The Good Place Review!

 Alright! Thanks to the random and not hyped up premiere of The Good Place (Season 4) on Netflix, I am finally able to speak all of my thoughts on the series. And, wow. What a great series. Absolute beast of a comedy. 

The Good Place is the next comedy from Michael Schur, who also wrote/produced The Office, as well as making occasional appearances as Mose Schrute, co-created Parks and Rec and Brooklyn 99, and also created The Good Place. 

The Good Place is about Eleanor Shellstrop, who has recently died and is now in The Good Place, which carefully avoids advocating any religion by creating basically what we all imagine heaven would look like - A wonderland where you can fly, never die, eat anything, know anything, and do anything. 

But, there's a catch to this heaven: Only the best of the best of the best get in. The absolute best, those who spent their entire lives doing good deeds are accepted. And Eleanor Shellstrop, the most recent soul to enter, is there by accident. She was supposed to go to The Bad Place, and through a catastrophic, mind-boggling mistake, must now cover her very not Good Place tendencies and become a better person to earn her place. 

And that's as much as I can say giving major, major spoilers that will blow your mind when you watch the series. So I'll just list a few general compliments I can give the show that stay true for every season: 

• The humor is absolutely top-notch. It's gut bustlingly funny every episode.
• The color palette is magnificent.
• The ensemble cast is great. Kristen Bell (Anna) and Ted Danson (Sam Malone) are both here and they're rocking it. 
• The series has some of the most genuine twists I've seen since The Sixth Sense. 
• Those twists are done so well. You think it's one thing and then it's completely different. 
• The series' commitment to the fundamentals of philosophy and what makes a person good is admirable consistent throughout all four seasons. 
• This is quite possibly the most original show to ever exist. I've never seen anything like it before. 

Lots of philosophy in this show

And with those general appraisements, I now must list a few bad things about The Good Place. The Good Place only has one major criticism on my part: Not every episode is particularly great, and sometimes the plot can get stretched out, even with only four seasons at 11 episodes apiece. But, it's not like they're terrible. They're just... not as good as the best episodes. Parts of the series reach such highs it's impossible to not compare the rest of the series to that. 

Overall, I give The Good Place a 9/10. "Scoring points in the originality, humor, visual, cast, and satisfaction departments, The Good Place is the comedy to end all comedies."

So, delving into what would consider to be "Spoiler" territory, because it is, let's go a bit deeper into the specific plot points and elements of each season.

The first season of The Good Place has a god-tier twist in it - Eleanor Shellstrop is not actually in the Good Place, but is in the Bad Place, along with the three other "Test subjects," Jason Mendoza, Tahani Al-Jamil, and Chidi Anagonye. And that was such a good twist. You might have thought of it going into the show, but nah. You're convinced that the hook of the show is that Eleanor isn't supposed to be there.

But then, but then, that twist is so good! So well done! Unnoticeable during a first watching, but during a second watching, you start getting all of the little signs and hidden details. Hindsight is 2020, as they say.

I was also really digging this version of "Heaven." It looked very nice. And I really liked seeing Ted Danson in his role outside of Sam Malone. I liked everything about the first season. It was a solid 10/10 in my book. 

First Season - 10/10

The first season ends with them figuring out that they are in the Bad Place, so Michael mindwipes them all and they start over for the second season. This obviously leads to some questions - How does the show move on? Is the second just the first season again? 

And I was so excited by what the show gave me, just from the first episode - The same, but different. And that's a common theme of the show. Every season has more or less the same type of structure - Four strangers arrive, learn about ethics, and then become better people. But each season adds its own twist on it that makes it all exciting. 

And season two's twist is that it should be season one. But it isn't. The first two episodes are what you'd imagine the season would be based on season one. It's very nice that the writers realized the show's structure didn't allow for a drawn-out show, and tweaked it to still be new and exciting. 

It's very clever. So the second season is the four humans and Michael (The head demon running the show) pretending they're still in the first season while actually being in the second season, which is a ridiculously clever tweak. The second season continues the show's 10/10 humor and writing, which I think are really highlighted in the episode "The Trolley Problem.". No complaints about the first two seasons. 

2nd Season - 10/10

But the third season is where things start to dip. The humans go back to Earth to try and legitimately get into the Good Place. It's not a bad season, but some of the mysticism and uniqueness of the show went away when they went to a place that wasn't mystic or unique - Australia. So it wasn't as different. It was all vaguely familiar. 

But, the commitment to ethics does not stop. Neither does the commitment to humor. Jason Mendoza, this comedy's court-approved dumb character, is actually really funny. I've been extremely critical of the dumb characters in comedy shows - Andy Dwyer and Kevin Malone both got progressively stupider as the show went on - But Jason Mendoza is routinely one of the funniest characters on the show, and I think that may be because he starts out as dirt stupid. He's not like Andy, who came off as semi-realistic in the early seasons of Parks and Rec, but then grew to be a living puppy. 

But, this season may have the single funniest part of the entire show: 

The perfect capturing of the Florida man

But season three is all over the place. They go to Earth, they go inside Janet, they go to the Bad Place, they go to the Good Place, they go to the Medium Place, they go to the Judge's realm, they even go to the Accountant Place. Literally everywhere. And not every episode hits the same way they did in seasons one and two. 

Season Three - 9/10

Moving on to season four, it's more or less on par with the first two seasons, at least for some of the first half. And this one's premise is that after their time on Earth, the five are able to recreate the experiment to prove humans can improve during the afterlife, and so they get a new set of four people, including one of the funniest scene stealers of the show, Brent Norwalk, a #MeToo candidate told he made it into the Good Place.

The epitome of rich white dude.

But, the overall first half of the season is the A-type of comedy you expect. It's hilarious. The second half, I felt was a bit drawn out. Their neighborhood is a success and everyone wins. Humans can improve during the afterlife. But then, the Judge decides to reboot humanity! That causes three episodes by itself. Then the humans actually have to tell everyone the new afterlife plane, which is an episode, and then they finally get to the Good Place, which also requires fixing, so that's an extra episode. Then you get the finale, which, while a bit long, was ultimately very satisfying and fun. 

The finale was a lot of fun. It was the perfect way to send off the series, although I would've liked a bit more information about what happens when the die die (In a non-technical sense). 

Overall, The Good Place is an expertly made comedy series, completely adept in its storytelling and acting, and a good lesson in philosophy to boot.

Season 4 - 9/10.
What a devastating series finale you had, Mr. The Good Place. Very well done.