Taking A Good Look At The Good Place

So, I watched The Good Place.  All four seasons. Eight years late. 

Eight years? Really? That long? Yes, apparently. That long.

Okay, since I've mentioned it, let's talk time. I mean, I guess I should talk about a lot of other things first, like the cast and the plot and the jokes, since it's a comedy and all, but no, let's talk time.

Here's Michael's explanation of how time works in The Good Place (And the rest of the after-life, probably.) That's The Good Place the actual place (Not an actual place.) not The Good Place the Netflix TV show, which, at least as far as I know, happens in boring old, regular, linear time.

Everyone got that? Good, because it comes up a lot in the extended final episode, about which I guess I can't really say much, just in case there's anyone reading this who's even further behind the zeitgeist than I am, hard though that is to imagine. 

The point is, without spoilers, that a good deal of the impact of that final episode rests on various, quantified numbers of Jeremy Bearimies (Hard word to pluralize since it's more of a picture of a word than an actual word but never mind, go with it.) Except, isn't the whole point of Michael's lecture to explain that time in The Good Place can't be quantified? 

Even if we posit that Jeremy Bearimy is a non-linear, non-quantifiable measurement, using Jeremy Bearimies (Y'know what? I'm going to abbreviate that. Let's call them JBs.) comparatively has to indicate... something, right? 

(This is going to mean nothing to anyone who hasn't watched the show but then I'm probably the last person with a Netflix account to have gotten to it. Oh, no, wait, Mrs Bhagpuss hasn't. She's only just at  Schitts Creek and Superstore so she has a while to go yet before she's on the same page as me, let alone everyone else.)

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, time and the after-life. This is the sort of thing that really shouldn't bother me in a sitcom. I realize that. But it did and it does. Stuff like it bothered me from pretty much the opening scene of S1E1 to the final shot in the series finale. 

Here's the thing that puzzles me most about The Good Place: that it was a hit. Absolutely everything about the show reeks of nerdism and I mean that in the most respectful way possible, which, on reflection, isn't all that. Respectful, I mean. But it does.

Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that one of the central characters is a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who not only talks about the subject constantly but gives mini-lectures on it, complete with names, quotes and examples, throughout the entire four seasons, eventually leading to every other character quoting Kant or Hume at the drop of a hat and putting the audience at genuine risk of actually learning something. I have never seen any popular show double down on what ought to have been a minor character quirk so determinedly, not to say dementedly.

No, what I'm talking about is the science-fictional element. When I heard the premise of the show many years ago I didn't think too much about it, other than to decide I didn't want to watch it because speculation about what happens after we die makes me uncomfortable. To the extent I thought about it at all, I imagined it would be some kind of fish-out-of water comedy, set against a backdrop of that delightful quasi-Edwardian vision of Heaven that went out of fashion sometime in the 1950s.

I realize now that impression was based largely on some publicity stills taken in front of Tahani's stately Good Place home-from-home and almost entirely wrong. The Good Place is actually a full-on science-fiction/fantasy-time-travel show, more likely to appeal to fans of Dr Who than Brideshead Revisited.

Science-fiction/fantasy comedies are always problematic. To get the jokes in, the writers often have to pitch the logic out to make room. Unfortunately, I find it very hard to disengage my analytical processes and, like Chidi, I find myself spending more time trying to figure out how things work than just sitting back and enjoying myself.

It's a shame, because there's a lot to enjoy. The ensemble cast is excellent. On the face of it, the show almost looks like a three-hander, with Eleanor, Michael and Chidi in the starring roles, but it quickly becomes clear that there are at least six lead parts with as many more strong, recurring supporting roles. 

It's Friends But They're Dead, basically.

The main, possibly the only, reason I finally buckled down and watched the show, which I'd had in my watchlist pretty much since I got Netflix, was because of Kristen Bell. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Kristen Bell is now my favorite, working female actor. (Actress? I forget which we're using now.)  Aubrey Plaza might have something to say about it and Jodie Foster isn't out of the reckoning but Kristen Bell is killing it just now.

She's as good here as she always is. Her facial expressions and body language are worth whole paragraphs of script, although she doesn't need to carry anything with her fantastic physical acting because the script is high-quality throughout. All the rest of the cast are on top form, too, although I think it might be fair to say some of the performances take a while to settle. 

When they, do, though, they really settle. By the time the Big Finale arrives at the end of Season Four (And the final episode is a big one - double-length in fact.) it's a good bet most viewers will be feeling very warmly towards every lead and supporting character. Usually, I can call out at least one character in a long(ish) running sitcom that I could have done without but not here. Everyone is just lovely.

And here, once again, we run into the substantive problem of nothing making any fricking sense! I'm not even talking about the plot, which if you followed it you might want to explain it to the rest of the class. I'm talking about emotionality and characterization. Is it feasible that everyone can really be that nice?

Well, yes, it seems so. It's kind of the whole point, too. But to find it, you have get past a whole lot of other stuff, set-ups that are so all-fired nonsensical they're not amenable in any way to analysis or interpretation. 

The conception of eternity and infinity in the show, for a start, even skipping over the way the terms are used as though they were synonymous, which they are not, never remotely threatens to achieve any definition beyond "a really long time that might be a few thousand years of maybe a few hundred but will never end." The Jeremy Bearimy explanation is there to deal with that but there's no follow-through, so it doesn't.

That's the whole time thing again, though, and I covered that already. What about the demons, most of whom express a strong dislike of wearing skin-suits to pose as humans but who nevertheless continue to do it almost all the time, even when there's no objective reason for them to do it? Other than to save on the special effects budget, of course.

Ah, yes, the demons. Note "demons", not "devils". Following in the tradition of Dungeons & Dragons, there's a clear division between classical and Christian iconography that then collapses under an onslaught of generalized pop-culture/middlebrow callbacks to afterlife tropes from the middle-ages to the present.

Then there's the concept of immortality and the immortals themselves. It seems, other than humans, no-one ever dies and everyone has been there since the beginning of time. There are multiple references to that being so but there's no clear explanation of what any of the immortal entities are, although all of them have roles and some of them even have job titles. 

The whole problem of religion gets disposed of right at the start, when Michael tells Eleanor all religions have it a little bit right but mostly wrong and then we never really hear of religion again. The Judge quite specifically mentions having been there from the beginning and has, apparently, all that tim been carrying a device whose specific purpose is to wipe the universe and start over, although only now does she feel the need to use it.

There are a cadre of Janets, whose powers seem easily equal to the task of Creation but there's no Creator. There are Architects, who design eternal neighborhoods for residents of the afterlife and a Council that administers those neighborhoods. And of course, there's The Bad Place which has a more cogent and coherent hierarchy, one which, along with the codes and practices it follows, I couldn't help but notice was more than a little reminiscent of the vision of Hell conjured up by Andy Hamilton in his radio sitcom Old Harry's Game.

Altogether, it's a mish-mash that never at any moment threatens to take a coherent, consistent or conclusive form. It's almost as if some writers sat around in a room somewhere and came up with it all, throwing out everything that got in the way of the jokes.

If you want to know who wrote The Good Place, I can help with that. Also with how and maybe to an extent why. More than a dozen people were involved, most of whom had previously worked together on Parks and Recreation, which I did not know but do not find surprising. 

Parks and Rec is a show I loved the first time I watched it but found a lot less enjoyable on a re-watch, which I wasn't even able to finish. Would I enjoy The Good Place as much, second time around? I don't know but I realize now I haven't even made it clear whether I liked it the once. I should probably clear that up.

I did. I enjoyed it a lot. A lot more than I expected, if I'm honest. I found much of it quite-to-very uncomfortable because, as I said, I really don't like anything that focuses on what happens after we die. (I think nothing, which is terrifying but a lot less terrifying than something, so it's a lose-lose for me.)

The Good Place is consistently funny. There's a slight sag in the first third of Season Three but that's about the only weak point and even then the show's not bad, just a little directionless and self-indulgent. It's also really nice to spend time with a whole load of people who are all basically nice, if annoying at times, and even better are trying and succeeding in becoming nicer still all the time.

That's the throughline, of course. And the takeaway. Literally everyone improves if you give them a chance. Even the demons. All the demons. The fundamental message of the show - and it very definitely has one and means to make sure you get it - is that no-one is so bad they can't be saved. 

I guess that means it is a Christian show, after all. Even if God never shows up, let alone Jesus. It's about redemption, after all. 

But who needs Jesus? Apparently all you really need to save ten billion souls is a bunch of self-centered jerk-offs, a few dissatisfied demons and some immortals who've been there, done that and would rather not do it all again because it'll cut into their box-set bingeing. Who knew?

If this feels somewhat incoherent, then good. So does the show. It might be possible to make sense of it but what would be the point? It's feel-good TV based on feel-bad concepts, which is a trick if you can pull it off. 

And they can. They did. 

Just one more thing. When did Ted Danson learn to act? Or could he always but just never bothered before? Not only is he really, really good in this, he's equally good in his new show, A Man On The Inside, which I started watching immediately I finished The Good Place.

That one's only eight episodes long, the first series at least, so I'll no doubt get to it here soon enough. As for Kristen Bell, she doesn't seem to have anything lined up but then I keep reading how she "came out of retirement" to do Nobody Wants This, so maybe she's back on her verandah by now, sipping mint juleps and watching the sun go down.

Living The Good Life for real. She deserves it.