The Good Place: "Chapters 14 & 15" Review

The Good Place came back as strong as ever this week with a one hour premiere, that had a lot of new plot to establish after last season's twist ending. Some brief thoughts on the premiere and the show moving ahead:

Beginning Again:

When last we saw Eleanor Shellstrop, she had just received the note that she had left in Janet's mouth before Michael reset his fake-"Good Place" scenario, instructing her to find Chidi. As the events of the episode played out, she indeed did find Chidi and the rest of her human cohorts and once again they were able to figure out that they were not in the "Good Place." Perhaps the more important development, however, is that Michael is on thin ice with Sean, who believes his experiment is doomed to fail again. 

Sean of course is right. Eleanor proves to be too skeptical to be duped into falling for a Michael's scheme a second time, while Chidi, Tahani, and Jason are all able to figure out pretty quickly that their new afterlives are way too miserable to actually be paradise. Ultimately though, its the mistakes made by Michael and the other inhabitants of the "Bad Place" that make it obvious to Eleanor and Co. that things aren't right. Michael fails to understand that his plan is inherently flawed, and that's where the show finds its most interesting material. 

"Out of many, one":

Michael's main failure, is where The Good Place finds its meaning. Despite what Michael thinks of these four people, none of them are completely bad, and all of them are capable of incredible good. By sticking these characters in a scenario where the whole point is judging them, the show allows us to see the complicated mixture of good and bad that makes up any person. Season one posited that when four very different and, more often than not bad, people are put together in a situation where they are challenged to make each other better, they can become better people. 

When Michael resets his fake-"Good Place" scenario, he assumes that all four of these people will behave as they would have at the beginning of the first scenario. Eleanor foregoes getting drunk at the party the first night in order to have a clear head for her speech, which allows her to find Chidi. Chidi puts aside his relationship triangle drama to help Eleanor. Tahani tries to make amends with Eleanor after drunkenly ruining her speech, and Jason and Janet reform a connection despite having their memories wiped. 

Watching these two episodes I couldn't help but think of the movie Run, Lola, Run. Each time the story resets, Lola remembers certain skills that she learned on her previous runs (for example: how to use a gun). The Good Place resets our heroes' circumstances, but also establishes that their experiences together have changed them in ways they don't even remember. At the core of the show is the idea that together we can grow, despite our worst instincts. It's a beautiful sentiment in a year that has been as bleak as 2017. For that reason, The Good Place might just be the most important show on TV right now. 

Looking Ahead:

The main concern about a show like The Good Place is that the premise wears out pretty quickly. In season one alone the premise when from being about Eleanor learning to be a better person, to Eleanor outing herself and the whole group coming to her defense, to Eleanor figuring out that they are already in the "Bad Place." By the end of the first two episodes of season two, Eleanor and her friends had already figured out pretty much everything they had forgotten from the first season, and Michael had reset their memories and started over another time. 

Obviously like the show's original premise, we can only watch Michael reset this afterlife scenario so many times before it becomes a stale plot point. Michael Schur is arguably the greatest working sitcom creator, and so far he had done an excellent job of not allowing the show to run in any one direction longer than it should. He's earned the trust of viewers, and I have no doubt he has a well crafted plan for the future of the show. What that plan entails, remains to be seen. 

Other Thoughts:

• The cast did a lot of great work in the first season, but in season two everyone feels much more comfortable in their roles. 
• The entire cast is amazing and you've got comedy veterans like Kristen Bell and Ted Danson around elevating everything, but D'Arcy Carden remains this show's secret weapon.  

The Good Place Season One Finale Review: "Mindy St. Claire" & "Michael's Gambit"

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.

The Good Place Review: "The Eternal Shriek"

This week's episode of The Good Place, took a very progressive step forward, by finally having Eleanor reveal to Michael that she was put in The Good Place, by mistake. How that will affect the show moving forward, remains to be seen, but last week's episode proved that it was time for the show to move in a new direction, so this was a smart move on the show's part.

"The Eternal Shriek" starts where last week's episode left off, with Michael announcing that he is leaving The Good Place forever and going into retirement. Believing this to be a win-win situation (her secret stays safe, while Michael gets to relax for eternity), Eleanor is content to let Michael retire, until she learns (from a hilarious monologue by Ted Danson) that retirement for Michael will essentially be his version of going to The Bad Place. Feeling guilty, Eleanor decides to "murder" Janet since only "she" can operate the train that takes Michael from The Good Place to retirement. Chidi, who does not approve of the plan, accidentally hits the button that terminates Janet while trying to keep Jason from pushing the button (because apparently stupid people love touching buttons?). After a huge screen appears in the sky playing a video of Janet saying she has been murdered on repeat, Michael learns that he at least is not the only thing wrong in the community and postpones his retirement. Eleanor seeing how much Chidi's guilt over "murdering" Janet is affecting him decides to spare him the eternal agony and admit to Michael in from of the whole community that she is the reason everything has gone wrong in the community.

There are two very important sides of Eleanor we see in this episode. Whenever she encounters a problem, her go to move is to lie until the problem goes away or someone else fixes it. She always comes up with justifications for her lies, but the reality is that this is the biggest roadblock preventing her from earning her spot in The Good Place. As long as Eleanor lies about deserving to be there, she could never actually deserve to be there (per the rules of the show). There's also the side of Eleanor that has genuinely started to become a better person who cares about those around her. She doesn't want Michael to experience the torture of retirement, or Chidi to have to suffer through the guilt of keeping a secret for the rest of eternity. Her choice to reveal herself, is the most selfless action she has ever taken. It's a necessary step forward for Eleanor as our protagonist, and a smart change of direction for the narrative of the show. Obviously the show can't get rid of Eleanor as the main character, so seeing how Michael and all of the other residents of the community react to this news will be an interesting way to spend the back half of the season.

Other Thoughts:

• The show pairs Tahani and Michael together a lot when it doesn't know what else to do with those characters. It's a pairing that has been pretty fruitless so far, but last night Tahani's increasingly misguided attempts at cheering Michael up made for one of the episode's best running gags.
• Janet rarely gets more than a few good lines in an episode, but this episode gave her a lot of great jokes. From her best approximation of human crying at the news of Michael leaving, to her default programming to realistically plead for her life when someone comes near the button that destroys her, Janet rivaled Michael as the comedy MVP of the episode.
• I'm glad Janet's "murder" was really just a hard reset. She's not the most vital character to the show, but she is often a great source of humor for a show that frequently relies more on "smart" comedy than laugh out loud jokes.
• Jason still isn't working for me. I understand the role he is supposed to play on the show, but the show would have to put in a lot of work to transition him from just a plain old idiot to a lovable idiot. At this point, the show hasn't done anything to prove that the character is worth all of that time and effort (especially given that the show is already halfway through its 13 episode season).  

The Good Place Review: "What We Owe to Each Other"

"What We Owe to Each Other," is the most uneven, of what has been a very strong run of  episodes for The Good Place so far. In one respect the episode expanded the show and its characters in some much needed ways. Namely this was the first episode to spend a good chunk of it's run time exploring who Michael is, and what makes him tick. Ted Danson has been a little underutilized on the show so far, besides a few hilarious one-liners or perfectly executed bits of physical comedy. Here he gets to let his freak flag fly.

Michael is so eccentric and obsessive, that he's often one of the show's greatest comic tools. From his love of paper clips (paperclip shower anyone?), to the way he puts on a hoodie like a sullen teenager when he can't solve a problem, Michael (in large part due to Ted Danson's excellent performance) is a gold mine for jokes. His obsession with the show Friends was a recurring joke that kept producing some of the episode's funniest lines, such as "Ross and Phoebe" being the first pairing from the show that Michael could think of as an example of true friendship. Eleanor's insistence that Michael needed to learn how to have fun, turned out to be more of a good deed for the audience than for Michael. From his line about liking frozen yogurt more that ice cream because, "There's something so human about taking something great and making it a little worse so that you can have more of it," to his description of a plush Minion he won from a claw grab arcade game as an, "ugly yellow toddler," Michael finally got the showcase episode he deserved this week. I hope Michael doesn't make good on his promise to leave the Good Place, because I'll never get tired of hearing him call a pile of rocks, "devious little bastards."

Most of the other characters had much smaller stories in the episode. Chidi and Tahani discovered that they have enough in common that in another situation they possibly could have been paired together as soul-mates. Given how nice Chidi and Tahani are, and how neither had a chance to be paired with a genuine soul-mate, it's nice that they are developing a connection, even if it makes the whole situation even more complicated. Jianyu/Jason hasn't been clicking for me. I understand the element of humor he is supposed to inject into the show, but for the most part it doesn't seem to be working. The show has just traded the "Jianyu never talks" gimmick for a half-hearted "Jason isn't smart" gimmick. Janet continues to be a good source of comedy, even if the show isn't completely sure how to use her. Her "does not compute" bit was the show's funniest non-Michael moment, but overall it seems like she's best used as a "straight man" to counter Michael's often spastic personality.

Eleanor's story this week was pretty basic as well. Seeing her teach Michael how to have fun was a great use of both Kristen Bell and Ted Danson (who have fantastic chemistry together). The episode didn't go too in depth on Eleanor's moral lesson from Chidi (which essentially boiled down to "keep your promises"), but focusing on building the Michael and Eleanor dynamic was a more rewarding use of time, so I applaud the writers on that. Where the episode took a big misstep was in the flashback. Past flashbacks have provided a lot of understanding as to why these characters have the bad habits and insecurities that they do, but this week's flashback served no other purpose than to show that Eleanor was a bad person on earth. That's something we already knew about Eleanor. Had the flashback been funny or illuminating, then I could have been okay with it, but here it seems like a contrived piece of formula the show is relying on. It would be a big mistake for the show to stick to this formula of including a flashback in every episode. At most they should be an occasional device the show uses, but really we are starting to know the characters well enough that the show would be fine dropping them all together. Other than that, the episode was mostly good, even if it was lacking in content. 

The Good Place Review: "Category 55 Doomsday Crisis"

The Good Place has reached the five episode mark, and that feels like a good sample size to start assessing whether or not this show is worth dropping or keeping around. Based on how each episode has improved upon the last, I would say it fits firmly in the latter group. When shows start with big concepts, like this one did, it's hard to keep them on track. "Category 55 Doomsday Crisis," was proof that not only can this show hand the many plot lines it has started, but it can do so while also developing its characters into increasingly fascinating and complex people. 

Front and center in this episode was the friendship/mentorship/soul-mate(ship?) of Chidi and Eleanor. Chidi has been a great "straight man" on the show so far (his consternation at the antics of both Eleanor and Jianyu/Jason has been one of the show's most reliable sources of jokes), but nearing the midway point of the season, it was time for the show to develop him better as an individual. In this episode, we learn that not only does Chidi sometimes resent Eleanor for being a burden in his afterlife, but he mourns the fact that he won't ever actually get to experience what it is like to have a soul-mate, since that was something he did not experience in life. 

Eleanor, as a result of her time with Chidi, has started to show signs that she is a better person. It's a fine line for the show to walk. On the one hand, if Eleanor never becomes a better person, then the premise of the show starts to feel pretty hollow pretty quickly. On the other hand, Eleanor's moral growth can only move so fast without seeming completely unrealistic. This episode was a perfect example of how the show can balance both aspects of Eleanor. The frozen yogurt scene at the beginning of the episode showed how Eleanor subconsciously did something good by not holding up the line of customers, but also how she can be selfish by not bringing Chidi the frozen yogurt she said she would, and then insisting he should go get it because she was too tired. 

While Jianyu/Jason only appears briefly at the beginning of the episode to tell a surprisingly accurate (and unsurprisingly absurd) story that illustrates utilitarian philosophy put into practice, Tahani got much more to do in this episode than she did in the last one. I'll admit I'm a sucker for stories where the somewhat unlikable "rival" of the main character is shown in a sympathetic light that makes viewers see them as a person. Jane the Virgin did a fantastic job of turning Petra into one of it's more lovable characters, after spending an entire season making her the villain of the show. While Tahani has never been the villain of The Good Place, it's great to see more layers of here character here. Her flashbacks presented a very real fear that she would always be overshadowed by others (namely her sister), and does a lot to explain why Tahani has an almost competitive drive to be the best at being a good person. 

Michael was given an appropriate amount to do here, and Ted Danson has continued to be one of the show's most reliable joke machine's . Janet on the other hand hasn't been very effectively used since the third episode, which took full advantage of a character whose personality can literally be reprogrammed. Why she was working at the frozen yogurt store at the beginning of the episode, is beyond me, but that's a small complaint coma in an otherwise great episode. Here's looking forward to what the show can cook up next week. 

The Good Place Review: "Jason Mendoza"

Last season (September 2015 to May 2016) I decided to hone my reviewing skills by dedicating myself to at least one show through the entirety of its season. That show was The CW's excellent and underrated iZombie. Since iZombie, won't be on again until winter 2017, I've been looking for a show to fill its spot in my weekly review schedule. My original plan was for the replacement show to be the cult musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Also on The CW. You REALLY should be watching that channel.), but since that show also hasn't started yet, I've been reviewing the first few episodes of The Good Place for now. I don't know if I will review every episode of The Good Place going forward, but for now its mix of both episodic and serialized storylines makes it a fun show to take a closer look at each week.

"Jason Mendoza" picked up right where the last episode left off. After telling Eleanor that he also does not belong in The Good Place, Jianyu - whose real name is actually Jason Mendoza - explains that he was mistaken for a Buddhist monk upon arriving in the afterlife. In reality he was a drug dealer and an amature DJ from Florida. Jason, to put it kindly, isn't the brightest person, something that Eleanor is able to figure out pretty quickly. He hasn't even realized that he is in the afterlife until Eleanor explains the situation to him, and he has the mentality of a teenager.

I was quickly growing tired of how underdeveloped Jianyu was as the always silent monk whose one gimmick was to unintentionally infuriate the otherwise "perfect" Tahani. The episode made some efforts to add a little depth to his character through flashback glimpses of what Jason's life was like before he died, but at this point he's still coming off more as character type than an actual human being. That being said, I trust the show will spend more time developing Jason now that he is so central to the story. While "dumb" humor isn't always my favorite, Jason's enthusiastic declaration that he was ready to, "learn about ethnics," when he came to Chidi's ethics class, was the best joke of the episode.

For the show to continue to work, it needs to keep bringing people into the fold, and expanding the underlying problem that is plaguing The Good Place. So far each episode has done a good job of at least doing one of those two things. This was a very solid episode and the show is still in the early part of its thirteen episode season. I look forward to seeing what everyone does next.

Some other thoughts on the episode:

• Tahani was given very little to do here, which was okay for the most part because she's such a big personality that she's better in small doses. Still her exchange with Michael about suspenders was one of the episode's funnier bits. Janet was also very deep in the background, after a very funny episode last week. 

• Not everything about Jason makes narrative sense. He was too dumb to realize he is in the afterlife, but he somehow understood he didn't fit in and needed to stay silent to hide himself? It's a bit of a stretch. The show will have to find a consistent sweet spot of just how smart or stupid they are going to allow him to be.

•  In Eleanor's case Michael, mixed up the details of her life, but had her name correct. In the case of Jason, Michael was wrong about both his name and the details of his life. Is the real Jianyu stuck in The Bad Place?

• The show often deals in broad personality types with mixed success. While chef Patricia's intense personality was an amusing running gag, she's a character/joke I don't need to see again.

• Points to the show for naming the restaurant "The Good Plate," and for not having Michael get the joke until he said it out loud in front of everyone at the restaurant opening.

• Last week Eleanor accepted the job as Michael's assistant, but as of this episode she has yet to start it. This episode had a lot going on, so I'm glad the show didn't try to squeeze that in too. 

• At the end of the episode Tahani learned that the hole Eleanor created was actually getting bigger, instead of repairing itself like Michael said it would. I'm not a fan of cliffhangers, but it has been smart for this show to end each episode with a problem that can be picked up in the next episode.  

The Good Place Review: "Tahani Al-Jamil"

Due to some scheduling manipulation on NBC's part, The Good Place ended up airing three episodes in its premiere week, and it was a move that I think ended up greatly benefitting the show. I noted in my review that one of the things that weighed down the first two episodes of the show was how much exposition the show had to get through to set up its premise. "Tahani Al-Jamil" was largely unchained from that burden, and as a result I believe it is the strongest of the episodes that has aired so far.

There were times while watching the episode that it felt like the writers had specifically been trying to assuage my doubts about whether or not the show would live up to its potential. My biggest concern after those episodes was that the cast of supporting characters were talented and often funny, but seemed like very broad stereotypes we've seen before. Janet, who was essentially a walking search engine before, got to try on a lot of different personalities as Michael kept adjusting her settings throughout the episode. My favorite of her phases was the "fun fact" phase, and her explanation of why Christopher Columbus is in the Bad Place was the second best joke of the episode (the first being the  "Who died and left Aristotle in charge of ethics" joke). Having Michael there to play off of Janet's many personality changes was a very effective use of Ted Danson's dry humor.

Chidi not only got to wear the hat of Eleanor's teacher in this episode, but also got to spend a good chunk of the episode figuring out what he wants to do in the afterlife (an area where Eleanor inadvertently teaches him to go after what he wants). Chidi is so central to the show's main story that it's important for the show to establish him as a character outside of Eleanor.This was  good first step in that direction. For his relationship with Eleanor to be rewarding, it has to work two ways. Having Eleanor and Chidi both learn something from each other in this episode, showed how rewarding this relationship might be in the future.

The central concern of the episode, however, was the relationship between Tahani and Eleanor. Tahani reminds me a lot of Parks and Recreation's Chris Traeger. At first they seemed so perfect that (much like Eleanor) I suspected there was something sinister lurking underneath the surface, only to realize that despite being somewhat delusional, they pretty much are exactly what they present to the outside world. Tahani really does want to be a good neighbor and friend to Eleanor, and having Eleanor realize that (while still being reasonably annoyed with how perfect Tahani is at everything from baking to giving hugs) led to some great moments of self-discovery for our main character.

The revelation that Eleanor's problem with Tahani is really that she feels insecure about who she is as a person (a fact we learn through a series of flashbacks where Eleanor sabotaged a relationship because her boyfriend suggested they not patronize a coffee show where the manager sexually harasses women) was the biggest step toward true change that Eleanor has made so far on the show. For the main premise of the show (Eleanor learning to be a better person) to work, it has to come from a place of self-discovery, instead of Eleanor just magically changing her mind about ethics.

Just to keep things interesting, the last moments of the episode threw in a couple of plot twists. Thinking this to be a gesture of friendship, Tahani suggests to Michael that Eleanor should be his assistant, and partner in solving the "mystery" of what is going wrong in the neighborhood. Having Eleanor work for the person who could send her to the Bad Place if he found out her secret provides a lot of fertile ground for interesting future storylines, but it also gives Eleanor a perfect excuse to be at the center of an investigation that few others realize directly concerns her. To complicate things further, the revelation that Jianyu has been putting the notes under Eleanor's door because he too was put in the Good Place by mistake, give the show a lot to work with. Not only does it complicate the main premise of the show (If both Eleanor and Jianyu are there by mistake, who else might be?), but it also adds a welcome new layer to Jianyu's character, who was quickly becoming a tired gimmick. Overall, the show has made some excellent progress in three episodes, and I feel safe saying this is the best new comedy of the fall.

"The Good Place" Premiere Review: Not Quite "Parks and Recreation"...Yet.

To say that a show like "The Good Place" (created by former "Parks and Recreation" creator Mike Schur)  is built on an abstract idea, is a bit of an understatement. The show, tells the story of Eleanor (the always funny Kristen Bell) who dies and accidentally winds up in "The Good Place" after having spent her life being a pretty terrible person. How did she wind up here? Michael (Ted Danson doing some great physical comedy) is some sort of eternal entity taking his first crack at creating his very own community in the Good Place, and has mistaken Eleanor for a lawyer who helped innocent people get off of death row. Realizing his mistake, Eleanor is desperate to avoid being found out as a fraud and sent to "The Bad Place," despite her inherent tendency to make selfish choices. It's a solid premise that presents a lot of opportunities for funny and inventive stories, but it also requires an exhaustive amount of exposition. The result was a series premiere that felt like it had a lot of potential to be something great, but also felt pretty bogged down by all of the explaining it had to do.

It's hard to call the exposition done in these first two episodes a flaw, because it's all very necessary. These episodes had to explain what "The Good Place" is, how a person winds up either there or in "The Bad Place" (it's based on a point system that evaluates everything you ever did while alive), and how Eleanor can have any hope of staying in "The Good Place," when she is clearly a pretty bad person.  The answer to that last plot issue is Eleanor's afterlife soulmate (In "The Good Place" every person is paired with their perfect soul-mate, even though the pairings don't always seem very perfect) Chidi (William Jackson Harper), who was a professor of ethics during his life on earth. Chidi is reluctant to be an accomplice to Eleanor's fraud, and the way that he won't let Eleanor off the hook for her bad behavior creates a strong comedic dynamic between the two characters. A lot of credit in these first two episode is owed to William Jackson Harper who proves to be a strong comedic foil for Kristen Bell.

Along the way, the show introduces some key supporting characters that currently feel more like caricatures than people. Ted Danson's Michael is the most developed of the supporting characters so far. His always optimistic attitude can be played for great laughs, but Danson also shows that there a cracks in Michael's happy exterior (such as the scene where Michael kicks a small dog into the Sun because he mistakenly thinks it is a glitch in his "perfect" community). D'Arcy Carden plays Janet, a sort of Google search bar AI who appears as a human. Janet provides a lot of funny moments, but as of now lacks depth. Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jianyu (Manny Jacinto) are Eleanor's soul-mate neighbors. Tahani is set up as Eleanor's sort of rival, whose actions are nearly perfect but whose attitude is incredibly smug. It's a broad character that we've seen before, but I have hope the show can turn it into something interesting. Jianyu is a former Buddhist monk who has taken a vow of silence which he is continuing even in the afterlife. Mostly this gimmick plays as a punchline to the fact that Tahani talks all the time, and it drives her nuts that Jianyu won't say a word back to her. It's a joke with a short shelf life, but the relationship could be rewarding if the show chooses to explore it further.

That about describes my overall view of the show after these first two episodes. None of it is quite where it needs to be yet, but just about everything in these episodes suggest the show could go in a lot of very fun and interesting directions. Schur's former show "Parks and Recreation" is a classic example of a show that needed time to grow, and it eventually became one of TV's all time great comedies. Will that happen with "The Good Place"? I don't know, but these two episodes were arguably more polished and self aware that the entire first season of "Parks and Recreation," so it's definitely a possibility. Either way, I can definitely see myself sticking with this one for a while.