step 2: grab butt from inside. Step 3: profit?</p>
<p id="HJvx0u">29. <strong>The Partial Decapitation Department</strong></p>
<p id="9KFFot">28. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4tA8JcOWQM"><strong>Turning humans into soup</strong></a></p>
<p id="BEoDeW">27. <strong>A volcano full of scorpions</strong></p>
<p id="QHtusU">26. <strong>Bees with teeth</strong>: The inventor’s picture is in the Bad Place Hall of Fame.</p>
<p id="in05xq">25. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzCUucUtflc"><strong>“Your brains will be removed, studied, and batted about a stadium like beach balls, your arms will be peeled like bananas—that part’s just for fun—and then you will be tortured for, you know, ever.”</strong></a></p>
<p id="Emmqh0">24. <strong>Scorpion diapers</strong></p>
<p id="TsOkjp">23. <strong>“Literally, they will boil us.”</strong></p>
<p id="5MRmXj">22. <strong>Squiggly eyeball corkscrews</strong></p>
<p id="YbPcoS">21. <strong>Butthole spiders</strong>: I shudder to think.</p>
<p id="EDt4DG">20. <strong>Impaling </strong></p>
<p id="TcRsoD">19. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k870ebvZCq4"><strong>DemonCon</strong></a><strong>: “100 straight days of seminars, lectures, and other crap you’ll hate.”</strong> This is where all torture innovation is born.</p>
<p id="4etW3l">18. <strong>Pulling out fingernails</strong></p>
<p id="6hEH7c">17. <strong>The endless screams of the perpetually tortured</strong></p>
<p id="2srJAu">16. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDjX4-LKqCA"><strong>The Kars4Kids jingle</strong></a>: The official song of the Bad Place. It’s stuck in your head already, isn’t it? </p>
<p id="DjN6Ub">15. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfCxkqyP62E"><strong>The food offerings in the actual Bad Place</strong></a><strong>, even though the demons don’t technically need to eat: </strong>Soul food from Maine; bagels from Arkansas; egg salad from a hospital vending machine in Azerbaijan; Hawaiian pizza; a baby; gunk from a Sonicare; expired, way-too-hot New England clam chowder; shoe sludge; dandruff; a can of mixed teeth; sun-dried mayo; burrito full of hair; and seven-layer dip (barf, garbage, glass, condom confit, repeat). It’s impossible not to gag.</p>
<p id="6fBSjo">14. <strong>Burning people with fire: </strong>A classic hell move.</p>
<p id="miUMp0">13. <strong>Penis flatteners</strong></p>
<p id="sjauEj">12. <strong>Hot spike pits with lava and bees and lightning that tears off human flesh</strong></p>
<p id="sBRDi7">11. <strong>Busting humans open like a piñata</strong>: “The goo that comes out doesn’t taste as good as candy,” says Michael.</p>
<p id="NoAji8">10. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghsOOTs9e6s"><strong>Shawn</strong></a>: Shawn is rude, sexist, in charge, and he loves <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pomYmMlu1Cg">cheating</a> and psyching Michael out. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWf75GmeOcw">He comes around</a> to the new afterlife plan in the end, but who knows if change will last for someone so evil?</p>
<p id="XSgosP">9.<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zykISvot388"><strong>Trevor</strong></a>: Michael says, “Trevor is a diabolical, sadistic agent of evil. He might just be the single most dangerous creature in the universe.” I say Trevor SUCKS.</p>
<p id="os1JDM">8. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-e1U21yTEE"><strong>Michael suit</strong></a><strong>/personalized skin suits to torture humans with</strong>: At DemonCon, Shawn calls the personalized skin suit the dawn of a new era in torture. It is extra cruel for the demons to torture a human while wearing a skin suit that looks like a loved one or nemesis. </p>
<p id="iUPmRm">7. <strong>“Rip a cat in half, it’s a party, Vicky, come on!”</strong></p>
<p id="k55wrC">6. <strong>The puppy cannon</strong></p>
<p id="ptKea2">5. <strong>All the rampant sexism and sexual harassment training</strong>: In the Bad Place, this is training on how to sexually harass, not how NOT to.</p>
<p id="VoTnUB">4. <strong>Endless memory erasure</strong></p>
<p id="Smqp8u">3. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeRmJVOMb18"><strong>“The Good Place” neighborhood 12358W,</strong> <strong>Michael’s original 15 million point torture plan</strong></a>: The Season 1 reveal that the four humans had been in the Bad Place masquerading as the Good Place all along was a great and cruel twist. This line item includes all the torture the core four faced during this first experiment: Chidi’s forever stomachache, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbWhYpjQnsc">Eleanor’s clown art</a>, Jason having to stay quiet and his diarrhea from all the Froyo, Tahani thinking her point total was low, all the incidental torturing the humans inflicted on each other, and … basically everything that happened in Season 1 goes here. </p>
<p id="igkWlH">2. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb7D_QWYOyo"><strong>All of the other Fake Good Place reboots</strong></a><strong> and everything within them</strong>: This includes all the torture the humans faced in the 801 reboots after that first Fake Good Place, such as Eleanor’s pooping lizard, Tahani’s mean centaur, Tahania, Chidi being trapped in a purple space bubble, Jason’s silent monk soulmate, and more. This is worse because it went on for 300 years, give or take. That’s 800-plus memory reboots and countless torture that we never even saw. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="uRyQJo">1. <strong>That all of the bad things about the Bad Place literally last for eternity</strong>: A constant refrain throughout the show’s run is that the Bad Place’s inhabitants will be tortured for eternity. Even if the afterlife system is changing now, the worst thing about the Bad Place as it was is undeniably that all the terrible things within it were never-ending, forever. That’s way scarier than butthole spiders.</p>
<p id="lPosqV"><em>Jessica MacLeish is a pop culture writer and freelance book editor based in Brooklyn (but also on the World Wide Web, tweeting sporadically </em><a href="https://twitter.com/jessmacleish"><em>@jessmacleish</em></a><em>).</em></p>
<aside id="yVbDe8"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside><p id="0JLsSr"></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/28/21110896/the-good-place-finale-bad-place-detailsJessica MacLeish2020-01-27T07:40:00-05:002020-01-27T07:40:00-05:00A Ranking of Every Episode of ‘The Good Place’
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<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.lucaromeo.com/" target="_blank">Luca Romeo</a></figcaption>
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<p>A good forking show is ending, so let’s forking celebrate this shirt </p> <p id="phE60g">In September 2016, NBC went to hell. Of course, we wouldn’t know until the following year that we were in hell—hidden truths are one of <em>The Good Place</em>’s deepest and most reliable wells of joy. But even before Michael Schur’s comedy pulled off one of the best TV twists of the 21st century, <em>The Good Place </em>announced itself as a series with vision, heart, and humor. Underneath the jokes about the NFL’s best quarterback, Blake Bortles, Eleanor’s (Kristen Bell) obsession with Stone Cold Steve Austin, and a neighborhood’s worth of puns—there’s a restaurant in the Good Place named Knish From a Rose—was a show that was genuinely curious about the afterlife, humanity, and a person’s ability to improve. At a time when the world seemed to be crumbling, <em>The Good Place </em>was there to remind us what we owe to each other.</p>
<p id="R00kuz">On Thursday, the final episode of <em>The Good Place </em>will air, bringing the journey of Team Cockroach—Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Michael, and Janet—to an end. In honor of that ceremonious finale, <em>The Ringer </em>will celebrate the show throughout the week, beginning with today’s ranking of every episode of <em>The Good Place</em>. Now, I can’t be certain whether there are many Good Place points to be earned in passing judgment and ranking someone’s creative work, but certainly there is in creating content that allows people to procrastinate at work, so I think we’re good here. And before anyone goes full Shawn on us, let me just say that while a ranking means there is a last place, that hardly means we regard the episodes that land toward the bottom as bad. <em>The Good Place </em>is a rare series in which even its least compelling episodes are relatively impressive and undeniably delightful. </p>
<p id="XxgnJk">OK, that’s enough—time to toss this Molotov cocktail. —<em>Andrew Gruttadaro</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="qkHwL3">
<h3 id="aGbYFP">51. “The Worst Possible Use of Free Will”</h3>
<p id="vKn043"><em>Season 3, Episode 8</em></p>
<p id="FnN3N2">The third season of <em>The Good Place </em>accounts for its rockiest transitions: from the comfortable confinement of Michael’s neighborhood to just plain Earth, and from everyday existence to a fight for the moral fate of humanity. “The Worst Possible Use of Free Will” represents the show at its most ungainly, a choppy sequence of out-of-context memories delivered to Eleanor by Michael in an Arizona public library. The result is the <em>Good Place </em>equivalent of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_show">clip show</a>, a sitcom trope that has little place in this highly unconventional sitcom. The episode is also tasked with selling Eleanor and Chidi as star-crossed soulmates, by far the heaviest lift <em>The Good Place </em>asks of its viewers and the least successful of its big swings. Even <em>The Good Place </em>at its least-best, however, is still a half hour of Kristen Bell and Ted Danson arguing amicably about the existence of free will. You don’t get <em>that </em>anywhere else on broadcast. —<em>Alison Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="BmSTyg">50. “You’ve Changed, Man”</h3>
<p id="3qjLcy"><em>Season 4, Episode 10</em></p>
<p id="GEiGgG">Unlike Michael Schur’s other half-hour comedies—<em>The Office</em>, <em>Parks and Recreation</em>, <em>Brooklyn Nine-Nine</em>—<em>The Good Place</em> is far more serialized; sometimes an episode’s primary need is merely to propel the plot forward. Such is the case with “You’ve Changed, Man,” which pushes the story toward the endgame as the humans concoct a new afterlife architecture. Humor still abounds in true <em>Good Place</em> fashion, though, with Maya Rudolph’s Judge disco dancing and fawning over guest star Timothy Olyphant. —<em>Zach Kram</em></p>
<h3 id="h621ws">49. “Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis”</h3>
<p id="cFnzIa"><em>Season 1, Episode 5</em></p>
<p id="xWnJM5">This is the weakest episode of <em>The Good Place</em>’s otherwise incredibly strong first season. The sinkhole that threatens the town is just weird—it feels like an excuse to bring the plot to a temporary standstill so the show can flesh out Tahani’s character and deliver some good Eleanor-Chidi moments, but it doesn’t stand out on its own. It’s cartoonish—and, on re-watch, a sign of how the show can bend the universe’s rules a bit to make the story move the way the writers want it to. Of course that’s how <em>all</em> shows work, but it’s best to not be so obvious. —<em>Riley McAtee</em></p>
<h3 id="qKPwYb">48. “Mondays, Am I Right?”</h3>
<p id="jBNGgt"><em>Season 4, Episode 11</em></p>
<p id="fObLG6">Ah, the home stretch. With the battle to institute a new afterlife won, Michael goes about training the Bad Place demons on their new means of torture while Eleanor, Chidi, and Jason select a handful of Good Place gimmes to make sure their new measurement system works (candidates include Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, and … Prince). Unfortunately, this episode turns into being much less about the secret sauce that goes on top of the juicy steak and much more about Eleanor and Chidi’s relationship, something with varying returns that’s plagued Season 4 of <em>The Good Place</em>—we want more jokes and philosophy, less <em>will-they-or-won’t-they?</em>! At the end of this episode, though, the gang does finally make it into the Good Place, setting up the show’s wistful conclusion. <em>—Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="lKyPnJ">47. “The Snowplow”</h3>
<p id="lHlCf5"><em>Season 3, Episode 4</em></p>
<p id="kC8y2s">It wouldn’t be an episode of <em>The Good Place</em> without a thorny ethical dilemma to confront. In this case, we’re forced to wrestle with one person’s “snowplow”—Michael and Janet, now on Earth and without their powers, intervening in the lives of Team Cockroach/The Brainy Bunch to keep their study group together so they can rack up more Good Place points (clearing the path so they can “more easily drive along the road of improvement,” as Michael says). By episode’s end, the snowplow has veered off the road: The about-to-splinter group discovers Michael and Janet preparing to walk through an interdimensional door to the afterlife, setting the stage for the stakes-raising scene-shift to come. </p>
<p id="pNvmbG">But while this episode’s more table-setting than transcendent, it still highlights what makes <em>The Good Place</em> so special: Even more workmanlike installments still give us gold like the roiling internal struggle of poor Larry Hemsworth, a lowly pediatric surgeon who can’t compete with his famous brothers because he “barely has an eight-pack;” poignant moments like<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRtl3uYtOjQ"> Eleanor’s defense mechanisms kicking in</a>; and, of course,<a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OCgm5MJ34Qf5Xp6slSXaAZW6moU=/0x0:450x517/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:450x517):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13255507/Beartles.png"> Blake Beartles</a>. —<em>Dan Devine</em></p>
<h3 id="9ytbtL">46. “A Girl From Arizona (Part 2)”</h3>
<p id="r1ni6f"><em>Season 4, Episode 2</em></p>
<p id="sGswHO">This episode is all about showing the full range of Eleanor’s growth. Not only is our titular girl from Arizona tasked with playing architect, trying to root out the Bad Place’s evil doings, and figuring out the hidden desires of the four humans in the neighborhood, she’s also thrown a few curveballs for good measure. Brent quickly becomes her archnemesis, proving to be the prototypical white male who’s unable—and unwilling—to realize just how awful he really is. (At one point, while the world is crumbling around him and essentially screaming at him that he is to blame, he tells Eleanor and Michael that he actually belongs in <em>The Best Place</em>.) Then comes the real heartbreaking task: To help Simone accept reality (or what is reality in this scenario), Eleanor tells Chidi that Simone is his soulmate, effectively making them fall in love while she—Chidi’s <em>real</em> soulmate—is forced to watch in real time. Eleanor justifies this by saying that Chidi gave up his memories for them, so she has to do what she can, too—but hers is arguably an even greater sacrifice. —<em>Megan Schuster</em></p>
<h3 id="BYOrbX">45. “Flying”</h3>
<p id="xLjkE1"><em>Season 1, Episode 2</em></p>
<p id="01K5o1">Pilots are notoriously a tough act to follow, though <em>The Good Place </em>makes a valiant effort by starting its second episode with Ted Danson attempting to lick his own armpit. “Flying” has to convince the audience that ethical philosopher Chidi would take a chance on Eleanor, valuing the potential salvation of a noted <em>Real Housewives </em>fan over the safety of an entire neighborhood. Fortunately, Kristen Bell and William Jackson Harper’s platonic chemistry is such that Chidi’s cautious faith in Eleanor, and Eleanor’s earnest attempts at self-improvement, read as genuine. (We’ll leave the romantic chemistry for another part of this ranking.) By the end of “Flying,” <em>The Good Place </em>has yet to introduce one of its core protagonists—Jason is still passing himself off as a silent monk named Jianyu—or even revealed its true premise. Still, the Eleanor-Chidi bond gives it a solid enough foundation to move forward. —<em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="LSsVnj">44. “A Fractured Inheritance”</h3>
<p id="lY2ByW"><em>Season 3, Episode 7</em></p>
<p id="C7iNog">The middle of Season 3 of <em>The Good Place </em>saw core cast ping-pong their way across the globe—Australia to Jacksonville to Canada—on a mission to rehab the souls of their closest friends and family. “A Fractured Inheritance” saw Eleanor head to Nevada to see her mother, who definitely didn’t die while adjusting her toe ring at a Rascal Flatts concert; Tahani, meanwhile, confronts her sister/rival at an art museum in Europe. The episode’s main thrusts are touching, albeit a tad rote—though Eleanor and Tahani satisfyingly reconcile the damage caused by their familial relationships, it’s not like we weren’t already acquainted with such dysfunction.</p>
<p id="i0OMM0">The main highlight of the episode, to me, is Andy Daly’s guest appearance as the basic-ass boyfriend of Eleanor’s mom, yet another example of <em>The Good Place </em>expertly deploying comedic geniuses in cameo capacities. Look at this “bad boy:”</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mbmf4iGSQGHY22DaUlLk-FWgX10=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19631070/Screen_Shot_2020_01_24_at_3.25.41_PM.png">
<figcaption>NBC</figcaption>
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<p id="mDIFz4">“Who am I—Avril Lavigne?” he asks. What a king. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="bzpVnM">43. “The Brainy Bunch”</h3>
<p id="QB1Jsc"><em>Season 3, Episode 3</em></p>
<p id="3XsyFp">This episode is a lot, but mostly because Trevor (the demon played by Adam Scott) has shown up to torture the humans on Earth—and the show’s viewers in the process. He arrives in Australia to try to break up Chidi and Simone’s study group, and he goes about it in the <em>most obnoxious</em> of ways: mass-texting the group “dank memes” (his words, I’m sorry); getting sweatshirts printed up with their faces under the header, “The Brainy Bunch;” taking them out to eat at the worst imitation of an American restaurant I’ve ever seen; and trying to get them all wasted on cheap beer and vodka. Scott’s performance is honestly art, and he should have won an award for being able to reach that level of awfulness, but Trevor’s presence makes for a tough rewatch. —<em>Schuster</em></p>
<h3 id="RVjEyi">42. “Chillaxing”</h3>
<p id="b3Wx1m"><em>Season 4, Episode 3</em></p>
<p id="HenqfN">In this Season 4 episode—a bit of a filler, if I’m being honest—everyone in Eleanor’s Good Place experiment is given the chance to throw a “lava stone” into a pit in order to receive “whatever your soul most desires.” Jason—who is playing as Jianyu in an ongoing effort to torture the memory-less Chidi—throws his stone almost immediately, and there it is: Jason’s old motorcycle, the one with Pamela Anderson airbrushed on the side. It exploded a week after he got it, you see, “because someone wanted to see what would happen if they poured lighter fluid in the engine.” (That someone was Jason.) Sometimes, when shows age, they begin to feel stale, not nearly as thrilling as they once were. But the best shows use the familiarity with characters that we’ve gained over the years as a source of new humor. <em>Of course </em>Jason briefly owned a motorcycle with Pamela Anderson airbrushed on the side. At this point in <em>The Good Place</em>’s run, it’s nice to be in on the joke. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="jogPVQ">41. “Best Self”</h3>
<p id="Y2bCtE"><em>Season 2, Episode 10</em></p>
<p id="QSbAmM">The gang spends much of this episode attempting to board a hot air balloon that Michael claims will take them to the Good Place. Eventually, though, Michael admits that the technologically complex hot air balloon won’t even get them to the Good Place; he doesn’t know how to get there at all, and so the group is doomed. </p>
<p id="Q2AiVK">Though adorned with various <em>Good Place</em> hallmarks—a texting, gum-smacking Bad Janet; a Michael monologue on the adorable idiocies of human existence, from perpetually lost car keys to corporate-branded stress balls one can never bring oneself to throw away; Jason’s assertion that for him, hell would be a Skrillex concert where the bass drop never comes—this episode belongs to a much bigger genre. It’s a “friends’ last hurrah before the bad thing happens” episode of TV, like a shorter, brighter version of <em>Game of Thrones</em>’ “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” Given this context, it’s extremely disappointing that there is absolutely no kissing. Alas, we must content ourselves with a middle school dance–style swaying waltz from the perpetually chemistry-less Chidi and Eleanor. It’s not how I’d spend my last night before going to hell, but OK. —<em>Charlotte Goddu</em></p>
<h3 id="gdZCIZ">40. “A Chip Driver Mystery”</h3>
<p id="w32DCZ"><em>Season 4, Episode 6</em></p>
<p id="yurlU3">There’s something admirable about <em>The Good Place</em> introducing a character like Brent Norwalk in its final season. An entitled middle-aged white dude who’s probably watched every Clint Eastwood movie 20 times, is glued to the Golf Channel, and, let’s be honest, voted for Donald Trump, it’s hard to think of someone who’d fit in less on the series than Brent. (The fact that his name is <em>Brent</em>, though, is perfect.)</p>
<p id="qrTi50">“A Chip Driver Mystery” skips ahead to six months into the experiment, and for all the strides John and Simone have made, Brent’s progress has amounted to … not always cheating at golf? Things get even worse when Brent shares a novel he wrote, <em>Six Feet Under Par: A Chip Driver Mystery</em>, which is [<em>deep breath</em>] a submarine-based, golf-centric political-thriller-whodunit in which the quarterback of the Chicago Bears, who is also the “world’s strongest president,” solves a murder by the 10th page. This James Patterson airport novel on steroids is rightfully panned, which only results in Brent being vitriolic to such an extent that Chidi—Chidi!—punches him in the face. Brent can be a tough character to spend time with, but his irredeemability adds an essential dimension to the series late in the game. If Eleanor and Co. are really going to devise a system that proves anyone can become a better person over time, someone like Brent is the ultimate litmus test. I’m not sure what it says about <em>my</em> ethical standing, however, that I really want to read <em>Six Feet Under Par</em>. —<em>Miles Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="fAk3vk">39. “Employee of the Bearimy”</h3>
<p id="LawXBs"><em>Season 4, Episode 5</em></p>
<p id="et5wEY">Here’s an episode about growth. Michael was once one of the Bad Place’s greatest demons; Jason once solved all his problems by throwing Molotov cocktails at them; Eleanor was once a trash bag who could barely manage her own life. By the middle of Season 4, though, Michael has become a benevolent being (or “like a nice, happy, weird, old dude,” according to Jason); Jason has become a person with restraint and actual wisdom; Eleanor has become fully capable, caring, and self-sufficient. And growth is what <em>The Good Place </em>is all about. (“Employee of the Bearimy” is also notable for being the episode that breaks the news of Nick Foles—and his broken clavicle—to Jason, which is important.). —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="6W7TDZ">38. “A Girl From Arizona (Part 1)”</h3>
<p id="c93fRg"><em>Season 4, Episode 1</em></p>
<p id="ZjwbV8">The most exciting moment of this episode may be when Eleanor takes a surprise punch to the face. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad episode, but like most of the show’s season openers, its purpose is to do a lot of table-setting. We open Season 4 with Eleanor in charge, Chidi with his memory erased, Michael recovering from a (fake) panic attack, and the group trying to figure out the four new humans they’ve been tasked with saving. Eventually it turns out that the dud of the group, a “Norwegian” “woman” named “Linda,” is actually a demon in disguise. Once that is discovered and Shawn is disciplined by the Judge, Chidi is inserted into the experiment and the real games begin. —<em>Schuster</em></p>
<h3 id="VR9vEP">37. “What’s My Motivation”</h3>
<p id="27UmWN"><em>Season 1, Episode 11</em></p>
<p id="vwRZEJ">Still under the impression that she’s the sole sinner in the Good Place, Eleanor (or Fake Eleanor, as Michael is still calling her) embarks on some misguided attempts to up her point count and justify her presence in paradise. When door-holding and a cocktail party win her neither affection nor tangible goodness points, she realizes why: Doing good deeds to benefit oneself isn’t actually good, and the only way to be a good person is to act simultaneously moral and un-self-interested. Eleanor’s praxis is to apologize to the neighborhood’s residents and banish herself to the Bad Place, barring herself from the benefits of accruing goodness points even as she racks up more than a million of them. This philosophy—effective altruism, more or less—becomes the animating principle of Season 2 of <em>The Good Place. </em></p>
<p id="jmf1v8">Of course, the episode isn’t all moral philosophy: We also get a lot of quality time with Jason. He’s recently married Janet—“She makes the bass drop in my heart,” he explains—but in addition to newlywed bliss we get a glimpse into his death, a burrito-joint robbery gone so awry that he ends up suffocating inside an unventilated safe after doing a bunch of whippets. As ever, the high-brow/low-brow mix of Peter Singer and nitrous oxide proves the recipe for a solid <em>Good Place</em> episode. —<em>Goddu</em></p>
<h3 id="ZXnZZR">36. “Help Is Other People”</h3>
<p id="Aw2Gaf"><em>Season 4, Episode 7</em></p>
<p id="44Gndr">An average plot-moving episode that revolves around the gang making one last push to prove that the neighborhood’s new group can improve, “Help Is Other People” is uplifted by its best scene, in which Jason Mendoza gives an inspiring message through a rare, concise description of “the prevent defense.” Jason flexes his knowledge by saying, “Prevent defense just prevents you from winning.” It’s a delightful moment, seeing these characters grow and evolve while also staying within the confines of their archetypes. The rest of the episode slightly mirrors the Season 1 finale, as the new group realizes they’re in an experiment and Chidi delivers Eleanor’s “We’re in the Bad Place” line. But mostly, I’m just here for “prevent defense.” (Though, a special shout-out to Michael, who is attempting to perform human magic throughout the run of the episode. Let’s be honest: The Magnificent Dr. Presto should get his own Vegas residency.) —<em>Sean Yoo</em></p>
<h3 id="5wbfLI">35. “The Book of Dougs”</h3>
<p id="kkxnzx"><em>Season 3, Episode 11</em></p>
<p id="tnyRR1">After three seasons of trying, the gang finally makes it to the Good Place. Well, sort of. Following a dive through a pneumatic tube, they’ve arrived at the Good Place’s correspondence center—an afterlife post office of sorts. Amid the chaos, Chidi attempts to bring Eleanor on a proper first date and they eventually have sex. Meanwhile, Michael realizes the Bad Place isn’t messing with the points system at all, but that the complexities of modern life have made it impossible to be good, no matter how hard one might try. One thing universally acknowledged as good: <a href="https://mlpnk72yciwc.i.optimole.com/w:726/h:407/q:auto/https://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/tgpb-3.jpg">Chidi dressed as a mailman</a>. —<em>Shaker Samman</em></p>
<h3 id="Pjw86j">34. “... Someone Like Me As a Member”</h3>
<p id="KXDonI"><em>Season 1, Episode 9</em></p>
<p id="ra2q5L">This episode is a masterful misdirection. The “real” Eleanor Shellstrop was introduced in the previous episode, and now the characters must deal with the fallout. The Bad Place wants “fake” Eleanor to come with them, but Michael wants to figure out a way to keep both Eleanors in the Good Place—because after all, one of them really does belong here and the other one has made real strides to become a good person. Such a conundrum! </p>
<p id="qCJxMw">Finally, Bad Place representative Trevor says that they’ll have to turn the case over to Shawn, the eternal judge of both the Good and Bad places. But before that can happen, Tahani walks in on Jason in his mediation room/bud hole, and realizes that he shouldn’t be in the Good Place either. It seems like this episode, Season 1’s midseason finale, is setting up plenty of plot threads to carry tension through the next half of the season. Only after the Season 1 finale do we figure out that virtually everything here is a ruse: Michael, “real” Eleanor, Trevor, and Shawn are all in on it together, and their psychological torture of the human characters is even more satisfying on a second go-round. —<em>McAtee</em></p>
<h3 id="AXJAjV">33. “Everything Is Bonzer! (Part 1)”</h3>
<p id="ZTYh2i"><em>Season 3, Episode 1</em></p>
<p id="v3vgdY">Season 3 starts off on a great note thanks in part to this above-average premiere, which revolves around Michael coming to Earth to prevent the deaths of our core four in the hope that they turn their lives around following this life-saving moment. Michael and Janet eventually realize that the key to making this work is bringing them all to Australia to learn from Chidi. Janet also gives calling Michael “dad” a shot; it’s weird, forget it even happened. —<em>Yoo</em></p>
<h3 id="V0U3zx">32. “The Ballad of Donkey Doug”</h3>
<p id="HLVaX4"><em>Season 3, Episode 6</em></p>
<p id="eLbblO">With how often Jacksonville, Florida, has become a <em>Good Place</em> punch line, we would’ve needed to dock a ton of Good Place points if the show never let us see the swampy hellscape for ourselves. Blessedly, “The Ballad of Donkey Doug” delivers a bonkers paean to Jacksonville. </p>
<p id="Bdu3kj">Featuring Randy “Macho Man” Savage Non-International Airport, monster truck taxis, and dudes passed out in swimming pools, <em>The Good Place</em>’s Jacksonville is an appropriate backdrop for a nearly impossible task. Jason wants to make sure his homies Pillboi and Donkey Doug (who also happens to be his father), aren’t doomed for an eternity of torture in the Bad Place—which only sounds slightly worse than living in Florida. Alas, only Pillboi is salvageable, as Donkey Doug gets arrested for trying to steal from a Red Bull factory to support Double Trouble, his new business venture—an energy drink that is <em>also</em> a body spray. “The Ballad of Donkey Doug” is endearingly absurd, and exactly what I expected from the series’ interpretation of Florida. All that was missing was a cameo from the God of Jacksonville himself, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/1/5/16854276/the-good-place-jacksonville-jaguars-blake-bortles">Blake Bortles</a>. —<em>Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="z0sYIK">31. “Team Cockroach”</h3>
<p id="V99Ibo"><em>Season 2, Episode 4</em></p>
<p id="DKsUBN">After the first few deliriously fun episodes of Season 2, <em>The Good Place</em> moved into the dynamic that would last for the rest of its run. In a bottle episode that takes place almost entirely in Eleanor’s creepy clown house, the gang agrees to team up with Michael to try to defy the rest of the Bad Place minions and, eventually, sneak into the Good Place. “Team Cockroach” transitions the plot to a new phase, as well as delights with its usual restaurant puns (A Little Bit Chowder Now, Pump Up the Clam) and character backstories (the method of Tahani’s death) and perfect one-liners (“Oh no, I died ... in Cleveland?!”). —<em>Kram</em></p>
<h3 id="3bBEDd">30. “Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By”</h3>
<p id="rMDRTW"><em>Season 3, Episode 9</em></p>
<p id="L8sfrM">Meet the real-life Doug Forcett, who guessed how the afterlife worked during a 1972 mushroom trip and has spent his entire pitiful existence since then groveling for Good Place points: eating only radishes and lentils, adopting wolves, submitting to cruel treatment from a teenage sociopath, burying snails he accidentally squashes, and, oh yes, recycling his own urine as his drinking water. As played by Michael McKean, he’s a delight, and also a legitimately disturbing manifestation of a human paralyzed by the desire to get into heaven. “Doug is a complete disaster,” is how Michael sums all this up. “And I drank his piss!” </p>
<p id="0eUfBx">Also, this is the episode where Janet gets into <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJoJaRHtwhc">a lengthy and extremely rad demon barfight</a> while Eleanor confesses to Chidi that they used to be in love, and also, “There’s a real possibility that I’m in love with you again. Here. On this plane of existence. Today. Now. In Canada. During this brawl. With demons.” There is, in short, a whole hell of a lot going on here, philosophically and otherwise, and little of it makes sense, and all of it rules. —<em>Rob Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="uzcavH">29. “The Funeral to End All Funerals”</h3>
<p id="UVJxb5"><em>Season 4, Episode 8</em></p>
<p id="55KVhs">In one of the more delightfully charming episodes of the series, three of our core four (Chidi is asleep until the results come in) hold pretend funerals for each other. Each memorial service is perfectly apt for our characters: Tahani chooses the cabin of a private jet, Jason is in the deep end of a pool while covered head to toe in Jaguars merch, and Eleanor picks a bar in a house she wasn’t invited to. The eulogies are hilarious and emotionally touching, and highlight what makes this show so special. While a host of plot-propelling events occur in the second half of the episode, it’s these quieter moments that stand out. Statham forever. Amen. —<em>Yoo</em></p>
<h3 id="Jcyoh7">28. “Everything Is Bonzer! (Part 2)”</h3>
<p id="N5Oj7b"><em>Season 3, Episode 2</em></p>
<p id="UxKL3Z">The second part of the Season 3 premiere has plenty of highlights: Michael’s alter egos of Gordon Indigo, Zach Pizazz, and Charles Brainman; a near-perfect <em>Vice</em> spoof in the form of a bro-y guy making a documentary called “Earth’s F’ed;” a ton of Jason Mendoza–related comedy (“Claustrophobic? Who would be scared of Santa Clau—<em>Ohhh, the Jewish</em>”). But one of the best parts of <em>The Good Place </em>is its “screenshot humor,” a detail-oriented form of comedy championed for years by Schur, in which taking a screenshot of certain scenes reveals minute jokes that have been tucked into the show, unseeable but for close examination. Screenshot humor is a testament to a show’s devotion to packing as many jokes as possible into every frame—and as evinced in “Everything Is Bonzer (Part 2),” <em>The Good Place </em>is extremely devoted. There’s this:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n8RfgtTKbsiolUbOSuQIKsGWxdQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19631075/Screen_Shot_2020_01_24_at_3.46.49_PM.png">
<cite>NBC</cite>
</figure>
<p id="dG0HGg">And also this, a quick glance at Tahani’s contacts:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_EtT8lbprJrZcobqEYVSFcER9Ro=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19631077/Screen_Shot_2020_01_24_at_3.42.01_PM.png">
<cite>NBC</cite>
</figure>
<p id="V7OIgR">Incredible stuff. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="53Ek7H">27. “Derek”</h3>
<p id="6gcV3H"><em>Season 2, Episode 8</em></p>
<p id="71BCEw"><em>The Good Place </em>brain trust has done an excellent job of casting its supporting roles, and in “Derek,” the titular character—who’s created by Janet in her void as a “rebound” because she’s still hung up on Jason hooking up with Tahani—is elevated by the chaotic energy of Jason Mantzoukas. Playing Derek, the comedian is essentially Rafi from <em>The League</em> undergoing an existential crisis. He’s been created to be a human-like companion for someone who, as Janet has often reminded us, isn’t human. As a result, Derek is a complete mess: glitchy, incoherent, and apparently with wind chimes where his penis should be (it’s not what you want). The Derek dilemma becomes another important test for our non-human leads, Janet and Michael, who must reckon with the very human feeling of heartbreak and the ethics of pulling the plug on someone. “Derek” is a tragicomic reminder that self-improvement isn’t exclusive to our four humans—the show’s lessons can be imparted to any type of being. Except, maybe, malfunctioning boyfriends with wind chime penises. —<em>Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="I2wv0N">26. “Chidi Sees the Time-Knife”</h3>
<p id="h5Qnp9"><em>Season 3, Episode 12</em></p>
<p id="ac1b9t">The fugitives arrange a rendezvous with the Judge in the IHOP (the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes; “If you eat anything in this IHOP you will literally explode,” Michael says. “Yeah, I know, it’s IHOP,” Jason responds) to lay out their arguments about why the current points system is broken. She’s not buying it: “Your big revelation is that life is complicated? That’s not a revelation. That’s a divorced woman’s throw pillow.” Stumped, Michael starts to floss. Then Jason tells a story that convinces the Judge to visit Earth, where she realizes they’re right about life’s complications. She summons Shawn, who is annoyed to have been taken away from “torturing William Shakespeare by describing the plot of the <em>Entourage</em> movie,” and the sides hash out a plan: Repeat Michael’s original experiment to prove whether or not humans can get better in the afterlife. Just as the experiment is set to begin, however, Eleanor is thrown another curveball when Danson’s increasingly-more-human demon has a nervous breakdown. —<em>Jack McCluskey</em></p>
<h3 id="4kUK4x">25. “What We Owe to Each Other”</h3>
<p id="f94gx3"><em>Season 1, Episode 6</em></p>
<p id="BZbHPO">“I’ve come to really like frozen yogurt,” Michael tells Eleanor as they take a froyo-karaoke-bowling-etc. break from trying to figure out what’s causing all the havoc in the neighborhood, the cause being, of course, Eleanor. “There’s something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.” That Top-Five All-Series line punctuates early-days hallmarks both tiresome (an Eleanor-on-Earth flashback to the time she abandoned a friend’s dog to go see Rihanna in Vegas) and surprisingly delightful. The “Jason pretends to be Jianyu, who is Tahani’s soulmate” subplot should’ve gone on for years. </p>
<p id="G6Gah9">Tahani: “Jianyu, darling, let’s discuss the arts. I adore the Impressionists. Who’s your favorite artist?”</p>
<p id="PXHI91">Jason: “I mean, Pitbull changed the game.” </p>
<p id="o4WAUI">Then again, maybe any more of it would’ve ruined it. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="RabrrE">24. “The Burrito”</h3>
<p id="da8MIG"><em>Season 2, Episode 12</em></p>
<p id="YNQGcC">Let’s start here: The most powerful being in the universe is not a burrito. But for a split second, our heroes think it might be. In reality, the consumer of the foodstuff, Judge Gen, is. Played perfectly by Maya Rudolph—<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/magazine/maya-rudolph-snl-amazon-forever.html">oft mistaken for the picture of God</a>—the Judge agrees to hear the four humans’ cases. At their own request, they’ll be judged as a unit, not individuals, and each of them is given tests to determine their growth as people. Eleanor passes her test, but she’s the only one, as Jason is consumed by <em>Madden</em>, Chidi is unable to overcome his indecisiveness, and Tahani sidetracks to confront her kin. Just as the group is about to meet their fate, though, Michael and Janet appear. —<em>Samman</em></p>
<h3 id="Cwswl5">23. “Most Improved Player”</h3>
<p id="rCxWeM"><em>Season 1, Episode 8</em></p>
<p id="czrx1w">With Eleanor’s admission to the Good Place seemingly unmasked as a mistake, Michael examines her behavior on Earth and finds it wanting (two words: <a href="https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/5286729-dress-bitch-the-good-place">Dress Bitch</a>). Although Eleanor admits that she “kind of sucked,” she argues that she was only bad in “like, a fun, chill way.” That defense doesn’t work, and Eleanor is sentenced to eternal torture, setting up a surprisingly fond farewell with her friends. (Even Tahani acknowledges that she feels a “casual kinship” with Eleanor, “much as one might be fond of a street cat.”) But after Chidi intercedes on Eleanor’s behalf, Michael frees her from the train to the Bad Place, extending her stay. “Most Improved Player” marks the arrival of Vicky, as well as the first appearance of Adam Scott’s <em>Step Brothers</em>–esque torturer, Trevor, who greets his target with the withering line, “Hi, you look like a piece of crap. Are you Eleanor?” This episode also stands out for mistakenly treating a fondness for <em>The Bachelor</em> as a bad thing, perhaps the first sign that the afterlife’s points system is seriously screwed up. —<em>Ben Lindbergh</em></p>
<h3 id="3SFfah">22. “Leap to Faith”</h3>
<p id="MjtJuM"><em>Season 2, Episode 9</em></p>
<p id="v2CzUy">Michael’s fake roast of the four humans is a little clunky, but this midseason premiere sets the show up for a strong Season 2 stretch run. Eleanor realizes that Michael’s quoting of Kierkegaard is a hint to take a “leap into faith,” and, crucially—she believes in him. It’s a touching moment when she defends him to the group. She also picks up on the set of clues Michael left in his roast as well. The humans are able to escape Shawn’s clutches by hiding under a train and tricking him into thinking they headed to the Medium Place. And when they reunite with Michael after, the race is on to figure out how the entire crew can escape the Bad Place and make it to the actual Good Place. In some ways, this episode is already setting up Season 3. —<em>McAtee</em></p>
<h3 id="M2AYS5">21. “Everything Is Fine”</h3>
<p id="0DwL8a"><em>Season 1, Episode 1</em></p>
<p id="HQwajQ">Eleanor wakes up to learn that she has died—in hilarious fashion, getting hit by a column of shopping carts and pushed into traffic, where she’s struck by a mobile billboard truck bearing an erectile-dysfunction ad—and been wrongly admitted to the Good Place. Indulging her worst impulses at Tahani’s welcome party by talking trash about everyone, drinking heavily, and stuffing her bra with shrimp, Eleanor unleashes chaos on the supposed utopia the next day as giant shrimp fly through the sky and giraffes run amok. Determined not to be found out, she enlists her new friend and supposed soulmate Chidi, a professor of ethics and moral philosophy, to help her become worthy of the mistake that landed her here—or at least avoid detection and subsequent ejection to the Bad Place. —<em>McCluskey</em></p>
<h3 id="xT82t1">20. “Everything Is Great! (Part 1)”</h3>
<p id="ev2SkU"><em>Season 2, Episode 1</em></p>
<p id="fj00OS">So it’s the dawn of Season 2, and that shocking They’re Really In The Bad Place plot twist is still reverberating, and Michael is, for a brief moment, a straightforwardly evil demon who says things like “Fire up the old penis-flattener” with unironic gusto. Eleanor and Chidi are rebooted as their selfish and paralyzingly indecisive selves, respectively, and now we know that everything and everyone around them is designed to torture them. </p>
<p id="XxcKYj"><em>The Good Place</em>, as it would prove from this moment forward, loves a good meta reboot, and while this stretch isn’t the show’s funniest by a long shot, this episode does immediately establish that brain wipes and convoluted plot machinations be damned, our four heroes will always find each other—and the show’s steady heartbeat—again. Just trust me that Chidi’s delivery of the line “You look … <em>fine</em>” is this disorienting episode’s highlight, and trust the show that it’s all gonna work out OK. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="GCJ4gt">19. “Jeremy Bearimy”</h3>
<p id="DSxhjg"><em>Season 3, Episode 5</em></p>
<p id="pvgfsw">This episode takes its title from Michael’s<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFm9ClqlGuo"> explanation for how time works in the afterlife</a>—a nonlinear, looping, swooping sequence of events in which things sometimes happen before things that happened before them, a nonsensical and impossible-to-explain absurdity<a href="https://news.avclub.com/the-good-places-jeremy-bearimy-joke-came-from-a-writer-1830574473"> called out in the writers’ room and then steered directly into</a>, to great comedic effect. That effect: Breaking Chidi’s brain, and sending him on an elliptical path to making the eternally cursed Peeps Chili.</p>
<div id="GlAWxT"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2c-AawAKZ14?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="encrypted-media; accelerometer; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="RH3NgR">It also offers something beyond the indelible image of William Jackson Harper, draped in a pink T-shirt aimed at impulse-buying moms, entreating his philosophy students to “dip [their] paws in my chili [and] scoop [their] little mittens right in the stew.” (Which is not to say that it <em>needs</em> to provide something beyond that image.) By episode’s end, our six main characters have all made peace with the inescapable reality of being damned for all eternity, and decided to forge on with doing good deeds anyway.</p>
<p id="ht84iB">“I mean, why not try?” Eleanor asks. “It’s better than <em>not</em> trying, right?” As mission statements go, it’s not quite “Who, What, When, Where … <em>Wine!</em>” but it ain’t half bad. —<em>Devine</em></p>
<h3 id="t4p5uc">18. “Patty”</h3>
<p id="w5q2rX"><em>Season 4, Episode 12</em></p>
<p id="mfMHyx">The Good Place, in a nutshell, slaps. The problem is it slaps it a little too hard, and for a little too long. The Good Place has always been a show with big ideas, and “Patty” is proof that it could still have big ideas late in the game. The concept that heaven—along with its never-ending supply of “energy you had when you were 12” and “full understanding of the meaning of <em>Twin Peaks</em>”—would eventually turn a person into a happy-drunk zombie is profound, though it says even more about our existence on Earth than the afterlife. Joy is only possible because of misery, happiness is only possible because of sadness, and all true emotion can only ever exist within a finite existence. We should therefore cherish our time on this blue marble, for everything it provides. For a man who once wished that the movie <em>Limitless</em> was just two hours of Bradley Cooper doing limitless stuff, this was a very eye-opening episode. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="jixztg">17. “Jason Mendoza”</h3>
<p id="NExD07"><em>Season 1, Episode 4</em></p>
<p id="x76JP4">Do you guys wanna see my bud hole? Aside from “Bortles!” no sentence quite captures the essence of this episode’s titular character. Jacksonville’s own is actually an aspiring DJ, not a Buddhist monk sworn to silence. And like Eleanor, he’s freaking out. Every group needs a dummy, and there is no one dafter than Jason. Either thanks to his guilt at living a lie, or his inability to process that the truth could be his downfall, he nearly blows his cover a handful of times, most notably when requesting some jalapeño poppers. “Jason Mendoza” doesn’t reveal much about the world our main characters are inhabiting, but it does introduce the true nature of a fan favorite. Duval County forever. —<em>Samman</em></p>
<h3 id="fyxelD">16. “Existential Crisis”</h3>
<p id="4hvz0k"><em>Season 2, Episode 5</em></p>
<p id="RZ74P4">The existential crisis is Michael’s, who has been encouraged, by Chidi, to <a href="https://66.media.tumblr.com/cabd6882c906f39ac8ab4e45fd4ac001/tumblr_oxrvnrqrfe1r0pllgo1_500.png">contemplate his own death</a>, which quickly leads to a less dignified midlife crisis that involves a sports car, a white suit, a lobotomized Janet, lots of Drakkar Noir, a new tattoo (“It’s Chinese for <em>Japan</em>”), and a great many “birth is a curse, and existence is a prison” <a href="https://i.redd.it/sag741z06ao11.jpg">screenshots</a>. Eleanor, recalling the time she cried into a toilet plunger at Bed Bath & Beyond after encountering a family-sized toothbrush holder, eventually talks him down. (It’s the show’s best Eleanor flashback.) Meanwhile, Jason cheers up Tahani (she threw a party and nobody came) by approvingly ranking her according to the five-category system used by his 60-person Jacksonville dance crew: “dancing ability, coolness, dopeness, freshness, and smart-brained.” Then they have sex, and now the existential crisis is the internet’s. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="DNtttb">15. “Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent”</h3>
<p id="JPyS2R"><em>Season 2, Episode 11</em></p>
<p id="gpcO0j">Though this episode doesn’t do much in the way of plot advancement, it’s centered on one of the things <em>The Good Place</em> does best: making fun of humans. On their way to see the Judge, the gang stops over in the Bad Place where they’re forced to behave like demons—and spend an evening in the Museum of Human Misery. That museum highlights such human trailblazers as the first person to floss in an open-plan office, the first white person to wear dreadlocks, and the first man to send an unsolicited picture of his genitals. True winners all around. The four humans face various challenges throughout the evening—Chidi wonders whether it’s morally OK for him to lie and pretend he’s a demon; Jason tries to hold back his impulse to toss Molotov cocktails everywhere—but the episode really seems to exist just to get some jokes off. Which, in a show as dense and philosophically challenging as <em>The Good Place</em>, is more than OK. —<em>Schuster</em></p>
<h3 id="foSN5D">14. “Chidi’s Choice”</h3>
<p id="sz726D"><em>Season 1, Episode 10</em></p>
<p id="hr7XYT">Early on in <em>The Good Place</em>’s run, it felt as if each character was given an episode of backstory. Jason, Tahani, and Eleanor all had their histories explained through flashback, and this chapter was Chidi’s turn. The good-natured, kind, brilliant philosophy scholar seemed an odd fit for the Bad Place, and it’s only in this episode that we learn why he’s been eternally damned. Chidi’s indecisiveness in life drove his friends and family to the brink, and caused his own death when he was crushed by an air conditioner after being unable to move for 30 minutes, paralyzed by the inability to pick a bar to patronize. That same indecisiveness haunts him in the afterlife, too, when he must choose between Eleanor and Tahani. —<em>Samman</em></p>
<h3 id="lwSA2S">13. “Janet and Michael”</h3>
<p id="qc7Z2v"><em>Season 2, Episode 7</em></p>
<p id="7rc6Bw">With the neighborhood in danger of total collapse caused by Janet’s glitching, Michael consults his omnipotent assistant’s user manual to search for a solution to the earthquakes. Extensive troubleshooting reveals the reason for her aberrant behavior: It’s not because she tried to eat frozen yogurt, or even because Michael has repeatedly lied to her—it’s because she has the hots for Jason, and she’s lying to herself about it. Janet determines that Michael must marbleize her and start fresh with a non-repeatedly-rebooted Janet who hasn’t learned to love, but Michael can’t do it. He has an epiphany of his own: Janet is his oldest, truest, and most loyal friend, which stops him from pressing the paper clip into the hole behind her ear. It’s a prime example of a <em>Good Place </em>staple: formerly flawed characters forming attachments to others and discovering hidden depths in themselves. —<em>Lindbergh</em></p>
<h3 id="E0L6q8">12. “Somewhere Else”</h3>
<p id="37N5OO"><em>Season 2, Episode 13</em></p>
<p id="AEsg1A"><em>Whew</em>. Here’s a heavy one. The Season 2 finale contemplates everything from the afterlife to moral desserts to utilitarianism to modern Earth potentially being an environment within which ethical behavior is literally impossible. How’s that for a network sitcom?!</p>
<p id="d0S18c">What’s amazing is to see all of this in action—to not only see a show tackle such topics, but to see it reconfigure itself in the process. The end of Season 2 doesn’t match the game-changing twist of the Season 1 finale, but by putting Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason back on Earth (in order to see whether they improve in their natural environment), it wipes the slate clean all the same. It’s incredibly smart writing, and as Michael satisfyingly says “Here we go” while the earthbound Eleanor takes the initiative to fly to Australia to see Chidi, the audience is hanging on to the side of a cliff, desperate to see what happens next. Also in this episode, Chidi finally kisses Eleanor. And then she says “hot diggity dog.” —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="UZh2g3">11. “Dance Dance Resolution”</h3>
<p id="r1zfRl"><em>Season 2, Episode 3</em></p>
<p id="3eB5mS">The jig is up, though the experiment is far from over. Every time Michael reboots the four humans, Eleanor finds a way to discover the truth about where they are and why. While it’s Michael who set out to do the torturing, the resilience and adaptability of his human subjects proves to be torturous to him as he becomes increasingly worried that Shawn will find out the truth. At one point, Ted Danson’s normally immaculately groomed character grows a beard and sports a paunch, explaining between sips of bourbon that he’s “stress eating and gaining weight in my thighs.” When everyone’s favorite Blake Bortles fan ends one experiment, Michael can’t help but feel sorry for himself: “Jason figured it out? <em>Jason</em>. This is a low point. Yeah, this one hurts.” And after Vicky attempts to blackmail him and take control, Michael decides to switch sides. If humans can better themselves, might an immortal demon be able to as well? —<em>McCluskey</em></p>
<h3 id="aqlYpF">10. “The Eternal Shriek”</h3>
<p id="xcWuDW"><em>Season 1, Episode 7</em></p>
<p id="zvlx3R">“My soul will be disintegrated, and each molecule will be placed on the surface of a different burning sun. And then my essence will be scooped out of my body with a flaming ladle and poured over hot diamonds.”</p>
<p id="hlUWLi">That’s what’s (supposedly) at stake for Michael as he admits failure in his neighborhood to the core four: infinite torture. Hearing this, Tahani does what she’s wont to do, and attempts to show him how much he’s valued. Eleanor, meanwhile, tries to convince Chidi they need to kill Janet in hopes of saving both Michael and herself. In the end, Eleanor finally confesses that she doesn’t belong, setting in motion what the rest of the season, and in turn the show, would become. —<em>Samman</em></p>
<h3 id="caRvXP">9. “Everything Is Great! (Part 2)”</h3>
<p id="4XrOnV"><em>Season 2, Episode 2</em></p>
<p id="Cql9M3">I’m a sucker for time jumps, varied perspectives, and situations where the audience knows more than the characters. The second half of the Season 2 premiere double-header has all of that and so much more. There is no wasted space in this episode. Eleanor reconnects with Chidi, sharing the note she’d written to herself. Tahani gives the drunken speech Eleanor was supposed to give. Jason ditches his “Jianyu” cover in dramatic fashion. And by the end of it, Eleanor has figured out that the crew is actually in the Bad Place, <em>again</em>.</p>
<p id="xe9b8b">This is when <em>The Good Place</em> is truly ripping through plot at an astronomical rate. After wiping the memories of Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason, the show could have slowly brought them together again during the run of an entire season. Instead, they did it in less than an hour, and by the end, the show shattered audience expectations and established an air of uncertainty that makes Season 2 the show’s strongest. —<em>McAtee</em></p>
<h3 id="5zKY42">8. “Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy”</h3>
<p id="IBexVf"><em>Season 4, Episode 4</em></p>
<p id="gXRJuG">Midway through the “fix new humans” adventures of Season 4 arrives a good old-fashioned mystery, straight out of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_the_Real_Martian_Please_Stand_Up%3F"><em>The Twilight Zone</em></a>: Someone in this room is lying, and the heroes have to figure out who. It’s a charming romp, with twist after turn after twist after turn, and surprisingly emotional stakes as Eleanor and Michael confront their trust for one another. In the ultimate twist, Jason plays Sherlock Holmes, drawing on his relationship with Janet to uncover the experiment’s secret saboteur. We also learn the stages of demon growth: “larva, slug monster, spooky little girl, teenage boy, giant ball of tongues, social media CEO, and then finally demon.” —<em>Kram</em></p>
<h3 id="j7FzDN">7. “Tahani Al-Jamil”</h3>
<p id="OQHKDk"><em>Season 1, Episode 3</em></p>
<p id="tTmSIY">Of course there would be even more profound reveals in the first season of <em>The Good Place</em>, but the reveal that Jianyu is actually Jason at the end of “Tahani Al-Jamil” is a truly beautiful moment of storytelling. With that tiny drop of information, the entire world of <em>The Good Place </em>bursts open. </p>
<p id="T7sHvX">But beyond that, this installment is also simply one of the straight-up funniest episodes the show has to offer. That’s in large part due to an ace performance by D’Arcy Carden as Janet cycles through personalities, from joke teller (she just says “hump day” a lot) to trivia resource (“Fun fact: Christopher Columbus is in the Bad Place because of all the raping, slave trade, and genocide!”) to overt sexual being (this one, and Chidi’s reaction to it, is my favorite) to nihilistic teen to wellness freak (“Turns out that the best Janet was the Janet living inside Janet all along”). It’s a tour de force. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="dcbnqQ">6. “Pandemonium”</h3>
<p id="F8QXUa"><em>Season 3, Episode 13</em></p>
<p id="PrT7K5">Season 3’s finale remixes the show’s formula. There’s still an experiment going on, still a neighborhood masquerading as heaven, still a mastermind pulling all the strings. But by putting Eleanor in charge for a panic-attack-stricken Michael, changing the point of the experiment from “finding a better way to torture humans” to “finding a way to make tortured humans better,” and changing the stakes from “the fate of the souls of four humans” to “the fate of the souls of <em>all</em> humans,” Schur and Co. manage to make what’s old new and exciting again—a bit of architecture as advanced as anything Michael’s been able to put together. (The writers deserve the praise Jason offers Eleanor early in the episode: “You’re like the Blake Bortles of whatever’s going on right now.”)</p>
<p id="qv7xVu">It can be hard to get through some days under even optimal circumstances, let alone when you’re tasked with pretending to be a godlike being and deleting your boyfriend’s memories for the sake of the continuation of the entire human race. Faced with the need to identify a reason to keep going forward, Eleanor seizes on something Janet tells her, thinks back to the time erstwhile boyfriend Chidi tricked her into reading <em>Paradise Lost</em>, and chooses her course: “I guess all I can do is embrace the pandemonium. Find happiness in the unique insanity of being here, now.” —<em>Devine</em></p>
<h3 id="oERooB">5. “The Trolley Problem”</h3>
<p id="5DRiVA"><em>Season 2, Episode 6</em></p>
<p id="EHbaQL">It was only a matter of time before television’s preeminent (uh, only?) <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/11/2/16596298/talking-to-philosopher-about-the-good-place-nbc">philosophy show</a> tackled the trolley problem. If you didn’t have to deal with the trolley problem in a classroom—congrats to you—the ethical dilemma is choosing whether to allow a runaway trolley to hit five people, or divert the track so it hits only one person. (Choosing to divert the track is a textbook example of utilitarianism.) But rather than provide a solution to an intentionally tricky conundrum, “The Trolley Problem” makes the stakes literal. Michael has poor, perpetually indecisive Chidi act out the trolley problem in real time through a horrifyingly realistic simulation, complete with blood and guts spewing all over the dude’s face. Michael resets the trolley problem enough times that one iteration has Chidi choose between five William Shakespeares and one Santa Claus. (He saved Santa, BTW.) It’s hilariously macabre, but the real heart of the episode is Chidi realizing that Michael is messing with him to mask his own insecurities at failing to understand how to be a better perso—er, immortal demon-being. A theoretical scenario like the trolley problem is perhaps most useful when it’s in service of someone actually improving themselves, and in a roundabout way, “The Trolley Problem” reaches that destination—without having to run over any more people. —<em>Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="1GgTM9">4. “Mindy St. Claire”</h3>
<p id="dQko7C"><em>Season 1, Episode 12</em></p>
<p id="NBnpGp">The penultimate episode of Season 1—the one immediately before the big twist—is rich in <em>Good Place </em>lore. It’s the one where we watch Eleanor’s undistinguished death by shopping cart. It’s the one where we’re introduced to Doug and Donna Shellstrop, the apathetic parents who helped mold Eleanor into the type of person who would one day die that way. It’s the one where we meet Mindy St. Claire, sole inhabitant of the Medium Place, the land of unsalted pretzels. (Side note: Judging by subsequent revelations, Mindy must have been the only human in hundreds of years to avoid the Bad Place.) It’s the one where Eleanor forsakes the relative comfort of eternal mediocrity to rescue her friends, a decision that, we later learn, the main characters would make many more times. It’s also the one where we hear how Tahani pictures life in the Bad Place: “Being forced to wear a knockoff handbag and drink tap water.” —<em>Lindbergh</em></p>
<h3 id="9gXEFQ">3. “Janet(s)”</h3>
<p id="N4GKUd"><em>Season 3, Episode 10</em></p>
<p id="dui1ie">D’Arcy Carden’s Janet takes center stage as our (not-a)girl protects the humans from the Judge and the Bad Place’s minions by bringing them into her void … where they all take on her form. While the human Janets—identifiable only by their outfits and Carden’s eerily accurate impressions—cool their heels outside of space and time and debate the philosophy of Eleanor and Chidi’s 300-plus-year-old relationship, Michael and Janet attempt to crack the code that’s damning all of humanity to the Bad Place by visiting the accounting department, where all the actions of every being on Earth are tracked and tabulated to determine eternal damnation or salvation. But let’s be honest, the draw here is Carden, who deserved an Emmy for this episode. —<em>McCluskey</em></p>
<h3 id="iT8HAu">2. “The Answer”</h3>
<p id="3CRMtD"><em>Season 4, Episode 9</em></p>
<p id="VSQxdS">If there’s a potentially fatal flaw to <em>The Good Place</em>—the show, not the actual Good Place, which has several—it’s how the Eleanor-Chidi relationship doesn’t always feel authentic so much as it’s become necessary for the plot. Through the characters’ myriad memory wipes and reboots, the series has mostly told, rather than shown, us how these two keep finding and falling for one another. </p>
<p id="OeynKZ">But “The Answer” is a masterful corrective—not just for Eleanor and Chidi, but for what <em>The Good Place</em> has itself been building toward. When Chidi gets all his memories restored in a desperate attempt to stop the Judge from wiping out human existence, we see through flashbacks how ethical decision-making—and the indecisiveness that comes from trying to find the perfect solution to every problem—has been baked into his DNA ever since he made a presentation for his parents about why they shouldn’t get divorced. What Chidi failed to realize was the act itself spurred his parents to stay together, not the moral philosophy word salad the dorky child scribbled on a board. Love, for all its ambiguity, is the key to humanity; like a fingerprint, it’s unique to every person. After hundreds of reboots always led them back to each other, Chidi finally makes up his mind: Love is Eleanor, and Eleanor is the answer. Fork, does anyone have a box of tissues? —<em>Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="fJO0oR">1. “Michael’s Gambit”</h3>
<p id="9ujzPh"><em>Season 1, Episode 13</em></p>
<p id="cwMV0T">“THIS is the Bad Place!” </p>
<p id="Y02x0v">A brilliant twist from Mike Schur; a wide-eyed, expressive delivery from Kristen Bell; an evil chuckle in response from Ted Danson, America’s goofy uncle turned unexpected, shocking heel. Such are the core components of <em>The Good Place</em>’s true beginning, an episode that does in the season finale what most series get out of the way in their pilot: explaining what this show is actually about, and showing what it can accomplish.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="3Ej3hU">That an idiosyncratic version of heaven is actually a deceptively Technicolor version of hell does more than ward off the more saccharine instincts of a show about decency. It also expands the possibility of the network sitcom, typically more of a modular delivery system for jokes than a serialized exploration of larger themes. It also aired in January 2017, mere months after millions of Americans experienced their own revelation that they, too, might be living in a darker world than they thought. “Michael’s Gambit” brings <em>The Good Place </em>out of the ethereal and into the zeitgeist. Three full seasons later, it remains the series’ peak. —<em>Herman </em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/27/21080695/the-good-place-episodes-rankedThe Ringer Staff2019-09-26T06:00:00-04:002019-09-26T06:00:00-04:00Attempt No. 4: In the End, ‘The Good Place’ Goes Back to Basics
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<figcaption>NBC/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>NBC’s existential sitcom about the afterlife has always been a tricky balance between abstract ideas and quaint packaging. And after skewing too far toward the former in Season 3, it’s recalibrating for its final installation.</p> <p id="ybYB9v">The sitcom is, by nature, an intimate medium. Its most common subjects are insular worlds like the workplace, the platonic friend group, and the nuclear family. Its bite-sized episodes and extended seasons encourage making meals out of picayune problems, which basically sums up <em>Seinfeld</em>’s entire M.O. It’s an objectively awkward fit, on its face, for a story about human nature, redemption, and the moral architecture of the cosmos. But don’t tell <em>The Good Place </em>that. </p>
<p id="Z36Rne">From its earliest entries, <em>The Good Place </em>has mined this juxtaposition of big and small for laughs; the referee in its tug-of-war between heaven and hell, Maya Rudolph’s omnipotent Judge, frequently cites the prestige television she’s currently bingeing. But the mismatch between stakes and style also partially explains the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/8/18075846/good-place-season-three">rough patch</a> the show went through in its third outing. In retrospect, the season was a transition between two phases of creator Mike Schur’s master plan: the first chronicling four mismatched souls sentenced to a version of hell that looks just like heaven; the second tracking that same group as they’ve evolved from solving their own predicament to making sure no one else ever has to endure it. In practice, <em>The Good Place </em>started to err too far on the side of its fantastical concept and away from the comforting amusements that once helped the philosophy lessons go down. As the characters ping-ponged from Earth to the Bad Place to the celestial Accounting Department, the show lost some of the soothing consistency that gives network sitcoms their enduring appeal.</p>
<p id="p6Zd1P">The good news is that <em>The Good Place </em>has always had an endgame. Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/6/10/18658996/the-good-place-ending-fourth-season">Schur announced</a> that the show’s fourth season, premiering Thursday night, would also be its last. <em>The Good Place </em>has always been more serialized than the average broadcast series, enabling the now-infamous twist—“THIS is the Bad Place!”—that catapulted the show from curious novelty to critical darling. Such an emphasis on larger narrative has also led Schur to break television’s prime directive to make as much as you can, as long as you can. (Helping matters is that ratings, despite the show’s healthy second life on Netflix, have always been <a href="https://deadline.com/2018/12/the-good-place-renewed-season-4-nbc-1202513823/">only decent</a>, never spectacular.) Instead, <em>The Good Place </em>will end when it has reached the natural conclusion of the path it was on all along.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="5sz7MR"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"‘The Hottest Take’: The Emmys","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/25/20883196/the-hottest-take-primetime-emmys"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="l1pcx3">That path was never going to mire <em>The Good Place </em>in limbo forever. (That’s for Mindy St. Claire, the coke-addicted Wall Streeter whose unlikely good deeds landed her in the Medium Place for all eternity.) Instead, the earnest, civic-minded optimism Schur made his calling card with <em>Parks and Recreation </em>has broadened its target from a small town in Indiana to the entire organization of the afterlife—one particular corner of which happens to look like a small town. First, our heroine Eleanor (Kristen Bell) was a mediocre person accidentally sent to the Good Place; then, she was a mediocre person trying to maneuver her way out of the Bad Place; now, she’s a decent-and-getting-better person attempting to prove that human beings don’t deserve eternal punishment for living ethically compromised lives, because they’re capable of change even in death.</p>
<p id="yKKV8y">Getting <em>The Good Place </em>in a position to make this argument, both to the Judge and to viewers, required many of the narrative contortions that marked Season 3. The show’s central sextet—Eleanor, indecisive philosopher Chidi (William Jackson Harper), vain socialite Tahani (Jameela Jamil), dense Floridian Jason (Manny Jacinto), converted demon Michael (Ted Danson), and chipper assistant Janet (D’Arcy Carden)—had to learn the full extent of the Good/Bad Place dichotomy’s dysfunction, which has doomed all of humanity to eternal torture since the Middle Ages. They also had to design a case study for the theory that their ability to learn from one another wasn’t just a fluke. Conveniently, that case study looks a whole lot like the show at its charmingly simplistic start: four <em>new </em>not-great-but-not-terrible humans, let loose in an ersatz Good Place stage-managed by Eleanor herself.</p>
<p id="gIoJSN">There are some role reversals in this slightly tweaked version of <em>The Good Place</em>, set up in last season’s finale and picked up seamlessly in Thursday’s premiere. Eleanor has effectively taken over from Michael as the face of the operation, swapping in Bell’s cheery pep for Danson’s soothing rasp as the face of (kinda-sorta) God. The goal of the deception is no longer for subjects to torture one another with their complementary flaws, but to teach one another through their complementary strengths. And with Eleanor and friends now running the show, the experiment that will decide the fate of billions of souls has a new group of subjects, plus a memory-wiped Chidi: There’s a Perez Hilton–like celebrity blogger; a characteristically confident mediocre white man who thinks he earned every cent of his inherited wealth; and Chidi’s neuroscientist ex-girlfriend, whose presence occasioned the memory wiping.</p>
<p id="n7ceL3">But apart from this musical chairs, <em>The Good Place</em>’s final season feels like a more evolved incarnation of its first. Such a full-circle structure is an effective commentary on the characters’ journeys, highlighting how much they’ve changed by keeping their backdrop the same. It’s also a way for <em>The Good Place </em>to silo its massively expanded mission into a more contained, legible vessel. The big and the small are no longer at odds in the show’s grand design—instead, in this recalibrated equilibrium, the small is once again a gateway into the big.</p>
<p id="ZnHaE1"><em>The Good Place </em>has merged its early and late periods, wedding familiar beats to an expanded context. Over the four episodes screened for critics in advance, the final season of <em>The Good Place </em>has plenty of the wacky grace notes enabled by the anything-is-possible set-up and furnished by an accomplished writers’ room that includes Megan Amram and Morgan Sackett. Eleanor introduces her charges to their fellow deceased by hosting a mock talk show, erecting a giant, <em>Tonight Show</em>–esque set in the middle of a quaint town square. Attempting to induce the guilt trip that inspired her own moral awakening, Eleanor and Michael trigger a meltdown like the one that ended the pilot, but with Princeton blazers in lieu of flying shrimp. The callback is a staple of well-liked comedies easing into their home stretch, but <em>The Good Place </em>puts its own spin on the convention.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="PORs3A">Mostly, though, the final season’s nostalgia takes root in the fictional people we’ve come to know like real ones, forming new connections and deepening the ones they’ve already made. The sitcom has never <em>needed </em>weighty ideas or epic overtones; simply showing likable people spending time with one another was always enough. <em>The Good Place </em>has added compelling ideas about fairness, interpersonal obligation, and bureaucratic torturers named Shawn to its basic scaffolding. But as a return to basics goes to show, it hasn’t forgotten its foundation, either.</p>
<aside id="SB0vFB"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/9/26/20884146/the-good-place-season-4-reviewAlison Herman2019-06-10T06:20:00-04:002019-06-10T06:20:00-04:00Everything Is Fine: ‘The Good Place’ Is Going Out on Its Own Terms
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<figcaption>NBC/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Michael Schur’s announcement on Friday that ‘The Good Place’ will end after its fourth season was surprising and sad, but for a show that’s always played by its own rules, it’s for the best</p> <p id="QFhVKT">Every episode of <em>The Good Place</em> begins with a cold open, and after that cold open, a title card. “The Good Place” appears in white text on a green background, reminiscent of a chalkboard, and “created by Michael Schur” fades in below it. There’s then one more panel to indicate the chapter number of the episode. Not an episode title; just the number of the “chapter” that episode represents.</p>
<p id="rRxRwO">It’s a brief and gentle reminder: <em>The Good Place</em> isn’t like any other sitcom. Normal half-hour network comedies don’t have any need for numbered chapters—despite a few plot threads that may be carried from one installment to the next, episodes of typical sitcoms can be watched in practically any order. Some of these shows are <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/12/why-syndicated-tv-shows-are-programmed-out-of-sequence.html">even aired out of order when they reach syndication</a>. But <em>The Good Place</em>, with its wild premise and frequent plot twists, demands a sequential viewing experience. </p>
<p id="WueqfU">Another way <em>The Good Place </em>isn’t like so many other popular, adored sitcoms: It won’t run for hundreds of episodes. On Friday, creator Michael Schur announced that the upcoming fourth season of the NBC comedy will be its last. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Dear Residents of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheGoodPlace?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheGoodPlace</a> Neighborhood 12358W... <a href="https://t.co/UVsm5x704p">pic.twitter.com/UVsm5x704p</a></p>— The Good Place (@nbcthegoodplace) <a href="https://twitter.com/nbcthegoodplace/status/1137180211798142976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 8, 2019</a>
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<p id="oSqweZ">If the fourth season of the show has the same 13-episode length as the previous three, then <em>The Good Place</em> will reach its conclusion after just 52 episodes. Fifty-two chapters. It stings to learn that our time with Eleanor, Michael, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, and Janet will be cut so short, but it’s also the best possible outcome for <em>The Good Place</em>. </p>
<p id="FBFPGr">The decision to end the show was Schur’s, who called the four-season run “the right lifespan” for the story he and his team are trying to tell. There was never going to be a reality in which <em>The Good Place</em> stuck it out for a decade-long run, as Schur told <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/good-place-season-3-fall-finale-explained-mike-schur-interview-1167276"><em>The Hollywood Reporter</em> in December</a>. “Obviously because of that DNA, where status quos get blown up so frequently, this is not a show that is destined to be on for nine years,” he said. “It’s not a 200-episode, <em>Friends</em> kind of a deal. It’s not a hangout show.”</p>
<p id="7aKxWB">Most sitcoms don’t truly need to stick the landing, because viewers can return to them and hang out with their favorite characters without giving too much thought to the broader narrative of the series. No one really resents <em>Seinfeld</em> for ending on a low note, and you can always end your rewatch of <em>The Office</em> with Michael’s departure, to name two examples. But <em>The Good Place</em> is different, and ending the show on Schur’s own terms should prevent the series from going off the rails <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/7/31/17628494/when-do-tv-shows-peak">the way so many other programs in the genre do</a>. </p>
<p id="nXmKZz">Just practically, the show <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/8/18075846/good-place-season-three">wasn’t built to sustain a long run</a>. What would Schur and Co. do to keep the show going? Reset everyone’s memories again? Send them back to Earth again? Take them back to the Bad Place? Find new drama in the Good Place? There are only so many twists and turns a story can take before it ties itself up in a knot. </p>
<p id="SCNizO">This decision to end the story at its natural conclusion also means there won’t be a premature cancellation that ends the show on a cliff-hanger, or a slog through dozens of filler episodes just to stay on the air (something that happened at times in Season 3). Instead, Season 4 will be more subdued, focusing on the character arcs that were sometimes sidelined as Season 3 burned through plot:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">When <a href="https://twitter.com/KenTremendous?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KenTremendous</a> & I were doing our annual Good Place Q&A, he asked me to hold this answer (regarding the more subdued s3 cliffhanger) til after the announcement that s4 would be the last: <a href="https://t.co/Ana0lG1cDM">https://t.co/Ana0lG1cDM</a> <a href="https://t.co/8L3jINv0en">pic.twitter.com/8L3jINv0en</a></p>— Alan Sepinwall (@sepinwall) <a href="https://twitter.com/sepinwall/status/1137394849282494464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 8, 2019</a>
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<p id="UZ30Ow">It’s worth noting, of course, that a tight ending doesn’t mean a satisfying conclusion. The last time a show’s creators chose to end their series on their own terms, they <a href="https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/5/23/18636692/season-8-iron-throne-imdb-ratings-worst-tv-finale-ever">didn’t exactly make anyone happy</a>. But I don’t exactly expect Schur and Co. to have Eleanor hop on a dragon and burn down the Good Place (if anyone does that, it’ll be Shawn).</p>
<p id="9Zu8HA">As Schur said, this isn’t a “hangout” show. That not only means the writers of the show can’t just add more episodes on a whim—it means it’s more difficult for viewers to jump back in. <em>The Good Place</em> is the perfect vehicle for binge-watching, and a poor one for syndication (it will fall well short of the 100-episode syndication threshold at any rate). Again, that heightens the importance of the ending. But if these final chapters are anywhere near as satisfying as the ones we have so far, <em>The Good Place</em> will be just as easy to revisit as any “hangout” show.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="DFJVyz">However <em>The Good Place</em> concludes will recontextualize the story we were told in the first three seasons. In between moral philosophy lessons, trips to get froyo, and Chidi’s stomach aches, this show has been trying to tell us something—about humanity, about morality, about life. What that something ultimately ends up being will reveal what <em>The Good Place</em> is truly <em>about</em>. I love <em>The Good Place</em>, but I’m excited as hell for it to end.</p>
<aside id="WbxoYD"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/6/10/18658996/the-good-place-ending-fourth-seasonRiley McAtee2019-01-25T10:00:50-05:002019-01-25T10:00:50-05:00The ‘Good Place’ Finale Embraces the Pandemonium
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<img alt="An illustration of D’Arcy Carden and Kristen Bell in ‘The Good Place’" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/E3WvMSpq5EYeezqlfivnlVbCB1o=/163x0:2830x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62930084/alison_goodplacefinale_nbc_ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>NBC/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The show’s Season 3 closer leans into the darkness without shedding its trademark optimism</p> <p id="fVauAo"><em>The Good Place </em>is a horrifically dark vision of an unjust cosmos where virtually the entire human race is condemned to eternal suffering in the afterlife, unbeknownst to the living. It is also a sunny, upbeat, congenitally kind sitcom from the creator of <em>Parks and Recreation. </em>Prior to its third season, which came to a conclusion on Thursday night, the NBC comedy was able to foreground the second version of itself while obscuring the first. In its latest volume, however, <em>The Good Place </em>no longer hid its contradictions—initially to its detriment, and then, eventually, to its advantage.</p>
<p id="q3f13o">Even before the first season finale, when Michael Schur and his writers unveiled the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/1/20/16042906/the-good-place-twists-the-sitcom-season-finale-6cf217213d7e">bombshell</a> revelation that its rainbow-hued heaven was in fact a devilishly intricate hell, there were signs that something was rotten in this frozen-yogurt-filled version of Denmark. As self-identified architect Michael (Ted Danson) shows the jaded, selfish Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) around her new home in the show’s very first episode, he blithely informs her this paradise of soulmates and the power of flight is open to only the tiniest fraction of the human race. The rest, from the truly abominable to the merely not good enough, are doomed to a realm of suffering we never actually see, though we do know it involves penis flatteners. It’s barely lingered on at first, but the injustice is there.</p>
<p id="v1xnWL">Once Eleanor and her compatriots learned their true fate, <em>The Good Place </em>inched closer to a systemic indictment of its fictional world, if just barely. But even though its protagonists had landed in the Bad Place, deservedly or not, they were still in a world that <em>looked </em>like the Good Place, putting larger questions about humanity’s plight at both a literal and figurative distance. Besides, this is television: Audiences attach themselves to the stories of individual characters, not abstract concepts. And while <em>The Good Place </em>does deal with concepts <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/11/2/16596298/talking-to-philosopher-about-the-good-place-nbc">far more philosophical</a> than those found in the typical network half-hour, its heroes were still concerned with the title quandary of T.M. Scanlon’s <em>What We Owe to Each Other</em>. They weren’t yet asking what the universe owed to <em>them</em>,<em> </em>or to anyone. The <em>Good Place </em>core four were looking to succeed within the system, not topple it altogether.</p>
<p id="HBdjzy">This latest season of <em>The Good Place </em>has shifted its focus from what Eleanor and her friends can do for themselves to what they can do for everyone else. Such a development is both a logical progression for a show about ethics—one can be only so ethical when selfishly, if understandably, trying to save oneself from eternal damnation—and an awkward transition. Caught between the blank slate of its earliest episodes and the increasingly apparent destination of its later ones, <em>The Good Place </em>found itself mired in an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/8/18075846/good-place-season-three">awkward middle</a>, first stalling out on Earth, then setting up a quixotic quest to help other deeply flawed humans redeem themselves despite everything viewers, and certain immortal characters, know of the rigged odds against them.</p>
<p id="CVmrmD">Not coincidentally, <em>The Good Place </em>recalibrated once it finally made this heavy tilt explicit. After fleeing as an interdimensional fugitive to the Accounting department—a sort of convoluted, <em>Office Space</em>–like version of Anubis’s scale—Michael made the horrifying discovery that no humans had qualified for the Good Place since the early Renaissance. Initially, he believed this was because Bad Place agents were deliberately sabotaging the math; later, he deduced the much more boring, and depressing, truth. The complicated, interconnected nature of life on Earth makes it so that living a completely moral life is effectively impossible. It’s the butterfly effect in action, but with an algorithm that doesn’t care whether the butterfly meant to cause the storm or not—and punishes it accordingly.</p>
<p id="vrU1Ka">But while this pivot has come with increased momentum, it also comes with a challenge of its own: How can a show center the borderline dystopian truth of its premise while keeping the bright, whimsical sense of humor that sold, and distracted, fans in the first place? <em>The Good Place </em>has constant change built into its DNA, but it can’t change so much that it’s unrecognizable to those first drawn in by its sweetness and optimism. The challenge is a matter of tone as much as plot.</p>
<p id="qbvhZ1">In a characteristically clever twist, <em>The Good Place</em>’s solution is to make its new normal look pretty much like its old one, with a few underlying truths irrevocably changed. Our characters now once again occupy a facsimile of the actual Good Place designed as an experiment. Except, instead of devising a novel way to torture humans, this new trial aims to prove humans really can improve themselves, even after death, and therefore don’t deserve to be judged on what they were able to accomplish in life. The quirky food puns and sincere concern with ethics are the same, but the stakes and context are very different. <em>The Good Place </em>is no longer skirting around the darkness, but it is easing the shock.</p>
<p id="iTUkgG">And also, at times, embracing it. “Pandemonium,” the finale, is named for the capital of Hell in John Milton’s <em>Paradise Lost</em>,<em> </em>a reference Eleanor cites while resolving to lean into all the chaos and hurt. Her boyfriend, the perpetually agitated ethicist Chidi (William Jackson Harper), has just opted to erase his memory of their relationship in order to prioritize the success of the experiment, of which his ex-girlfriend Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) is now a subject. It’s convoluted, but it involves Eleanor and Chidi sacrificing their own happiness for the greater good, their own exquisitely awful version of the many <a href="https://www.avclub.com/chidi-wrestles-with-the-trolley-problem-on-a-brillian-1819677918">high-concept hypotheticals</a> they’ve pondered as part of their studies.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="93BZXu">The reality is that darkness isn’t antithetical to a sitcom, even one as earnest and fundamentally <em>nice </em>as <em>The Good Place. </em>When venting to the all-knowing Janet (D’Arcy Carden), Eleanor demands some version of logic or fairness: “There has to be meaning to existence. Otherwise the universe is just made of pain, and I don’t like the thought of that.” Of course, the universe <em>is </em>made of pain, sort of—a fact <em>The Good Place </em>has now spelled out on a theoretical level and illustrated on a deeply personal one. Yet Janet still encourages her friend to keep trying, searching for the moments of humanity that make the universe more than “a big, dumb food processor.” By the season’s closing moments, Eleanor has opted to embrace pandemonium, and <em>The Good Place </em>has shown its intention to keep pressing on. A darker cloud only makes the silver lining more bright.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/1/25/18197195/the-good-place-recap-season-3-finale-pandemoniumAlison Herman