I don't normally do spoiler alerts at the beginning of a review, because it's kind of a given. If you happen to be reading this and haven't seen the season one finale of The Good Place, I would just caution you to go watch those episodes first, because major spoilers lie ahead.
The season one finale of The Good Place was technically two episodes, and while “Mindy St. Claire” was a fine episode on its own, there are only two major takeaways from the episode that shed any significant light on the series moving forward (that is if it moves forward, which it better): Eleanor (thankfully and ironically we can drop the “fake” from now on) grew up with awful parents whom she eventually emancipated herself from, and there is a middle place in the afterlife that is basically undetectable by either the people running The Good Place, or the people running The Bad Place. The major revelations, however, came in “Michael’s Gambit”, so that’s the part I really want to discuss here.
It’s rare that a show can pull of genuine surprises these days. Sure shows like Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder pride themselves on “OMG” moments, but genuine and thoughtful plot twists are hard to pull off in the social media age. Is it out of the realm of possibility that some viewers saw this twist coming? No, but gauging the reactions I saw from people on social media, many of them being the most avid TV watchers around, I’m guessing most people didn’t see this twist coming. The Good Place, is actually The Bad Place, and it has been set up specifically to be a living hell for our four main protagonists: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason.
Looking back at the way the series was built leading up to this point, it was such an amazingly well crafted con. Michael Schur created such an intricate world in the twelve episodes leading up to the reveal, that once the wizard was revealed behind the curtain, it all still held up. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any major continuity errors. That’s the brilliance of this show’s storytelling. I’m not even mad that this entire season has essentially been a preface to the real story that will hopefully be told in subsequent seasons. I’m just mad that I will probably have to wait until next fall to see how all of this plays out. I’m not saying it was flawless, but it was some of the smartest and most thought provoking storytelling on TV.
Thematically, the show takes on a whole new meaning after this revelation. Over the course of their time together in The Bad Place, our four main protagonists did become better people just by knowing each other. Eleanor learned to put others before herself, Tahani learned to genuinely care about the good things she did for other people, and Chidi learned to become fairly decisive when it came to protecting Eleanor. Jason seems to have learned the least, but the fact that he was able to fall in love with Janet, is proof that he could at least care about something other than himself.
The show actively rebels against the idea that people are irredeemably bad. It posits that connecting with other people and learning to love beyond just ourselves, helps us become the best version of who we can be. Michael brought these four people together knowing that they would drive each other crazy, and initially they did. Eventually however, it was learning to rely on each other as a way of coping with their struggles, that made them better people. It’s an important story for the times we are living in right now. I hope this isn’t where that story ends.
Other thoughts:
- The one aspect of the show that is still somewhat confusing is Janet. If I understood correctly, our Janet actually belongs in The Good Place, but The Bad Place actually stole or took her for authorized use in The Bad Place. Either way, it sets her up as a potential ally for our protagonists, seeing as this is not where she belongs.
- One of the most brilliant storytelling tricks the show pulled off, was using the audience’s expectations about sitcoms against them. On any other kind of show, the absurd obstacles that kept popping up to hinder the group might have been seen as suspicious, but they are a familiar part of the sitcom formula, so in this case most people probably didn’t give the orchestrated effort to make our protagonists’ miserable, a second thought.
- If the show moves forward, it will be interesting to see how Michael fits into everything, given that we now know he’s essentially the villain of the show. I’m sure the writers have something great planned.
No comments:
Post a Comment