The Good Place is here to show Netflix 'binge shows' how it’s done.

Heaven is a place on Netflix.

I, along with the rest of the NoDLC team and anyone else who sits down to watch it, finished all one and a half seasons of Netflix’ new comedy The Good Place in an unfathomably, almost embarrassingly, short amount of time. It is, put simply, a freaking blast of a show; both totally joyous and fun like you’d expect this sort of show to be, but with such a keen sense of depth and storytelling showmanship that you can’t look away or shut up about it for days after finishing. I wasn’t particularly surprised to find out that not too many people have really heard of the show or paid it that much attention (it’s been on for over a year now and I only found it the other week), so this is both a personal plea for people to park their asses on a sofa for a few hours and just devour this show whole, but I also want to acknowledge some of the stuff running under the hood that really makes this show so fascinating for me. Because the tangible qualities that make The Good Place so great are pretty obvious to anyone who watches it, but I think its the writers’ profound disinterest in letting anything sit still for more than an episode that is the cause for why we all just-cannot-stop-watching.

The Good Place starts with Eleanor Shellstrop (an always fantastic Kristen Bell) waking up to find herself in the afterlife after suffering a particularly embarrassing trolley-related death. She’s told by Michael – the architect of this particular neighbourhood of the afterlife (Ted Danson, putting in career-best work) – that amongst all the people living on Earth, only one in millions make it into ‘the good place’ and that she is one of them! She is quickly initiated into the frozen-yogurt filled heaven, introduced to her soul mates (“Soul mates exist!”) and left to enjoy eternal bliss. There’s just one problem: Eleanor isn’t the person Michael thinks she is. The memories relayed to her of her life belong to someone else. Someone has made a very big mistake.

The general arc of the show finds Eleanor trying to escape ‘the bad place’ where she actually belongs by attempting to become a better person. She does this by taking Ethics lessons from her ‘soulmate’ Chidi (William Jackson Harper, who is crazy good at delivering the character’s nervous ticks with perfect comedic timing) – an ethics professor in his previous life who is so indecisive he once asked a store if he could rent socks instead of committing on the spot. Their story also intertwines with that of her next door-neighbours: the angelic and slightly-condescending Tahani (Jameela Jamil, clearly having an absolute blast) and her soulmate Jianyu – a buddhist monk whose vow of silence extends even into the afterlife (Manny Jacinto, who nails what is probably the show’s toughest character to pull off). All the while, Michael remains to survey his creation in the most goofball way possible and the omniscient servant Janet (D’Arcy Carden who just rules) sees to everyone’s needs.

The most immediately obvious thing to notice about The Good Place from watching five minutes of it or just reading my summary, is that it’s completely and utterly bonkers. I mean, the premise alone is crazy, but the amount of mileage and depth the show manages to wrangle out of itself is just mind-blowing to behold. Every episode introduces some new rule of the afterlife or new creation that I’m loathe to ruin any of them here and the consistency that it’s been able to keep doing this has just been staggering to behold. And it’s all wrapped up in this vaguely pastel world that just exudes a kind of sunny warmth beyond the reach of even most sitcoms.

But before anyone allergic to niceness tunes out, let it be known that The Good Place is also one of the most morally and philosophically complex shows currently on television. Most of this is rooted in Eleanor’s efforts to become a better person and how these attempts often relate to and antagonize Chidi, whose rigid adherence to ethical principles usually ends up giving him a sever stomach ache every time Eleanor comes up with a new plan. But as the show unveils more and more rules to its universe, it constantly rewrites our understanding of things we previously took for granted earlier on. Sometimes this is unusually dramatic (the finale of Season 1), most times it is incredibly funny. Look, I’m a philosophy graduate who’s had my fair share of gripes with the subject over the course of my degree, so seeing Ethical conundrums like ‘The Trolley Problem’ (a trolley is on course to crash into five people – do you do nothing or change track to kill only one person?) roasted and literalised in the most absurd fashions possible is like overdue catharsis.

I know me waffling on about a show’s philosophy is going to attract about one person so I feel like that last point is crucial to re-emphasize: The Good Place is hilarious. From running jokes about clowns and the afterlife’s swearing filter that changes swear words to “fork” and “shirt”, to the show highlighting its own ridiculousness by taking story developments and ramming them to their ultimate logical conclusion (again, I won’t say them here, but ‘Dance Dance Resolution’ is one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year), there’s never a dull moment. And it’s all carried out by a brilliant cast of characters that I’ve already touched on but really shouldn’t be undersold. Most of these people felt like old acquaintances by episode 5, whilst Michael might be one of the most fascinating television characters of the decade.

So there is a lot going for The Good Place. But I think the sneaky reason that the show is so good and most certainly the reason people blitz through it so quickly, is its outright refusal to let the narrative sit still for much longer than an episode. I’ve talked before on here about how wheel-spinning narratives in television might encourage binge-watching initially, but don’t produce anything particularly satisfying in the long run and ultimately just end up as exhausting. The Good Place is having none of that shit. Virtually every episode ends with the show throwing the established character dynamics into total disarray to be picked up next episode and as such you can never be sure where the show can go next. It takes the episodic sitcom structure of yore, tells a full story in 20 mins and then shifts the dynamic of the show along to find something new. It all culminates in the now legendary season finale, which more or less demolishes the show’s premise before Season 2 has to pick up the pieces.

We’re at the point where The Good Place isn’t just one of the freshest and funniest sitcoms around at the moment, but it’s also managing to dramatically outpace most shows whose sole focus is drama! You owe it to yourself to watch The Good Place if you haven’t already and then feel free to grab someone else and babble at them until they watch it too. Then, join us in the longer-than-it-seems wait for January when Season 2 starts up again. It’s forking worth it.

#thegoodplace #netflix #kristenbell #teddanson