When Michael Schur first explained the premise of The Good Place to actor and friend Marc Evan Jackson, Jackson’s response was the same as that of many Hollywood professionals: “they let you make this?” The Good Place debuted in September of 2016, when many people still thought Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States, and ended in January of 2020 before words like “lockdown” and “quarantine” became an everyday part of the world’s vocabulary.
The show begins with a death: Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is ushered into a kind of diorama version of heaven, created by architect Michael (Ted Danson) because she racked up karmic points on earth for her good deeds. It soon becomes clear that this is a case of mistaken identity, and that Eleanor belongs in “the bad place.” In order to avoid being tortured for eternity, she must fool Michael and others in the neighborhood into thinking she belongs.
Much of the first season revolves around another character, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), a moral philosophy professor, helping Eleanor maintain her cover by teaching her how to become a better person. Together they explore the works of Kant, Plato, John Rawls, and several other dead white men whose works had, up to this point, been relegated to college classrooms, as opposed to NBC’s comedy block.
Suddenly the utilitarianism versus liberalism debate was on primetime television. If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, The Good Place was a show about everything. Then the show became something different. At the end of season one, viewers learn that Eleanor hasn’t been in “the good place” at all. She’s been in “the bad place,” a new corner of hell designed by Michael to torture her, Chidi, and two other humans. This means, of course, that the ethicist Chidi and socialite-cum-philanthropist Tahani (Jameela Jamil) were also in hell, despite thinking they had done good on earth.
Suddenly, the ethics lessons from the show take on a new context. The show was no longer about a funny “medium person” trying to game the system; it was about how a person can try to be good and fail, how the “good” one does might not have the effect they thought it would.
While watching the first season, I wrote about The Good Place in my journal, contemplating what it means to do good and the importance of intent (I was going through some stuff). I’m far from the only one who was invested in the show — fans packed rooms at Comic-Con to hear from the actors. Reading groups formed with Good Place syllabi. Across the country, library copies of What We Owe To Each Other, a seminal text for the series, have “Eleanor — find Chidi” scrawled in the front, a reference to the season one finale (although writing in a library book is almost certainly grounds for negative points). One Redditor called the show his new religion.
So why was this strange, heavy show successful at a time when the world was both actually and figuratively on fire? A time when so many people were looking for junk-food-escapism via Love Island or soothing decompression viewing à la Great British Bake Off? When there is constant stress in the form of climate change and the electoral college and an actual extinction event, why are people drawn to a show that dissects the greatest existential questions known to humankind, namely, what does it mean to be good? Why care if no one is keeping score? Why do we eat frozen yogurt?
As we get to know Eleanor throughout the first season, we learn her everyday behavior on earth was as cartoonishly awful as it could be without slipping into villainy. While alive she worked as a telemarketer selling placebos to gullible seniors, and in the afterlife, her idea of pure joy was witnessing people vomiting on roller coasters. But she is capable of improving, and her vulnerability makes her a sympathetic hero.
As a viewer, I relate to the underlying motives of all of her selfish actions. I have not made a weekly habit of shirking my duties as a designated driver as Eleanor has, but I understand the impulse. And when she does become a better friend and person, she shows us that trying matters. Working at being good in a world that feels bad is worth something, even when it does not feel like it.
The show also emphasizes the idea that individuals have a duty to assist one another (reductive takeaway of the previously mentioned What We Owe To Each Other), but there are, of course, limits to this idea of constantly trying to do good for others’ sake. Chidi seeks perfection, immobilizing him from making any real choices and making his intentions null. Another character, Doug Forcett (Michael McKean), does everything “right” according to the afterlife point system, but his life has no purpose, no bonds that make living meaningful, and that make good worth doing.
Everything in the universe that seems like it should be black and white is actually a spectrum of gray. An understanding of what constitutes “good actions” may not actually be the best thing for you or the people you know. The only real solution is trying, and that is never futile, though it can be and often humorous. In a way, it makes perfect sense that a show about living an ethical life is a comedy. The world is absurd and living is absurd, and sometimes you must laugh at all the challenging incongruities the universe keeps throwing at us.
It’s easy to see how these ideas apply to the current situation. In this global pandemic, I ponder the moral implications of the smallest day-to-day choices — grocery shopping, ordering dinner, taking a walk in the park. I continually find myself thinking about how these choices could create different paths, have unintended consequences down the line. It’s not exactly a revelation to say our actions have consequences and affect others, but, for the most part, people don’t get to know the ultimate impact of their actions. But right now I can turn on the news and see the direct impact of individuals’ choices on a community.
Likewise, the world that is created in the show focuses on the potential scope of an individual's actions, although it does so in a colorful and humorous way. It also emphasizes that people need each other to live good lives, a point made clearer in 2020 by weeks spent in isolation and the dependency on strangers to wear masks and stay home when sick and/or exposed.
I’ve watched other TV in lockdown, but I keep coming back to The Good Place. It is great entertainment packed with elaborate plotlines and subtle background jokes that rewards rewatches. More than that, its weird optimism insists that people can be good to each other and that it’s okay to rely on one another. It’s been the most effective watching for combating the existential and personal dread of living through a pandemic.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next with the pandemic — I don’t know the next time I’ll see my parents or if I’ll get to have the wedding I’d planned or even if the people I love are safe. But even with this not-knowing and my impatience for life to change, I’m still going to keep trying to do the right thing for my community and for strangers.