Welcome! Everything is Fine.

"But why?"

Most fantasy stories can answer the why question pretty simply. Sauron must be stopped before he can defile the Shire. Voldemort must be stopped because he's a wizard Nazi. The Empire must be stopped because they're space Nazis. Presumably we'll end up seeing Jason Momoa fight a fish Nazi in an Aquaman sequel, and so on and so forth until all forms of Nazis have been exhausted.

Those are good motivations. They're clear and concise and they drive a lot of conflict. They're the sort of thing that you can pick up as you enter the theater and put down when the credits roll, not unlike a pair of 3D glasses.

Evil is vanquished, heroes are heroic, hurrah, hurrah.

The Good Place is a little different. The Good Place looks at all of those motivations and digs a level deeper: but why should our heroes try to be good? Why should any of us try to be heroic?

What do we owe each other?

Make no mistake, The Good Place is still a fantasy world: there are supernatural entities all over the place, and even bizarre creatures. What exactly is Derek at the conclusion of the series? I'll leave that for you to decide. It's just that The Good Place isn't content to just be a fantasy world. The Good Place also has to be philosophically engaged, damn clever, and really funny too.

The show starts with a brilliant problem: in a case of mistaken identity, a dead person has gone to "the good place" when they deserve to go to "the bad place." But, Eleanor, our trash-bag of a hero, has an ace up her sleeve. Her soulmate is a professor of ethical philosophy, and she manages to trick him into a promise. He'll try to make her a good person before the authorities figure out their mistake.

There's our simple why: Eleanor doesn't want to go to "the bad place."

But should her soulmate help her? Why? And what does helping her even mean? There's no magic artefact to be found, used, or destroyed. If the heroes are going to win, somehow they're going to make Eleanor into a better person. What does that look like? And why should anyone care about a dumpster-fire of a person like Eleanor?

Most sitcoms would be willing to rest easy with a premise that brilliant. After all, some folks in an office kept a show running for much longer than The Good Place's 4 seasons, only ever introducing change gradually. But The Good Place digs deeper.

By the time the show ends, it has dug down into questions of what life itself means. You know, no big deal for a sitcom to try to get to the bottom of the meaning of life in 20 minute episodes.

To put it bluntly, The Good Place had no right being as smart as it was. There are dick jokes, fart jokes, and plenty of puns. And don't forget IHOP. It's just that all of those dumb things coexist along questions regarding what it means to be a human, and what it means to be a good human, and what it means to be a meaningful human.

And frankly, The Good Place has been the fantasy we've all needed ever since it started airing episodes.

Courage in the face of wizard Nazis is great, but The Good Place offered a different set of virtues: kindness, compassion, and goodness in the face of a world that often does not reward those virtues immediately. The Good Place argued that we all have the capacity to grow, and we all have the capacity to do a little better tomorrow than we did today. The Good Place is a celebration of empathy, even towards people who have done nothing to deserve it, because in The Good Place you don't need to earn empathy.

The Good Place celebrates the virtues of leading a good life even when that's hard, and it argued that the real meaning of life comes from the people who we love and the people who love us.

Much has already been written about how cleverly the show's use of moral philosophy is, or how shocking many of the plot twists are, or the general trend of subverting the norms for sitcoms. That's all true. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, The Good Place is the best sitcom ever, and with a considerable margin too.

But why is it the best fantasy?

To illustrate that, let's allow a few spoilers, shall we? If you haven't seen the show, consider this your warning.

In season 2, the heroes encounter a new problem: they've already worked on reforming terrible humans, but now they have to reform a demon. In season 2, episode 4, the gang is working on teaching the demon how to be good, but they're not getting anywhere.

"It's all... stupid garbage," the demon says. Before long, the demon is ripping pages out of books, and maybe all hope is lost.

But our philosopher hero has an idea: teach the demon about consequences and ultimately, death. So they get the demon to talk about how demons die. This serves multiple purposes: it's funny, it's world-building, and it's integral for character development.

And it works. The show's longest-running villain is suddenly considering the possibility of total oblivion, which makes him sympathetic, and it drives the plot forward.

"This is good!" the philosopher says. "He's having an existential crisis!"

And by the end of the episode, the value of this existential crisis is proved. The Good Place is making an argument: rather than constantly seeking out distraction, sometimes its actually good for sentient beings like us to consider our place in the universe, even if that consideration makes us squirm. It's good to consider what life means, and an existential crisis here or there? That's healthy. It's the first step of a journey.

"All humans are aware of death," our recently-enlightened trash-bag of a protagonist tells the demon. "So we're all a little bit sad, all the time. That's just the deal."

Frankly, I will never be called upon to go on a world-saving adventure. I'll never need to trust the Force on a trench-run or practice potions. Escapism can be great, but fantasy doesn't just need to be escapism.

The Good Place is a call to live well, not just in the world of the imagination, but in our world as well. It's a messy world full of broken people (and demons and Janets), but it's also a world full of forgiveness and love. The Good Place is the fantasy that we all need.