Everyone has those few shows that they watch over and over. For me, one of those shows is The Good Place. I think that this show, even if it is talked about quite often, is extremely underrated.
The Good Place follows 4 characters in the afterlife. In the beginning, we follow a character named Eleanor Shellstrop, who passes away. In the afterlife, she is greeted by the architect of the good place, Michael. He tells her that there is a good place and a bad place, and she is in the good place. He explains that people are sent to these places according to how good or bad of a person they were on earth.
But Eleanor soon realizes that she is not supposed to be there, and it was a case of mistaken identity. She makes it her mission to not get caught and get sent back to the bad place, while also trying to become a better person. She becomes friends with three other people, and the story builds on from there.
Aside from having a highly interesting premise, the show continues to have a genuinely funny and fascinating story that changes and progresses with each season. It seems like a normal sitcom for the first season, after which the story completely changes. It turns out that the characters are not in the good place after all; it was an experiment orchestrated by Michael.
The reason I like this show so much is because it is a theme I have never seen before. I have never seen a show tackle this theme of ‘goodness’. What does being a good person mean?
As the show continues in season two, we see all the characters working together, and it’s clear that they have incredible rapport. Even though Michael seemed to be playing tricks on them in the beginning, we see him starting to help them get into the real good place. He starts fighting against the system to achieve this.
Throughout the show, we start to see the cracks in the system that controls the afterlife; there seems to be real flaws in the point system with which people are judged. People are seen as numbers, instead of the broader context of the society they live in, and the experiences they have had. The system is, evidently, very black and white.
Throughout the show, we see the main characters fight to improve the system, drawing parallels between the system in the show and capitalism in everyday life. It seems to suggest that humans can be free to grow and become better once liberated from the constraints of capitalism and other stresses in their modern lives.
Looking at the bigger picture, it becomes clear that the show is not just about being good; it is about being good in a bad system. It explores how the system does not always act in our best interests, and the people who control it assume that it works without analyzing its flaws.
Underneath all this, the characters in The Good Place realized early that the key to defeating the bad place was simple: to work together in harmony. Ultimately, it was their relationship with each other that helped them catch Michael again and again. It was only through the developing relationships of the main characters, as they learned together and grew, that they realized that they could change the way the system works.
I absolutely love the way the seasons unfolded, and I think that there is so much more to analyze about this show. It emphasized that if the modern pressures of life were removed, we would inherently seek out opportunities to learn and become better and kinder people. In the end, there was no proper metric to measure if people were good or bad – what mattered was they were trying to be better today than they were yesterday.