Originally published at: https://quickbox.io/blog/review-the-good-place-good-start-but-what-on-earth-happened-spoilers/
During recent times, I have been watching shows that I should have watched but never got round to doing so. One of those shows was “The Good Place”. I watched all four seasons of this show and it was generally good. However, there were some things that didn’t make sense to me, and lost me in the story.
The Good Place, starring Kristen Bell, is about a women called Eleanor who dies, and ends up going to “The Good Place”. However, as the first episodes goes on, we soon learn that the wrong Eleanor was sent to “The Good Place” and should have gone to the bad place.
However, as the season goes on, we soon learn that the big twist (and one that I wasn’t expecting personally) is that Eleanor, Jason, Chidi, and Tahani are actually in the bad place and they are being tortured.
This is when I started to feel lost in the story.
I think in Seasons 2-3 that the writers had written themselves into a hole, and spent two seasons getting them back out of the hole into the ending that they wanted.
You can see them getting lost when they decide to un-kill the characters and let them live on Earth again.
Maya Rudolph as “Gen” or the “Judge” was perfect. I loved that character and how sassy and obsessed with long running TV Shows. Being able to perfectly balance the importance of morality with comedy and just bring a sense of life and joy during an unsettling time during the characters.
I also enjoy how Manny Jacinto breaks common stereotypes of Asian characters being super smart by being, well, super not smart.
This show is great for those who want something to watch but it definitely has it’s lows. For example only using characters for jokes and not plot development/character development, and using “Reboots” as a get-out-of-jail free card for when they can’t think of anything clever to get them out of a situation.