Warning: This contains spoilers for the television series The Good Place
The Good Place is a hit sitcom that aired on NBC for four seasons from 2016 to 2020. The show follows Eleanor Shellstrop after she dies and is sent to what is presumably “the good place,” a supposed paradise for people who got the most positive “points” during their time on earth. Here she swiftly connects the dots that she doesn’t belong.
The first season of the show focuses on Eleanor as well as the characters Chidi Anagonye, Tahani Al-Jamil, and Jason Mendoza, who all slowly realize they also don’t belong in the Good Place.
The first season ends on an extreme cliffhanger as the group realizes the place they believed to be the good place is indeed the opposite. It is a custom-designed “bad place” made for the four to torture each other.
It is an undoubtedly funny and almost whimsical show, as there are many absurdities used to keep the plot going, but with that, it is a well-written and thoughtful show, as we see these characters grow and develop alongside each other just in the first thirteen episodes.
It is, however, after this first season that the show begins to fall flat and become a repetitive mess.
After the group discovers they are in the Bad Place as a trial, they are rebooted, and it starts again. This is the first episode of the second season.
That episode, as well as the few following, are essentially all the same. It is a repeat of scenes where Eleanor spends an amount of time in the rebooted good place and once again realizes what it truly is.
It’s boring. It’s repetitive. It’s frustrating.
The predictability of it all makes you want to turn it off and pick out a new show. It makes the viewer think, “well, the first season was good, but these new episodes are all the same,” and that’s not entirely wrong.
Typically, you don’t want to finish a show if it feels like you have to power through all the episodes.
I believe, though, the relationships and development of the characters is what makes it worth the continuation of watching.
Primarily, the example of Chidi and Eleanor as they become a prime “will they or won’t they?”
The pair is placed against each other in the start of the show and encouraged to be soul mates and they have a strong conflict abut towards the end of the first season that becomes resolved as they realize their feelings for each other.
The audience is officially hooked on these two. Then they lose it all in the reboot.
It’s then the hope of the couple and the need to see them progress that makes watching the repetitive episodes worthwhile. It’s what changes your mindset, so instead you think “When will Chidi and Eleanor find each other again,” and it adds an enjoyable complexity to watching the show.
So much of the plot is focused on the sole fact that these characters change and they become different and better people, and they build these important relationships with each other. It makes the viewer have hope and truly hold out to see what’s next.
I absolutely love this show for a wide variety of reasons, but I don’t think I would have made it past the second season if I didn’t have that sense of hope for the characters. It’s almost immersive in a way. The hope created by the incredible writing of the characters overpowers the overkill. The suspense of their progress is what makes it a captivating show. It’s what makes you want more.
Every show obviously has character development, and it’s important, but the way The Good Place writers handle it is absolutely next-level.
Not only is it a cycle of recurring tropes and bits, but it’s a cycle of hope for these relationships that follow the four seasons.
