Yo anyone watching The Good Place tonight??
- Thread starter geechiedan
- Start date
Nice partial areola.
Disney's Cruella adds The Good Place star Kirby Howell-Baptiste
By
September 24, 2019 at 08:09 PM EDT
FBTwitter
GREG DOHERTY/PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
Cruella
05/28/21
TYPE
Kirby Howell-Baptiste is continuing her takeover of Hollywood. EW has confirmed that the Good Place actress has landed a role opposite Emma Stone in Disney’s upcoming live-action movie Cruella.
The latest in Disney’s long list of live-action remakes of its classic animated films, Cruella is an origin story for the 101 Dalmatians villain (played by Stone) that’s set in 1970s London and and described as having a “punk rock” vibe. The film is currently in production, and details on Howell-Baptiste’s character have yet to be revealed.
The British actress is currently having a moment, coming off a year of star-making roles. Along with her hilarious and heartbreaking arc on The Good Place, Howell-Baptiste has also made a splash with appearances on Hulu’s Veronica Mars revival, CBS All Access’ Why Women Kill, BBC America’s Killing Eve, and HBO’s Barry.
Cruella also stars Emma Thompson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Joel Fry, and is set to hit theaters May 28, 2021.
Variety first reported Howell-Baptiste’s casting.
By
September 24, 2019 at 08:09 PM EDT
FBTwitter
GREG DOHERTY/PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
Cruella
05/28/21
TYPE
- Movie
Kirby Howell-Baptiste is continuing her takeover of Hollywood. EW has confirmed that the Good Place actress has landed a role opposite Emma Stone in Disney’s upcoming live-action movie Cruella.
The latest in Disney’s long list of live-action remakes of its classic animated films, Cruella is an origin story for the 101 Dalmatians villain (played by Stone) that’s set in 1970s London and and described as having a “punk rock” vibe. The film is currently in production, and details on Howell-Baptiste’s character have yet to be revealed.
The British actress is currently having a moment, coming off a year of star-making roles. Along with her hilarious and heartbreaking arc on The Good Place, Howell-Baptiste has also made a splash with appearances on Hulu’s Veronica Mars revival, CBS All Access’ Why Women Kill, BBC America’s Killing Eve, and HBO’s Barry.
Cruella also stars Emma Thompson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Joel Fry, and is set to hit theaters May 28, 2021.
Variety first reported Howell-Baptiste’s casting.
The Good Place Is the Quintessential TV Show of the Trump Era
By Jen Chaney@chaneyj
Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), taking charge in The Good Place. Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
Spoilers below for The Good Place. You’ve been warned!
With The Good Place, creator Mike Schur sought to make a show about what it means to be a good person. But by inventing a sitcom about ethics and putting it on the air these past four years, Schur unwittingly cemented the show’s legacy as the quintessential series of the Trump era.
I realize that the fourth and final season literally just began, so perhaps it seems premature to discuss the show’s legacy. But wherever the story winds up going in these last 13 episodes, four of which I’ve already seen, The Good Place has consistently tapped into a public curiosity and concern about whether integrity still matters in a country where Donald Trump can run for president, take office, and seemingly get away with doing whatever he wants. (At least until this week, anyway.) The NBC series has accomplished all of that without ever being an overtly political show. Actually, the fact that it isn’t an overtly political show is part of the reason why it’s so effective.
Many good shows (and a couple so-so ones) have tackled Trump’s America in a more direct way. The Good Fight, Roseanne before it turned into The Conners, Our Cartoon President, Saturday Night Live, and of course all the political talk shows, from Last Week With John Oliver to Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, have addressed the president and the ramifications of his conduct in the Oval Office. That kind of television certainly has its place, but it’s sometimes so specific that it has a preaching-to-the-choir effect. I also wonder whether, years from now, some of those shows will still resonate. The Good Place is much more subtle. It’s an inviting, funny work of escapism that makes viewers comfortable enough to consider deep philosophical questions at a time when considering them is vital, but often obscured by a barrage of news alerts and tweets. It’s not outright about Trump’s America, but it does capture, on a subconscious level, what is so troublesome about living in Trump’s America.
Of course, The Good Place does sometimes comment on the current political climate, even if it’s by accident. This week’s season premiere gave off that vibe more than once, perhaps most glaringly when Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson), the leader of Team Bad Place, said it would be cheating to make Chidi become the fourth subject in a competitive experiment with Team (Fake) Good Place, who are trying to prove that humans are capable of rising to their better selves. “Chidi can’t be part of the experiment,” Shawn objected, despite having just sent a demon in disguise to sabotage the same experiment. “They already know that he can improve … that’s cheating.”
“How is that cheating?” Kristen Bell’s Eleanor asked. “You’re just accusing us of doing what you actually did.” This episode was written months ago, but the idea of an unethical character accusing someone else of doing what he actually did was extra rich against the backdrop of an impeachment inquiry in which Trump has been accusing Joe Biden of corrupt behavior while seemingly engaging in tons of it himself.
Other moments in “A Girl From Arizona” could also be interpreted as riffs on the current moment. There was the introduction of Brent (Ben Koldyke), a subject in the experiment who happens to be a rich white man with a load of gripes about PC culture run amok. (“By the way, I’m the furthest thing from racist,” he made sure to note. “My dentist was a black woman.”) Despite his enthusiasm for golf, Brent doesn’t come across as an exact Trump surrogate, but he certainly seems like someone who would have been friends with Brett Kavanaugh, PJ, and Squi in high school. And then, there was the scene that cut back and forth between Michael, Eleanor, Shawn, and his demons. “There is no problem we can’t solve!” declared Michael. Cut to Shawn: “There is no problem we can’t create!” Two parties working at cross-purposes, with one trying to resolve issues only to see their work potentially undone by the other? That doesn’t echo contemporary politics at all.
I’ll admit that some of these connections are probably not intentional. Schur, who expresses plenty of political opinions on his Twitter feed, was adamant at this summer’s Television Critics Association press tour that he keeps that sort of discussion to a minimum within The Good Place writers’ room. “We try to avoid all Trump bullshit, frankly,” he said. “I was like, ‘We can’t function as a show if all we’re doing is talking about this.’ So we have appointed times where we discuss current events and what’s going on — and then we work. And we’ve tried to keep the ethics that our characters are discussing and the ethics of modern-day America [separate].”
What’s remarkable is that the ethical concerns of The Good Place still dovetail with what’s happening in modern-day America. The show debuted on NBC in 2016, a week before the first presidential debate, and its first season finale aired the night before Trump’s inauguration. Over the course of that season, Eleanor Shellstrop, a woman who had been a real heel in life, got into the Good Place because of what initially appeared to be an error. But the season’s big twist was that Eleanor, along with her friends Chidi, Tahani, and Jason didn’t land in the Good Place by accident. They were actually in the Bad Place the whole time. Michael (Ted Danson), the guy in charge, was really a demon. That shock — that a place so seemingly wonderful was actually the worst — may not have meant to reflect how many Americans felt when they realized our country was capable of electing Donald Trump. But it absolutely did, and so did the sense of determination that Eleanor showed in the face of Michael’s unconscionable behavior, a determination that she’s exhibited time and time again ever since.
In an essay published on Splitsider after that finale, Stephanie Palumbo expressed these same ideas. “Whether Schur wrote it with Trump in mind or not, the timing couldn’t have been more appropriate,” she wrote. “Eleanor’s strength, optimism, and resolve against the embodiment of evil are instructive. She reads the book What We Owe to Each Other, about our ethical obligations to others, throughout the series, and her words and actions advocate collaboration and solidarity. She provides a model of what people are capable of, even when under attack.”
For those who feel under attack by the Trump presidency, The Good Place serves not only as a respite from distressing headlines and asinine tweets, but a sitcom beacon reminding us that decency matters and that anyone is capable of it. Season two in particular — which, for the record, ended the same week that Trump delivered his first State of the Union address — served that function by showing that even Michael, a demon, could learn to be compassionate.
From there, season three highlighted the inequities in the Good Place’s scoring system and why it’s so challenging for a human to live ethically in a world where corruption is baked into its core. In the episode “Book of Dougs,” Michael brought his concerns about that system to the Committee, a group of decision-makers who planned to take action, but warned that their work will slowly unfold over hundreds of years. “We have rules, procedures,” said one of the Committee members. “We can’t just do stuff.” That prompted this response from Michael: “Just so you know, the whole time you’re doing this, the bad guys are continuing to torture everyone who ends up in the Bad Place. Which is everyone!” In Trump-era parlance, Michael’s urgency echoed what some Americans may have felt about the president, while the Committee could be seen as a stand-in for Democratic Party leaders reluctant to start impeachment proceedings. In broader terms, the Committee also symbolized how bureaucracy can be ineffective in moments of crisis, which was a perfect note to strike given that “Book of Dougs” aired in the midst of a federal government shutdown.
Again and again, The Good Place has been moving on parallel tracks with our political reality. Our desire, as viewers, to believe that the main characters on The Good Place will triumph in the face of evil mirrors the desire to see the same thing happen in our presidential politics. In terms of world-building, The Good Place was partially inspired by Lost, a show that, in my view, was the ultimate post-9/11 television series. Just as The Good Place doesn’t explicitly wrestle with politics, Lost didn’t talk about 9/11 at all. But in its premise and themes — a tragedy involving a plane, the attempt to regain normalcy after major trauma, the wariness of people who seem different — Lost yanked at threads that were also winding their way through the public consciousness. The Good Place has been doing the same thing. Which, as in the case of Lost, puts a lot of pressure on the show to pull off a satisfying finale.
The Good Place is beginning its last lap right as the impeachment effort heats up. The show’s final episode will air in early 2020, a year when the Trump era could come to an end by election or impeachment. As many Americans look to the upcoming months, they are crossing their fingers that rightness and integrity will prevail. As a series with an optimistic heart, The Good Place will likely end on a note that reinforces a belief in, well, goodness. Whatever happens on this wonderful, unpredictable brain twister of a sitcom will not predict what’s going to happen in the real world, even if it unintentionally reflects current events. But as it comes to an end, I feel sure The Good Place will do one thing that it’s always done: It will give us intelligent, hilarious television that also gives us hope.
By Jen Chaney@chaneyj
Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), taking charge in The Good Place. Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
Spoilers below for The Good Place. You’ve been warned!
With The Good Place, creator Mike Schur sought to make a show about what it means to be a good person. But by inventing a sitcom about ethics and putting it on the air these past four years, Schur unwittingly cemented the show’s legacy as the quintessential series of the Trump era.
I realize that the fourth and final season literally just began, so perhaps it seems premature to discuss the show’s legacy. But wherever the story winds up going in these last 13 episodes, four of which I’ve already seen, The Good Place has consistently tapped into a public curiosity and concern about whether integrity still matters in a country where Donald Trump can run for president, take office, and seemingly get away with doing whatever he wants. (At least until this week, anyway.) The NBC series has accomplished all of that without ever being an overtly political show. Actually, the fact that it isn’t an overtly political show is part of the reason why it’s so effective.
Many good shows (and a couple so-so ones) have tackled Trump’s America in a more direct way. The Good Fight, Roseanne before it turned into The Conners, Our Cartoon President, Saturday Night Live, and of course all the political talk shows, from Last Week With John Oliver to Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, have addressed the president and the ramifications of his conduct in the Oval Office. That kind of television certainly has its place, but it’s sometimes so specific that it has a preaching-to-the-choir effect. I also wonder whether, years from now, some of those shows will still resonate. The Good Place is much more subtle. It’s an inviting, funny work of escapism that makes viewers comfortable enough to consider deep philosophical questions at a time when considering them is vital, but often obscured by a barrage of news alerts and tweets. It’s not outright about Trump’s America, but it does capture, on a subconscious level, what is so troublesome about living in Trump’s America.
Of course, The Good Place does sometimes comment on the current political climate, even if it’s by accident. This week’s season premiere gave off that vibe more than once, perhaps most glaringly when Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson), the leader of Team Bad Place, said it would be cheating to make Chidi become the fourth subject in a competitive experiment with Team (Fake) Good Place, who are trying to prove that humans are capable of rising to their better selves. “Chidi can’t be part of the experiment,” Shawn objected, despite having just sent a demon in disguise to sabotage the same experiment. “They already know that he can improve … that’s cheating.”
“How is that cheating?” Kristen Bell’s Eleanor asked. “You’re just accusing us of doing what you actually did.” This episode was written months ago, but the idea of an unethical character accusing someone else of doing what he actually did was extra rich against the backdrop of an impeachment inquiry in which Trump has been accusing Joe Biden of corrupt behavior while seemingly engaging in tons of it himself.
Other moments in “A Girl From Arizona” could also be interpreted as riffs on the current moment. There was the introduction of Brent (Ben Koldyke), a subject in the experiment who happens to be a rich white man with a load of gripes about PC culture run amok. (“By the way, I’m the furthest thing from racist,” he made sure to note. “My dentist was a black woman.”) Despite his enthusiasm for golf, Brent doesn’t come across as an exact Trump surrogate, but he certainly seems like someone who would have been friends with Brett Kavanaugh, PJ, and Squi in high school. And then, there was the scene that cut back and forth between Michael, Eleanor, Shawn, and his demons. “There is no problem we can’t solve!” declared Michael. Cut to Shawn: “There is no problem we can’t create!” Two parties working at cross-purposes, with one trying to resolve issues only to see their work potentially undone by the other? That doesn’t echo contemporary politics at all.
I’ll admit that some of these connections are probably not intentional. Schur, who expresses plenty of political opinions on his Twitter feed, was adamant at this summer’s Television Critics Association press tour that he keeps that sort of discussion to a minimum within The Good Place writers’ room. “We try to avoid all Trump bullshit, frankly,” he said. “I was like, ‘We can’t function as a show if all we’re doing is talking about this.’ So we have appointed times where we discuss current events and what’s going on — and then we work. And we’ve tried to keep the ethics that our characters are discussing and the ethics of modern-day America [separate].”
What’s remarkable is that the ethical concerns of The Good Place still dovetail with what’s happening in modern-day America. The show debuted on NBC in 2016, a week before the first presidential debate, and its first season finale aired the night before Trump’s inauguration. Over the course of that season, Eleanor Shellstrop, a woman who had been a real heel in life, got into the Good Place because of what initially appeared to be an error. But the season’s big twist was that Eleanor, along with her friends Chidi, Tahani, and Jason didn’t land in the Good Place by accident. They were actually in the Bad Place the whole time. Michael (Ted Danson), the guy in charge, was really a demon. That shock — that a place so seemingly wonderful was actually the worst — may not have meant to reflect how many Americans felt when they realized our country was capable of electing Donald Trump. But it absolutely did, and so did the sense of determination that Eleanor showed in the face of Michael’s unconscionable behavior, a determination that she’s exhibited time and time again ever since.
In an essay published on Splitsider after that finale, Stephanie Palumbo expressed these same ideas. “Whether Schur wrote it with Trump in mind or not, the timing couldn’t have been more appropriate,” she wrote. “Eleanor’s strength, optimism, and resolve against the embodiment of evil are instructive. She reads the book What We Owe to Each Other, about our ethical obligations to others, throughout the series, and her words and actions advocate collaboration and solidarity. She provides a model of what people are capable of, even when under attack.”
For those who feel under attack by the Trump presidency, The Good Place serves not only as a respite from distressing headlines and asinine tweets, but a sitcom beacon reminding us that decency matters and that anyone is capable of it. Season two in particular — which, for the record, ended the same week that Trump delivered his first State of the Union address — served that function by showing that even Michael, a demon, could learn to be compassionate.
From there, season three highlighted the inequities in the Good Place’s scoring system and why it’s so challenging for a human to live ethically in a world where corruption is baked into its core. In the episode “Book of Dougs,” Michael brought his concerns about that system to the Committee, a group of decision-makers who planned to take action, but warned that their work will slowly unfold over hundreds of years. “We have rules, procedures,” said one of the Committee members. “We can’t just do stuff.” That prompted this response from Michael: “Just so you know, the whole time you’re doing this, the bad guys are continuing to torture everyone who ends up in the Bad Place. Which is everyone!” In Trump-era parlance, Michael’s urgency echoed what some Americans may have felt about the president, while the Committee could be seen as a stand-in for Democratic Party leaders reluctant to start impeachment proceedings. In broader terms, the Committee also symbolized how bureaucracy can be ineffective in moments of crisis, which was a perfect note to strike given that “Book of Dougs” aired in the midst of a federal government shutdown.
Again and again, The Good Place has been moving on parallel tracks with our political reality. Our desire, as viewers, to believe that the main characters on The Good Place will triumph in the face of evil mirrors the desire to see the same thing happen in our presidential politics. In terms of world-building, The Good Place was partially inspired by Lost, a show that, in my view, was the ultimate post-9/11 television series. Just as The Good Place doesn’t explicitly wrestle with politics, Lost didn’t talk about 9/11 at all. But in its premise and themes — a tragedy involving a plane, the attempt to regain normalcy after major trauma, the wariness of people who seem different — Lost yanked at threads that were also winding their way through the public consciousness. The Good Place has been doing the same thing. Which, as in the case of Lost, puts a lot of pressure on the show to pull off a satisfying finale.
The Good Place is beginning its last lap right as the impeachment effort heats up. The show’s final episode will air in early 2020, a year when the Trump era could come to an end by election or impeachment. As many Americans look to the upcoming months, they are crossing their fingers that rightness and integrity will prevail. As a series with an optimistic heart, The Good Place will likely end on a note that reinforces a belief in, well, goodness. Whatever happens on this wonderful, unpredictable brain twister of a sitcom will not predict what’s going to happen in the real world, even if it unintentionally reflects current events. But as it comes to an end, I feel sure The Good Place will do one thing that it’s always done: It will give us intelligent, hilarious television that also gives us hope.
Of Course The Good Place Got Its Own College Seminar
By Lauren Chval
The Good Place creator Mike Schur with Notre Dame students. Photo: Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame
On a Monday afternoon at the University of Notre Dame this fall semester, 17 college students sat around a long table with a very special guest. They had convened in a sleek meeting space known as the “Founders Room,” not their usual classroom, and there was a catered lunch on warming trays along the wall. The students dressed more nicely than they otherwise might — no one was wearing sweatpants — and in this gussied-up setting with such an important newcomer, there was a distinct, jittery vibe that had already caused one student to knock over a glass of water.
To lighten the mood, they answered a typical icebreaker question: Which character from The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreation, or The Good Place did they most identify with?
“Leslie Knope.”
“Phyllis from The Office.”
“Rosa.”
“A paradoxical hybrid of April and Tom.”
It’s only after Mary Crawford, a junior majoring in film, television, and theater, answered, “I would definitely say Chidi. Unequivocally,” that the class’ guest of honor finally spoke up.
“Then you’re not like Chidi,” quipped Mike Schur, eliciting laughter from the students. Chidi, The Good Place character portrayed by William Jackson Harper, has never made a decision unequivocally in his life. Schur would know, since he created the character, along with all the other ones being discussed.
This is “The Good Class,” a new seminar entirely focused on the sitcom he created, The Good Place. But what exactly was Schur doing on a college campus in northern Indiana? Why fly to the middle of the country so he could have lunch with a bunch of college kids? It all started with a letter. Notre Dame philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan teaches a freshman philosophy course called “God and the Good Life,” and last November, she set her sights on booking Schur as a guest speaker.
“The central question we pose to the 300-some students we teach each semester in [“God and the Good Life”] is: What does it take for you to have a good life?” Sullivan wrote in her letter to Schur. “Each of our class meetings also poses an answer — You should be maximizing utility in the world! You should pursue the life of contemplation! And so on. We discuss the relevant philosophy and then debate a current event that turns on that theory.” Her students, she explained, culminate the course with a philosophical defense of how they choose to live their lives. “We would love to bring you to Notre Dame to talk with our students about the how and why behind making such an ambitious and awesome sitcom around the question of the good life,” she wrote.
After nodding to Immanuel Kant and nihilism, Sullivan wrapped up the letter with a joke about Jeremy Bearimy (“My research area is philosophy of time. We are about to start putting our Ph.D. students through their oral exams. I am strongly tempted to include a question explaining Jeremy Bearimy time.”) and gave it to someone, who gave it to someone, who gave it to Notre Dame alumnus Regis Philbin, who happens to be Schur’s father-in-law. The letter finally reached Schur last Thanksgiving.
“Regis came up to me and went, I got this, I don’t know what to do with it, here! and threw it in my face,” Schur says. “And I read it and thought, This sounds awesome. The class sounds like the exact academic equivalent of what the show is, which is a sampling platter of a lot of big ideas and concepts.”
Schur got back to Sullivan less than two weeks after she first handed off her letter. Once he agreed to come to her class, she started to think even bigger. She got together with film, TV, and theater professors Ricky Herbst and Christine Becker, and the three began planning an interdisciplinary course entirely devoted to The Good Place. And once they announced the one-credit class, officially called “The Good Class — The Philosophy and Production Behind The Good Place,” demand for enrollment was so high that the professors had to create an application form and upped the class size from 12 to 17 students. (Though the course was limited to philosophy and film, television, and theater majors, they got plenty of emails from other students pleading their case.) Becker says they wanted everything about the class to feel true to the show, so they asked themselves, “How would The Good Place do it?” To that end, the application only had two questions:
1. Why do you deserve to be admitted into the Good Class? Provide specific reasons accompanied by the approximate points you believe you have earned for each of these achievements.
2. We recently discovered that no one has passed the Good Class in centuries, so please provide your suggestions for how the course should be fairly graded going forward. Answers should be no longer than 400 words each, and creativity will be rewarded.
“We wanted it to be a filter for the people who were hardcore,” Sullivan explains. “We’re all doing this for free. This doesn’t count for any of our teaching credits. So if I’m going to give up a bunch of Fridays to talk about this show with you, you’ve got to be nerding out on this hard.”
The students’ nerd credentials didn’t disappoint. Some answered the question “Why do you deserve to be in the Good Class?” by ascribing point totals to their good and bad deeds. (“Purchasing a reusable stainless-steel straw to be sustainable: +743.33” was offset by “showing off my straw to any and everybody: -176.54.”) One student submitted an imagined transcript of her conversation with Michael upon entrance to the Good Place. Others gave examples of their good qualities: “Honesty: When a ‘novelty ID company’ sent a letter to my home address in response to my customer service complaint (i.e. they didn’t send me my goddamn fake ID), my parents were quite upset. BUT I did not lie to them.”
It’s not hard to see why professors took on extra work and students fought to get into the class — the syllabus was full of thought-provoking lessons that seemed more like fun than schoolwork. The semester kicked off exploring “What’s so special about The Good Place?” through mini sessions on the television industry, humor theory, and virtue ethics. Each week focused on a new theme, with Sullivan taking the philosophy and Herbst and Becker splitting the TV topics; one class was devoted to contemporary virtue ethics and how well the show nails them, while another debated the critical reaction to whether Chidi and Eleanor deserve to be labeled soulmates. UCLA professor and The Good Place advisor Pamela Hieronymi guest-lectured for the class on “Virtue Ethics for Script Writing,” and NBC VP of production Michael Swanson Skyped in to talk about the TV industry.
But of course, there is still homework to be done in the Good Class. Along with readings, there are required episode viewings: One week, season three’s “Jeremy Bearimy” and “Pandemonium” were paired with an academic article about how Comic-Con marketing labels “good fans” as those whose devotion can be monetized, rather than those whose fandom is the most pure. In other words, it plays off the question humming at the heart of The Good Place: What makes someone good?
The class was planned before Schur announced that season four would be The Good Place’s last, but when the professors eventually found out, they were thrilled. Exploring The Good Place academically during its final season offered them the rare opportunity to engage with the show’s ending in real time.
“The potential to talk in class about the decision to end the show, how TV shows end, how you put finality on philosophical interrogations, the pedagogical opportunities of this being the final season?” Becker says. “As a total nerd, that’s the most thrilling thing to me.”
As the day’s two-hour session — sandwiched between a morning visit to Sullivan’s “God and the Good Life” class and a public talk titled “Can TV Make Us Better People?” in the evening — came to a close, the students were eager to get their final questions in. When someone asked how Schur thinks streaming will affect the industry long-term, he pointed out that while television can create a dialogue on a national scale, people rarely watch things together or at the same pace in the Peak TV era. “When I have never seen The Americans and someone else has never seen ER and someone else has never seen The Crown, we’re all flailing around trying to find a common language to talk about our culture,” Schur says. “The idea that we all have something to talk about is disappearing, and I think that’s bad.”
The Good Class, at least, provides one place where people convene every week to talk about what they just saw.
“[This class is playing with] the idea of what it means to watch and debate television like this together. To use television as a vehicle. It’s hard to talk about ethical issues these days. It’s hard to have a common language that’s not hyper politicized or hyper reductive,” Sullivan says. “We need cultural questions like this to do some of the 2,400-year-old work on our souls.”
By Lauren Chval
The Good Place creator Mike Schur with Notre Dame students. Photo: Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame
On a Monday afternoon at the University of Notre Dame this fall semester, 17 college students sat around a long table with a very special guest. They had convened in a sleek meeting space known as the “Founders Room,” not their usual classroom, and there was a catered lunch on warming trays along the wall. The students dressed more nicely than they otherwise might — no one was wearing sweatpants — and in this gussied-up setting with such an important newcomer, there was a distinct, jittery vibe that had already caused one student to knock over a glass of water.
To lighten the mood, they answered a typical icebreaker question: Which character from The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreation, or The Good Place did they most identify with?
“Leslie Knope.”
“Phyllis from The Office.”
“Rosa.”
“A paradoxical hybrid of April and Tom.”
It’s only after Mary Crawford, a junior majoring in film, television, and theater, answered, “I would definitely say Chidi. Unequivocally,” that the class’ guest of honor finally spoke up.
“Then you’re not like Chidi,” quipped Mike Schur, eliciting laughter from the students. Chidi, The Good Place character portrayed by William Jackson Harper, has never made a decision unequivocally in his life. Schur would know, since he created the character, along with all the other ones being discussed.
This is “The Good Class,” a new seminar entirely focused on the sitcom he created, The Good Place. But what exactly was Schur doing on a college campus in northern Indiana? Why fly to the middle of the country so he could have lunch with a bunch of college kids? It all started with a letter. Notre Dame philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan teaches a freshman philosophy course called “God and the Good Life,” and last November, she set her sights on booking Schur as a guest speaker.
“The central question we pose to the 300-some students we teach each semester in [“God and the Good Life”] is: What does it take for you to have a good life?” Sullivan wrote in her letter to Schur. “Each of our class meetings also poses an answer — You should be maximizing utility in the world! You should pursue the life of contemplation! And so on. We discuss the relevant philosophy and then debate a current event that turns on that theory.” Her students, she explained, culminate the course with a philosophical defense of how they choose to live their lives. “We would love to bring you to Notre Dame to talk with our students about the how and why behind making such an ambitious and awesome sitcom around the question of the good life,” she wrote.
After nodding to Immanuel Kant and nihilism, Sullivan wrapped up the letter with a joke about Jeremy Bearimy (“My research area is philosophy of time. We are about to start putting our Ph.D. students through their oral exams. I am strongly tempted to include a question explaining Jeremy Bearimy time.”) and gave it to someone, who gave it to someone, who gave it to Notre Dame alumnus Regis Philbin, who happens to be Schur’s father-in-law. The letter finally reached Schur last Thanksgiving.
“Regis came up to me and went, I got this, I don’t know what to do with it, here! and threw it in my face,” Schur says. “And I read it and thought, This sounds awesome. The class sounds like the exact academic equivalent of what the show is, which is a sampling platter of a lot of big ideas and concepts.”
Schur got back to Sullivan less than two weeks after she first handed off her letter. Once he agreed to come to her class, she started to think even bigger. She got together with film, TV, and theater professors Ricky Herbst and Christine Becker, and the three began planning an interdisciplinary course entirely devoted to The Good Place. And once they announced the one-credit class, officially called “The Good Class — The Philosophy and Production Behind The Good Place,” demand for enrollment was so high that the professors had to create an application form and upped the class size from 12 to 17 students. (Though the course was limited to philosophy and film, television, and theater majors, they got plenty of emails from other students pleading their case.) Becker says they wanted everything about the class to feel true to the show, so they asked themselves, “How would The Good Place do it?” To that end, the application only had two questions:
1. Why do you deserve to be admitted into the Good Class? Provide specific reasons accompanied by the approximate points you believe you have earned for each of these achievements.
2. We recently discovered that no one has passed the Good Class in centuries, so please provide your suggestions for how the course should be fairly graded going forward. Answers should be no longer than 400 words each, and creativity will be rewarded.
“We wanted it to be a filter for the people who were hardcore,” Sullivan explains. “We’re all doing this for free. This doesn’t count for any of our teaching credits. So if I’m going to give up a bunch of Fridays to talk about this show with you, you’ve got to be nerding out on this hard.”
The students’ nerd credentials didn’t disappoint. Some answered the question “Why do you deserve to be in the Good Class?” by ascribing point totals to their good and bad deeds. (“Purchasing a reusable stainless-steel straw to be sustainable: +743.33” was offset by “showing off my straw to any and everybody: -176.54.”) One student submitted an imagined transcript of her conversation with Michael upon entrance to the Good Place. Others gave examples of their good qualities: “Honesty: When a ‘novelty ID company’ sent a letter to my home address in response to my customer service complaint (i.e. they didn’t send me my goddamn fake ID), my parents were quite upset. BUT I did not lie to them.”
It’s not hard to see why professors took on extra work and students fought to get into the class — the syllabus was full of thought-provoking lessons that seemed more like fun than schoolwork. The semester kicked off exploring “What’s so special about The Good Place?” through mini sessions on the television industry, humor theory, and virtue ethics. Each week focused on a new theme, with Sullivan taking the philosophy and Herbst and Becker splitting the TV topics; one class was devoted to contemporary virtue ethics and how well the show nails them, while another debated the critical reaction to whether Chidi and Eleanor deserve to be labeled soulmates. UCLA professor and The Good Place advisor Pamela Hieronymi guest-lectured for the class on “Virtue Ethics for Script Writing,” and NBC VP of production Michael Swanson Skyped in to talk about the TV industry.
But of course, there is still homework to be done in the Good Class. Along with readings, there are required episode viewings: One week, season three’s “Jeremy Bearimy” and “Pandemonium” were paired with an academic article about how Comic-Con marketing labels “good fans” as those whose devotion can be monetized, rather than those whose fandom is the most pure. In other words, it plays off the question humming at the heart of The Good Place: What makes someone good?
The class was planned before Schur announced that season four would be The Good Place’s last, but when the professors eventually found out, they were thrilled. Exploring The Good Place academically during its final season offered them the rare opportunity to engage with the show’s ending in real time.
“The potential to talk in class about the decision to end the show, how TV shows end, how you put finality on philosophical interrogations, the pedagogical opportunities of this being the final season?” Becker says. “As a total nerd, that’s the most thrilling thing to me.”
As the day’s two-hour session — sandwiched between a morning visit to Sullivan’s “God and the Good Life” class and a public talk titled “Can TV Make Us Better People?” in the evening — came to a close, the students were eager to get their final questions in. When someone asked how Schur thinks streaming will affect the industry long-term, he pointed out that while television can create a dialogue on a national scale, people rarely watch things together or at the same pace in the Peak TV era. “When I have never seen The Americans and someone else has never seen ER and someone else has never seen The Crown, we’re all flailing around trying to find a common language to talk about our culture,” Schur says. “The idea that we all have something to talk about is disappearing, and I think that’s bad.”
The Good Class, at least, provides one place where people convene every week to talk about what they just saw.
“[This class is playing with] the idea of what it means to watch and debate television like this together. To use television as a vehicle. It’s hard to talk about ethical issues these days. It’s hard to have a common language that’s not hyper politicized or hyper reductive,” Sullivan says. “We need cultural questions like this to do some of the 2,400-year-old work on our souls.”
The Good Place’s Final Twist
By Kathryn VanArendonk@kvanaren
Even fire squids don’t last forever. Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
Again and again throughout its four seasons, The Good Place pulled the rug out from under you. The show’s first twist, the most impressive and indelible, was the discovery that Chidi, Eleanor, Tahani, and Jason were actually in the Bad Place. Then came an almost constantly running machinery of twistiness, as the show doubled back on itself and pulled off restarts and surprises again and again. They were rebooted! Many times! They were sent back to Earth, the guy with the ultimate key to goodness was actually miserable, the Bad Place was broken, the Good Place was broken, the entire system was a disaster! Meanwhile, the show’s bigger question about how we should live remained shielded within a layer of unknowing. It was the mystery of existence packaged inside the mystery of “No, seriously, what is really going on?”
That sense of twist surprise waned in the final season. However lovely and endearing its characters were, the seams of the show’s inner structure began showing more clearly. The things meant to disguise them — mostly Eleanor and Chidi’s continually doomed love — looked and felt like distractions. But in its final episode, The Good Place unfurled one last surprise: a glorious, straightforward, naked embrace of the essential fact about life we all know. Everything ends, and no one knows for certain what that ending looks like.
What happens after you die? The first episode of The Good Place started with an answer: You go to a frozen-yogurt-filled paradise where you hang out with your soul mate and take flying lessons for eternity. That answer ended up being false, but not quite in the way that the show initially suggested. The Good Place — the real Good Place, once the system had been fixed so that it was no longer an impossible goal to achieve — does look pretty close to that original answer from the first episode. It’s a happy, brightly colored place full of the best parties you could ever want and unlimited time with your soul mate, your friends, and your family.
But in the penultimate episode, “Patty,” the show concluded that what makes life worth living is the knowledge that there can’t be an absolute, final, party-for-eternity Good Place. People need the option to choose to leave, a way to no longer exist. The final door Michael designs is one we cannot see beyond, a door that leads to a complete and unknowable end. In the finale, the last gift that Eleanor gives him is the ability to go through a door of his own, to mortality and life on Earth and, when the time comes, judgment in the afterlife that he and his friends built together. He, too, will end.
It feels cheap to say that the final twist of The Good Place is there is no twist. But there’s something lovely and right about the show’s decision to abandon its twisting mechanisms and accept the obvious. It has always been two kinds of mystery at once: A puzzle-box mystery that continually offered up solutions to new problems, doling out “aha!” moments of revelation and then immediately producing the next puzzle to be solved; and a John Donne, key-to-all-mythologies, epistemological kind of mystery. Why are we here? What happens after we die? What is the nature of goodness? While The Good Place pulled off the structure of its puzzle box remarkably well, the reality is that there could never be a satisfying answer to its second mystery that was not also deeply obvious. There’s no answer to “What is the nature of goodness?” that could be surprising, and there’s no answer to “What happens after we die?” that could ever be truly satisfying.
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Instead, The Good Place chose to embrace those things. The answer to “What happens after we die?” came in Chidi’s Buddhism-inspired speech to Eleanor about waves in the ocean, an image of water that temporarily forms itself into a powerful, meaningful, organized thing, and then recedes back to where it belongs. The answer to “What is the nature of goodness?” was the same answer The Good Place has been offering up from its earliest seasons: Goodness is about balancing your own happiness with the need to connect with and help others. There is no closing hairpin turn, no last moment where the show reboots everything all over again. The final twist is that everything ends, we don’t know exactly what that looks like, and that’s okay.
In one last bit of apt narrative symmetry, The Good Place’s door to the unknown is a perfect metaphor for ending a television show on good terms. After you walk through the door and the show is done, there will be an absence. A thing used to exist and now it doesn’t, which is unbearably sad. But to have had meaning in the first place, The Good Place needed to have an ending. When everyone’s at peace, it’s time to say good-bye. It was a delight to have The Good Place on TV, and it’s even better that the show got to walk through the door on its own terms.
www.vulture.com
By Kathryn VanArendonk@kvanaren
Even fire squids don’t last forever. Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
Again and again throughout its four seasons, The Good Place pulled the rug out from under you. The show’s first twist, the most impressive and indelible, was the discovery that Chidi, Eleanor, Tahani, and Jason were actually in the Bad Place. Then came an almost constantly running machinery of twistiness, as the show doubled back on itself and pulled off restarts and surprises again and again. They were rebooted! Many times! They were sent back to Earth, the guy with the ultimate key to goodness was actually miserable, the Bad Place was broken, the Good Place was broken, the entire system was a disaster! Meanwhile, the show’s bigger question about how we should live remained shielded within a layer of unknowing. It was the mystery of existence packaged inside the mystery of “No, seriously, what is really going on?”
That sense of twist surprise waned in the final season. However lovely and endearing its characters were, the seams of the show’s inner structure began showing more clearly. The things meant to disguise them — mostly Eleanor and Chidi’s continually doomed love — looked and felt like distractions. But in its final episode, The Good Place unfurled one last surprise: a glorious, straightforward, naked embrace of the essential fact about life we all know. Everything ends, and no one knows for certain what that ending looks like.
What happens after you die? The first episode of The Good Place started with an answer: You go to a frozen-yogurt-filled paradise where you hang out with your soul mate and take flying lessons for eternity. That answer ended up being false, but not quite in the way that the show initially suggested. The Good Place — the real Good Place, once the system had been fixed so that it was no longer an impossible goal to achieve — does look pretty close to that original answer from the first episode. It’s a happy, brightly colored place full of the best parties you could ever want and unlimited time with your soul mate, your friends, and your family.
But in the penultimate episode, “Patty,” the show concluded that what makes life worth living is the knowledge that there can’t be an absolute, final, party-for-eternity Good Place. People need the option to choose to leave, a way to no longer exist. The final door Michael designs is one we cannot see beyond, a door that leads to a complete and unknowable end. In the finale, the last gift that Eleanor gives him is the ability to go through a door of his own, to mortality and life on Earth and, when the time comes, judgment in the afterlife that he and his friends built together. He, too, will end.
It feels cheap to say that the final twist of The Good Place is there is no twist. But there’s something lovely and right about the show’s decision to abandon its twisting mechanisms and accept the obvious. It has always been two kinds of mystery at once: A puzzle-box mystery that continually offered up solutions to new problems, doling out “aha!” moments of revelation and then immediately producing the next puzzle to be solved; and a John Donne, key-to-all-mythologies, epistemological kind of mystery. Why are we here? What happens after we die? What is the nature of goodness? While The Good Place pulled off the structure of its puzzle box remarkably well, the reality is that there could never be a satisfying answer to its second mystery that was not also deeply obvious. There’s no answer to “What is the nature of goodness?” that could be surprising, and there’s no answer to “What happens after we die?” that could ever be truly satisfying.
Get unlimited access to Vulture and everything else New York
LEARN MORE »
Instead, The Good Place chose to embrace those things. The answer to “What happens after we die?” came in Chidi’s Buddhism-inspired speech to Eleanor about waves in the ocean, an image of water that temporarily forms itself into a powerful, meaningful, organized thing, and then recedes back to where it belongs. The answer to “What is the nature of goodness?” was the same answer The Good Place has been offering up from its earliest seasons: Goodness is about balancing your own happiness with the need to connect with and help others. There is no closing hairpin turn, no last moment where the show reboots everything all over again. The final twist is that everything ends, we don’t know exactly what that looks like, and that’s okay.
In one last bit of apt narrative symmetry, The Good Place’s door to the unknown is a perfect metaphor for ending a television show on good terms. After you walk through the door and the show is done, there will be an absence. A thing used to exist and now it doesn’t, which is unbearably sad. But to have had meaning in the first place, The Good Place needed to have an ending. When everyone’s at peace, it’s time to say good-bye. It was a delight to have The Good Place on TV, and it’s even better that the show got to walk through the door on its own terms.
The Good Place’s Final Twist
Everything ends, we don’t know exactly what that looks like, and that’s okay.
www.vulture.com
The Good Place finale: Kristen Bell on the emotional 'tough-love ending'
The actress also reveals her most challenging scene and who has Chidi's calendar.
By Dan Snierson
January 31, 2020 at 02:03 AM EST
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Warning: This story contains plot details from “Whenever You’re Ready,” Thursday’s series finale of The Good Place.
Farewell! Everything is fine. Sparkle on.
The Good Place put the good in goodbye, as NBC’s ambitious, ethics-laced, silly-faced comedy signed off Thursday night with an emotionally and spiritually charged finale that wrapped up four seasons of the Soul Squad’s upside down supercoaster afterlife adventures with satisfaction. While the core characters received fitting happy endings, there was a bittersweet finality to the proceedings. Not just because that’s what finales are supposed to do, but also because The Good Place — led by creator Mike Schur, who wrote and directed the episode — dared to imagine how the universe works once you died. (Sorry, but even paradise wasn’t eternal.) And so Team Cockroach went their separate ways, forever bonded, most of them dissolving into the ether from which they came, a journey complete but continuing on, at least in sparkling spirit.
Last week, reformed demon architect and aspiring human Michael (Ted Danson) and the Soul Squad devised a way to fix the Good Place, which had been stagnating with pleasure zombies, people numbed out by too many hundreds of thousands of years in perpetual bliss. The solution? A door through which souls could walk when they felt that they were ready, bringing a peaceful end to their journey, their energy returned to the universe. This week, several characters began metaphorically shouting “Portals!” Jacksonville deejay Jason (Manny Jacinto), who found love with human database Janet (D’Arcy Carden), made the leap after the perfect game of Madden; self-consumed socialite Tahani (Jameela Jacinto) had healed her familial wounds and thought she was ready, only to half-reverse course and become an afterlife architect to help other people. Ethics professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper) was the next to feel the itch, much to the fear of his soulmate/anarchic anchor/lone wolf-turned-pack leader Eleanor (Kristen Bell). She tried all sorts of international intrigue to get him to stay, but even she knew that true love was about letting go, especially when he turned to Buddhism and the ocean. (“The wave was just… a different way for the water to be, for a little while,” he explained.)
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And so Eleanor searched for her own reason to feel complete, first helping the Medium Place resident recluse Mindy St. Clair (Maribeth Monroe) resolve to make human connections and take the afterlife test (to be administered by Tahani). But Eleanor’s true purpose was more appropriately fulfilled after persuading Judge Gen (Maya Rudolph) to transform Michael into the species that had long captured his imagination, sending him back to Earth in human form, bound for a hopeful but uncertain future. Eleanor then bid poignant goodbye to Janet in the forest, the final unknown in front of them, with Eleanor explaining that as a very wise not-robot told her, the true joy is in the mystery. And then she passed through the gate of branches, dissipating into floating particles in the universe. One such glowing particle touched down back on Earth, on the shoulder of a random dude in Arizona, prompting said fellow to remove a letter that he just threw in the trash and make that tiny extra effort to bring it to its rightful owner: Michael. Michael’s final words to his friendly neighbor, “I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe: Take it sleazy,” fulfilling a quotidian wish from season 1 when he listed all the things he’d never get to do as a human.
Let’s brush our teeth with a cat, pour a cup of anti-matter, ride the groovy wave of love, wonder if ghosts are actually racist, and ring up a Bell — Good Place standout Kristen Bell — to glean some insight into the final forkin’ chapter, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Ever.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The time knife really cut both ways on that finale, offering bursts of happiness and satisfaction, but also some brutal, bottom-lining, that’s-the-way-the-system-works sadness. Which concept hit you the hardest: That even in the forever after we wrestle with mortality or endings or the great unknown? That the joy is in the mystery?
KRISTEN BELL: The fact that once you have everything you’re striving so hard to earn, it’s still not enough. That what you need to earn is the acceptance of the complex internal decision to let go. It was so beautiful how they made everybody mush in the Good Place because it’s true. There’s one line that really sums it up. “A vacation is only so fun because it has an ending.” If everything were bliss, would everyone be happy? I don’t think so. Part of the drive and the passion is why it’s the journey, not the destination. And I was very happy with the tough-love ending that happened.
Chidi, man of great indecision, made the most important decision he ever made, and Eleanor heartwrenchingly begged him not to leave. And the capper was that he agreed to stay, although both of them knew it wasn’t cosmically right. Then she used the ethics knowledge she learned from What We Owe Each Other and explained how it was an unfair rule to try to make him stay. Then he heartwrenched some more when he gave the Buddhist waves speech. How many buckets of tears did you all shed while filming? What did you love about that sequence?
Enough buckets to make that Buddhist wave. [Laughter] That paragraph has been ringing in my head since I heard it in August. It is something that I want to say to my kids one day — the idea of us being the wave. It’s an incredible way to explain to someone that you have to let go and become whatever the world wants you to become. The hardest thing for me to shoot was on the [Pont des Arts in Paris] with Will, when I was asking him to stay because Eleanor had been emotionally healthy for so long. That was a bit of a back step and she knew it. But her impulses still brought her to beg him for selfish reasons, which is okay. I’m glad she came to her senses so quickly. And I’m also glad that she came to her senses by reading the works of other people. Human beings learn from stories; she learned from What We Owe to Each Other, and she was able to see the error of her ways. Shooting that scene, pleading with him on the bridge was probably the hardest thing I shot in the whole four years.
Speaking of Paris, you filmed there and in Athens. Are they into The Good Place in Greece and France?
Shockingly, people were saying, “Oh, we watch The Good Place,” which was, like, blowing our minds.
What sticks out to you about those secret shoots?
It felt like a senior trip right before you graduated high school. It was so much fun to go with everyone. We went for seven days. We shot all over in some of those beautiful locations. I think we might be the only people that have ever shot at the Parthenon at sunrise, on the Acropolis. It was breathtaking watching the sunrise come up. There were so many stray cats. I didn’t even know what to do with myself. But it was incredibly, beautifully humbling to feel so insignificant. I loved that feeling. There were so many people who tread on those stones before me. It made me feel oddly like a part of a team. Team Human.
And the man who chose to be human, Michael, therefore chose the path of the most uncertainty, a dream made possible by Eleanor. When Mike Schur told you that this was going to be Eleanor’s ultimate mission before she passed, what was your first reaction?
That was my very favorite part of what he wrote in that final episode. The fact that Eleanor’s final mission is to give a gift to the person that has been there for her through and through, who was her enemy and then her frenemy, and finally one of her closest allies. The fact that she could use her weight with the judge to give him the ultimate gift just made my heart smile. And what made me even more excited was that Mary Steenburgen jumped at the opportunity to play his guitar teacher.
Nick Offerman also made a cameo. [The credits listed Offerman as playing himself.] Was that the Parks’ wink that you were expecting?
The Parks winks have been happening since we started the show, with Adam [Scott, who starred on Parks as Ben Wyatt and guest-starred on The Good Place as Trevor]. There are tidbits all around the show, Easter eggs, but that was a real nice cherry on the cake that Nick came in and did that. And by the way, that speaks to some evidence as to when we say the show was just a delicious experience. Maya [Rudolph] and Nick don’t just come back and do jobs for anyone. They come back to the world that Mike Schur creates because he hires wonderful people and he’s great to work for.
When Eleanor walks through the door of branches, we see her dissolve into sparkling particles, returned to the universe. One particle falls to Earth, prompting a man to bring that letter to its rightful owner: Michael. Are the many particles of the departed souls sprinkling down on people, sparking goodwill in an act of divine intervention?
I think everybody’s particles sprinkle down. The way they reevaluated how to get into the Good Place with these manufactured tests that once you got to the Good Place, you were allowed to celebrate being there as long as you want. Then you are allowed to end it. Then you become these tiny, sparkly particles that rain down on the people on Earth to give them an extra boost. Those are the tiny voices inside your head that say, “Don’t throw that person’s mail away. Just walk to their door. It takes two seconds and it probably will make their day.” I would love to believe that that’s what happens. That’s such a beautiful way of thinking about it. Because we are all one, right? We’re all part of each other. Whether we want to believe it or not. There’s something that connects us all. I would love to believe that people who die become sparkly particles that make the voices inside our head give us good guidance.
It softens the sadness that when these characters pass on, they’re ending their journey, but the memory lives on. The story has a definitive ending; the story goes on.
Yes, it’s a beautiful example of paying it forward. You didn’t just walk through the door, you became something that helped someone else. And the major lesson here is you can be something that helps someone else your entire life if you choose to.
Who has the Chidi calendar? I feel like it should be you.
No, you know what? I’ll give you one more appropriate try. It’s Will’s girlfriend. I was so proud of him because he doesn’t even like to talk about the fact that he’s ever taken his shirt off. But I’m on Team Will Take Your Shirt Off, and so is his girlfriend. He took it home and gave it to Ali, his wonderful girlfriend who’s also an actress, which is an amazing choice. That’s where the calendar should live.
Your most memorable moment sipping margaritas with D’Arcy in the Redwoods?
That she could not stop crying. We were both crying a lot, but she was definitely crying more than me. And when someone cries more than me, I’m a little taken aback. Because normally I have that title. But D’Arcy, this ending really hit her hard. And Janet the robot cried quite a bit in the finale, which I love so much.
As you become untethered from the physical show, how will The Good Place continue to manifest in your essence?
Ooh. I am taking some time to look inward, to be present for my family. I will keep up the friendships with these people and the crew. I know where all the camera guys have landed and on what shows. I know where the grips have landed. These friendships will be forever. As far as my life, I am hoping to affect people in a little bit more personal, intimate way. I think I’m going to take a step back from shooting anything for a while, be there for my kids, be there for my husband, do some charity work and affect the people directly around me.
So, fair to say that your points went up while making this show?
I certainly hope so. But look, I’m a very competitive game player, so don’t you worry — I’ll get them much, much higher.
For much more from creator Mike Schur on four seasons of The Good Place, head over here.
The actress also reveals her most challenging scene and who has Chidi's calendar.
By Dan Snierson
January 31, 2020 at 02:03 AM EST
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Warning: This story contains plot details from “Whenever You’re Ready,” Thursday’s series finale of The Good Place.
Farewell! Everything is fine. Sparkle on.
The Good Place put the good in goodbye, as NBC’s ambitious, ethics-laced, silly-faced comedy signed off Thursday night with an emotionally and spiritually charged finale that wrapped up four seasons of the Soul Squad’s upside down supercoaster afterlife adventures with satisfaction. While the core characters received fitting happy endings, there was a bittersweet finality to the proceedings. Not just because that’s what finales are supposed to do, but also because The Good Place — led by creator Mike Schur, who wrote and directed the episode — dared to imagine how the universe works once you died. (Sorry, but even paradise wasn’t eternal.) And so Team Cockroach went their separate ways, forever bonded, most of them dissolving into the ether from which they came, a journey complete but continuing on, at least in sparkling spirit.
Last week, reformed demon architect and aspiring human Michael (Ted Danson) and the Soul Squad devised a way to fix the Good Place, which had been stagnating with pleasure zombies, people numbed out by too many hundreds of thousands of years in perpetual bliss. The solution? A door through which souls could walk when they felt that they were ready, bringing a peaceful end to their journey, their energy returned to the universe. This week, several characters began metaphorically shouting “Portals!” Jacksonville deejay Jason (Manny Jacinto), who found love with human database Janet (D’Arcy Carden), made the leap after the perfect game of Madden; self-consumed socialite Tahani (Jameela Jacinto) had healed her familial wounds and thought she was ready, only to half-reverse course and become an afterlife architect to help other people. Ethics professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper) was the next to feel the itch, much to the fear of his soulmate/anarchic anchor/lone wolf-turned-pack leader Eleanor (Kristen Bell). She tried all sorts of international intrigue to get him to stay, but even she knew that true love was about letting go, especially when he turned to Buddhism and the ocean. (“The wave was just… a different way for the water to be, for a little while,” he explained.)
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And so Eleanor searched for her own reason to feel complete, first helping the Medium Place resident recluse Mindy St. Clair (Maribeth Monroe) resolve to make human connections and take the afterlife test (to be administered by Tahani). But Eleanor’s true purpose was more appropriately fulfilled after persuading Judge Gen (Maya Rudolph) to transform Michael into the species that had long captured his imagination, sending him back to Earth in human form, bound for a hopeful but uncertain future. Eleanor then bid poignant goodbye to Janet in the forest, the final unknown in front of them, with Eleanor explaining that as a very wise not-robot told her, the true joy is in the mystery. And then she passed through the gate of branches, dissipating into floating particles in the universe. One such glowing particle touched down back on Earth, on the shoulder of a random dude in Arizona, prompting said fellow to remove a letter that he just threw in the trash and make that tiny extra effort to bring it to its rightful owner: Michael. Michael’s final words to his friendly neighbor, “I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe: Take it sleazy,” fulfilling a quotidian wish from season 1 when he listed all the things he’d never get to do as a human.
Let’s brush our teeth with a cat, pour a cup of anti-matter, ride the groovy wave of love, wonder if ghosts are actually racist, and ring up a Bell — Good Place standout Kristen Bell — to glean some insight into the final forkin’ chapter, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Ever.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The time knife really cut both ways on that finale, offering bursts of happiness and satisfaction, but also some brutal, bottom-lining, that’s-the-way-the-system-works sadness. Which concept hit you the hardest: That even in the forever after we wrestle with mortality or endings or the great unknown? That the joy is in the mystery?
KRISTEN BELL: The fact that once you have everything you’re striving so hard to earn, it’s still not enough. That what you need to earn is the acceptance of the complex internal decision to let go. It was so beautiful how they made everybody mush in the Good Place because it’s true. There’s one line that really sums it up. “A vacation is only so fun because it has an ending.” If everything were bliss, would everyone be happy? I don’t think so. Part of the drive and the passion is why it’s the journey, not the destination. And I was very happy with the tough-love ending that happened.
Chidi, man of great indecision, made the most important decision he ever made, and Eleanor heartwrenchingly begged him not to leave. And the capper was that he agreed to stay, although both of them knew it wasn’t cosmically right. Then she used the ethics knowledge she learned from What We Owe Each Other and explained how it was an unfair rule to try to make him stay. Then he heartwrenched some more when he gave the Buddhist waves speech. How many buckets of tears did you all shed while filming? What did you love about that sequence?
Enough buckets to make that Buddhist wave. [Laughter] That paragraph has been ringing in my head since I heard it in August. It is something that I want to say to my kids one day — the idea of us being the wave. It’s an incredible way to explain to someone that you have to let go and become whatever the world wants you to become. The hardest thing for me to shoot was on the [Pont des Arts in Paris] with Will, when I was asking him to stay because Eleanor had been emotionally healthy for so long. That was a bit of a back step and she knew it. But her impulses still brought her to beg him for selfish reasons, which is okay. I’m glad she came to her senses so quickly. And I’m also glad that she came to her senses by reading the works of other people. Human beings learn from stories; she learned from What We Owe to Each Other, and she was able to see the error of her ways. Shooting that scene, pleading with him on the bridge was probably the hardest thing I shot in the whole four years.
Speaking of Paris, you filmed there and in Athens. Are they into The Good Place in Greece and France?
Shockingly, people were saying, “Oh, we watch The Good Place,” which was, like, blowing our minds.
What sticks out to you about those secret shoots?
It felt like a senior trip right before you graduated high school. It was so much fun to go with everyone. We went for seven days. We shot all over in some of those beautiful locations. I think we might be the only people that have ever shot at the Parthenon at sunrise, on the Acropolis. It was breathtaking watching the sunrise come up. There were so many stray cats. I didn’t even know what to do with myself. But it was incredibly, beautifully humbling to feel so insignificant. I loved that feeling. There were so many people who tread on those stones before me. It made me feel oddly like a part of a team. Team Human.
And the man who chose to be human, Michael, therefore chose the path of the most uncertainty, a dream made possible by Eleanor. When Mike Schur told you that this was going to be Eleanor’s ultimate mission before she passed, what was your first reaction?
That was my very favorite part of what he wrote in that final episode. The fact that Eleanor’s final mission is to give a gift to the person that has been there for her through and through, who was her enemy and then her frenemy, and finally one of her closest allies. The fact that she could use her weight with the judge to give him the ultimate gift just made my heart smile. And what made me even more excited was that Mary Steenburgen jumped at the opportunity to play his guitar teacher.
Nick Offerman also made a cameo. [The credits listed Offerman as playing himself.] Was that the Parks’ wink that you were expecting?
The Parks winks have been happening since we started the show, with Adam [Scott, who starred on Parks as Ben Wyatt and guest-starred on The Good Place as Trevor]. There are tidbits all around the show, Easter eggs, but that was a real nice cherry on the cake that Nick came in and did that. And by the way, that speaks to some evidence as to when we say the show was just a delicious experience. Maya [Rudolph] and Nick don’t just come back and do jobs for anyone. They come back to the world that Mike Schur creates because he hires wonderful people and he’s great to work for.
When Eleanor walks through the door of branches, we see her dissolve into sparkling particles, returned to the universe. One particle falls to Earth, prompting a man to bring that letter to its rightful owner: Michael. Are the many particles of the departed souls sprinkling down on people, sparking goodwill in an act of divine intervention?
I think everybody’s particles sprinkle down. The way they reevaluated how to get into the Good Place with these manufactured tests that once you got to the Good Place, you were allowed to celebrate being there as long as you want. Then you are allowed to end it. Then you become these tiny, sparkly particles that rain down on the people on Earth to give them an extra boost. Those are the tiny voices inside your head that say, “Don’t throw that person’s mail away. Just walk to their door. It takes two seconds and it probably will make their day.” I would love to believe that that’s what happens. That’s such a beautiful way of thinking about it. Because we are all one, right? We’re all part of each other. Whether we want to believe it or not. There’s something that connects us all. I would love to believe that people who die become sparkly particles that make the voices inside our head give us good guidance.
It softens the sadness that when these characters pass on, they’re ending their journey, but the memory lives on. The story has a definitive ending; the story goes on.
Yes, it’s a beautiful example of paying it forward. You didn’t just walk through the door, you became something that helped someone else. And the major lesson here is you can be something that helps someone else your entire life if you choose to.
Who has the Chidi calendar? I feel like it should be you.
No, you know what? I’ll give you one more appropriate try. It’s Will’s girlfriend. I was so proud of him because he doesn’t even like to talk about the fact that he’s ever taken his shirt off. But I’m on Team Will Take Your Shirt Off, and so is his girlfriend. He took it home and gave it to Ali, his wonderful girlfriend who’s also an actress, which is an amazing choice. That’s where the calendar should live.
Your most memorable moment sipping margaritas with D’Arcy in the Redwoods?
That she could not stop crying. We were both crying a lot, but she was definitely crying more than me. And when someone cries more than me, I’m a little taken aback. Because normally I have that title. But D’Arcy, this ending really hit her hard. And Janet the robot cried quite a bit in the finale, which I love so much.
As you become untethered from the physical show, how will The Good Place continue to manifest in your essence?
Ooh. I am taking some time to look inward, to be present for my family. I will keep up the friendships with these people and the crew. I know where all the camera guys have landed and on what shows. I know where the grips have landed. These friendships will be forever. As far as my life, I am hoping to affect people in a little bit more personal, intimate way. I think I’m going to take a step back from shooting anything for a while, be there for my kids, be there for my husband, do some charity work and affect the people directly around me.
So, fair to say that your points went up while making this show?
I certainly hope so. But look, I’m a very competitive game player, so don’t you worry — I’ll get them much, much higher.
For much more from creator Mike Schur on four seasons of The Good Place, head over here.
A sweet Good Place finale rescues a frustrating final season: Review
NBC's afterlife sitcom took some curious detours on the way to a moving conclusion.
By Darren Franich
January 31, 2020 at 07:51 PM EST
FBTwitterMore
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
The Good Place
B+
TYPE
GENRE
The Good Place was a nice show about nice people. The main characters were cursed to eternal punishment, but nobody watching thought they belonged in hell. Their sins were quirky, their souls cute. In the NBC sitcom’s generous and exasperating final season, even the demons revealed a softer side, pushing the hereafter toward a new era of Good-Evil collaboration. Everyone learned philosophy; everyone was stoked about philosophy!
I liked Thursday’s series finale, and I used to love the show. The season 1 twist remains a high point in recent TV history. Creator Michael Schur cleverly revealed that the neighborhood built by angel-seeming architect Michael (Ted Danson) was a friendly trap. He could have tortured Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) for millennia. In season 2’s absurdly brilliant “Dance Dance Resolution,” he kinda did, rebooting his tormentees’ memory several hundred times.
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Michael broke good. The gang destroyed the neighborhood. Then Schur wrote and directed the season 2 finale, “Somewhere Else,” the all-time best Good Place episode. It showed Eleanor getting a second chance at life. She became a better person. Time passed. Fun beckoned: casual disregard for fellow people, weekday hangovers, recyclables in the trash, the environment something for someone else to worry about. The Good Place always enjoyed building its cosmos. But “Somewhere Else” plumbed a deep well of human frailty: day after day, the same temptations, your good intentions spiraling to dull actualities.
After that, I worry this smart and sincere sitcom edged into painfully well-meaning escapism. People can get better, and they can make each other better: That was the underlying motto, and a worthwhile theme to explore. Didn’t “getting better” seem a tad simple, though? Eleanor was no longer some scuzzbucket struggling between the allure of weeknight shots and a poorly paid activist gig. Her whole job was going to Australia to fix herself. Then the central foursome became a crusading Soul Squad, flying around the world on Tahani’s infinite dime.
They wound up saving humanity, and the universe. The Good Place flirted heavily with philosophy and religion, but deep down I think it was a superhero story, complete with importance-announcing dialogue. Michael was “the greatest architect in existence,” Janet was “the most advanced being in the universe,” the lead ensemble became “the very best versions” of themselves.
Schur’s an optimist who believes the sweetness of his characters will be rewarded. His masterpiece Parks & Recreation wrapped on a success-for-everybody flash-forward: best-selling authorhood, mayoralty, a governorship, maybe a presidency? In that spirit, I think The Good Place cut some corners when it became a catharsis-of-the-week redemption procedural. A sisterhood was redeemed, a fractured mother-daughter relationship started to heal, old love was reformed through various amnesias. Like the philosophers say: You can’t save Donkey Doug, but at least you can save Pillboi. Actually, the finale revealed, you can save Donkey Doug. You can save everyone!
The cast was swell. D’Arcy Carden was an immediate discovery, making Janet a good-humored god thing evolving past omni-consciousness while falling believably hard for an apex Florida Man. Danson had whimsical fun as a reformed Michael, though a late flashback to his jailer days reminded you of his insidious charm. Harper sputtered splendidly, and Jacinto and Jamil played their single jokes (Jacksonville/namedropping) with aplomb. Bell’s acerbic steadiness counterbalanced an ever-busier plot.
Then came the final twist. In the Good Place, everyone was a purposeless zombie. The solution: Add a doorway to nothing-everythingness. Bring death back to death. The emotionally charged last episode, “Whenever You’re Ready,” had the flash-est forwards in TV history, following everyone (including offscreen Shakespeare) to a final state of grace. Jason scored his perfect Madden game. Chidi experienced profound joy with Eleanor. Tahani finally got along with her parents, and dedicated herself to learning the demi-godly profession of architecting. Eleanor loved Chidi enough to let him go and, umm, also saved Mindy St. Clare (Maribeth Monroe), sure, I can see that. Michael became a human, and his legal name was Michael Realman, god that’s funny. Janet was Doctor Manhattan, more or less, living forever in kamillion Jason kisses.
It was an eccentric finale: location shoots in Athens and Paris, crossovers with Parks & Rec and the Danson-Steenburgenverse. I doubt there will ever be another sitcom that openly references Kant so much, and I admire any show that ends with the entire cast joining together in the afterlife to enter a higher state of Deadness. (See also: Lost.) And, after two years of whiplashing plots, we watched the characters at rest. How sweet to see everyone say goodbye — and how transcendantly goofy that Jason spent eterna-time walking through a forest, waiting for Janet to swing by. Chidi’s journey through his own past felt personal. Bell dug deep as the last misfit toy left on the island.
I admire the ambitions of The Good Place, and I wonder what could have been. The series seemed anxious about portraying anything nasty enough to upset the smiley balance. It believed everyone was redeemable — and was unwilling to portray anything that came close to irredeemable. The least curable character was probably misogynist mediocrity Brent (Benjamin Koldyke), and even he saw a climactic uptick in his sacred Points. That was held up as proof of the theory (not entirely convincing) that the afterlife should become an infinite videogame of moral evolution. I wonder how many viewers are also watching the just-released final season of Bojack Horseman, which has its own tougher (and funnier) vision of guilt and past sins. (Bojack also has some Symbolic Door imagery, and wow, that door does not turn you into starspecks of good deedery.)
The Good Place wanted to fix the universe — and it did! All it took to rescue the broken souls of humanity was infinite time, infinite resources, and a helping hand from some former demons. Aspirational, no doubt. I preferred the spikier first half, when Danson’s smile was a lethal weapon, and the title was still one hell of a joke.
Series grade: B
Finale grade: B+
NBC's afterlife sitcom took some curious detours on the way to a moving conclusion.
By Darren Franich
January 31, 2020 at 07:51 PM EST
FBTwitterMore
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
The Good Place
B+
TYPE
- TV Show
GENRE
The Good Place was a nice show about nice people. The main characters were cursed to eternal punishment, but nobody watching thought they belonged in hell. Their sins were quirky, their souls cute. In the NBC sitcom’s generous and exasperating final season, even the demons revealed a softer side, pushing the hereafter toward a new era of Good-Evil collaboration. Everyone learned philosophy; everyone was stoked about philosophy!
I liked Thursday’s series finale, and I used to love the show. The season 1 twist remains a high point in recent TV history. Creator Michael Schur cleverly revealed that the neighborhood built by angel-seeming architect Michael (Ted Danson) was a friendly trap. He could have tortured Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto) for millennia. In season 2’s absurdly brilliant “Dance Dance Resolution,” he kinda did, rebooting his tormentees’ memory several hundred times.
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Michael broke good. The gang destroyed the neighborhood. Then Schur wrote and directed the season 2 finale, “Somewhere Else,” the all-time best Good Place episode. It showed Eleanor getting a second chance at life. She became a better person. Time passed. Fun beckoned: casual disregard for fellow people, weekday hangovers, recyclables in the trash, the environment something for someone else to worry about. The Good Place always enjoyed building its cosmos. But “Somewhere Else” plumbed a deep well of human frailty: day after day, the same temptations, your good intentions spiraling to dull actualities.
After that, I worry this smart and sincere sitcom edged into painfully well-meaning escapism. People can get better, and they can make each other better: That was the underlying motto, and a worthwhile theme to explore. Didn’t “getting better” seem a tad simple, though? Eleanor was no longer some scuzzbucket struggling between the allure of weeknight shots and a poorly paid activist gig. Her whole job was going to Australia to fix herself. Then the central foursome became a crusading Soul Squad, flying around the world on Tahani’s infinite dime.
They wound up saving humanity, and the universe. The Good Place flirted heavily with philosophy and religion, but deep down I think it was a superhero story, complete with importance-announcing dialogue. Michael was “the greatest architect in existence,” Janet was “the most advanced being in the universe,” the lead ensemble became “the very best versions” of themselves.
Schur’s an optimist who believes the sweetness of his characters will be rewarded. His masterpiece Parks & Recreation wrapped on a success-for-everybody flash-forward: best-selling authorhood, mayoralty, a governorship, maybe a presidency? In that spirit, I think The Good Place cut some corners when it became a catharsis-of-the-week redemption procedural. A sisterhood was redeemed, a fractured mother-daughter relationship started to heal, old love was reformed through various amnesias. Like the philosophers say: You can’t save Donkey Doug, but at least you can save Pillboi. Actually, the finale revealed, you can save Donkey Doug. You can save everyone!
The cast was swell. D’Arcy Carden was an immediate discovery, making Janet a good-humored god thing evolving past omni-consciousness while falling believably hard for an apex Florida Man. Danson had whimsical fun as a reformed Michael, though a late flashback to his jailer days reminded you of his insidious charm. Harper sputtered splendidly, and Jacinto and Jamil played their single jokes (Jacksonville/namedropping) with aplomb. Bell’s acerbic steadiness counterbalanced an ever-busier plot.
Then came the final twist. In the Good Place, everyone was a purposeless zombie. The solution: Add a doorway to nothing-everythingness. Bring death back to death. The emotionally charged last episode, “Whenever You’re Ready,” had the flash-est forwards in TV history, following everyone (including offscreen Shakespeare) to a final state of grace. Jason scored his perfect Madden game. Chidi experienced profound joy with Eleanor. Tahani finally got along with her parents, and dedicated herself to learning the demi-godly profession of architecting. Eleanor loved Chidi enough to let him go and, umm, also saved Mindy St. Clare (Maribeth Monroe), sure, I can see that. Michael became a human, and his legal name was Michael Realman, god that’s funny. Janet was Doctor Manhattan, more or less, living forever in kamillion Jason kisses.
It was an eccentric finale: location shoots in Athens and Paris, crossovers with Parks & Rec and the Danson-Steenburgenverse. I doubt there will ever be another sitcom that openly references Kant so much, and I admire any show that ends with the entire cast joining together in the afterlife to enter a higher state of Deadness. (See also: Lost.) And, after two years of whiplashing plots, we watched the characters at rest. How sweet to see everyone say goodbye — and how transcendantly goofy that Jason spent eterna-time walking through a forest, waiting for Janet to swing by. Chidi’s journey through his own past felt personal. Bell dug deep as the last misfit toy left on the island.
I admire the ambitions of The Good Place, and I wonder what could have been. The series seemed anxious about portraying anything nasty enough to upset the smiley balance. It believed everyone was redeemable — and was unwilling to portray anything that came close to irredeemable. The least curable character was probably misogynist mediocrity Brent (Benjamin Koldyke), and even he saw a climactic uptick in his sacred Points. That was held up as proof of the theory (not entirely convincing) that the afterlife should become an infinite videogame of moral evolution. I wonder how many viewers are also watching the just-released final season of Bojack Horseman, which has its own tougher (and funnier) vision of guilt and past sins. (Bojack also has some Symbolic Door imagery, and wow, that door does not turn you into starspecks of good deedery.)
The Good Place wanted to fix the universe — and it did! All it took to rescue the broken souls of humanity was infinite time, infinite resources, and a helping hand from some former demons. Aspirational, no doubt. I preferred the spikier first half, when Danson’s smile was a lethal weapon, and the title was still one hell of a joke.
Series grade: B
Finale grade: B+
Kristen Bell on The Good Place goodbye: 'You will finally see what we owe to each other'
By Dan Snierson
September 26, 2019 at 08:41 PM EDT
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MANNY JACINTO ON THE FINAL SEASON OF 'THE GOOD PLACE'
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Fall TV
The Good Place
TYPE
GENRE
No amount of divine intervention is going to change this fate: The Good Place is bidding farewell to our TV universe after only 14 more chapters. NBC’s Emmy-nominated afterlife comedy enters its fourth and final season tonight at 9 p.m. with stakes higher than teenage Doug Forcett: The fate of Team Cockroach (and all of humanity, really) hangs on the results of the final experiment designed to show whether humans can actually better themselves, as theorized by humanized demon Michael (Ted Danson).
A look inside in the final season — including a visit to the set of the finale — can be found over here, but below, Kristen Bell, who plays Eleanor, the leader of the foursome of in-limbo souls, tees up this final batch of episodes and hints at an all-powerful, all-meaningful ending.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your first reaction when you found out that season 4 would be the show’s last? Ted told EW that he was “slightly stunned, but the move had such integrity.” You recently said you were in the car when Mike [Schur, the show’s creator] called you with the news, but did it take you by surprise?
KRISTEN BELL: I had a sneaking suspicion because I’m an empath, and I can usually sense what someone’s going to say right before they say it because of their energy. I have had casual conversations with Mike in the past where he had said, “We can’t draw this out forever. It has to have a meaningful conclusion.” So his tone of voice when I picked up the phone was clear. And I will echo what Ted said, that it’s the best, worst feeling in the world to be a part of something you love that’s ending, but know that the “why” has so much integrity behind it and it’s so meaningful and impactful because the entire last season is such a lesson. A gift.
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From census.gov
What was it like filming this season? Was it light and joyful, or was there a sense of inevitable doom and farewell hanging over the proceedings? Or both?
I think that this season has two different tones to me that link up. We’re talking a lot about the ending, but that feeling for me set in the last three episodes. The previous 11 were so lighthearted and funny, and we have a couple of new cast members this year that are getting overlooked…. I think their performances are some of the best we’ve ever had, and the dynamics they create are just hilarious. And educational, as far as human communication is concerned.
What analogies would you use to describe this final season? D’Arcy [Carden] compared it to a board game, like Candy Land.
I would say it’s exactly like life. It is frustrating, requires effort, hilarious at times, and in the end is really meaningful. And over too soon. The final episodes [have] such major life lessons, it’s crazy.
There are new characters in the mix this season, including two new test subjects. What does that do to the dynamic? And what could you hint at Eleanor’s and Jason’s?
Tahani’s and Chidi’s matchups are sort of direct torture, but the other two are more abstract and have more of an overall meaning to the group.
Eleanor — who’s used to looking out for itself — has to manage this experiment while watching her boyfriend, Chidi, as an unwitting participant in this. That’s got to be painful. Seems like there’s at least two big challenges facing her early in the season.
Yeah. Eleanor’s arc has been such a freaking joy for me because she started out as an island, a complete lone wolf. She learned to build bonds with other people and explored how valuable that was, how that gave her “life” a little more meaning. And she’s never wanted to lead anything in her entire life because she’s never cared enough to lead. At the start of season 4, she’s put in a position where she is the only option as leader and she has to step into those shoes really quickly to save the day. Which is just further along in her emotional development, and throughout the season having to watch someone she loves not recognize her is the strongest challenge she will ever face because it will put to the test whether or not these emotional bonds and selflessness qualities are something that she can execute — something she can stand by. She is faced with whether or not she can actually be selfless. She now knows why being selfless is important, but can she actually do it?
What’s your advice for viewers as they dip into the final season?
Don’t watch it alone, and hold the hand of the person next to you — even if it’s a stranger.
Was the ending heavier or more poignant than you thought it might be, especially for a comedy?
Yeah. But in the way that it makes the audience feel. It’s not like everybody dies in a fiery car crash. What it says to the audience is what was so heavy to me. And I thought, “Wow, are people actually even going to want to hear this? Because it’s easier not to.”
There’s so much pressure on the show these days to stick the landing. How much pressure did the cast feel — and did Mike feel — to bring this celebrated show to the end?
I didn’t feel a lick of pressure. I actually applied some pressure to Mike. I said, “You better make this good! You better make this worth it!” [Laughs] I didn’t feel any pressure because I am not in charge of that writers’ room. I don’t know how much pressure Mike felt because Mike’s brain is somehow bigger than the cage of his skull — and I still don’t know how that’s anatomically possible — but I know he’s got the biggest brain I’ve ever seen on a human. He never let on like it was a ton of pressure. When he came to the conclusion about how it should end and it felt right in his heart, he then simply executed it. I don’t know that he felt a ton of pressure so much as he got the answer — in a dream one night or in a conversation with someone…
What’s one thing you can guarantee that we will see in the finale?
You will finally see what we owe to each other…. This will be worth it. It will give you a lot of feelings — and one is a strong sense of satisfaction. Not only will the ending be worth it, you’ll understand why the whole thing was worth it.
By Dan Snierson
September 26, 2019 at 08:41 PM EDT
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Loaded: 0%
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YOU MIGHT LIKE
MANNY JACINTO ON THE FINAL SEASON OF 'THE GOOD PLACE'
×
Fall TV
The Good Place
TYPE
- TV Show
GENRE
No amount of divine intervention is going to change this fate: The Good Place is bidding farewell to our TV universe after only 14 more chapters. NBC’s Emmy-nominated afterlife comedy enters its fourth and final season tonight at 9 p.m. with stakes higher than teenage Doug Forcett: The fate of Team Cockroach (and all of humanity, really) hangs on the results of the final experiment designed to show whether humans can actually better themselves, as theorized by humanized demon Michael (Ted Danson).
A look inside in the final season — including a visit to the set of the finale — can be found over here, but below, Kristen Bell, who plays Eleanor, the leader of the foursome of in-limbo souls, tees up this final batch of episodes and hints at an all-powerful, all-meaningful ending.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your first reaction when you found out that season 4 would be the show’s last? Ted told EW that he was “slightly stunned, but the move had such integrity.” You recently said you were in the car when Mike [Schur, the show’s creator] called you with the news, but did it take you by surprise?
KRISTEN BELL: I had a sneaking suspicion because I’m an empath, and I can usually sense what someone’s going to say right before they say it because of their energy. I have had casual conversations with Mike in the past where he had said, “We can’t draw this out forever. It has to have a meaningful conclusion.” So his tone of voice when I picked up the phone was clear. And I will echo what Ted said, that it’s the best, worst feeling in the world to be a part of something you love that’s ending, but know that the “why” has so much integrity behind it and it’s so meaningful and impactful because the entire last season is such a lesson. A gift.
PAID CONTENT
Sponsored Video
Watch to learn more
From census.gov
What was it like filming this season? Was it light and joyful, or was there a sense of inevitable doom and farewell hanging over the proceedings? Or both?
I think that this season has two different tones to me that link up. We’re talking a lot about the ending, but that feeling for me set in the last three episodes. The previous 11 were so lighthearted and funny, and we have a couple of new cast members this year that are getting overlooked…. I think their performances are some of the best we’ve ever had, and the dynamics they create are just hilarious. And educational, as far as human communication is concerned.
What analogies would you use to describe this final season? D’Arcy [Carden] compared it to a board game, like Candy Land.
I would say it’s exactly like life. It is frustrating, requires effort, hilarious at times, and in the end is really meaningful. And over too soon. The final episodes [have] such major life lessons, it’s crazy.
There are new characters in the mix this season, including two new test subjects. What does that do to the dynamic? And what could you hint at Eleanor’s and Jason’s?
Tahani’s and Chidi’s matchups are sort of direct torture, but the other two are more abstract and have more of an overall meaning to the group.
Eleanor — who’s used to looking out for itself — has to manage this experiment while watching her boyfriend, Chidi, as an unwitting participant in this. That’s got to be painful. Seems like there’s at least two big challenges facing her early in the season.
Yeah. Eleanor’s arc has been such a freaking joy for me because she started out as an island, a complete lone wolf. She learned to build bonds with other people and explored how valuable that was, how that gave her “life” a little more meaning. And she’s never wanted to lead anything in her entire life because she’s never cared enough to lead. At the start of season 4, she’s put in a position where she is the only option as leader and she has to step into those shoes really quickly to save the day. Which is just further along in her emotional development, and throughout the season having to watch someone she loves not recognize her is the strongest challenge she will ever face because it will put to the test whether or not these emotional bonds and selflessness qualities are something that she can execute — something she can stand by. She is faced with whether or not she can actually be selfless. She now knows why being selfless is important, but can she actually do it?
What’s your advice for viewers as they dip into the final season?
Don’t watch it alone, and hold the hand of the person next to you — even if it’s a stranger.
Was the ending heavier or more poignant than you thought it might be, especially for a comedy?
Yeah. But in the way that it makes the audience feel. It’s not like everybody dies in a fiery car crash. What it says to the audience is what was so heavy to me. And I thought, “Wow, are people actually even going to want to hear this? Because it’s easier not to.”
There’s so much pressure on the show these days to stick the landing. How much pressure did the cast feel — and did Mike feel — to bring this celebrated show to the end?
I didn’t feel a lick of pressure. I actually applied some pressure to Mike. I said, “You better make this good! You better make this worth it!” [Laughs] I didn’t feel any pressure because I am not in charge of that writers’ room. I don’t know how much pressure Mike felt because Mike’s brain is somehow bigger than the cage of his skull — and I still don’t know how that’s anatomically possible — but I know he’s got the biggest brain I’ve ever seen on a human. He never let on like it was a ton of pressure. When he came to the conclusion about how it should end and it felt right in his heart, he then simply executed it. I don’t know that he felt a ton of pressure so much as he got the answer — in a dream one night or in a conversation with someone…
What’s one thing you can guarantee that we will see in the finale?
You will finally see what we owe to each other…. This will be worth it. It will give you a lot of feelings — and one is a strong sense of satisfaction. Not only will the ending be worth it, you’ll understand why the whole thing was worth it.
The Good Place creator on how — and why — the show changed its ultimate message
By Dan Snierson
August 08, 2019 at 08:16 PM EDT
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COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
The Good Place
TYPE
GENRE
NBC’s afterlife adventure The Good Place has become one of TV’s most challenging and delightful comedies, exploring questions of ethics, morality, and lower-circle-of-hell torture techniques over the last three seasons. But the expectation-subverting show that loves to shift paradigms has pivoted in another significant way. Speaking to reporters during The Good Place panel at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, creator Mike Schur explained how the intention of the series wound up evolving over time, and he seemingly hinted at a component of what will be the show’s ultimate message entering this fourth and final season.
The series began with ethics/moral philosophy professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper) attempting to teach Eleanor (Kristen Bell) what it means to be a good person. Later, the entire group (which also includes Jameela Jamil’s Tahani, Manny Jacinto’s Jason, and D’Arcy Carden’s Janet) sought to help demon architect Michael (Ted Danson) find his humanity. Most recently, the Soul Squad prepared to prove Michael’s humans-can-evolve theory with a fate-deciding experiment. And somewhere along the way, as the points system went to, well, hell, the show’s writers discovered a deeper truth than the one they initially thought they were seeking. And it involved a simple word: Try.
“I pitched the show as an investigation of what it meant to be a good person, and found over the course of working on it with the writers and the actors and the entire crew that that’s even a more complicated question than I think I thought it was,” Schur explained. “I thought at the beginning that the show could, if given the chance, describe what it meant to be a good person. That was my hope. And that didn’t mean ‘Do this and not that.’ It meant ‘Here’s what a good person looked like in the world. Here’s how a person can feel like he or she led a good life.’ At the end of the day, that objective kind of shifted a little bit. Because what we found as we discussed it and wrote it and executed it is that some very, very smart people over the last, say, 3,000 years have had a lot of very different opinions about that question.”
He continued, “So what the mission of the show then became was to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to give you a bunch of options. You can be a good person this way or you can try to be a good person this way.’ And what we ended up saying is ‘We’re going to present a bunch of options, and by the way, there are plenty more we didn’t describe, but what’s important is that you try one of them.’ That was my internal shift over the course of making the show: the newfound belief that the important thing wasn’t actually — and it’s counterintuitive to say this — being good. The important thing was that you’re trying.”
Schur indicated that said effort seemed to be in short supply among us in these complicated, fractured times. “It feels like a huge part of the problem, from my point of view, is that not enough people are just trying,” he said. “And trying means failing. Everybody fails all the time; even people with the best of intentions will fail. It doesn’t matter whether you follow this theory or that theory, or this belief or whatever. You’re going to fail a lot. We all fail all the time at this. So… at the beginning I pitched what it means to be a good person. And at the end I would describe this as a show that makes the argument that we all ought to try harder than we are. And as long as you’re trying, you’re on the right path.”
The path to the final episode of The Good Place begins Sept. 26, with the unveiling of the season 4 premiere. And Danson — who, like Bell, welled up with tears at the TCA panel — expressed his admiration for and satisfaction with the conclusion of this heady journey. “I’m grateful that it ended with as much integrity as it started with,” he summed up.
By Dan Snierson
August 08, 2019 at 08:16 PM EDT
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COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
The Good Place
TYPE
- TV Show
GENRE
NBC’s afterlife adventure The Good Place has become one of TV’s most challenging and delightful comedies, exploring questions of ethics, morality, and lower-circle-of-hell torture techniques over the last three seasons. But the expectation-subverting show that loves to shift paradigms has pivoted in another significant way. Speaking to reporters during The Good Place panel at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, creator Mike Schur explained how the intention of the series wound up evolving over time, and he seemingly hinted at a component of what will be the show’s ultimate message entering this fourth and final season.
The series began with ethics/moral philosophy professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper) attempting to teach Eleanor (Kristen Bell) what it means to be a good person. Later, the entire group (which also includes Jameela Jamil’s Tahani, Manny Jacinto’s Jason, and D’Arcy Carden’s Janet) sought to help demon architect Michael (Ted Danson) find his humanity. Most recently, the Soul Squad prepared to prove Michael’s humans-can-evolve theory with a fate-deciding experiment. And somewhere along the way, as the points system went to, well, hell, the show’s writers discovered a deeper truth than the one they initially thought they were seeking. And it involved a simple word: Try.
“I pitched the show as an investigation of what it meant to be a good person, and found over the course of working on it with the writers and the actors and the entire crew that that’s even a more complicated question than I think I thought it was,” Schur explained. “I thought at the beginning that the show could, if given the chance, describe what it meant to be a good person. That was my hope. And that didn’t mean ‘Do this and not that.’ It meant ‘Here’s what a good person looked like in the world. Here’s how a person can feel like he or she led a good life.’ At the end of the day, that objective kind of shifted a little bit. Because what we found as we discussed it and wrote it and executed it is that some very, very smart people over the last, say, 3,000 years have had a lot of very different opinions about that question.”
He continued, “So what the mission of the show then became was to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to give you a bunch of options. You can be a good person this way or you can try to be a good person this way.’ And what we ended up saying is ‘We’re going to present a bunch of options, and by the way, there are plenty more we didn’t describe, but what’s important is that you try one of them.’ That was my internal shift over the course of making the show: the newfound belief that the important thing wasn’t actually — and it’s counterintuitive to say this — being good. The important thing was that you’re trying.”
Schur indicated that said effort seemed to be in short supply among us in these complicated, fractured times. “It feels like a huge part of the problem, from my point of view, is that not enough people are just trying,” he said. “And trying means failing. Everybody fails all the time; even people with the best of intentions will fail. It doesn’t matter whether you follow this theory or that theory, or this belief or whatever. You’re going to fail a lot. We all fail all the time at this. So… at the beginning I pitched what it means to be a good person. And at the end I would describe this as a show that makes the argument that we all ought to try harder than we are. And as long as you’re trying, you’re on the right path.”
The path to the final episode of The Good Place begins Sept. 26, with the unveiling of the season 4 premiere. And Danson — who, like Bell, welled up with tears at the TCA panel — expressed his admiration for and satisfaction with the conclusion of this heady journey. “I’m grateful that it ended with as much integrity as it started with,” he summed up.
The Good Place creator Mike Schur on hiding the show's biggest secret from the cast
By Dan Snierson
June 03, 2019 at 01:12 PM EDT
FBTwitterMore
NBC
The Good Place
TYPE
GENRE
On Jan. 19, 2017, everything that you knew went to hell.
The season 1 finale of The Good Place shorted out viewers’ braingrids by revealing that Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and her equally dead friends weren’t chilling in eternal paradise, but actually the fiery opposite. (Damn, indeed!) Viewers weren’t the only ones Shell-stropped by the twist; so were the stars of NBC’s crafty afterlife comedy (minus Bell and Ted Danson, who had been brought into the fold when they signed on to the series). Near the end of filming season 1, creator Mike Schur finally revealed the game-changing secret to a line of shocked faces, and Bell filmed the meeting, because, as she explained to EW, “I wanted to see everyone’s unique ability to digest this betrayal.” Here, Schur reflects on the afterlife-altering twist heard ’round the TV world — and explains his rationale for keeping one of pop culture’s best secrets from the people who were making it.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you brought Kristen and Ted on board, you let them in on the huge twist, but not the rest of the cast. With a show about ethics, how did you decide to tell Kristen and Ted, but not the others?
MIKE SCHUR: There were many dimensions to it. The first being, I felt strongly that Ted and Kristen had a right to know, because they were the caliber of actor who, in order to get them to sign on, I wanted them to know the whole picture. I thought it would be sort of uncool to Ted Danson to say, “I want you to play an angel,” and then four months later go, “Just kidding. You’re a devil.” I really wanted them to have the whole picture of what the show was, and where it was going, and what the point of it was, so I pitched both of them the entire season.
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For the rest of the actors, I really struggled with it. In certain ways, I thought, “Well, they also have a right to know, creatively speaking,” but then I thought, “Well, if I were an actor and my job was to sell properly that I believed I was in the Good Place and there was going to be a moment at the end of the year where I found out on camera, “Oh no, I’ve been fooled!,” I personally would not want to know.” If I were Ted, I would want to know the whole picture. If I were Kristen, same thing, because she was going to be the one who figured it out. If I were one of the other people, I think I would’ve not wanted to know, because it might’ve screwed up my performance. They gave the most honest and real performance they could give, simply because they didn’t know.
There’s a bunch of philosophical writing about the ethics of secret keeping. The very general rule of thumb is that it’s okay to keep a secret. Chidi actually says this to Eleanor in the [season 2] episode where she is asking about the nature of secret keeping: “It’s okay to keep a secret as long as keeping that secret doesn’t do anybody any harm. And also theoretically, by telling someone that secret, you might be actually doing them more harm than they’re suffering from not knowing the secret.” That was the rule of thumb that I went by in the first season.
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It proved to be involuntary method acting, in a way. How small was the circle of people who knew the secret? You talked with [Lost co-creator] Damon Lindelof when you were developing the show. The writers obviously had to know, but how about producers and down the line? Friends and family?
I pitched the writers the entire season right at the beginning, because in order to pull it off, we had to have incredible consistency in terms of what we could show and what we couldn’t show. It made no sense not to tell the writers, because if I hadn’t, the writers probably would’ve pitched a story line where Michael was off doing something alone somewhere with one of the other people in the neighborhood, not understanding that if one of the four main cast members weren’t around, that instead of doing whatever they were going to pitch he was doing, he would be giggling maniacally and cackling, and enjoying the fact that he was screwing with everybody.
The main producers knew. I didn’t tell any of the directors, except for the in-house directors that we had. Most of the directors who came for a week didn’t know. Most of the department heads also did not know, because I just wanted to keep the circle closed. The head of costumes department, props department, most of those people didn’t know. It really was limited to writers, a couple key producers, a couple in-house directors. As far as other people, I pitched the show to Damon before I pitched it to NBC. I told my wife [J.J. Philbin], because she’s a writer, and she was very good about helping me work through the various problems that came up. I had a couple other close friends that I told. I would say the total number of people on Earth who knew was probably fewer than 20.
What about people at the network?
I told the studio [Universal Television] fairly early, and they were really into it and really supportive. I told the network a little bit later. I like both of those groups of people a lot, and the fact that the studio responded positively made me feel confident. I held off on telling the network just because it’s very hard to control who knows what once you’ve told a group of executives. The studio was a smaller crew, and what happens at the network is, memos get written and people have discussions with bigger groups, because there are other shows that are going on, and they start to say things like, “Oh, that episode of that other show might pair well if we could make the schedule work with this episode, because something big is going to happen in this episode.” It’s not through any fault of their own; it’s just the way that you have to run a network. Word gets out to a lot more people.
I told them somewhere around the middle of the season. They were a little worried, because it’s always worrisome when someone says, “Hey, by the way, I’m completely upending the show that you thought you were watching,” but they also didn’t push back at all. They were like, “Okay, great. That sounds good. Good luck.” Once they were totally on board — which happened very quickly — I felt like, “Okay, I’m doing this.” I was always going to do it, but I felt more confident because those two groups of people, who weren’t on the internal creative team, seemed to really like the idea, and that helped me a lot.
VIVIAN ZINK/NBC
Kristen took the secret-keeping a little more seriously than Ted. I know that when he was telling his friends about the show before it aired, and they would say, “Oh, it sounds like The Office in heaven,” he would get defensive and be like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. Here’s the crazy twist.” Did you know that Ted had loose lips and was telling everyone?
That’s exactly what happened. He would pitch the show to people and say, “I play the architect of heaven.” People go, “Yeah, that sounds fine.” He would go, “No, you don’t understand!” Then, he would just spill the beans to literally everyone. I believe he told me that he had told Larry David. He told, like, a million people. Let me revise. When I say that the total number of people who knew was fewer than 20, I’m excluding Ted and his social circle, which is probably another thousand people. Kristen took it very seriously. I believe she didn’t even tell Dax [Shepard, her husband]. I’m fairly sure that she didn’t tell Dax and that he was actually surprised when it happened on air that he got all the way to the finale without knowing, which is kind of amazing.
Were there moments where the cast was close to figuring it out? Did you ever almost slip or did someone else around you?
I don’t know if anybody else did, but I never almost slipped. I know from talking to cast that they had a sense that there was something coming toward the end of the year. That’s from the portentous stuff that we wrote into each episode, as well Loose Lips Danson maybe saying things, hinting at stuff something that was coming down the pike or whatever. Darcy [Carden, a.k.a. Janet] told me that she and Jameela [Jamil, a.k.a. Tahani] and Will [Jackson Harper, a.k.a. Chidi] and Manny [Jacinto, a.k.a. Jason] would have conversations during shooting days: “What do you think is going to happen?”
I believe they never got anywhere close to the truth. I remember having one conversation with Kristen in the middle of the year where I said, “Do you think that we’re good in terms of the secret being kept?” and she was pretty confident that we were. She said that she’d been privy to some conversations with the cast where they were excitedly guessing what was going to happen, but the guesses weren’t close. The guesses were some kind of new people joining the neighborhood or some disruptive thing, but they never were in the ballpark of actually getting close to what we were doing.
Kristen decided to film the moment that you told them so that she could see “everyone’s unique ability to digest this betrayal.”
Perfect.
What was it like to finally reveal the twist that you had been holding onto for so long?
It was super fun. I get nervous before a read-through that has a big story move in it. It’s not even nervous, it’s a little adrenaline-y, like if it’s an episode of a show where someone is going to propose marriage to someone else. My hands shake a little bit and my voice when I’m reading stage directions quivers a little bit and I have to calm myself down. And I had that feeling when I was pitching the story to them, which I wasn’t expecting but it definitely happened.
I was very conscious of having to be deliberate and slow and steady when I was pitching, when I was winding up to what was going to happen. This is a good sign. That means this is a big deal. It was very fun. It was also very fun to see their reactions. I was terrified, terrified that people in the world were going to figure it out, guess it or start talking about it or put it online or whatever that they had these theories, and I gauged our chance at pulling it off based on their [reactions]…. Their reactions will tell me whether or not we’re going to pull it off. If the people who have been living with the characters every day are genuinely surprised at this move, that’s a pretty good indication that the audience will be as well. So when they all were very surprised — and we got that reaction that you see in that video — I was like, “Okay. This is going to work.”
The real fun of it was the aftermath when I grilled them. You don’t see this in the video, but we did a 20-minute debrief where I was like, “Did any part of you know this was coming? Do you feel it’s unearned? Are there any things you’ve done in your performances that you feel would contradict this or make this seem unlikely or impossible?” None of them said that they [knew] this was coming, which made me feel really confident about pulling it off.
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Whose reaction amused you the most when you look back, whether it’s at the video or in that debriefing after?
Will makes the funniest face. It’s a very Chidi face of being truly shocked by something. [Laughs]. But the funniest part of it was, Manny told me afterward that when we called the meeting that he somehow thought that they were getting fired. When I was like, “Hey. I need to talk to you guys about the end of the year,” somehow he got it into his head that what I was going to say was, “Look, guys, this isn’t working out for all four of you.” And they were going to get fired. [Laughs.] I don’t know how in the world that got into his head. So, I remember his reaction in the debrief being more like relief — almost like, “Oh. Okay. You don’t have a problem with our performances. You’re just telling us what the actual plot is.”
Did you always know it was going to be a meeting where you told them? How much thought did you put into the actual reveal to the cast?
We put a lot of thought into it. I wanted to tell them directly. I wanted to do it all four of them at the same time, partly because it felt like this is a team, and I want the whole team to be caught up to speed in exactly the same way in exactly the same moment. That was the end parentheses to the parentheses of this ethical dilemma that I had had about whether to tell them. I felt like, “Well, now that we’ve gotten to the point where I need to tell them, I need to tell them all at the same time in exactly the same way, so it really has the sense of, we’re all a team. We’re rowing in the same boat.”
There was a constant debate, because as much as I still believed it was the right decision not to tell them, it was weighing on me that there was this group of people who were the most important people in the show — the actual actors playing these actual characters — and they were still in the dark about this gigantic thing. There was a lot of sturm und drung internally about what moment is right, when to do it, how to do it. And then Kristen, in classic Kristen fashion, was like, “This is going to be hilarious. I have to film this.” [Laughs.] All of the angst that I had, and she was like, “Their faces are going to be funny when I tell them, so I’m going to just take a video of it.”
EVANS VESTAL WARD/NBC
Wasn’t it weird to them that Kristen was off-camera, filming them, as you were revealing the story?
Yeah, although they must have figured it out as I was saying, “I just want to tell you what’s going to happen the rest of the year.” If Manny was worried somehow I was going to fire them — which is so silly — I hope he would have felt better about Kristen being on my side of the table, because it would be really weird and cruel to fire someone when another cast member is sitting next to you taking a video of it.
The way that the scene actually played out in the finale of season 1 is I think really wonderful in terms of the way that it’s presented. There’s music while [Eleanor] is talking and then after she springs the surprise, we just drop all the sound out, and slowly, she turns around and is talking to the four of them. And Janet. And then she slowly turns around and faces Michael and there’s zero sound. You can hear her feet creaking on the floor of her house, and it’s just really weird and eerie and kind of… strange. I remember reading about when the Coen brothers were making No Country for Old Men — they did this thing whenever Javier Bardem was approaching a door when there was horror-movie tension, they did the opposite of what people normally do, which is they dropped out all the sound. There’s no music, there’s no spooky “uh-oh” music, it’s all just silence, and you can hear tiny little foot creaks. And I was like, “All right, I’m going to steal from the Coen brothers.” [Laughs]
It gives this real sense of weird eeriness, and that was also present at the moment that we told them. It felt weird and ominous, and they were confused and scared. We were sitting in the room where we eat lunch on the Universal lot, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. It was just this very odd, interesting, loaded moment of this creative payoff of this weird thing, and it was really cool. That private moment that Kristen made public by filming it [laughs] had the exact same feeling that I wanted to try to capture when we actually did it for the cameras. The vibe that I had personally during that meeting I also had when we were making the actual episode, which I think is kind of cool.
You want to achieve a balance so the revelation is totally shocking but still also tracks logically and made sense. Did you initially have more clues laid into the series, but you pulled back a few? That’s got to be the trickiest thing, especially given that you were terrified that people would figure it out.
Yes. That was obviously the reason the writers had to know, because we were constantly laying in things. We would go, “Ahh! We need one more clue here…” We knew once we revealed it at the end, we wanted to go back and show things from previous episodes, either in clips or narrated, slow-mo, whatever, that really pinpointed why everyone was being tortured the whole time. When we were breaking an episode, we would go, “We haven’t totally explained why Chidi deserves to be in the Bad Place. So let’s try to lay in something in this episode that really explains that.” And out of that would come an episode where Chidi would have some flashbacks and he would see that he was driving everybody in his life miserable because he was so indecisive.
It was a constant calibration where we had to lay in enough breadcrumbs that the revelation would make sense, but not so many that it would tip our hand. For example, there was a thing that was in the pilot that I took out in the edit bay. It’s when Michael introduces Tahani and Jason, who at the time is Jianyu, to Eleanor and Chidi and he says, “These are your next-door neighbors.” Chidi’s got a terrible stomach ache and he’s miserable because he’s keeping this secret. And there was a line that we gave to Michael where he said, “Boy, I’ll tell you the thought of the four of you living next door to each other for all of eternity just fills me with so much joy.”
I was like, “I’m sure I’m paranoid, I’m sure this won’t tip anybody off,” but it was a little on the nose that he was so full of glee about these four specifically being all together, so I just cut it. It was sad because that’s the kind of thing that probably would have flown by; no one would have paid attention to it. Because at the point, nine minutes into the premiere, he is just happy about everything. I think it would have been fine and it would have been cool at the end to do a flashback to that moment, to basically say to the audience, “Look, we told you what was happening. We told you eight minutes into the pilot that he was torturing these four people specifically and he was getting a lot of pleasure from torturing them.” I couldn’t get out of my head that there might be a problem, so I was just like, “Let’s err on the side of caution; there will be plenty more clues.” There were things like that over the course of a season — most of them never got shot, most of them would be things we would write in scripts and go, “Ehhh, that’s a little close to revealing something,” and we would just rewrite them or get rid of them.
Between us, are you keeping another huge secret from the cast right now?
No, just you.
I decided in season 2 that there would be no more subterfuge. That it was more important to me to have all of the cast know equally at the same moment exactly what was going to happen to all of their characters over the course of the year. We have this tradition where at the beginning of every season, the cast would all come in… and I walk them through the entire season and let them know everything that’s going to happen. In season 2, they all knew that the end of this season was going to be, they’re going back to Earth, and that the end of season 3 was going to be, they’re rebooting the experiment with four new people. And they know all know everything that’s going to happen in season 4. We might end up changing a bunch of stuff in the writing or rewriting, but I didn’t see the same requirement to keep anything from them as I did in season 1. So, now the cast all knows everything that’s going to happen. Although, hilariously, I told Kristen about season 4 and a bunch of stuff about the future of the show, and then she mostly forgot it.
By Dan Snierson
June 03, 2019 at 01:12 PM EDT
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NBC
The Good Place
TYPE
- TV Show
GENRE
On Jan. 19, 2017, everything that you knew went to hell.
The season 1 finale of The Good Place shorted out viewers’ braingrids by revealing that Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and her equally dead friends weren’t chilling in eternal paradise, but actually the fiery opposite. (Damn, indeed!) Viewers weren’t the only ones Shell-stropped by the twist; so were the stars of NBC’s crafty afterlife comedy (minus Bell and Ted Danson, who had been brought into the fold when they signed on to the series). Near the end of filming season 1, creator Mike Schur finally revealed the game-changing secret to a line of shocked faces, and Bell filmed the meeting, because, as she explained to EW, “I wanted to see everyone’s unique ability to digest this betrayal.” Here, Schur reflects on the afterlife-altering twist heard ’round the TV world — and explains his rationale for keeping one of pop culture’s best secrets from the people who were making it.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you brought Kristen and Ted on board, you let them in on the huge twist, but not the rest of the cast. With a show about ethics, how did you decide to tell Kristen and Ted, but not the others?
MIKE SCHUR: There were many dimensions to it. The first being, I felt strongly that Ted and Kristen had a right to know, because they were the caliber of actor who, in order to get them to sign on, I wanted them to know the whole picture. I thought it would be sort of uncool to Ted Danson to say, “I want you to play an angel,” and then four months later go, “Just kidding. You’re a devil.” I really wanted them to have the whole picture of what the show was, and where it was going, and what the point of it was, so I pitched both of them the entire season.
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For the rest of the actors, I really struggled with it. In certain ways, I thought, “Well, they also have a right to know, creatively speaking,” but then I thought, “Well, if I were an actor and my job was to sell properly that I believed I was in the Good Place and there was going to be a moment at the end of the year where I found out on camera, “Oh no, I’ve been fooled!,” I personally would not want to know.” If I were Ted, I would want to know the whole picture. If I were Kristen, same thing, because she was going to be the one who figured it out. If I were one of the other people, I think I would’ve not wanted to know, because it might’ve screwed up my performance. They gave the most honest and real performance they could give, simply because they didn’t know.
There’s a bunch of philosophical writing about the ethics of secret keeping. The very general rule of thumb is that it’s okay to keep a secret. Chidi actually says this to Eleanor in the [season 2] episode where she is asking about the nature of secret keeping: “It’s okay to keep a secret as long as keeping that secret doesn’t do anybody any harm. And also theoretically, by telling someone that secret, you might be actually doing them more harm than they’re suffering from not knowing the secret.” That was the rule of thumb that I went by in the first season.
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It proved to be involuntary method acting, in a way. How small was the circle of people who knew the secret? You talked with [Lost co-creator] Damon Lindelof when you were developing the show. The writers obviously had to know, but how about producers and down the line? Friends and family?
I pitched the writers the entire season right at the beginning, because in order to pull it off, we had to have incredible consistency in terms of what we could show and what we couldn’t show. It made no sense not to tell the writers, because if I hadn’t, the writers probably would’ve pitched a story line where Michael was off doing something alone somewhere with one of the other people in the neighborhood, not understanding that if one of the four main cast members weren’t around, that instead of doing whatever they were going to pitch he was doing, he would be giggling maniacally and cackling, and enjoying the fact that he was screwing with everybody.
The main producers knew. I didn’t tell any of the directors, except for the in-house directors that we had. Most of the directors who came for a week didn’t know. Most of the department heads also did not know, because I just wanted to keep the circle closed. The head of costumes department, props department, most of those people didn’t know. It really was limited to writers, a couple key producers, a couple in-house directors. As far as other people, I pitched the show to Damon before I pitched it to NBC. I told my wife [J.J. Philbin], because she’s a writer, and she was very good about helping me work through the various problems that came up. I had a couple other close friends that I told. I would say the total number of people on Earth who knew was probably fewer than 20.
What about people at the network?
I told the studio [Universal Television] fairly early, and they were really into it and really supportive. I told the network a little bit later. I like both of those groups of people a lot, and the fact that the studio responded positively made me feel confident. I held off on telling the network just because it’s very hard to control who knows what once you’ve told a group of executives. The studio was a smaller crew, and what happens at the network is, memos get written and people have discussions with bigger groups, because there are other shows that are going on, and they start to say things like, “Oh, that episode of that other show might pair well if we could make the schedule work with this episode, because something big is going to happen in this episode.” It’s not through any fault of their own; it’s just the way that you have to run a network. Word gets out to a lot more people.
I told them somewhere around the middle of the season. They were a little worried, because it’s always worrisome when someone says, “Hey, by the way, I’m completely upending the show that you thought you were watching,” but they also didn’t push back at all. They were like, “Okay, great. That sounds good. Good luck.” Once they were totally on board — which happened very quickly — I felt like, “Okay, I’m doing this.” I was always going to do it, but I felt more confident because those two groups of people, who weren’t on the internal creative team, seemed to really like the idea, and that helped me a lot.
VIVIAN ZINK/NBC
Kristen took the secret-keeping a little more seriously than Ted. I know that when he was telling his friends about the show before it aired, and they would say, “Oh, it sounds like The Office in heaven,” he would get defensive and be like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. Here’s the crazy twist.” Did you know that Ted had loose lips and was telling everyone?
That’s exactly what happened. He would pitch the show to people and say, “I play the architect of heaven.” People go, “Yeah, that sounds fine.” He would go, “No, you don’t understand!” Then, he would just spill the beans to literally everyone. I believe he told me that he had told Larry David. He told, like, a million people. Let me revise. When I say that the total number of people who knew was fewer than 20, I’m excluding Ted and his social circle, which is probably another thousand people. Kristen took it very seriously. I believe she didn’t even tell Dax [Shepard, her husband]. I’m fairly sure that she didn’t tell Dax and that he was actually surprised when it happened on air that he got all the way to the finale without knowing, which is kind of amazing.
Were there moments where the cast was close to figuring it out? Did you ever almost slip or did someone else around you?
I don’t know if anybody else did, but I never almost slipped. I know from talking to cast that they had a sense that there was something coming toward the end of the year. That’s from the portentous stuff that we wrote into each episode, as well Loose Lips Danson maybe saying things, hinting at stuff something that was coming down the pike or whatever. Darcy [Carden, a.k.a. Janet] told me that she and Jameela [Jamil, a.k.a. Tahani] and Will [Jackson Harper, a.k.a. Chidi] and Manny [Jacinto, a.k.a. Jason] would have conversations during shooting days: “What do you think is going to happen?”
I believe they never got anywhere close to the truth. I remember having one conversation with Kristen in the middle of the year where I said, “Do you think that we’re good in terms of the secret being kept?” and she was pretty confident that we were. She said that she’d been privy to some conversations with the cast where they were excitedly guessing what was going to happen, but the guesses weren’t close. The guesses were some kind of new people joining the neighborhood or some disruptive thing, but they never were in the ballpark of actually getting close to what we were doing.
Kristen decided to film the moment that you told them so that she could see “everyone’s unique ability to digest this betrayal.”
Perfect.
What was it like to finally reveal the twist that you had been holding onto for so long?
It was super fun. I get nervous before a read-through that has a big story move in it. It’s not even nervous, it’s a little adrenaline-y, like if it’s an episode of a show where someone is going to propose marriage to someone else. My hands shake a little bit and my voice when I’m reading stage directions quivers a little bit and I have to calm myself down. And I had that feeling when I was pitching the story to them, which I wasn’t expecting but it definitely happened.
I was very conscious of having to be deliberate and slow and steady when I was pitching, when I was winding up to what was going to happen. This is a good sign. That means this is a big deal. It was very fun. It was also very fun to see their reactions. I was terrified, terrified that people in the world were going to figure it out, guess it or start talking about it or put it online or whatever that they had these theories, and I gauged our chance at pulling it off based on their [reactions]…. Their reactions will tell me whether or not we’re going to pull it off. If the people who have been living with the characters every day are genuinely surprised at this move, that’s a pretty good indication that the audience will be as well. So when they all were very surprised — and we got that reaction that you see in that video — I was like, “Okay. This is going to work.”
The real fun of it was the aftermath when I grilled them. You don’t see this in the video, but we did a 20-minute debrief where I was like, “Did any part of you know this was coming? Do you feel it’s unearned? Are there any things you’ve done in your performances that you feel would contradict this or make this seem unlikely or impossible?” None of them said that they [knew] this was coming, which made me feel really confident about pulling it off.
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Whose reaction amused you the most when you look back, whether it’s at the video or in that debriefing after?
Will makes the funniest face. It’s a very Chidi face of being truly shocked by something. [Laughs]. But the funniest part of it was, Manny told me afterward that when we called the meeting that he somehow thought that they were getting fired. When I was like, “Hey. I need to talk to you guys about the end of the year,” somehow he got it into his head that what I was going to say was, “Look, guys, this isn’t working out for all four of you.” And they were going to get fired. [Laughs.] I don’t know how in the world that got into his head. So, I remember his reaction in the debrief being more like relief — almost like, “Oh. Okay. You don’t have a problem with our performances. You’re just telling us what the actual plot is.”
Did you always know it was going to be a meeting where you told them? How much thought did you put into the actual reveal to the cast?
We put a lot of thought into it. I wanted to tell them directly. I wanted to do it all four of them at the same time, partly because it felt like this is a team, and I want the whole team to be caught up to speed in exactly the same way in exactly the same moment. That was the end parentheses to the parentheses of this ethical dilemma that I had had about whether to tell them. I felt like, “Well, now that we’ve gotten to the point where I need to tell them, I need to tell them all at the same time in exactly the same way, so it really has the sense of, we’re all a team. We’re rowing in the same boat.”
There was a constant debate, because as much as I still believed it was the right decision not to tell them, it was weighing on me that there was this group of people who were the most important people in the show — the actual actors playing these actual characters — and they were still in the dark about this gigantic thing. There was a lot of sturm und drung internally about what moment is right, when to do it, how to do it. And then Kristen, in classic Kristen fashion, was like, “This is going to be hilarious. I have to film this.” [Laughs.] All of the angst that I had, and she was like, “Their faces are going to be funny when I tell them, so I’m going to just take a video of it.”
EVANS VESTAL WARD/NBC
Wasn’t it weird to them that Kristen was off-camera, filming them, as you were revealing the story?
Yeah, although they must have figured it out as I was saying, “I just want to tell you what’s going to happen the rest of the year.” If Manny was worried somehow I was going to fire them — which is so silly — I hope he would have felt better about Kristen being on my side of the table, because it would be really weird and cruel to fire someone when another cast member is sitting next to you taking a video of it.
The way that the scene actually played out in the finale of season 1 is I think really wonderful in terms of the way that it’s presented. There’s music while [Eleanor] is talking and then after she springs the surprise, we just drop all the sound out, and slowly, she turns around and is talking to the four of them. And Janet. And then she slowly turns around and faces Michael and there’s zero sound. You can hear her feet creaking on the floor of her house, and it’s just really weird and eerie and kind of… strange. I remember reading about when the Coen brothers were making No Country for Old Men — they did this thing whenever Javier Bardem was approaching a door when there was horror-movie tension, they did the opposite of what people normally do, which is they dropped out all the sound. There’s no music, there’s no spooky “uh-oh” music, it’s all just silence, and you can hear tiny little foot creaks. And I was like, “All right, I’m going to steal from the Coen brothers.” [Laughs]
It gives this real sense of weird eeriness, and that was also present at the moment that we told them. It felt weird and ominous, and they were confused and scared. We were sitting in the room where we eat lunch on the Universal lot, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. It was just this very odd, interesting, loaded moment of this creative payoff of this weird thing, and it was really cool. That private moment that Kristen made public by filming it [laughs] had the exact same feeling that I wanted to try to capture when we actually did it for the cameras. The vibe that I had personally during that meeting I also had when we were making the actual episode, which I think is kind of cool.
You want to achieve a balance so the revelation is totally shocking but still also tracks logically and made sense. Did you initially have more clues laid into the series, but you pulled back a few? That’s got to be the trickiest thing, especially given that you were terrified that people would figure it out.
Yes. That was obviously the reason the writers had to know, because we were constantly laying in things. We would go, “Ahh! We need one more clue here…” We knew once we revealed it at the end, we wanted to go back and show things from previous episodes, either in clips or narrated, slow-mo, whatever, that really pinpointed why everyone was being tortured the whole time. When we were breaking an episode, we would go, “We haven’t totally explained why Chidi deserves to be in the Bad Place. So let’s try to lay in something in this episode that really explains that.” And out of that would come an episode where Chidi would have some flashbacks and he would see that he was driving everybody in his life miserable because he was so indecisive.
It was a constant calibration where we had to lay in enough breadcrumbs that the revelation would make sense, but not so many that it would tip our hand. For example, there was a thing that was in the pilot that I took out in the edit bay. It’s when Michael introduces Tahani and Jason, who at the time is Jianyu, to Eleanor and Chidi and he says, “These are your next-door neighbors.” Chidi’s got a terrible stomach ache and he’s miserable because he’s keeping this secret. And there was a line that we gave to Michael where he said, “Boy, I’ll tell you the thought of the four of you living next door to each other for all of eternity just fills me with so much joy.”
I was like, “I’m sure I’m paranoid, I’m sure this won’t tip anybody off,” but it was a little on the nose that he was so full of glee about these four specifically being all together, so I just cut it. It was sad because that’s the kind of thing that probably would have flown by; no one would have paid attention to it. Because at the point, nine minutes into the premiere, he is just happy about everything. I think it would have been fine and it would have been cool at the end to do a flashback to that moment, to basically say to the audience, “Look, we told you what was happening. We told you eight minutes into the pilot that he was torturing these four people specifically and he was getting a lot of pleasure from torturing them.” I couldn’t get out of my head that there might be a problem, so I was just like, “Let’s err on the side of caution; there will be plenty more clues.” There were things like that over the course of a season — most of them never got shot, most of them would be things we would write in scripts and go, “Ehhh, that’s a little close to revealing something,” and we would just rewrite them or get rid of them.
Between us, are you keeping another huge secret from the cast right now?
No, just you.
I decided in season 2 that there would be no more subterfuge. That it was more important to me to have all of the cast know equally at the same moment exactly what was going to happen to all of their characters over the course of the year. We have this tradition where at the beginning of every season, the cast would all come in… and I walk them through the entire season and let them know everything that’s going to happen. In season 2, they all knew that the end of this season was going to be, they’re going back to Earth, and that the end of season 3 was going to be, they’re rebooting the experiment with four new people. And they know all know everything that’s going to happen in season 4. We might end up changing a bunch of stuff in the writing or rewriting, but I didn’t see the same requirement to keep anything from them as I did in season 1. So, now the cast all knows everything that’s going to happen. Although, hilariously, I told Kristen about season 4 and a bunch of stuff about the future of the show, and then she mostly forgot it.
One of the few recent shows that will have good replay value.
Ted Danson goes deep on 'The Good Place' finale — and that final line
'The Good Place' star Ted Danson weighs in on the 'Good Place' finale and what happened to Michael after the show ended.
Ted Danson goes deep on The Good Place finale — and that final line
By Dan Snierson
February 13, 2020 at 03:04 PM EST
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PETER GALLAGHER SAYS HE KEEPS IN TOUCH WITH ALL OF 'THE O.C.' CAST: 'I ROOT FOR THEM'
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The Good Place
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In the final moments of the series finale of The Good Place, things got real, man.
As in: Michael Realman. NBC’s ambitious adventure comedy — centered on four lost souls and the human database and demon squid architect who helped them — concluded its four-season topsy-turvy-twisty-turny tour of all nooks and many crannies of the afterlife with an emotionally charged, satisfaction-saturated finale last month. When the dust and sparkly particles had settled, three of those souls — Manny Jacinto’s Jason, William Jackson Harper’s Chidi, and Kristen Bell‘s Eleanor — felt complete enough to opt out of paradise and dissolve into pleasant nothingness, while Tahani (Jameela Jamil) chose to help others through better design, and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) remained behind in the afterlife to provide stellar assistance. But it was that dashing demon, Michael (Ted Danson), who took the biggest leap of faith.
After Eleanor persuaded the Judge (Maya Rudolph) to bend the rules onnnnnne more time and allow Michael to become a human, he was sent to Arizona to explore the species with which he had always been captivated, with no guarantee of re-entry to paradise. Viewers watched Michael go through the most quotidian of human rites: ringing in the new year; learning a chord (and about love?) in a guitar lesson (taught by Danson’s real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen!); texting a friend that he was five minutes away when he hadn’t even left his apartment; and burning his hands when pulling a too-hot dish out of the microwave.
The entire series would end on the most Michael of moments. After Eleanor returned her matter to the universe, a sparkling piece of her fell to Earth, landing on the shoulder of a stranger who had just thrown out a piece of mail. He instinctively changed his mind, fished it out of the trash, and delivered it to Michael. It was a Coyote Joe’s Marketplace Rewards Card — issued to one Michael Realman — which delighted its rightful owner, and Michael thanked the man, who bid farewell by saying, “Take it easy.” Michael then responded with a callback to a season 1 scene in which he lamented all the things that he’d never get to do as a human. “I’ll do you one better,” he told the neighbor at his door. “I’ll say this to you, my friend, with all the love in my heart and all the wisdom of the universe: Take it sleazy.”
What did Danson think of those triumphant, bittersweet end-game moves of The Good Place? How did that surprise cameo come about? What happened to Michael on Earth after the credits rolled? EW sought out answers to the mysteries of the universe from the afterlife’s most dapper being in a skin suit, Ted Danson. Read on for an engaging Ted talk.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It’s been six months since you shot that finale and two weeks since it aired. What’s the most potent feeling or idea about The End that is still rocketing around your brain right now?
TED DANSON: First off, we had the luxury of knowing that we were saying goodbye for the entire year that we were shooting the show. Mike [Schur, the show’s creator] knew that he would have told the story by the end of the season, and he didn’t want to vamp, he wanted to do it the way he envisioned it from the very beginning. So that was lovely. You got to be sad in real time and appreciate and celebrate the fact that we are all together doing this amazing show, because a lot of times you get cancelled when you thought you were going to be back. So the actual goodbye was not as sad. For me, the sadness of the actor and the sadness of the character saying goodbye kind of coincided, so it was kind of this wonderful, sweet, sad acting and also, you know, real life. By the time we watched the final show and did that whole final episode thing, it was just sweet, it wasn’t really even sad.
The takeaway — there are so many little messages or thoughts about how the universe works. And I have to say that I walked away going — and I heard some other people say — “I sure hope that’s the way the universe works.” Because you don’t know. And that’s the wonderful, sad, and exciting thing about being human. And it’s probably the reason why we have faith, because you had to live your life not knowing but having faith that certain things might be true. So there’s all of that, which I found so pleasing to be part of. I took away — the one thing that you know: just try to be better every day. Just try. Trying to be better is perhaps all we can really, really do and really know. Just keep doing better.
In a finale that explored the idea that all journeys must end, the power of connection, and the great unknown, the man who desperately wanted to be human chose the path of greatest uncertainty. And it was made possible by Eleanor, someone whom Michael had helped along her journey. Was that the ending you were expecting — or hoping for — from Mike Schur?
Well, I knew it for a while, but when I heard it, it just made me so happy. It just was so perfect. Because even in the beginning, you could tell he was fascinated and just intrigued by humanity. And then he just grew to love them. So it was a perfect, perfect ending to experience what it is to be human. And I loved that [Mike] asked my wife, Mary, to play the guitar teacher, with the implication, “Oh, he will get to experience the most human of all things, which is love.” I just found it — oh, I can tear up just thinking about it. I thought it was just very sweet and perfect.
How long had Mary’s cameo been in the works? Was that something you all had been talking about for a while and then Mike brought it to her?
I think we all had the same idea at the same time when we read the final script. We heard that he was going to bump into another human being that implied — I think Mary actually thought about it in our household. And I’m sure Mike had it in his head all along. It was this perfect idea that we all just loved.
Let’s talk about the different ways that Michael tried to pass through the door — hopping on Eleanor’s back, doing sort of a side sashay, and pretending to disappear into the back side of it. What sticks out to you about filming that sequence and the physical comedy you created?
Just the “This is what I’ve wanted so badly. Don’t leave me behind,” and obviously it’s not gonna work. Then Eleanor finally realized that that’s [her final mission]. The final one was written. “Okay, here I go. All right! It’s working now!” That final moment was in the script. Everything else was just Mike encouraging me to come up with something else. [Laughs]. And, you know, silly is kind of my middle name. So we just played around. There were about six or seven different choices, and I think [Michael’s] thinking that doing that, as you said — the side sashay dance step — would do the trick just tickled me.
A sparkly particle of Eleanor compels a stranger to deliver that letter to Michael, a bit of divine intervention, if you will. What was your first reaction to that pay-it-forward, your-life-will-go-on concept when you first learned about that?
I wish I had something pithy to say. I think I was just delighted by Michael’s delight in being human, you know? I just loved that he was so excited about getting a — what was it, like a…?
A Coyote Joe’s Rewards Card.
Yes.
In any world, did you think the final words of the entire series of The Good Place would be “Take it sleazy”—
No!
—which was such a perfect callback to season 1?
Yeah, I remember that was one of the things that he was bemoaning in season 1, but when he was faking not being a demon that he would miss not being able to say, “Take it sleazy.” [Laughs] And it’s said as if he was imparting a truism, some piece of wisdom that would alter the man’s life — and somehow it does. Or implies that it does.
COLLEEN HAYES/NBC
As a serious actor, how many different ways did you try to deliver the line “Take it sleazy”? I mean, this is the final message of The Good Place.
Yeah, a moment like that, all you want to do is not get in the way of the line. You just want to be… present. Film is so weird — you’re either there, alive in that moment, or you’re pretending to be. And anything short of truly being there in that moment, the audience can tell and it doesn’t have quite that same impact. So you really just try to keep doing it until you somehow get there. You just keep doing it until finally you are in the moment.
How do you think Michael wound up faring on Earth? What do you imagine his adventures were like? Finding love seemed to be something.
Definitely finding love. That was the implication of hiring Mary to do that. Clearly he was as hypocritical as all of us by texting that he was five minutes away. I think he’ll experience what Kristen Bell narrates over that moment. He’ll be fully human. He’ll do all those things that human beings do. He’ll make stuff up. He’ll be sad. He’ll be happy. I remember my mother used to wish me in my life — me, Ted — “I just wish for you to be fully human, to experience being fully human.” And that is everything from the sadness, the vulnerabilities, experiencing loving someone, being loved, feeling anger, it’s everything. It’s literally being fully human, and that has all the dark and scary, and all the happy and joyous, all bundled up. And what you do is you just keep trying to be better every day. And have faith that matters.
Did you imagine what day job that he might’ve had?
I’m trying to think if I — you know, they did not show this in the actual [episode]; they took it out. But I started working for an architectural firm, which may make total sense. [Laughs] You know the guy who was in the bar and is sad and I’m comforting him as one of those little vignettes? He was boss in the architectural firm. So I’ll go with “architect.”
What was the most challenging moment for you to play in that finale?
Probably that very last moment, trying not to get in the way. Because it’s silly, it’s funny, and yet it was Mike Schur’s way of saying, “Here is a truism from the heart.” For me, I guess “Take it sleazy” means, “Just keep trying, keep trying, keep trying.”
When I was on the set during the finale, you told me that in addition to some suits that you might be taking, you were going to keep Michael Realman’s wallet, which Janet hands to him when he goes to Earth. You could have taken a bunch of things. Why was this important to you to keep?
Oh, I’m bad at memorabilia. It’s sweet and wonderful for a moment, and then it’s a cardboard box that makes you feel guilty. So I figured that’s something I could keep in my drawer forever. A wallet that had everyone’s picture and my character’s name on a driver’s license — it’s kind of perfect.
While the finale admirably provided closure, what’s the one burning question that you’ve been thinking about since?
Here’s the joke, because we’re not going to do this. But the joke reboot of this show is Michael dies, gets to the afterlife, and discovers that there’s been a coup in heaven and Shawn [Marc Evan Jackson] has taken over, and it’s back to torturing people, the good old fashioned way. And I somehow get the old band back together to try to defeat him again. [Laughs]
Next up, you play the mayor of Los Angeles in a new NBC comedy created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. What can we expect when you trade the architect’s chair for the mayoral seat?
Well, I probably will not be fixing any of Los Angeles’ problems. [Laughs] It’s going to be hopefully just funny as all-get out. That’s our mandate: be really bright, really smart, and really funny. And I really don’t know because I literally have done one episode and I haven’t seen it yet. So that’s part of the leap of faith, which is “Hey, we’re about to crawl into Tina Fey’s brain, Robert Carlock’s brain, and see where it takes us.” But they’re so smart and such great people, I’m really looking forward to that journey.
Where would you rank this Good Place role in your career? It’s been such a signature chapter for you.
You know what? I’m kind of bad about roles. I can talk about the show, though. The show ranks up there as one of the things I’m most proud of to have been part of. Characters are too subjective and it’s hard to have distance and rank them, but the show — here’s what I love about being part of it. I love that 12-year-olds would come up with beaming faces, having watched every second of the show, and their parents were so happy that they were watching something that was funny but decent, and about something, what it means to lead a purposeful life. I love that [universities such as] Notre Dame have ethics and philosophy classes built around the show. I love that when I came to get an honorary doctorate at CMU [Carnegie Mellon University], the ethics professors were so acknowledging of this show. I love that you can walk down the streets of New York and a construction worker will pop up and say how much he enjoyed the show. My hope for this show is that because of the way things are streaming nowadays that every new crop of 12-year-olds that come up get excited looking at this show, because it’s quite a little gift of “Hey! Here’s a way to think about how to live your life.”
Did the Season Finale of The Good Place promote suicide and euthanasia?? SPOILERS DUH!
In the last two episodes, we discover that even tho the group made it to the Good Place...they quickly discover that the novelty of spending eternity being given anything you've ever wanted eventually runs out and the Good Place (Heaven) gets to be almost as bad a drag as the NOT Good Places. So the crew comes up with an out...literally. They create a door than when your done being in the Good Place you can walk thru and be completely disintegrated. Your essence goes back into the cosmos and you no longer exist in any capacity.
Then in the last episode, we watch person after person decides to walk thru the door. Its sort of bittersweet but the remaining people understand and accept each person's decision and POOF! One by one we watch people, in essence, KILL THEMSELVES.
This is the rationalization suicidal people and terminally ill people use to escape their suffering. This tv show spent 4 seasons making the case for euthanasia when you really think about it.
Did anyone else pick up on that subliminal??
In the last two episodes, we discover that even tho the group made it to the Good Place...they quickly discover that the novelty of spending eternity being given anything you've ever wanted eventually runs out and the Good Place (Heaven) gets to be almost as bad a drag as the NOT Good Places. So the crew comes up with an out...literally. They create a door than when your done being in the Good Place you can walk thru and be completely disintegrated. Your essence goes back into the cosmos and you no longer exist in any capacity.
Then in the last episode, we watch person after person decides to walk thru the door. Its sort of bittersweet but the remaining people understand and accept each person's decision and POOF! One by one we watch people, in essence, KILL THEMSELVES.
This is the rationalization suicidal people and terminally ill people use to escape their suffering. This tv show spent 4 seasons making the case for euthanasia when you really think about it.
Did anyone else pick up on that subliminal??
I started watching it this month an I've reached the final season.
Season 1: 8.5/10
Season 2: 8/10
Season 3: 7/10
Great premise, the execution just begins to fray as it goes along. I'm hoping it ends on a strong note!
Season 1: 8.5/10
Season 2: 8/10
Season 3: 7/10
Great premise, the execution just begins to fray as it goes along. I'm hoping it ends on a strong note!
Season 4: 8/10
I feel like the show never lived up to its potential. The Jason character had me tuning out, Mya Rudolph's performance as the judge was emblematic of my problem with the series-- I just don't vibe with the wacky over the top stuff that seems so en vogue in TV comedy these days. I enjoy humor that stems from the characters and situations or plot, not zany non-sequiturs.
But I really enjoyed the contemplative aspects of it and Eleanor & Chidi, even though the romance was a bit too much of a focus at times. And the structure fell apart-- Mindy being the only person in the Medium Place makes no sense. Still, funny and thought-provoking. It was worth watching.
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Definitely one of my favorite shows I've watched this decade. K. Bell messed with the Botox a little too much during the last season for me, but love the characters, all of them. Probably Jason was my favorite, though. Crazy diversity on this show without yelling how diverse they were/are too, which I appreciate.
Hey sis how are you!!!!!???
Doing okay. PPD and PPA hit like a mofo but everyday is a new day
How are you doing?
Doing okay. PPD and PPA hit like a mofo but everyday is a new day
Imma PM you know!
Mike Schur Talks Morality and Ethics in The Good Place — and Everywhere Else
It feels right that a chat about the show’s Emmy-nominated finale would lead to a philosophical discourse on bad tweets, blackface, and wearing masks.
www.vulture.com
Mike Schur Talks Morality and Ethics in The Good Place — and Everywhere Else
“Intention does matter … but it’s not the only thing that matters.”
By Jen Chaney@chaneyj
Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
When The Good Place creator Mike Schur called recently to discuss his dearly departed series, which is currently nominated for six Emmy Awards, I expected to have a 20- or 30-minute conversation about the series’s final episode and how it ushered each of its main characters into a more permanent version of the hereafter.
We did talk about that. But that 30-minute conversation turned into a 90-minute dialogue about a whole bunch of things: how Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which Schur executive-produces, is shifting its approach to telling stories about police; the controversy over offensive tweets that Good Place writer Megan Amram sent in the early 2010s and recently apologized for; the removal of blackface episodes from streaming services; and the reasons why some Americans won’t wear masks in public in the middle of a pandemic.
It got philosophical. I suppose I should have expected nothing less from the man who created the most philosophically engaged sitcom in recent history, if not ever.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The Good Place finale feels like it aired 100 years ago. You finished shooting it almost a year ago, right?
Yeah, it’s been almost a year since we wrapped shooting. I didn’t finish editing it until January because I took my own sweet time. It does feel like a million years ago. I mean, everything feels like a million years ago.
The four main Good Place characters didn’t get to decide how they died on Earth, but they all get some measure of choice in the finale, as far as when they pass through the door. Was giving them a choice at the end something that you and the writers talked about?
Yes and no. Given that we were basically saying, “These people’s journeys are ending, and now they’re going into an actual great unknown,” we wanted to make sure that it felt like it was their choice, but we also wanted to make it seem like it was a matter of achieving some kind of fulfillment. You were choosing, you could do whatever you wanted to, but also the universe would let you know when it was the right time. To me, that is the dream of what life on Earth would really be like if you could call your own shots but you were calling them because you had this really calm feeling, like there was nothing left for you to do. It has to be a choice. If it’s not a choice, it’s not better than Earth.
Toward the end of his journey on the series, Jason plays the perfect Madden game, Tahani decides to become an architect, and everybody goes on a different path to fulfillment. Did you and the writers talk about other options for what those paths might be?
I’m sure we did. But the approach to it was starting from a place of, “We ought to be telling a story for each of these four people that suggests that the last thing they had to overcome was their central flaw.” In broad strokes, you could say there was a reason that each of them ended up in a bad place to begin with. Eleanor was selfish, Tahani was badly motivated, Jason had impulse-control issues that made him do all sorts of stupid stuff, and Chidi was so indecisive he drove everybody crazy.
Playing the perfect Madden game was a silly way to say Jason has completed his journey. But really, he doesn’t complete his journey until he gets to the door, realizes that he forgot the necklace he was going to give Janet, and decides to wait. The guy who at a moment’s notice would huck a Molotov cocktail at anyone, anywhere, was like, “I’ll just wait for her.” And he waited for some untold number of hundreds or thousands of years peacefully and silently and quietly because he wanted to do this one last thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I believe you didn’t know exactly how you were going to end The Good Place until you got to the last season and were breaking that story. Is that right?
I didn’t know every detail of the finale until the final season when we actually broke it. But the writers and I talked a lot about how the show would end, especially over the course of season three but as early as the end of season two. We knew they were going to fix the afterlife, they were going to get to live there for some amount of time and then they were going to truly move on. The actual real details of it we didn’t really get into until we were breaking it, which was at the beginning of season four. But it was really great because — knowing as early as the end of season two that there were going to be four seasons unless something really weird happened — we got the chance to slowly keep adding ingredients to the pot.
When did the light bulb go on for having the last moment be Michael’s “Take it sleazy” line?
In the original conception, it was slightly different. I think he was buying a cup of coffee and the barista misspelled his name on the coffee cup, and that made him really happy. The barista misinterpreted that as making fun of him, there was a brief argument, and then the barista apologized and Michael said, “Don’t worry about it. Mistakes happen. It’s part of being human.” And then on his way out, he said, “Hey, take it sleazy,” and the barista laughed. We changed the little details in the margins, but we knew for at least a year that the show was going to end with Michael finally getting to say “Take it sleazy.” It just seemed like the perfect amount of meaningful because he had said in season one that he always wanted to do that, and also just ridiculous and silly and lighthearted because it’s a bizarre way to end the show.
Mary Steenburgen has a cameo as Michael’s guitar instructor. This whole time, were you like, “When can we get Mary Steenburgen in here”?
It came pretty organically out of the idea that one of the themes of the show is you don’t figure this stuff out by yourself. We owe our growth and our understanding of the world to our relationships with other people. There’s a line in Aristotle that Chidi quotes in season one: Aristotle compares getting better to playing the flute. The more you play it, the better you get. And so we were like, “Maybe we should design this thing for Michael where he’s trying to do something by himself,” and then when he gets to Earth, it’s like, “Oh, you can ask people for help.”
Once we had that idea, I was like, “Well, then it’s got to be Mary.” It’s too lovely an idea, because the way Ted [Danson] talks about Mary is that she is, for him, the person who unlocked the world and made him understand things he didn’t understand before. They have a beautiful, incredible marriage that is full of togetherness and joy and happiness and mutual respect and love and understanding.
On another subject, I know that with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the writers have pumped the brakes a little bit and asked themselves, “How should we be approaching the subject of a police show?” What can you say at this point about where you all are with that?
Well, the most important thing to say is that it’s Dan Goor’s show. I haven’t really worked on it on a day-to-day basis in a long time, certainly since the beginning of The Good Place. We’ve had a bunch of conversations about it. I know that it has been, I would say, all-consuming for him and his writing staff. How could it not be? It’s not very frequent that you’re making a TV show and then the exact subject of your TV show becomes the dominant national conversation everyone is talking about.
I don’t 100 percent know what they’re planning to do. I know they’re being incredibly thoughtful about it. It’s a tricky thing. They want to address it more than anything, and they’re going to. But also the show has a very specific tone and it’s very silly and fun, and you can’t just turn on a dime and make the show into something it isn’t. The show is not designed to be a vehicle for the intense and drama-filled discussion of social justice. So if you suddenly make it that, it’s not going to work. Whatever message you’re trying to get across won’t be received, because people will be like, “What the hell is this? This isn’t the show that I know.” At the same time, if you don’t address it at all, then it’s absurd — you’re doing a show about police officers in New York City who are completely, utterly failing to address the dominant issue of the day that has to do exactly with them and their behavior. So it’s a really dicey thing.
I also want to ask you about something I feel is very relevant to The Good Place: Megan Amram’s old tweets and her response to those being unearthed, which involved her talking about working on being a better person. It feels very thematically relevant to what the whole show is about.
Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? I’ve talked to her multiple times because I love her, and it’s sad when your friend is going through something painful. It is thematic, certainly. The theme of the show is, “Look, you’re going to blow it sometimes. You’re going to make mistakes. Everybody does.” So the question isn’t how to avoid making mistakes. The question is, once you make mistakes, how do you go about improving yourself?
In this case, those things she tweeted were, I don’t know, eight, nine years ago. So I knew her not as that person but the person who came after that. And that person has spent pretty much every waking moment of her life fighting for LGBTQ rights and radical equality among all people in the world, especially marginalized people, women, and gay people. So when it came out, it was like, “Well, the advice that I would give you is the advice that you’ve not only already taken but have actually been acting on for the last nine years, which is to be a better person than that.”
The awful thing about bad choices is that they often continue to ripple out and affect other people in ways you can’t even anticipate. It’s obvious that if you tweet an offensive joke about East Asian people, East Asian people are going to be sad and hurt. But then there’s this second-level thing where I saw that someone on Twitter — and I don’t remember who, I apologize — said, “You know what bums me out about this is I wonder whether if I express my feelings I am hurting my chances of getting a job in Hollywood.” Because Megan is a fairly well-known writer, and she works with a lot of other fairly well-known writers on projects that are getting a lot of attention.
That was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t even think about that.” Because I’m not in a position of having to think about that automatically. And that’s awful. That’s a horrible thing, that not only does it hurt to read jokes like that written about you, but also you wonder whether just saying out loud that they hurt you might hurt you in a different way. Through the Vulture website, I can say to that person: That’s not the way I personally would ever operate. That’s not the way that anybody I know would ever operate.
It seems like there isn’t as much latitude for people to do what you’re describing, to try to do better. Not to make this sound like it’s about cancel culture, because some people should be canceled. I think people are often frustrated with that not happening for good reasons.
We’re having the same debate now about stuff like this that we were having a couple of years ago about Me Too, where people were like, “This is an overcorrection.” My attitude was like, “Yeah, it is. Sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.” For the entirety of human existence, in every power structure that existed, certainly in this country, there was no correction. Men generally treated women however they wanted to with no repercussion, with no punishment, and without any fear of reprisal or of losing their jobs. That’s the way it was for the entirety of American history until like five years ago. So if there’s an overcorrection, yeah, I don’t know what to tell you.
The same thing is happening with regards to marginalized communities, ranging from ethnic minorities to women to LGBTQ people to every kind of person that basically isn’t the white dude. People are having the same reaction, which is like, “Well, now I’m walking on eggshells.” You don’t have to walk on eggshells. You just have to treat people with a baseline of dignity and respect and compassion. The people who tweeted or said or otherwise disseminated disrespectful language are now being called out for it. And I just don’t see why that’s bad. The national conversation about this stuff will settle, and we’ll begin to be able to discern nuance and gradation and shading and intention.
I’ve spent five years on this show about moral philosophy, so I learned a lot about intention. Intention does matter. There’s a difference between someone intending to hurt someone and someone intending to be funny and make a joke and it going horribly wrong and miscalculating. But we have to be better at understanding that the things we say, regardless of their intention, can be really hurtful and can contribute to this ongoing problem of people feeling disrespected and less than and everything else. Tina Fey’s statement when she asked for the blackface episodes of 30 Rock to be pulled off of streaming, I thought her statement was really good. Because what she said was, “It wasn’t our intention. Our intentions were very specifically to comment on how dumb people are when they do things like engage in this kind of behavior.” But intention isn’t the only thing that matters. The other thing that matters is the image of a white person in blackface. Some images are hurtful and awful to the point where they block out the sun. If you’re using that imagery, you’re going to cause people pain, and I don’t want to cause people pain so let’s just get rid of it.
We’re in the moment where it’s like, let’s just stop all that behavior. The people who were screaming about freedom and liberty and a robust exchange of ideas and all of those terms that fly around the internet and appear in letters from Harper’s Magazine — it’s like, we’re not asking very much here. We really aren’t. There’s, like, 50 words that you shouldn’t use in the English language, and there’s 250,000 that are fine. Let’s not use the 50 that cause people true pain and anguish. Let’s put those aside.
You’re trampling on my liberties, Mike, by asking me to do that.
[Laughs.] You know what? This is an impossibly huge discussion we’re having, but there is a direct connection between that mindset and the mask thing, where it’s like, “The tiniest impingement upon my absolute, pure, uncut, grade-A-heroin level of freedom is unacceptable.” Like, “You can’t tell me I can’t use these 50 words, and you can’t tell me I have to wear a mask.” It’s the thing that just wounds my soul so deeply. The gain of putting a $3 mask on your face when you go outside is that society returns to normal and no one gets sick and dies. That’s an enormous payoff for an incredibly small price. The big gain of not using 50 or so words in the English language to talk about other people is that all people feel a greater sense of meaning in their lives and have respect and have dignity. I don’t understand why anyone in the world doesn’t make that trade. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny request to just not be a total asshole. I guess when no one ever tells you that you can’t do something, the tiniest request feels like oppression.
Well, it’s that. But I also think there’s a common denominator in all these things. People aren’t wearing their masks because they don’t believe the virus is as much of a threat as it actually is. They don’t care about whether they’re offending Black people, Asian people, or LGBTQ people because they don’t believe that they have anything to be offended about. There’s a denial of the payoff that you’re describing.
That’s a good point. With the mask thing, also swirled into it is the problem of a now 40-year assault on science and reason as a guiding principle for how we ought to live our lives. This is the result of that.
It’s not quite as simple as I laid it out, obviously. In fact, it’s not nearly as simple. But at the same time, underpinning all of it, there is this very simple exchange, which is give up the tiniest imaginable amount of your absolute, pure freedom to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to do it and you will contribute to this enormous benefit for everybody on the other side. It breaks my heart that more people aren’t willing to make that deal.
I want to circle back to what you said about Tina Fey. I agree that it was a great statement, but I’m not sure the 30 Rock episodes should be taken down. I feel like it’s erasing the fact that they ever happened. Part of what we should be doing right now is talking about this stuff, and we can’t talk about it if we don’t leave it out there.
I know a lot of people who feel that way, and I think there’s a lot of validity to that argument. To be totally honest, I don’t quite know how I feel. Part of me feels like, look, those episodes of 30 Rock, like the one [where] Tracy was saying it was harder to be a Black person than a woman, and Jenna was saying it was harder to be a woman than a Black person — they were two complete morons, so the solution they came up with was they would live like the other person for a day. The show is very obviously, plainly, not using blackface the way blackface had been used in minstrel shows and in systemic, oppressive ways in this country for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was making a very, very specific point, and it was doing it through the lens of two total dopes. It’s obvious the show is not saying in any way, shape, or form that blackface is acceptable.
So there’s a way in which you would leave it up and put context around it, the way HBO Max did with Gone With the Wind. Have a little disclaimer at the beginning, or have an explainer, have a filmed thing with Tracy and Tina at the beginning of the episode, like, “Hey, here’s what we were going for.” That would certainly be one option. I think there’s a lot of validity to that, but I also see the point where, in the aftermath of George Floyd, at this moment when this conversation is being had in earnest maybe for the first time on a national level, I also totally understand the impulse to say, “You know what? It doesn’t really matter.” This is what [Fey] was saying. It doesn’t matter what our intention was, because when you watch this episode, you see a white person in blackface makeup. The ability to have a thoughtful and considered discussion about our intention and about the world we live in and the entire history of minstrels in America, it’s just not what anyone is really interested in right now. So I just want to get rid of it.
I see both sides of that point. I think there’s probably, long-term, more benefit to that episode still being up and to people being able to watch it and think about it, but only if there is some kind of context provided. In things like this, there are no easy answers. Everybody is just fumbling around trying as hard as we can to try to do better.
The last thing I’ll say is that you want to feel like the people making the decisions are really thinking hard about them. No one is solving racism or police brutality or white supremacy through a TV show. That’s not the way the world works. The best you can hope for is a sense that the people who were in charge are taking it seriously and really considering it. That’s why I love Tina’s statement. She was like, “Look, I thought really hard about this, and this is the conclusion I came to. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I think is best.” That’s about as good as you can do with something that’s thorny and complicated and full of pain and anguish.
It’s funny that we’re having this conversation and the ostensible purpose of this phone call was, “Let’s talk about the end of The Good Place.”
It’s impossible to have a conversation about even innocuous things right now. Especially with a show that deals with ethics.
The show ended when it did, but if it hadn’t, I don’t know what we’d be doing, because suddenly the whole world is talking about morality and ethics. Maybe that would have been good, I don’t know. Our ratings would have been higher.
Mike Schur Talks Morality and Ethics in The Good Place — and Everywhere Else
It feels right that a chat about the show’s Emmy-nominated finale would lead to a philosophical discourse on bad tweets, blackface, and wearing masks.
Mike Schur Talks Morality and Ethics in The Good Place — and Everywhere Else
“Intention does matter … but it’s not the only thing that matters.”
By Jen Chaney@chaneyj
Photo: Colleen Hayes/NBC
When The Good Place creator Mike Schur called recently to discuss his dearly departed series, which is currently nominated for six Emmy Awards, I expected to have a 20- or 30-minute conversation about the series’s final episode and how it ushered each of its main characters into a more permanent version of the hereafter.
We did talk about that. But that 30-minute conversation turned into a 90-minute dialogue about a whole bunch of things: how Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which Schur executive-produces, is shifting its approach to telling stories about police; the controversy over offensive tweets that Good Place writer Megan Amram sent in the early 2010s and recently apologized for; the removal of blackface episodes from streaming services; and the reasons why some Americans won’t wear masks in public in the middle of a pandemic.
It got philosophical. I suppose I should have expected nothing less from the man who created the most philosophically engaged sitcom in recent history, if not ever.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The Good Place finale feels like it aired 100 years ago. You finished shooting it almost a year ago, right?
Yeah, it’s been almost a year since we wrapped shooting. I didn’t finish editing it until January because I took my own sweet time. It does feel like a million years ago. I mean, everything feels like a million years ago.
The four main Good Place characters didn’t get to decide how they died on Earth, but they all get some measure of choice in the finale, as far as when they pass through the door. Was giving them a choice at the end something that you and the writers talked about?
Yes and no. Given that we were basically saying, “These people’s journeys are ending, and now they’re going into an actual great unknown,” we wanted to make sure that it felt like it was their choice, but we also wanted to make it seem like it was a matter of achieving some kind of fulfillment. You were choosing, you could do whatever you wanted to, but also the universe would let you know when it was the right time. To me, that is the dream of what life on Earth would really be like if you could call your own shots but you were calling them because you had this really calm feeling, like there was nothing left for you to do. It has to be a choice. If it’s not a choice, it’s not better than Earth.
Toward the end of his journey on the series, Jason plays the perfect Madden game, Tahani decides to become an architect, and everybody goes on a different path to fulfillment. Did you and the writers talk about other options for what those paths might be?
I’m sure we did. But the approach to it was starting from a place of, “We ought to be telling a story for each of these four people that suggests that the last thing they had to overcome was their central flaw.” In broad strokes, you could say there was a reason that each of them ended up in a bad place to begin with. Eleanor was selfish, Tahani was badly motivated, Jason had impulse-control issues that made him do all sorts of stupid stuff, and Chidi was so indecisive he drove everybody crazy.
Playing the perfect Madden game was a silly way to say Jason has completed his journey. But really, he doesn’t complete his journey until he gets to the door, realizes that he forgot the necklace he was going to give Janet, and decides to wait. The guy who at a moment’s notice would huck a Molotov cocktail at anyone, anywhere, was like, “I’ll just wait for her.” And he waited for some untold number of hundreds or thousands of years peacefully and silently and quietly because he wanted to do this one last thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I believe you didn’t know exactly how you were going to end The Good Place until you got to the last season and were breaking that story. Is that right?
I didn’t know every detail of the finale until the final season when we actually broke it. But the writers and I talked a lot about how the show would end, especially over the course of season three but as early as the end of season two. We knew they were going to fix the afterlife, they were going to get to live there for some amount of time and then they were going to truly move on. The actual real details of it we didn’t really get into until we were breaking it, which was at the beginning of season four. But it was really great because — knowing as early as the end of season two that there were going to be four seasons unless something really weird happened — we got the chance to slowly keep adding ingredients to the pot.
When did the light bulb go on for having the last moment be Michael’s “Take it sleazy” line?
In the original conception, it was slightly different. I think he was buying a cup of coffee and the barista misspelled his name on the coffee cup, and that made him really happy. The barista misinterpreted that as making fun of him, there was a brief argument, and then the barista apologized and Michael said, “Don’t worry about it. Mistakes happen. It’s part of being human.” And then on his way out, he said, “Hey, take it sleazy,” and the barista laughed. We changed the little details in the margins, but we knew for at least a year that the show was going to end with Michael finally getting to say “Take it sleazy.” It just seemed like the perfect amount of meaningful because he had said in season one that he always wanted to do that, and also just ridiculous and silly and lighthearted because it’s a bizarre way to end the show.
Mary Steenburgen has a cameo as Michael’s guitar instructor. This whole time, were you like, “When can we get Mary Steenburgen in here”?
It came pretty organically out of the idea that one of the themes of the show is you don’t figure this stuff out by yourself. We owe our growth and our understanding of the world to our relationships with other people. There’s a line in Aristotle that Chidi quotes in season one: Aristotle compares getting better to playing the flute. The more you play it, the better you get. And so we were like, “Maybe we should design this thing for Michael where he’s trying to do something by himself,” and then when he gets to Earth, it’s like, “Oh, you can ask people for help.”
Once we had that idea, I was like, “Well, then it’s got to be Mary.” It’s too lovely an idea, because the way Ted [Danson] talks about Mary is that she is, for him, the person who unlocked the world and made him understand things he didn’t understand before. They have a beautiful, incredible marriage that is full of togetherness and joy and happiness and mutual respect and love and understanding.
On another subject, I know that with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the writers have pumped the brakes a little bit and asked themselves, “How should we be approaching the subject of a police show?” What can you say at this point about where you all are with that?
Well, the most important thing to say is that it’s Dan Goor’s show. I haven’t really worked on it on a day-to-day basis in a long time, certainly since the beginning of The Good Place. We’ve had a bunch of conversations about it. I know that it has been, I would say, all-consuming for him and his writing staff. How could it not be? It’s not very frequent that you’re making a TV show and then the exact subject of your TV show becomes the dominant national conversation everyone is talking about.
I don’t 100 percent know what they’re planning to do. I know they’re being incredibly thoughtful about it. It’s a tricky thing. They want to address it more than anything, and they’re going to. But also the show has a very specific tone and it’s very silly and fun, and you can’t just turn on a dime and make the show into something it isn’t. The show is not designed to be a vehicle for the intense and drama-filled discussion of social justice. So if you suddenly make it that, it’s not going to work. Whatever message you’re trying to get across won’t be received, because people will be like, “What the hell is this? This isn’t the show that I know.” At the same time, if you don’t address it at all, then it’s absurd — you’re doing a show about police officers in New York City who are completely, utterly failing to address the dominant issue of the day that has to do exactly with them and their behavior. So it’s a really dicey thing.
I also want to ask you about something I feel is very relevant to The Good Place: Megan Amram’s old tweets and her response to those being unearthed, which involved her talking about working on being a better person. It feels very thematically relevant to what the whole show is about.
Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? I’ve talked to her multiple times because I love her, and it’s sad when your friend is going through something painful. It is thematic, certainly. The theme of the show is, “Look, you’re going to blow it sometimes. You’re going to make mistakes. Everybody does.” So the question isn’t how to avoid making mistakes. The question is, once you make mistakes, how do you go about improving yourself?
In this case, those things she tweeted were, I don’t know, eight, nine years ago. So I knew her not as that person but the person who came after that. And that person has spent pretty much every waking moment of her life fighting for LGBTQ rights and radical equality among all people in the world, especially marginalized people, women, and gay people. So when it came out, it was like, “Well, the advice that I would give you is the advice that you’ve not only already taken but have actually been acting on for the last nine years, which is to be a better person than that.”
The awful thing about bad choices is that they often continue to ripple out and affect other people in ways you can’t even anticipate. It’s obvious that if you tweet an offensive joke about East Asian people, East Asian people are going to be sad and hurt. But then there’s this second-level thing where I saw that someone on Twitter — and I don’t remember who, I apologize — said, “You know what bums me out about this is I wonder whether if I express my feelings I am hurting my chances of getting a job in Hollywood.” Because Megan is a fairly well-known writer, and she works with a lot of other fairly well-known writers on projects that are getting a lot of attention.
That was like, “Oh shit, I didn’t even think about that.” Because I’m not in a position of having to think about that automatically. And that’s awful. That’s a horrible thing, that not only does it hurt to read jokes like that written about you, but also you wonder whether just saying out loud that they hurt you might hurt you in a different way. Through the Vulture website, I can say to that person: That’s not the way I personally would ever operate. That’s not the way that anybody I know would ever operate.
It seems like there isn’t as much latitude for people to do what you’re describing, to try to do better. Not to make this sound like it’s about cancel culture, because some people should be canceled. I think people are often frustrated with that not happening for good reasons.
We’re having the same debate now about stuff like this that we were having a couple of years ago about Me Too, where people were like, “This is an overcorrection.” My attitude was like, “Yeah, it is. Sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.” For the entirety of human existence, in every power structure that existed, certainly in this country, there was no correction. Men generally treated women however they wanted to with no repercussion, with no punishment, and without any fear of reprisal or of losing their jobs. That’s the way it was for the entirety of American history until like five years ago. So if there’s an overcorrection, yeah, I don’t know what to tell you.
The same thing is happening with regards to marginalized communities, ranging from ethnic minorities to women to LGBTQ people to every kind of person that basically isn’t the white dude. People are having the same reaction, which is like, “Well, now I’m walking on eggshells.” You don’t have to walk on eggshells. You just have to treat people with a baseline of dignity and respect and compassion. The people who tweeted or said or otherwise disseminated disrespectful language are now being called out for it. And I just don’t see why that’s bad. The national conversation about this stuff will settle, and we’ll begin to be able to discern nuance and gradation and shading and intention.
I’ve spent five years on this show about moral philosophy, so I learned a lot about intention. Intention does matter. There’s a difference between someone intending to hurt someone and someone intending to be funny and make a joke and it going horribly wrong and miscalculating. But we have to be better at understanding that the things we say, regardless of their intention, can be really hurtful and can contribute to this ongoing problem of people feeling disrespected and less than and everything else. Tina Fey’s statement when she asked for the blackface episodes of 30 Rock to be pulled off of streaming, I thought her statement was really good. Because what she said was, “It wasn’t our intention. Our intentions were very specifically to comment on how dumb people are when they do things like engage in this kind of behavior.” But intention isn’t the only thing that matters. The other thing that matters is the image of a white person in blackface. Some images are hurtful and awful to the point where they block out the sun. If you’re using that imagery, you’re going to cause people pain, and I don’t want to cause people pain so let’s just get rid of it.
We’re in the moment where it’s like, let’s just stop all that behavior. The people who were screaming about freedom and liberty and a robust exchange of ideas and all of those terms that fly around the internet and appear in letters from Harper’s Magazine — it’s like, we’re not asking very much here. We really aren’t. There’s, like, 50 words that you shouldn’t use in the English language, and there’s 250,000 that are fine. Let’s not use the 50 that cause people true pain and anguish. Let’s put those aside.
You’re trampling on my liberties, Mike, by asking me to do that.
[Laughs.] You know what? This is an impossibly huge discussion we’re having, but there is a direct connection between that mindset and the mask thing, where it’s like, “The tiniest impingement upon my absolute, pure, uncut, grade-A-heroin level of freedom is unacceptable.” Like, “You can’t tell me I can’t use these 50 words, and you can’t tell me I have to wear a mask.” It’s the thing that just wounds my soul so deeply. The gain of putting a $3 mask on your face when you go outside is that society returns to normal and no one gets sick and dies. That’s an enormous payoff for an incredibly small price. The big gain of not using 50 or so words in the English language to talk about other people is that all people feel a greater sense of meaning in their lives and have respect and have dignity. I don’t understand why anyone in the world doesn’t make that trade. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny request to just not be a total asshole. I guess when no one ever tells you that you can’t do something, the tiniest request feels like oppression.
Well, it’s that. But I also think there’s a common denominator in all these things. People aren’t wearing their masks because they don’t believe the virus is as much of a threat as it actually is. They don’t care about whether they’re offending Black people, Asian people, or LGBTQ people because they don’t believe that they have anything to be offended about. There’s a denial of the payoff that you’re describing.
That’s a good point. With the mask thing, also swirled into it is the problem of a now 40-year assault on science and reason as a guiding principle for how we ought to live our lives. This is the result of that.
It’s not quite as simple as I laid it out, obviously. In fact, it’s not nearly as simple. But at the same time, underpinning all of it, there is this very simple exchange, which is give up the tiniest imaginable amount of your absolute, pure freedom to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to do it and you will contribute to this enormous benefit for everybody on the other side. It breaks my heart that more people aren’t willing to make that deal.
I want to circle back to what you said about Tina Fey. I agree that it was a great statement, but I’m not sure the 30 Rock episodes should be taken down. I feel like it’s erasing the fact that they ever happened. Part of what we should be doing right now is talking about this stuff, and we can’t talk about it if we don’t leave it out there.
I know a lot of people who feel that way, and I think there’s a lot of validity to that argument. To be totally honest, I don’t quite know how I feel. Part of me feels like, look, those episodes of 30 Rock, like the one [where] Tracy was saying it was harder to be a Black person than a woman, and Jenna was saying it was harder to be a woman than a Black person — they were two complete morons, so the solution they came up with was they would live like the other person for a day. The show is very obviously, plainly, not using blackface the way blackface had been used in minstrel shows and in systemic, oppressive ways in this country for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was making a very, very specific point, and it was doing it through the lens of two total dopes. It’s obvious the show is not saying in any way, shape, or form that blackface is acceptable.
So there’s a way in which you would leave it up and put context around it, the way HBO Max did with Gone With the Wind. Have a little disclaimer at the beginning, or have an explainer, have a filmed thing with Tracy and Tina at the beginning of the episode, like, “Hey, here’s what we were going for.” That would certainly be one option. I think there’s a lot of validity to that, but I also see the point where, in the aftermath of George Floyd, at this moment when this conversation is being had in earnest maybe for the first time on a national level, I also totally understand the impulse to say, “You know what? It doesn’t really matter.” This is what [Fey] was saying. It doesn’t matter what our intention was, because when you watch this episode, you see a white person in blackface makeup. The ability to have a thoughtful and considered discussion about our intention and about the world we live in and the entire history of minstrels in America, it’s just not what anyone is really interested in right now. So I just want to get rid of it.
I see both sides of that point. I think there’s probably, long-term, more benefit to that episode still being up and to people being able to watch it and think about it, but only if there is some kind of context provided. In things like this, there are no easy answers. Everybody is just fumbling around trying as hard as we can to try to do better.
The last thing I’ll say is that you want to feel like the people making the decisions are really thinking hard about them. No one is solving racism or police brutality or white supremacy through a TV show. That’s not the way the world works. The best you can hope for is a sense that the people who were in charge are taking it seriously and really considering it. That’s why I love Tina’s statement. She was like, “Look, I thought really hard about this, and this is the conclusion I came to. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I think is best.” That’s about as good as you can do with something that’s thorny and complicated and full of pain and anguish.
It’s funny that we’re having this conversation and the ostensible purpose of this phone call was, “Let’s talk about the end of The Good Place.”
It’s impossible to have a conversation about even innocuous things right now. Especially with a show that deals with ethics.
The show ended when it did, but if it hadn’t, I don’t know what we’d be doing, because suddenly the whole world is talking about morality and ethics. Maybe that would have been good, I don’t know. Our ratings would have been higher.
Very very smart thoughtful guy.
There's dehani the beautiful neighborhood and all you notice is this plain middle aged white woman? You dudes have the strangest taste in women. For the life of me I can't even see the appeal of flo the Geico lady.
He reminds me of raj Thomas from what's happening.
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