Warning: SPOILERS for The Good Place!
The Good Place's ending, because each viewer can interpret it differently. The series can do this because of the subjectivity of the show’s premise and its work to present many angles and examples on a particularly difficult ethical subject, that is, what it means to be a ‘good person,’ while still being a comedy show about a group of mismatched friends in unbelievable circumstances.
On paper, The Good Place tells the story of four very disparate people who journey through the afterlife together to escape eternal damnation. These four humans, Eleanor (Kristen Bell), Chidi (William Jackson Harper), Tahani (Jameela Jamil), and Jason (Manny Jacinto), are ed by their demonic torturer-turned-friend, Michael (Ted Danson), and afterlife AI Janet (D’Arcy Carden), as they work to unravel how they ended up in the ‘bad place’ and the mysteries of the enigmatic system that determines which people are good. As they do so, The Good Place's characters must confront the kind of people they were on earth and how this impacted their lives and those around them.
The Good Place Pointed Out The Fallacy Of Comparison
As the ‘Soul Squad’ makes their way through the locations of the afterlife in The Good Place, they discover that people’s placement in ‘hell’ or ‘heaven’ is determined by a calculated point system. The points each person accrues during their life - with each action given a mathematical value depending on how much good or ill it puts into the world - then logically determines where they should go upon their death. However, one of the biggest plot points in The Good Place is that the system itself is flawed, and could not for either the growing complexity of life on Earth or for anyone's potential improvement in the future.
The fallibility of the point system in The Good Place is key to the show’s main message. Although the system was supposed to show who was ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ comparing points could not determine what it meant to lead a good life, or even to gauge if any person was better than another. Through this, The Good Place showed that what it means to be ‘good’ cannot be found by comparing people, but instead must be determined individually based on someone's means and experiences. This, too, highlights that any act of goodness from ordinary people can be just as impactful as incredible, but rare, heroics, and thus can’t be compared.
The Good Life Looked At The Nature Of Self Improvement
The way that Jason, Chidi, Elanor, and Tahani discovered the flaws in the point system is through their work on self-improvement, an aspect of the show that is prevalent in each of its seasons. The premise of the very first season focuses squarely on Eleanor wanting to improve herself so that she’s not discovered as a fraud in the ‘good place’ and sent to hell. But even after this, how and why people strive to be better people, and the often difficult process of doing so, is a focal point of The Good Place, as is the message that anyone can always be better tomorrow than the day before.
Along with examining the daily minutiae and challenges that can come with being a better person, The Good Place is also a ringing endorsement of the good people can do when they work together. Throughout each season, the protagonists improved themselves and each other through mutual companionship and help, even though they often began the series at odds. This innate capacity for community, no matter how disparate they may seem, and the benefits that come from working together, is a key message of the series as well.
The Good Place Told You How To Live A Good Life
It may seem that The Good Place could not explore self-improvement without showing its audience how to live the epitome of a good life. However, this isn't exactly true, as one of the key messages of the series is that there is no singular good way to live ethically. Even those who seemed to live a ‘good’ life, like Tahani and Chidi, still had much to learn about themselves and what it means to truly do good for others. Whether being ‘good’ means learning and practicing various virtues or determining and following the rules of a given society, The Good Place depicts the many approaches to a good life, both publicly and personally, and how anyone can achieve it.
This is especially true given how the group approaches self-improvement differently in each season. Although The Good Place’s ‘Soul Squad’ often improves themselves and each other through the literal study of ethics, the series is careful to show that academia is not the only way to understand what it means to be good. Instead, the series emphasizes that being good is complicated, ongoing, and often an individual journey to understand what a person’s best self looks like. This is especially true in The Good Place season 3 when the group takes turns improving the lives of their family and friends, not via taking a class, but with meaningful interactions.
The Good Place Talked About What It Means To Face Death
Finally, the reason any of the characters tackled goodness and self-improvement at all is because of the role of death in The Good Place. Death is prevalent and inescapable in the series, especially as the characters are often already deceased. This makes each character’s processing of their life and death a critical part of the story. Ultimately, this also drives home the final and most important message of The Good Place: everything must end, from human life to the series itself. It’s this finality that gives the series, and life overall, so much of its meaning.