I'm somebody who consumes sitcoms and comedy movies by the score, I have binge watched so many great shows over the years and loved them all, From Family Ties to Friends, From Scrubs to The Big Bang Theory, From Parks & Rec to Brooklyn Nine Nine, comedy shows are my thing.
The Good Place however was an unexpected surprise. It is one of the most ingenious, intriguing, unique, thought provoking and touching shows I have ever watched whilst still remaining both fun and funny.
It's a show that literally deals with death and what happens to your immortal soul after you die. In the case of The Good Place it is Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who has died and we follow her journey into The Good Place, a spiritual heaven where only the most wholesome and decent people go after a life spent doing selfless good deeds on earth.
It seems during our time on earth our selfless good deeds and ethical and moral behaviour earn us reward points, and our selfish bad deeds and our unethical and immoral behaviour lose us points.
The Good Place is the eternal paradise waiting for those of us who manage to accrue the most points during our short mortal existence.
It's a perfect paradise where magical things can happen and your every whim and desire is immediately catered for on request through a walking, talking AI being named Janet (D'arcy Carden) and Eleanor has earned a place amongst the great and the good, the humanitarians and aid workers, the life savers and the life givers, the moral and the courageous.....or has she?
It turns out that she hasn't. The list of good deeds that are used to explain why Eleanor has qualified for an eternal existence in paradise are not her good deeds at all, They must clearly belong to another Eleanor Shellstrop, as our Eleanor has spent her life being what she self describes as an 'Arizona trash bag'
She spent the entirety of her short life being selfish, slutty, self obsessed, immoral, dishonest and generally unpleasant to everybody and anybody, so why is she here?
It soon becomes apparent however that her erroneous presence in The Good Place is causing their Garden of Eden to glitch and malfunction almost as if it's got an enormous bellyache after eating some dodgy food. It knows something is wrong..it detects a disturbance in the force.
Ted Danson plays Michael, the omnipotent architect of 'The Neighbourhood' who cannot understand what is happening to his creation and Eleanor cannot tell him because she'll be booted 'downstairs' to The Bad Place where an eternity of endless torture awaits her alongside all the other Arizona Trash Bags of the world,
Eleanor realises that in order to stabilise The Good Place and to genuinely earn her right to stay there, she must set out to become a better person and she must do it before she is identified as an imposter.
Originally introduced to Eleanor as her afterlife eternal 'Soulmate', Chidi Anagonye was an ethics and moral philosophy professor on earth. He is highly neurotic and wrestles with even the slightest decision obsessed as he is with making the perfect ethical choice every time. Eleanor come clean with Chidi and tells him that she is the reason the world is glitching and that she shouldn't have been sent to The Good Place but that she needs him to teach her all he knows to make her become a better person so she can stay,
This of course sends Chidi into meltdown as withholding the truth, covering up that truth with further lies and overall being party to an intrigue goes against his moral code and everything he stands for. He is however a kind hearted and compassionate person who is committed to helping his fellow man whenever he can so he agrees to tutor Eleanor on the quiet.
Also in on the secret is Tahani Al Jamil, (Jameela Jamil) a self obsessed British socialite and compulsive name dropper who earned her place in heaven by raising billions of pounds for charity and a buddhist monk named Jianyu Li, (Manny Jacinto) living (or rather in this case NOT living) under a vow of silence.
An extra twist here is that Jianyu is also not meant to be in The Good Place as he's really a hip-hop loving, petty criminal and part time arsonist named Jason Mendoza from Jacksonville, Florida, a man so stupid that he met his end by locking himself in a safe he intended to rob wearing a snorkel to help him breath inside.
However he makes up for his lack of intelligence by being an expert with Molotov cocktails guaranteed to get him out of most situations
When the pressures of keeping each others secrets reach boiling point, and their fears of discovery increase, they realise that their Good Place is becoming an unbearable personal torture chamber far worse than anything The Bad Place has to offer which leads Eleanor to a startling realisation.
And thats just the first season.
What follows are three more seasons where Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Michael and Janet take us on an emotional journey of self discovery through their afterlife, where they take on the Demons of The Bad Place, a celestial judge and even challenge the existence and structure of heaven and hell itself.
As mentioned earlier, this show is one of a kind. It's unique. There has never been a show like this before which is what makes it so wonderful. It's funny, dramatic, thought provoking..even inspiring in places. It's characters (even the bad guys) are great to watch, the overall story is ingenious and it all culminates in a great 1 hour final episode which is both satisfying and very emotional...it a shame but it seems even eternity has to have an end.
It really does gets you thinking...where do we go after we shuffle off this mortal coil? I'd like to think there is a Good Place waiting for us all somewhere...and if it is anything like the Good Place depicted here it will certainly take the sting out of dying.
I'd like to think this show got it dead right.. after all, if I got to spend an eternal afterlife with Kristen Bell as my soulmate then that would be the closest to a Heaven I would ever need to get.
The Good Place however was an unexpected surprise. It is one of the most ingenious, intriguing, unique, thought provoking and touching shows I have ever watched whilst still remaining both fun and funny.
It's a show that literally deals with death and what happens to your immortal soul after you die. In the case of The Good Place it is Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who has died and we follow her journey into The Good Place, a spiritual heaven where only the most wholesome and decent people go after a life spent doing selfless good deeds on earth.
It seems during our time on earth our selfless good deeds and ethical and moral behaviour earn us reward points, and our selfish bad deeds and our unethical and immoral behaviour lose us points.
The Good Place is the eternal paradise waiting for those of us who manage to accrue the most points during our short mortal existence.
It's a perfect paradise where magical things can happen and your every whim and desire is immediately catered for on request through a walking, talking AI being named Janet (D'arcy Carden) and Eleanor has earned a place amongst the great and the good, the humanitarians and aid workers, the life savers and the life givers, the moral and the courageous.....or has she?
It turns out that she hasn't. The list of good deeds that are used to explain why Eleanor has qualified for an eternal existence in paradise are not her good deeds at all, They must clearly belong to another Eleanor Shellstrop, as our Eleanor has spent her life being what she self describes as an 'Arizona trash bag'
She spent the entirety of her short life being selfish, slutty, self obsessed, immoral, dishonest and generally unpleasant to everybody and anybody, so why is she here?
It soon becomes apparent however that her erroneous presence in The Good Place is causing their Garden of Eden to glitch and malfunction almost as if it's got an enormous bellyache after eating some dodgy food. It knows something is wrong..it detects a disturbance in the force.
Ted Danson plays Michael, the omnipotent architect of 'The Neighbourhood' who cannot understand what is happening to his creation and Eleanor cannot tell him because she'll be booted 'downstairs' to The Bad Place where an eternity of endless torture awaits her alongside all the other Arizona Trash Bags of the world,
Eleanor realises that in order to stabilise The Good Place and to genuinely earn her right to stay there, she must set out to become a better person and she must do it before she is identified as an imposter.
Originally introduced to Eleanor as her afterlife eternal 'Soulmate', Chidi Anagonye was an ethics and moral philosophy professor on earth. He is highly neurotic and wrestles with even the slightest decision obsessed as he is with making the perfect ethical choice every time. Eleanor come clean with Chidi and tells him that she is the reason the world is glitching and that she shouldn't have been sent to The Good Place but that she needs him to teach her all he knows to make her become a better person so she can stay,
This of course sends Chidi into meltdown as withholding the truth, covering up that truth with further lies and overall being party to an intrigue goes against his moral code and everything he stands for. He is however a kind hearted and compassionate person who is committed to helping his fellow man whenever he can so he agrees to tutor Eleanor on the quiet.
Also in on the secret is Tahani Al Jamil, (Jameela Jamil) a self obsessed British socialite and compulsive name dropper who earned her place in heaven by raising billions of pounds for charity and a buddhist monk named Jianyu Li, (Manny Jacinto) living (or rather in this case NOT living) under a vow of silence.
An extra twist here is that Jianyu is also not meant to be in The Good Place as he's really a hip-hop loving, petty criminal and part time arsonist named Jason Mendoza from Jacksonville, Florida, a man so stupid that he met his end by locking himself in a safe he intended to rob wearing a snorkel to help him breath inside.
However he makes up for his lack of intelligence by being an expert with Molotov cocktails guaranteed to get him out of most situations
When the pressures of keeping each others secrets reach boiling point, and their fears of discovery increase, they realise that their Good Place is becoming an unbearable personal torture chamber far worse than anything The Bad Place has to offer which leads Eleanor to a startling realisation.
And thats just the first season.
What follows are three more seasons where Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason, Michael and Janet take us on an emotional journey of self discovery through their afterlife, where they take on the Demons of The Bad Place, a celestial judge and even challenge the existence and structure of heaven and hell itself.
As mentioned earlier, this show is one of a kind. It's unique. There has never been a show like this before which is what makes it so wonderful. It's funny, dramatic, thought provoking..even inspiring in places. It's characters (even the bad guys) are great to watch, the overall story is ingenious and it all culminates in a great 1 hour final episode which is both satisfying and very emotional...it a shame but it seems even eternity has to have an end.
It really does gets you thinking...where do we go after we shuffle off this mortal coil? I'd like to think there is a Good Place waiting for us all somewhere...and if it is anything like the Good Place depicted here it will certainly take the sting out of dying.
I'd like to think this show got it dead right.. after all, if I got to spend an eternal afterlife with Kristen Bell as my soulmate then that would be the closest to a Heaven I would ever need to get.