Loveday Writing

The Good Place – the moral, philosophical, and Heaven and Hell-based afterlife

The premise of The Good Place is described on IMDb as follows: “four people and their otherworldly frenemy struggle in the afterlife to define what it means to be good.”

The Good Place lasted for four seasons, a deliberate choice by the show’s creators and writers, and a rarity for shows – usually they are cut short through cancellation or conversely, drag on for too long with its characters and premise becoming stale. By knowing they only wanted to last for four seasons and be given them to create and build the show, the writing was of higher calibre and the show came to an organic and fitting close. I personally felt that each season explored a different theme and aspect of the afterlife and its characters.

The show’s pilot immediately reveals that the religious Heaven and Hell idea that a large number of people would have been raised on is only five percent accurate, and that where someone goes in the afterlife is based on the points total of their actions (good and bad) during their life on Earth. A third of the way into the pilot, the first protagonist we are introduced to, Eleanor, reveals to her soulmate, Chidi, that there’s been a mistake and she’s not supposed to be in the Good Place, setting the entire series in motion. Eleanor reveals that Michael got her name right but her life details wrong, and goes on to tell Chidi about the kind of selfish person she was. We are also introduced to the other two protagonists, wealthy socialite, Tahani, and silent Buddhist monk, Jianyu.

The first season goes on to reveal that Jianyu is actually Jason Mendoza, an amateur DJ from Florida, and has Chidi teaching both Eleanor and Jason philosophy so they can become better people. Eleanor eventually reveals to Michael that she is not supposed to be there, which leads to the “real Eleanor” coming up from the Bad Place, and the Bad Place demons causing chaos. The season also goes on to have Eleanor and Chidi, and Jason and Janet fall in love. It’s also revealed that there is a Medium Place where only one person, Mindy St Claire, lives, due to her living a selfish life until her last two days when she came up with the idea for a charity which ended up changing the world forever.

The first season ends with Eleanor realising that she, Chidi, Tahani and Jason are actually in the Bad Place, with Michael admitting that the four of them in a pretend Good Place is part of an experiment he created. Michael reboots the experiment and everyone’s memories, however Eleanor leaves a note for herself to find Chidi, which Janet gives her after the reboot has happened, completely turning the series and the concept of the afterlife on its head.

The second season kicks off with Michael rebooting the experiment, only for it to fail faster the second time around due to the note Eleanor left for herself. He reboots the experiment for a third time, only for that to fail and by the end of the third episode, he asks the four protagonists to team up with him as Shawn thinks he’s on his second reboot, when in reality, he’s rebooted the experiment over 800 times.

The second season goes on to have Michael and now Tahani take Chidi’s philosophy classes with Eleanor and Jason, and Janet malfunctioning as she is having to suppress her feelings for Jason, due to the reboots and his relationship with Tahani. Towards the end of the season, Shawn eventually comes to see Michael about his experiment, and Michael has changed so much that he manages to trick Shawn and the other Bad Place demons into thinking that the four protagonists escaped the neighbourhood, which leads to the gang making him an honorary human. Tahani then comes up with the idea of “speaking to the manager” or in this case, The Judge, however they have to go through the Bad Place to get there. When they’re caught, Michael throws Eleanor into the portal so she and the others can reach The Judge, sacrificing himself to save them.

The season ends with Michael and Janet making their way to see The Judge, with Michael pointing out to her that the four protagonists being able to improve themselves after their deaths proves that the points system is corrupt. While at this point it’s been hinted at with Michael’s previous experiment alone, this moment is the first in the show’s run to state this outright. Michael convinces The Judge to send the four protagonists to Earth, in a new timeline. Eleanor’s near-death experience compels her to change, and she does, but after being mistreated due to her newfound kindness, she reverts to the selfish person she used to be. Michael comes to Earth and intervenes, which leads to her coming across a philosophical lecture Chidi delivers at the Australian university he works at, which leads to her going to Australia to meet him.

The third season kicks off with the reveal that Chidi, Jason and Tahani all tried to improve themselves after their respective near-death experiences, only to end up reverting to the people they used to be after a few months. Michael and Janet are observing them, and Michael ends up intervening again to get all four of them to connect via a joint study that Chidi and his girlfriend, Simone, run, examining the effects of near-death experiences on ethical decision making. Michael thinks everything and everyone is on the right track, only for the end of the premiere to reveal that the Bad Place have sent Trevor to sabotage this new experiment.

The Judge eventually finds out about Michael’s, Janet’s and Trevor’s interference, and whilst she sends Trevor into the void, Michael and Janet manage to escape back to Earth. When their experiment starts to go awry and they interfere even further, it leads to the four protagonists discovering the portal between Earth and the afterlife. This forces Michael and Janet to tell them everything that has happened to them, and as the four of them now know about the afterlife system, they can’t gain enough points to enter the Good Place as their motivations would be corrupt. This leads to the third season changing course by having them decide to help other people get into the Good Place instead.

The season goes on to have the self-titled ‘Soul Squad’ help Donkey Doug (Jason’s father), Pillboi (Jason’s best friend), Kamila (Tahani’s sister), and Donna (Eleanor’s mother) get into the Good Place, which also helps the four protagonists mend their relationships with their respective loved ones in the process. Michael also discovers that the problem with the points system is more complex than he thought, dismissing his original theories that there was a problem with how people were evaluated and that the system didn’t allow for the possibility that people could improve. This leads to Michael and Janet going to Accounting, where they’re told by the Head Accountant that no-one has entered in the Good Place in over 500 years. After the Head Accountant fails to provide any answers, Janet tells Michael that he needs to figure out the solution himself. This leads to Michael stealing a book detailing the points scores of every Doug on Earth and escaping with the others to the Good Place via a pneumatic mail tube.

Towards the end of the season, Michael eventually realises via Tahani that as human life has evolved over the years, it has become more complicated, and that unintended consequences to ostensibly good acts are leading to points losses. When they (and Shawn) meet up with The Judge to reveal this to her, she dismisses them at first, but when she briefly experiences life on Earth, she realises his theory has merit. When she asks for Shawn’s take on it from a Bad Place perspective, he naturally fights the theory by saying humans are fundamentally bad, however Michael’s theory has credibility as the four protagonists kept improving after each reboot. Chidi tells them they’re both right, their improvement could have been a fluke as the afterlife removed the variables that made life on Earth hard, and suggests that the experiment be repeated with four other humans.

The season ends with terms being set for the experiment: Michael designs the neighbourhood, the Bad Place will choose the four humans, Michael will not get the files in advance so he does not have forever to plan, but he can change the neighbourhood however he wants along the way. Shawn naturally tries to sabotage the experiment straight away by choosing humans connected to the four protagonists, one of them being Simone. Michael is allowed to erase her memory back to before they met, however Chidi still has anxiety about possibly letting it slip to Simone that they dated and therefore contaminating the experiment, so he asks Michael to erase his memory, and after he does so, Chidi is welcomed into the neighbourhood by Eleanor.

The fourth and final season of The Good Place mostly focuses on the experiment. The premiere episode has another sabotage be revealed with a demon disguised as a dull human, and Chidi subsequently becoming the fourth human in the experiment. As the season progresses, Tahani gets tabloid journalist, John, to join Chidi’s ethics class, along with Jason, who’s disguised himself as Jianyu.

The Bad Place sabotage the experiment again when it’s revealed in the fourth episode that a Bad Janet is impersonating their Janet. This reveal is facilitated by Jason due to his knowledge of Janet as they have resumed their relationship, and after the four protagonists are initially led to believe that Michael is the imposter.

The experiment continues to have its ups and downs from Bad Janet being detained by Michael after her attempt to pose as their Janet, the four humans starting to get along after a ski trip only for Brent to insult them in a book he wrote, and John discovering Jason is not Jianyu and struggling to keep it a secret.

After a year the experiment ends with the reveal that Simone has been investigating the neighbourhood suspecting that they are being subjected to an experiment, and her and Chidi breaking into Michael’s office, discovering his notes. When their last ditch effort to have them gain points by getting John, Simone and Chidi to rescue Brent from a sinkhole doesn’t work, Michael and Eleanor tell them that they are in the Bad Place. When Brent refuses to believe this, Chidi tells him he’s a bad person, and just as the experiment ends, Brent begins to apologise for his behaviour.

When Michael and Shawn go back to The Judge, it’s revealed that even though Simone’s, Chidi’s and John’s points scores improved, Brent’s score dropped over the course of the experiment. Shawn argues that if humans can’t improve when they have their needs magically met, maybe they’re not that good. Michael argues that the fact that they, as well as Tahani, Eleanor and Jason improved as people in the afterlife, and their loved ones’ lives improved when the timeline was reset, proves that the points system is flawed. The Judge concurs with Michael, although her solution is to erase the Earth and start humanity over. Just as she is about to press the reset button, Bad Janet arrives with the other Janets in tow as she read and distributed Michael’s manifesto on the previous experiment to them, to stall her. As The Judge searches for her reset button, Michael restores Chidi’s memories so he can come up with a solution to the points system and overall afterlife problem.

Chidi’s solution is making life on Earth a class humans take and the afterlife will be their test of morality, and they’ll be rebooted as many times as they need (retaining some memories of previous attempts) until they pass (or possibly, don’t pass). The Good and Bad Places work together to design the test neighbourhoods, with the Bad Place demons populating them. Whilst he refuses at first, Shawn agrees, as does The Judge.

The third-last episode of the season and series focuses on implementing the new system by training the Bad Place demons on how to conduct appropriate personalised tests and train the other demons, and the four protagonists finally making it to the Good Place for real.

The penultimate episode has the four protagonists resolving one final problem, the fact that the benefits of the Good Place being infinite leading to its residents becoming happiness zombies. I felt it was fitting that this was the final problem with the afterlife for the four protagonists to fix, as the points system and the Bad Place were flawed and fixed, it was only natural that the Good Place had its own problems. They come up with the solution for a final door for people to walk through to end their existence peacefully, if they wished to do so. Once they’ve come up with this solution, they can finally reap the benefits of their hard work and live happily ever after in the Good Place, which the series finale explores.

The series wraps up with Jason being the first of the group to be ready to walk through the final door, telling the others he knew it was time as he experienced a calm and peaceful feeling. He makes a necklace for Janet but loses it just before he walks through the door, although it later turns out he stuck around for thousands of years looking for it, living a monk-like existence.

Whilst Tahani has the same realisation as Jason, after she and Kamila make amends with their parents, she also doesn’t want to walk through the final door, and asks Michael about becoming an architect. Michael gets her an intern role so she can learn and work her way through the ranks. By going down this path, Tahani is helping people for real instead of appearing to help them and is the only one out of the four protagonists to live forever, with Shawn revealing to Eleanor towards the end of the episode that she is close to becoming certified.

Chidi later has the same realisation, however as Eleanor isn’t ready to leave the Good Place, he stays. However, Eleanor eventually realises that making him stay for her is selfish, and they watch one final sunset together before Chidi leaves during the night.

Once the new system is established and running smoothly, Michael finds himself without any real purpose and tries to walk through the final door, however as it’s not designed for him, it doesn’t work in ending his existence. Eleanor comes up with the idea of making Michael human and sending him to Earth to live out his life and be subjected to the new system once he passes away.

After Tahani, Jason, Chidi and Michael leave, Eleanor convinces Mindy to go through the new system before she walks through the final door. The final moments of the series show Eleanor walking through the final door, becoming a series of sparks in the sky, with one of them landing on Ken, Ken gets Michael’s mail by mistake and delivers it to him.

I wrote in my review of the series finale that it was one of the best finales I’ve ever seen as it has the group live out their lives in the Good Place and enjoying the successes of the new afterlife system, which was created by their hard work across the entire series.

Their hard work, as well as being able to enjoy the new afterlife system, ultimately enabled the four protagonists to become the better people they wanted to be but couldn’t become during their life on Earth – Jason lived like a monk whilst he was waiting for Janet to return so he could give her the necklace he made, Tahani genuinely ended up helping people by becoming an architect, Chidi became someone who was secure and sure of himself when he knew he was ready to leave, and Eleanor realised how far she had come when she realised Mindy is the person she would have become if she hadn’t met the others, and ultimately helped her by convincing her to go through the new system and its tests.

In terms of its seasons, I felt that the first season was solid in establishing the show’s premise, characters, and ultimately pulling off a great twist in its finale, something you don’t see that often in shows, and it ultimately undermined its Heaven and Hell premise. I felt its second season was where the show really hit its stride by establishing there was a problem in the afterlife that needed to be solved, as well as Michael bonding with the group and reforming. I felt that the third and final seasons had more weaknesses, as its story arcs and subplots involved re-hashing everything to the viewers, due to the characters initially not knowing what happened to them. However, the final season came to a clean and satisfying close with the afterlife system problems being resolved and the new system succeeding.

The next part of the Exploration of the afterlife on television analysis series will be released next week and will focus on and compare the benefits and shortfalls of the afterlives established in Upload and The Good Place.