Ever wondered what happens after death? Welcome to the club. The Good Place, an NBC television series that has been running for almost four years now, is a comedy series that attempts to answer this age-old question with self-deprecating humor, the creation of Disco Janet, and the never-ending supply of replacement words that sound like cuss words. But the thing is, even a show about the infinite afterlife must come to an end. The show’s series finale episode airs next Thursday on January 30th. As someone who’s followed it from the beginning, I’m sad to see it go, but excited to see what last minute plot twists they manage to pull out. But before I watch the series finale, I just wanted to explain what about the show makes it so special.
The Good Place has a lot of twists and turns throughout the entire show that, for the sake of spoilers, will not be disclosed. But I can tell you that it follows four humans on their journey through the afterlife with the creator of their neighborhood, Michael. Eleanor, the main human, was dropped into The Good Place by mistake. The first season follows the journey of Eleanor trying to learn how to be in The Good Place so she can stay there rightfully. The show, though full of thought out plot twists, is not hard to understand. It allows the avid television watchers, the Netflix bingers, and the background noise sleepers to follow the plot and stay engaged.
The humor in the show has its stupid moments, as most sitcoms do, but the show does a good job at encouraging those moments. Each character has a past that gets more intricate as time goes on, and with that comes Eleanor’s constant trail of margaritas and men named Steve. One of the things that’s the funniest at the beginning is that the characters can’t cuss in The Good Place, so when they go to drop a well-deserved f-bomb, the word “fork” comes out instead. It’s endearing, and it gets them around the network’s rules.
I know I’ve talked about some individual characters, but the bonds they’ve formed are integral to getting into the show. There are four main human characters: Chidi the philosophy professor, Tahani the socialite, Jason the lovable idiot from Jacksonville, and Eleanor the self proclaimed white trash from Arizona where she eats endless amounts of shrimp and takes part in a very complex vitamin scheme.The four of them, though not always agreeable, form relationships through the trials and tribulations of their adventures.
With 276 minutes of content per year, the show makes you laugh until you cry, cry until you laugh, and crave the next 23 minutes. Next week, we’ll get the final installment of The Good Place, a show that started off as a funny answer to the question: “What happens after death?” and I, along with many others, are awaiting the final moments eagerly.