What Makes NBC’s "The Good Place" so Forking Binge-able?

1. At its heart, The Good Place is a feel-good show.

“Okay homies, you’re sad. I can tell ’cause you have the same looks on your faces that my teachers did whenever I raised my hand in class. But let’s be happy.” – Jason Mendoza, The Good Place (Season 4, Episode 13)

Everything about the Good Place is set up to make you feel, well, good. That is the essence of the joyous humor of the show. Eleanor Shellstrop, the flawed but lovable main character, dies and ends up in the Good Place, essentially heaven. The irony of the show occurs when she realizes she was not meant to be placed there and antics ensue. In one prime example, Eleanor realizes she is unable to swear causing her to make repeated use of the Euphemism “forking.”

What I love the most about this show, is that it proves that a piece of media can be nuanced and rich while also being uplifting. The show writer’s took care to make sure that the humor was never at anyone else’s expense. Eleanor and the other characters gleefully critique themselves, both on purpose and inadvertently, but the affect is to help them grow and develop as characters. This may seem like a small thing, but considering the accumulated effect of binging many episodes at a time it can make a huge difference. It’s refreshing to finish a five hour tv-show marathon and not feel like garbage.

So often we watch shows that are gritty and dark, with the assumption that these are accurate portrayals of life. However, the Good Place makes a different argument. It demonstrates that something can be uplifting, and frankly wholesome, and still have characters and themes that resonate deeply with viewers.

2. The Good Place does something nearly impossible - It proves Philosophy can actually be applied to life.

“Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through, and it’s there, and you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore, and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.” – Chidi Anagonye, The Good Place (Season 4, Episode 13)

I was a philosophy major in college, so I can verify first hand that the Good Place has achieved something which many highly trained academics have failed. The show makes the claim that philosophy can and should inform our personal values and ethical models.

Academia has a reputation for not being accessible and my own experience (while in all other aspects very positive) did not invalidate that assumption. Actual philosophical arguments are usually hidden behind impenetrable walls of overly complicated analytical language. This does not give laypeople a very friendly impression. (By the way, I’m mostly joking about Academia, but not entirely. I had a lot of great professors. )

The Good Place completely reverses this narrative by giving us the character of Eleanor. She is the perfect everywoman for us, as we approach Philosophy through her context and understanding. If she doesn’t see the point in something, she’s not afraid to say the thing that everyone else is thinking. Isn’t that secretly what we all want?

Because as it turns out, philosophy has a lot to say about a lot of things that most of us care deeply about, like relationships, and why we suffer, and how to suffer less.

3. The Good Place will take you to Church.

“What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is, if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from? That’s my answer.” – Michael, The Good Place (Season 4, Episode 6)

Full disclosure, I work as a Youth Ministry Director at an Episcopal Church, so I am a part of the Church Establishment. However, I wholeheartedly believe that the Good Place does a better job at portraying love, redemption, and community than many, if not most, religious communities do.

If I had to come up with a slogan for the theological message of the show, it would be this:

We are better together.

The Good Place shows us characters who have deep flaws, flaws that our obvious enough for us to identify with them. Many shows take the approach of showing us in gruesome detail how a character’s particular negative trait ends up ruining their life. Most often, there is a sense of pleasure taken at the character’s expense. A constant influx of this type of media, can make us (at least me) start to feel hopeless.

However, in the Good Place we see Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason give in to their flaws at various moments while also being forgiven and welcomed back by their friends. They get chances over and over again to repeat the same choices until eventually they learn that their lives will be improved by trying something different. This is not to say that they never have to face consequences for bad behavior, but rather that those consequences are shown as a net positive. They are a chance to learn a better way of living that, in the end, makes everyone happier.

Throughout the show we get a glimpse at a huge variety of different religious and philosophical approaches. The purpose of showing the viewer such a wide range of ideas is to show how the characters can approach ideas that are unfamiliar or different without it threatening who they are. We see them try on different versions of who they could become until they begin approaching something that is closer to the truest version of themselves.

I hope I have at least convinced you to check out The Good Place. You can stream it on Netflix or purchase the seasons on Amazon Prime.

Enjoy!