“You need to be a better version of yourself, ok?
And I do too.”
You may have seen a meme circulating that everyone is two characters
from the Good Place.
But we’d say that really, everybody has all four central characters
from The Good Place inside of them
and maybe even a Michael and a Janet, too.
The Good Place follows Eleanor, Chidi, Jason and Tahani
as they find themselves in the afterlife in the so-called “Good Place,”
but come to wonder if they really belong there.
“You’re a mistake.
Just like me.”
“Yeah.
And I’m freakin’ out, dog.”
As they discover more about their situation
“This is the bad place.”
this really becomes a show about how to be a good person.
“You want to prove you’re not selfish?
Here’s the perfect test.
There’s something fun that you want to do,
and then there’s something less fun that people are doing
for the common good.”
Each of the four main characters makes up one piece of the morality puzzle.
And every one of the four has something to teach the others
about how to live morally.
“Now, thanks to your ‘good person’ lessons, I didn’t hold up the line,
I didn’t even try a dozen samples I didn’t want just to spite some jerk
who told me I was holding up the line.”
And with their strengths combined, the four together add up
to one complete moral person.
“We improved each other.
And the four of us became a team.”
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Each central character in The Good Place has one piece of what it takes
to be a good person:
Eleanor is the will, Chidi is the conscience,
Jason is kindness on a personal scale,
and Tahani is kindness on a larger community scale.
Each of these elements is a very positive thing,
but none is enough on its own.
The characters eventually understand that they make each other better
by being together --
“You’ve been our teacher this whole time.
And we are much better because of you.”
And likewise, if we want to be moral people,
we need all four of these components.
As the will, Eleanor implements the others’ abstract desires
and turns them into action.
She has the drive to act that the others often lack --
especially Chidi
“Thirty minutes, Chidi?
We’ve been trying to pick a bar for thirty minutes.
It is literally impossible to be your friend.
You’re incapable of making a single decision.”
But Eleanor’s drive to act can be either for good or,
more often when she's left to her own devices, for bad.
“You never get picked and you’re always the one
who draws the name.
Let me see that.”
She needs to learn what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called “good will.”
According to Kant, good will has two parts:
first, using reason to recognize the right thing to do,
and second, acting based on this sense of moral obligation or duty.
So the two steps are essentially the “good” plus the “will.”
Eleanor has the “will” part down.
“We can’t kill her.”
“Not with that attitude, we can’t!”
What she lacks, and needs to gain from the others,
is the “good.”
“It really hurts my feelings.”
“It does?
Because the minute you’re out of my line of sight
I literally forget you exist.”
During the group’s test, the judge evaluates Eleanor's selfishness.
“You’re supposed to do good things because you’re good.
Not because you’re seeking moral dessert.”
Because without the good in “good will,” there’s nothing to prevent us
from making purely self-serving choices.
Eleanor starts filling in that missing first step
and understanding how to reason out her moral choices
thanks to lessons from her new friends.
Chidi provides that “reason” that sorts out the good from the bad,
and Jason and Tahani provide the kindness and the desire to do good.
But the kindness and good intentions of the other three are useless
without Eleanor’s ability to carry them out.
“Everybody— quietly but quickly head to the train station.”
She becomes the decision maker of the group,
and even feels like the leader most of the time
“Ok, team meeting.”
because she has the will to make change happen.
“Ok, all humans who have not already been suckered by Michael,
another team meeting.”
Chidi represents the knowledge of right and wrong,
and this basically makes him the conscience of the group.
He knows virtually everything there is to know
about how to be a good person.
“The only thing that you are concerned with is your own happiness.
That’s your problem.”
And this knowledge is essential for behaving in a moral way:
without it, Eleanor, Jason, and Tahani would remain ignorant.
Still, what Chidi lacks is the ability to translate his knowledge into action.
“I’ve never been that certain about anything.
I once even tried to rent socks.”
He’s paralyzed by his hyper-awareness of the moral ramifications
of every tiny decision.
His test from the judge is simply to make a choice,
and he fails miserably.
“It took you 82 minutes to choose a hat.”
He needs Eleanor to execute his reason in behavior.
“The best version of me is just as much about my effect
on the world around me as it is about my own
egocentric self-image.”
This key revelation from Chidi finally makes this connection
between his intentions and the result or impact of his actions.
He spent his life trying to embody an abstract, perfect good.
“Come on, Chidi.
Pick someone.”
“Don’t pressure me, Uzo.
I have to consider all the factors -- athletic strategies,
the fragile egos of my classmates, and gender politics.”
But since goodness has to be expressed in action,
it can’t be perfect except in theory.
“I spent my whole life trying to learn about right and wrong,
and apparently, I failed.”
Chidi spent his life thinking about good instead of doing it --
and that’s why he ended up in the bad place.
“Indecision caused you so much agony in your life.”
Jason embodies kindness on a personal level.
“I’m your nicest friend -- no, Jason is.”
Unlike the other three, he actually had close,
supportive friendships while he was on earth.
“I’ll race you.”
“Best friends!”
He’s always understood the value of relationships with other people,
which is something that Eleanor, Chidi, and Tahani are still learning.
“I’ve never even had a friend I could just be myself around.”
“Maybe I could be that friend.”
He’s very sweet,
“Lately you’ve been really down on yourself.
But you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
and his first instinct is always to be nice to people.
“And I promise to always be nice to you.”
Showing others kindness is an important part of being a good person,
but what Jason needs to gain from the others, and especially Tahani,
is a broader understanding of how to be good,
not just in the moment, but in the long run.
“And if you work hard and absorb the material,
you just might be able to earn your place here.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
He fails his test from the judge
because he doesn’t even bother to figure out what the test really is:
he sees the video game,
something that will bring him immediate happiness,
and he jumps on it without examining the consequences.
“Your test was about impulse control, but you never asked
if you could opt not to play.
I mean, you basically told me, an all-knowing judge,
to just shut up and go away.”
So Jason needs to find the will to improve, and develop the foresight to consider
how the moment at hand affects the future.
“It’s basic consequentialism.
The morality of an action is solely judged on its consequences.”
While Jason is kind to the individuals in his life,
Tahani represents good works for the benefit of the community
and the world.
She’s a philanthropist who has made the world
a better place in a quantifiable way.
“Didn’t you raise like a thousand dollars for charity of whatever?”
“Uh, sixty billion, actually.”
The results of her charitable generosity
are an indisputably positive, meaningful contribution to the greater good.
But the problem is that her motivations are entirely selfish.
“I didn’t care about helping the people I raised the money for.
I just wanted to prove my parents wrong and stick it to my sister,
get fame and attention.”
Despite the good outcome, her behavior is lacking morality
because it’s never grounded in love for other people --
and that’s what she needs to learn from Jason.
“You’re awesome.
Be nicer to yourself.”
Eleanor and Chidi, and Jason and Tahani, are paired as fake “soulmates”
precisely because they’re complete opposites.
“You know, Jason, every single detail about your life is deeply disturbing,
and yet, I envy you.
I...I was never allowed to goof off.”
Michael assumes these people are so ill-matched
they’ll torture each other.
“Four people perfectly suited to make each other miserable.”
But ironically, Eleanor and Chidi, and arguably Jason and Tahani, too,
do become each other's soulmates.
“The only reason we’ve come this far is because we’ve helped each other.
And I don’t think anything’s gonna feel like the Good Place
if we’re not together.”
What makes them total opposites actually allows them to bring out
the best in each other.
Eleanor’s will forces Chidi to stop being so hesitant and wishy-washy.
“I won’t do it.
And although five people will die, I cannot harm one innocent person
to save them and forsake my oath.”
And Chidi is a conscience helping Eleanor decipher right from wrong --
he’s the voice inside her head she keeps referring to.
“This ethics stuff, it’s hard, and it’s confusing.
It is such a buzzkill.
But it does get rid of the little voice.”
Jason shows Tahani the importance of sincerely meaning the kind things you do.
“You’ve helped me to see that there’s more to life
than just appearances.”
And Tahani helps Jason understand the impact of his actions.
“Every day you teach me something new about art and history
and why you shouldn't eat everything that smells good
because sometimes, it's candles.”
So what is a soulmate, then?
We might picture our soulmate as someone we have a lot in common with,
who’s a mirror of us, made of the same stuff we are.
But The Good Place is saying a soulmate is more the thing you’re missing.
And opposites don’t just attract, they also complete each other.
Fundamentally, your soulmate is just the person who makes you better
than you can be without them.
That’s why the final scene of Season 2 is such a hopeful moment --
“Are you Chidi…
Anna…
Kendrick?”
“Anagonye… and, yes.”
“From the long nerdy video about the little voice
that tells you to be good.”
Eleanor finally manages to find Chidi on Earth,
so we know that something is about to change.
It’s not that the couples are soulmates, intrinsically.
In The Good Place, being someone’s soulmate
is far from a passive, predestined thing; it’s active and iterative.
These pairs definitively weren’t fated.
But spending time together, helping each other,
and making sacrifices for each other creates a real and sincere love.
“I never want to leave you.
I want to stay in the Good Place because of you.”
So the show is telling us you don’t necessarily need
to find that perfect cosmically chosen match.
You and your partner can develop into soulmates by working on yourselves together.
The Good Place’s overriding message is that it’s our love for one another
that makes us good.
Being a good person is hard work, but if you truly understand the value
of the people in your life, it’s hard work you want to do.
“Can we talk?”
“Okay.
Here we go.”
Hi guys, Susannah and Debra here.
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