FYC: "The Good Place" for Best Comedy
Thursday, June 22, 2017 at 3:33PM Team Experience are sharing their Emmy hopeful favorites. Here's Sean Donovan...
The Good Place was one of the quietest critical successes of the 2016/2017 television calendar, amassing a small but loyal band of followers. They attended to every minuscule detail of the show’s terrifically nuanced mythology. Yet, of all the Emmy FYCs The Film Experience has been doling out these past two weeks, this feels like one of the farthest reaches. The Good Place is perfectly in the lane of a future cult classic. But that's the problem. To become a true cult classic, your greatness must somehow allude the powers that be at the time.
For the uninitiated, The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who, following her sudden death in the pilot, finds herself in the afterlife, specifically the carefully non-denominational “Good Place,” presided over by cheerful architect Michael (Ted Danson)...
The Good Place is a smiley suburban utopia where everyone has a positive outlook, an impressive resumé of good deeds, and there’s enough frozen yogurt for everyone! For, as Michael says on frozen yogurt, “There’s something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.” There’s one glaring problem: Eleanor was destined for “The Bad Place” and has been confused with a different woman through a bookkeeping error. The Good Place starts as this elaborate screwball narrative of mistaken identities, as Eleanor marshals her saintly assigned-soulmate Chidi (William Jackson Harper) through hurdle after hurdle to protect her spot in The Good Place, and hide her true identity from Michael. There’s more than enough material in a story like that, but The Good Place was not intent to rest on that, creating dense layers of its complex afterlife mythology, and twist after twist to re-format the heaven and hell stakes of the comedy in more and more peculiar directions. The season finale performs a stunning twist that re-contextualizes the show’s potential plot holes into clues towards the show’s ultimate reveal. The Good Place boasts an ambitious narrative architecture that no other show on television can beat.
The Good Place’s most impressive magic trick is that it can scale these feats of high mythology and remain a pleasant character-based sitcom. The Good Place is show-runner Michael Schur’s follow-up to the beloved Parks and Recreation, using many of the same writers and directors. Parks became a classic in some ways through its impressive sense of warmth and comfort; this team creates characters that you want to spend time with. As with Parks, The Good Place is stocked with excellent performances across the board. Two of my particular favorites in the supporting cast: D’Arcy Carden as the Good Place’s artificial intelligence, embodied in a chipper personal assistant named Janet, and Jameela Jamil as Tahani, a luxuriously breezy philanthropist socialite never seen without a flowing floral sundress.
Sadly under-viewed in its first season, NBC’s pickup of The Good Place for season two seems like a gesture of goodwill towards its established creator and an affirmation of the critical enthusiasm. Who knows how long The Good Place can last? But awards attention to this precious gem of a sitcom could only help the case, extending the life of this blessedly eccentric show for as long as possible.
Emmy, FYC, Kristen Bell, Parks and Recreation, TV, Ted Danson, comedy
Reader Comments (12)
That season finale alone deserved the renewal :)
Ted Danson is sooooooo good in this.
I seriously had not heard of this show before now!!! That's how many thousands of TV shows are eligible every year. But it sounds interesting.
I adore this show. It's both clever and ridiculously easy to watch, which is a tricky balancing act. It's well acted, but I agree that Ted Danson is brilliant here.
I totally agree with you, Sean!
Elude - to fail to grasp
Allude - to make a reference that is not explicitly noted
Yes this show needs to be celebrated.
yes, Yes, YES! I LOVE this show, and it absolutely deserves a nomination for Comedy Series, certainly over some of the series that probably will get nominated. Each episode is an utter delight, and that season finale was just PERFECTION. Ted Danson should be a shoo-in for a nomination, too.
This show was great fun. Not a huge fan of sitcoms and this is the definition of a sitcom but I still liked it quite a bit.
This is an amazing show and the season finale just put it to NEXT LEVEL. I loved it a lot.
I watched it after I read about the excitement over the finale and yup, it's a pretty smart show. Agree that Danson is great and I love how Kristen Bell, post Veronica Mars, has found another tv show that's destined to become a cult classic.
my favourite new show of the season. smart writing, great cast and a clever cliffhanger every epiode. looking forward to [and grateful for] season two
I love this show, I caught it once just flipping through channels and got hooked, clever writing, great concept, great cast!
This show is great. Great acting - D'Arcy Carden James is so funny - especially as 'bad Janet', the unhelpful version from 'the bad place', the scene where she alternately begs for her life and reminds everyone that she doesn't actually have emotions, and the loopy delights of memory-erased Janet constantly handing Ted Danson cactuses; the look on Ted Danson's face in the reveal of the last episode was so great; and Adam Scott as the scumbag proprietor of the bad place was sleazy perfection; 2. Great production values. 3. Writing that is funny, but also involves some very intricate plotting that never shows at the seams.