Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, NBC’s The Good Place is the show you should be binge-watching, if you haven’t already done that. Featuring renowned actors and actresses like Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Ted Sanson, Jameela Jamil, D’Arcy Carden, and Manny Jacinto as its main cast, The Good Place is a fact-based philosophical fiction with a comic twist that leaves you engaged and entertained. Here is everything we know about the television series.
The Good Place is an American comedy series created by Michael Schur, who is known for producing and writing the award-winning comedy series The Office and co-creating political satire ‘Parks and Recreation’. The four-season series focuses on the concept of the afterlife in relation to ethics and moral philosophy and approaches this otherwise serious concept with an appropriate level of humor that draws its audience in. The Good Place made its first appearance on NBC on September 19, 2016, a successful premiere that garnered over eight million views in the US.
Creator Michael Schur executive-produced The Good Place alongside David Miner, Morgan Sackett, and Drew Goddard. David Hyman, Joe Mande, and Megan Amram served as producers on the show. The Good Place aired a total of four seasons from September 19, 2016, to January 30, 2020. New episodes were released weekly on Thursdays at 8:30 pm on NBC. Fremulon, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Universal Television produced the comedy series, while NBCUniversal distributed it.
The Good Place Season 5 Release Date
Unfortunately, prior to the premiere of The Good Place Season 4, NBC announced that the fourth season would be it’s last. This announcement was made by creator Micheal Schur on Twitter on June 7, 2019. It turns out the creators never even expected or planned for the show to go on for as long as it did. Members of The Good Place cast and crew were, however, satisfied with the outcome of a five-season run, and happy to move on knowing they had done an excellent job.
And an excellent job they did, the comedy series has received several nominations in the most prestigious award programs including Primetime Emmy, Golden Globes, and Saturn Awards. The Good Place won a Peabody Award and four Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form. All of its main cast were also nominated for one or more awards for their performance on the show. The Good Place received universal acclaim and appeared on many critics’ top ten lists including Vox, Vulture, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, LA Times, and Rolling Stone.
The Good Place’s fourth and final season premiered on September 26, 2019, and wrapped up with its fourteenth episode on January 30, 2020. Although fans of the show seem too long for a season where we see how Michael fares as a human on Earth, The Good Place will not return for season 5.
The Good Place Season Storyline
The Good Place is centered around an afterlife, where humans are either sent to “The Good Place” or “the Bad Place” after death, based on a score calculated from their actions and morality on Earth. In The Good Place, the deceased enjoy a never-ending euphoric existence, guided by an artificial intelligence named Janet (D’Arcy Carden)., while those in the Bad Place are tortured eternally by demons. Our story begins when Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a deceased corrupt pharmaceutical saleswoman, and Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto), a deceased DJ and drug dealer, wind up in The Good Place by mistake.
In the first season, Eleanor and Jason find out about their precarious fortune and begin to make an effort to secure their place in The Good Place. Eleanor’s assigned soulmate Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), a deceased Nigerian-Senegalese professor of ethics and moral philosophy, attempts to teach Eleanor and Jason morals that will help them turn a new leaf and keep their place in The Good Place. Meanwhile, Jason’s wealthy and name-dropping soulmate, Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil), tries to help Michael (Ted Sanson), the architect of The Good Place, fix the mayhem caused by Jason and Eleanor’s presence in the neighborhood. She believes that she deserves to be in The Good Place while they don’t.
At the end of the first season, Eleanor discovers that the Good Place is actually a Bad Place, and the four of them are being used in a torture experiment by Michael, who is actually a Bad Place architect. Michael actually designed the neighborhood and picked the four of them to observe the psychological and emotional torture he thought they would put one another through. When Eleanor and the rest discover this truth, his experiment fails, which leads us to season two.
In The Good Place Season 2, Michael attempts to save his experiment by erasing the four humans’ memories in order to restart their torture. But Eleanor, Jason, Chidi, and Tahani find out the truth each time, so Michael fails. A Bad Place demon named Vicky begins to use Michael’s failures to blackmail him into giving up his control of the neighborhood. After using up the two chances his wicked boss Shawn gave him to prove his torture experiment, Michael seeks the help of humans to fool his boss. He promises them passage into the real Good Place in exchange.
As they execute their plan to fool Shawn, Michael realizes that humans are capable of improving their morals even after death. He appeals their case to Gen, the judge, who rules on matters between the Good Place and the Bad Place. The Judge rules that humans be returned to Earth, with their memories of the afterlife erased, so they can prove their ability to change for the better. Back on Earth in season 3, the group tries to figure out the truth about the afterlife again. They also find out no one has been sent to The Good Place in centuries because the points system is flawed.
By the fourth season of The Good Place, Eleanor, Jason, Tahani, Chidi, and his colleague Simone, have carried out an experiment that proves humans can grow morally even in the afterlife. They propose a new system where the deceased can earn their way into The Good Place by passing several moral tests. Instead of getting sent to the Good Place being for eternity, they also proposed that deceased humans be allowed to exit The Good Place and leave the afterlife. The Good Place Season 4 ends with Eleanor, Jason, and Chidi choosing to exit while Tahani stays to serve as an architect of afterlife neighborhoods. Michael chooses to be sent to Earth to live as a human.
Where to Watch The Good Place
You can stream all four seasons of The Good Place on NBC, the NBC app, and Netflix. The Good Place was also released on Blu-ray on May 19, 2020, and can be purchased on Amazon.
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