Why the 'The Good Place' Works

Arguably what brings people back to their most beloved sitcoms and series is the connections they have with the characters, the urge to laugh, cry and love with them, which is why it's so understandable that most showrunners choose to stretch the series for as long as they possibly could — or at least they used to. 

Many shows today choose to shy away from "filler" or anything that doesn't directly drive forward the plot, yet that comes at a significant cost to the viewers, who are now less inclined to care about the protagonists of the show because they've had no time to get to know them as individuals, the stakes however high they become less emotionally significant. This is not to say that shows should allow their character to go off on meaningless story arcs, they should still be significant in terms of developing relationships and in turn bolstering the characters themselves. 

As a viewer myself, characters are what I care most about in any piece of media, who they are, why they are that way and who they'll become, which is why it should come as no surprise that "The Good Place," — which places its focus entirely on our protagonist Eleanor Shellstrop's journey to become a better person — is one of my favorite shows— currently streaming on Netflix. 

 

The show follows Eleanor (Kristen Bell) once she wakes up in the afterlife to find that she's made it to The Good Place, and she can enjoy its tranquility and unlimited frozen yogurt forever, one small issue though: she's not supposed to be there. Eleanor is a fraud, they've somehow mistaken her for someone else who is decidedly a much better person than her. Now in order to avoid going to The Bad Place, she has to attempt to become a better person and shy away from her previous selfish and callous behavior. 

This is a story deeply centered around what makes a person good and to do that it needs to focus heavily on its characters, not just Eleanor but the others around her. A large part of the first season follows a pretty rinse-and-repeat formula where Eleanor swears to be better, and ends up doing something bad or selfish which then causes some giant malfunction in the Good Place ecosystem that she and Chidi (William Jackson Harper) — Eleanor's assigned soulmate, perpetual worrywart and former ethics professor — scramble to resolve by making sure Eleanor learns something about ethical theory and caring about other. 

I realize that this may get a bit boring for most viewers after the first couple of instances. Still, they're important because, through each instance of Eleanor, screw-ups are juxtaposed with flashbacks to similar experiences from when she was alive. We get to see her growing through each of these experiences to the point where she eventually starts being enthusiastic about her ethics lessons and begins to do nice things for people unprompted.

Eleanor befriends Tahani (Jameela Jamil), despite her initial dislike of her because of how seemingly perfect she was, she is able to realize when she's being too overbearing for Chidi and gives him his time and space. She starts to care about the people around her and in turn we begin to care about her. This makes the stakes even greater, we as the audience care about what happens to her which makes her character arc throughout the four-season run all the more satisfying and compelling because we were given the chance to get to know her.

Many shows seem to forget the importance of that, it seems they just attempt to jam in as much story as possible without considering the characters and their respective arcs being done well, I assume this is a result of the rise in show cancellations after just the first season, which is a problem in and of itself. However, the show that are able to continue on past one season should follow The Good Place's example in terms of building up their character because to put it frankly what is even the point of watching something if I'm not invested in the characters.