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.