Returning this week after a short winter hiatus, The Good Place wisely used "Chidi's Choice" as a chance to put the show's wildly evolving main plot on hold, in favor of very solid character building. In it's short run, The Good Place has built up a number of complicated relationships, which came to a head this week after both "Fake" Eleanor and Tahani confessed their love for Chidi, whilst he was just beginning to contemplate the idea of "Real" Eleanor being his eternal soul mate (I know what you're thinking, what show hasn't done this plotline before?).
There are a lot of ways that this could have gone wrong. Love triangles are a messy business for any show, and even the best of them have issues (If I have one complaint about my favorite show Jane the Virgin, it is the way the show handled its love triangle). Here a lot was at a stake. "Fake" Eleanor's feelings for Chidi were less than reliable, especially considering that in life she had never allowed her self to feel either the kind of love one feels for a best friend, or the kind of love one feels for a potential soul mate. Which was only further proven when she started to convince herself that Jianyu/Jason was meant to be her true soul mate. While Tahani and Chidi arguably had something closer to a romantic connection than "Fake" Eleanor and Chidi, the show wisely understood that Tahani's feelings also couldn't be trusted because they were borne of her feelings of dissatisfaction with Jianyu/Jason (whom I will furthermore refer to as Jason, because every main character except Michael now knows his true identity) as a soulmate.
The conflict driven option would be to have these two women, whose friendship was already built on a pretty weak foundation, become rivals and fight for Chidi's affections. Instead, the show wisely used the rivalry as an opportunity to strengthen the show's only female friendship. Both women deciding to put their differences aside and learn more about each other, was one of the strongest feminist statements made on a sitcom in recent memory, and an incredibly satisfying path for the show to pursue. Unlikely friendships add so much more to a show than unnecessary rivalries, because they allow the characters' differences to create conflicts that can have rewarding resolutions, if both characters use the conflict as an opportunity to understand one another.
By the time both women were sitting at Jason and Janet's wedding, they were both having the time of their lives openly mocking and even cheering on the strange proceeding. It was some of the best comedic acting either actress has done on the show, and is already a strong front-runner for one the best scenes of the year on any show. I love that the show didn't take the time to explain the logistics of Jason and Janet's wedding, because with a show as zany as The Good Place leaving somethings things a mystery only adds to the world building.
No comments:
Post a Comment