Despite critical acclaim and decent ratings, this past Thursday marked the final season premiere of NBC's The Good Place. Where many sitcoms of similar success find themselves running for upwards of six seasons, ending the series after just four was the choice of the creator Michael Schur to preserve the show's narrative integrity, continuing its tradition of subversive television storytelling.
The Good Place stars Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, an Arizona deadbeat who dies and finds herself in an afterlife neighborhood in the titular Good Place, a non-denominational heaven. The only problem: she has ended up in the Good Place by accident, mistaken for a different Eleanor Shellstrop who dedicated her life to helping others. Slowly her presence and less-than-savory personality begin to have dire physical consequences on the environment around her.
While slightly more fantastical, the show situates itself like most modern network sitcoms, centering around a group of diverse personality types in a unifying location. Where Friends has Central Perk and the apartments, The Office has the office, Parks and Rec has the parks department, The Good Place has the neighborhood. As its first season starts up, the groundwork established, the episodes remain mostly episodic, following Eleanor and her allies as they help her avoid detection and teach her to fit in by becoming a better person.
However, a mere seven episodes in, the show begins making bold narrative choices. Season 1 Episode 7, "The Eternal Shriek", follows another antic filled day. This time Eleanor and her friends must murder the pseudo-robot neighborhood guide, Janet, in order to keep Eleanor from being discovered. Just when they escape the day unscathed, seeing her friends wracked with guilt for their actions and stress over maintaining their lies, Eleanor announces to the entire neighborhood that her placement in the Good Place was a mistake.
This pivotal turning point completely changes the structure of the show from an episodic comedy to a plot-driven adventure. For the back half of the season, every episode pushes the plot forward as stakes increase. It becomes necessary for the audience to watch every episode in order to understand what's going on.
Situational comedies have a long and noble history on broadcast television. A hallmark of the genre is repetition, the necessity to return all characters and relationships to their starting point at the end of every episode, no matter what has been accomplished by the plot, to preserve established dynamics and tensions. For example, a 'will-they-won't-they' dynamic holds two characters with romantic potential right at the edge of a relationship for as long as possible to continue to use the tension of the situation. Missing an episode or tuning in to a later season should have little effect on the audience's ability to enjoy the show.
The Good Place rejects the sitcom's repetitive nature. The characters begin to change drastically, most notably Eleanor who genuinely becomes a better person as the show progresses and whose actions as a good person disrupt any possibility that the situation can exist in perpetuity. Where the conceit of the show depends on Eleanor's selfish actions jeopardizing her position in the Good Place, her learned honesty and selfless actions disrupt the status quo of the show's world.
The season one finale ushers in a plot twist of monumental proportions, redefining the entire season and establishing that the content of the show will never be the same. The Good Place is self-aware of its changing nature as it moves from a mere subversion of the genre into a meta-commentary. The final scenes see our main characters have their memories wiped, literally reverted to their states at the beginning of season one because their character development was a threat to the sustained existence of their neighborhood.
Season two and three become even more plot-heavy and dedicated to worldbuilding, the midpoint of season two seeing the characters abandon the neighborhood altogether and go on a sprawling adventure through all corners of the afterlife and then the real world. And every time the characters grow, internally and in their relationships with each other, some magical force will inevitably revert them back to their 'default' state, until they inevitably grow into their better selves.
As we approach the finale, it's impossible to say where the story and characters will end up. By deliberately choosing its end, I have no doubt The Good Place's conclusion will be as narratively satisfying as the previous three seasons.
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