In this video, I m going to spoil The Good Place. Not the whole 4-season run, but certainly the
biggest twist, development, thing, that you definitely want to experience for yourself
first time round. So if you ve not watched the show, you should definitely click off this video
right now. 3, 2, 1 spoiler warning over. If you ve seen The Good Place, you know
what I m referring to. There are a bunch of really cool, jaw-dropping moments throughout this show,
stuff that makes you feel like you re seeing The Time Knife, but there s one moment above
all else that s stuck with people, that takes the cake, that s come to define this show,
to the point that we all know what I m talking about, and there s really nothing else I
could be talking about, it s obviously this episode, this scene (clip MICHAEL: *laughs*
I can t believe you ve figured it out!) This is, of course, the big reveal at the
end of season one. Throughout these first 13 episodes, the show s setting had remained
mostly constant Eleanor s found herself in the Good Place, a heaven-type deal,
but she s there by mistake, she wasn t a great person, and so she s been trying to
become a better person, to earn her spot, all while attempting to evade notice by Michael,
the Good Place architect. The plot advances, eventually she s found out, new characters
appear and complicate the situation, but that s the premise, or so we thought. the last episode,
Michael s Gambit , pulls the curtain back. (clip ELEANOR: This is the bad place.) This
was never the Good Place. None of these people made it in. They were all being tortured,
they were all torturing each other. This episode changes everything. But I m going to try and make
the case that there s another episode which does this again, which rips up the rulebook,
in a bigger, more impactful way, in a way that better defines the show and that s the very next
episode, the season 2 premiere, Everything is Great! (clip MICHAEL: Ok, here we go)
So the humans figured it out and Michael resets their memories, thinking that discovery was just
a fluke, and that s where season 1 ends, that s the setup for season 2 - time to do it all over
again! - only for the very next episode to see them figure it out again. (clip ELEANOR: I don
t know what this place is, but it is certainly not the good place. Michael is forking with us!
JASON: like a prank show! ELEANOR: Yeah, like a prank
show!) On the face of it, this isn t quite the bombshell that season 1 reveal was, but well,
for one? It s a pretty bold swing. I mean, just think about it. The way Michael s Gambit offered
a pretty solid blueprint for the show s sophomore year the same setting, the same characters, a few
switchups, and a headstart for the humans. Season 2 could have played this out over the course of 13
episodes, this could have been a year s worth of story, of the humans figuring out their position,
trying to keep that knowledge secret, trying to get an edge on their captors all while we also
get to see the demons perspectives, all while the humans endure the same zany torture scenarios the
real season two shoves to the background (clip CHIDI: Sorry to interrupt, but you
didn t give me a heads up about this new Vicky torture, the one with the needles in my face)
That would have still been interesting in the same way howcatchems like Columbo or Poker Face
which tell you what s happening at the start are still interesting, even when compared to
your more traditional whodunnit mysteries. The fun comes in seeing how your characters
figure out what you already know, and seeing how they use that information. This looked
like the route season 2 was going to take but it didn t. At all. It tore through this new
status quo in 20 minutes. The Good Place looked at this premise, this perfectly solid premise,
and said, no. We can do better. Way better . And this move wasn t always guaranteed in the
show s official podcast, discussing this episode, the writers notes that the show s creatives didn t
really have a plan for Season 2 when finishing Season 1, when setting up this blank slate.
But eventually, this bold choice was made. The immediate aftermath of this choice is
one of the show s all-time best episodes, Dance Dance Resolution , and if Everything
is Great was The Good Place thumbing its nose at the idea of playing it safe, Dance Dance
Resolution is the show dousing the studio with petrol and lighting a match. (clip ELEANOR: wait
a minute, you know what, holy smokes, this is the bad place! This is the bad place!)
) We jump ahead from the 3rd go-around of Michael s neighborhood to attempt 802 and if the previous
episode abandoned a solid season s worth of conceits, this one practically throws away a
whole show, because in Dance Dance Resolution , you can almost detect the ghost of a different,
maybe worse, certainly less ambitious version of The Good Place the version of the show
from a parallel timeline which leans into this . fungibility, this palimpsestic, episodic dynamic,
the infinite narrative potential of a rebooting, hellish heaven, in which show creator Mike Schur
took a similar route to the one taken by other sitcoms he d worked on, The Office, Parks and Rec,
Brooklyn Nine Nine, where overarching narratives inch ahead, bit by bit, every season, but the
focus is mostly on the characters, and the gags. Just imagine a show s worth of this a different
moral lesson every time, a different fantastical, otherworldly problem, all while some grand chess
match is unfolding incrementally between the humans and the Bad Place demons. This does all
happen, but mostly offscreen, in two episodes. Arguably, the only thing more gutsy than doing
this, than tearing through seasons worth of premises in a single bound, is the amount of times
The Good Place does this. Cockroaches + Michael against Vicki and Shaun? Humans back alive,
getting better together? Soul squad, trying to get other people into the good place? The season
4 experiment, complete with Sus Impostor Michael? Especially given the show s short runtimes and the
compact seasons, all of these are premises which a less ambitious show would have stretched out,
would have wrung a season each from. But that show wouldn t have been The Good Place. The Good Place
breezed through all of these. None overstay their welcome, the show never just spins its wheels. And
while that season one twist makes a bigger impact first time round, what we see in the following
episode is, I think, the bigger departure. And, ok, sure, you might say. It s a big swing
but why am I making so much of it? Well I think this episode, the way it blazes a trail forth,
away from the familiar, the safe, captures the essence of The Good Place, or the essence of what
it d become, maybe better than anything else. Throughout the show s run, everything changes,
to a degree you really don t see. Our main characters are rebooted, again and again,
character progression is reset, time is rewound, the setting changes dramatically on a dime,
and all that really remains static, across the board is the cast, the tone, and the optimism.
That s all the show needs to get where it wants to go. Everything else is optional, is ephemeral,
is subject to change, to rebooting. And I think that is key here. In some ways, The Good Place is
defined by impermanence as the eventual finale makes painfully clear and I think the point at
which this expendability, this willingness to let go first comes into focus is here, is the
start of season 2, and the way it demolishes your expectations with gleeful abandon.
Season 1 is great, but when you re looking at the trajectory of the show as a whole?
It s a cocoon. A fantastic, perfectly formed cocoon, but a cocoon nonetheless. Everything
is Great! , season 2 episode 1, is the shedding of this, the moment the guide wheels are taken off,
a quantum leap away from stability and toward a show that habitually upends itself. I thin that
s important, that this is an important choice, an important point in the development of honestly
one of the best shows of the 2010s definitely moreso than has been granted, and, yes, maybe
even moreso than that classic Bad Place twist. So, yeah. It s nothing massive, but that s today
s content nugget. The idea came to me while making that last video, so I just thought why
not double up? On that note, while making this I did get an idea for another Good Place video,
a bit of a meatier one, one I honestly can t believe nobody else has done yet, so I ll tell
ya what if this or that other one end up doing ok, I ll start planning that big chonker pronto.
Until then, thanks for watching, I have it on good authority that likes and comments will earn
you enough points to avoid eternal damnation, and huge shoutout as always to my Patreon supporters
onscreen now, especially Daniel Goldhorn, Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and WeirdyBeardy.