Farewell to The Good Place
Last night, the final episode of The Good Place aired, and we said goodbye to one of the best series in recent television history.
This post is entirely spoiler free
Firstly, if you haven’t had the joy of watching this show, go watch it from the start. But don’t search for spoilers or anything else related to the show. Seriously, don’t. Just know it’s the “smartest, dumbest half-hour of network television”, as Marc Evan Jackson frequently says on The Good Place The Podcast (more on that later).
I’ve been a big fan of this show since I started watching mid-way through season one (thanks reddit!). Described as a funny show about philosophy, it also helped that Ted Danson was one of the main cast. And The Good Place lived up to its advertising, and more. I don’t watch much TV live, but half an hour on Thursday nights was set aside for The Good Place.
Since this is a spoiler-free post, I’ll keep this purposefully vague. Each episode is definitely a comedy, but almost all episodes present philosophical concepts as well. You can watch just for the jokes, but you can also engage you mind and ponder some of life’s bigger questions. And, as the series progresses, you really have the opportunity to give serious thought about what it means to be human. You might even become a better person along the way.
A wonderful companion to the show itself is the podcast, The Good Place The Podcast, which gives all kinds of additional information about the creation of the show and topics that are covered in the episodes. Be forewarned, there are spoilers, so don’t listen to each episode of the podcast without first having watched the actual episode itself.
It’s sad to say goodbye, but The Good Place was able to say goodbye on its own terms and at its own time. While we may want to keep the adventure going, it’s better than being abruptly canceled or continuing on beyond a point where the quality of each episode drops. And really, being able to make the choice of how long an adventure should last makes it all the better along the way.