Hey! The Good Place was really good, wasn t it? Let s talk a little about why. It had heart,
it had soul, it had humour (clip ELEANOR: You re pulling an Eleanor
MICHAEL: What, posting my cousin s credit card number on Reddit because she said I looked tired?
ELEANOR, LAUGHING: I forgot I did that!) but it also had brains, also brought philosophy
into the mix in a really interesting and authentic way. But a lot of the time, when people talk or
write about this side of the show, that s about as far as they go maybe you ll get a headline about
the moral philosophy featured on the show, a blurb about how it s included in ways that advance the
plot and add intrigue but I want to contend that well, it goes further than this. That s what we re
doing here and in case you ve not seen the show, there s spoilers for individual episodes here,
but nothing that ll ruin the experience of watching it for the first time. So you re good.
Real quick, some background - for anyone who s new here, every other month my Patreon supporters get
to suggest a bunch of video ideas, then vote upon a pool of those suggestions,
and by ancient decree I have to make whatever the winning suggestion is. This time,
the winning suggestion was The Morals of The Good Place . The thing is morals? That can refer to two
different things. On the one hand we have moral as basically the lesson of a story, on the other,
we have moral as ethical principle. These two meanings are closely related, of course the
lesson of a story is often an ethical principle in the other sense - but there is a distinction here,
a distinction I m going to exploit. Because I m not an expert in philosophy. I know a lot of the
basics, sure, I am doing my best to get more clued in, but I m probably not versed enough to say
anything about this show s philosophy specifically that hasn t been said better already by others,
who know what they re talking about. But what I don t think has been done or at least hasn t
been done to death and what s maybe more in my wheelhouse (clip JANET: Fun fact,
a wheelhouse is a part of a boat! MICHAEL: Ok, thank you Janet, thank you.)
is a video looking at how both types of morals overlap in The Good Place, because they do,
sometimes in really cool ways. So that s what we re doing here, looking at the relationship
between the ethics of The Good Place and its narratives or more specifically, how
the way these stories are constructed allows the viewer to appreciate and experience the dilemmas,
the problems of moral philosophy alongside the characters and why this is important.
For starters, let s talk desert. Moral desert, that is. The season 2 finale sees an experiment
take place. We see Eleanor returned to life, we see her make that crucial decision to try
and be a better person, on which the fate of humanity itself depends but that decision isn t
the cathartic, climactic payoff it at first seems, because of what follows. She makes that decision,
does well for a time, but we see that choice slowly unravel. In that unravelling, heightened
by that episode s use of montage, we re shown Eleanor s fading enthusiasm for ethical life,
and the growing challenge of working to be better in a world that seems to punish you
for it. From her perspective, the choice seems to have been a pointless one and the viewer,
too, feels short-changed here. It sort of goes against conventional storytelling. A character
making a long-anticipated, deep-rooted change like this, especially one near the end of a
season of TV? We re used to that mattering, we re used to it leading to success, to happiness,
to victory. We re not used to getting nothing from such a change. So when Michael brings up
the problem of moral desert, that little pinch of subversive storytelling, the way the Good Place
withholds what might be termed narrative desert well, we re in a very similar boat to Eleanor,
so we really get it. (clip MICHAEL: Moral Desert is the concept that if you act with virtue,
you deserve a reward. ELEANOR: Right!) Or, take another example. The sixth and
seventh episodes of season 1, What We Owe to Each Other and The Eternal Shriek , see the
neighbourhood s glitches intensify. Eleanor is indirectly responsible, and tries to find
workarounds, ways she can stop this harm without taking a big L herself before realising that s
impossible. So she takes the L (clip ELEANOR: Michael,
the problem in the neighbourhood is me.) . If there s a moral to this story,
it s that letting your friends come to harm is bad, that allowing this to happen is not
a solid foundation for a good society, for a good place, and this is, of course, the episode
which introduces us and Eleanor to contractualism, specifically T.M. Scanlon s brand of it basically,
the idea that we should all act reasonably to one another, that we should imagine a set of sensible
people devised together general rules for society s good functioning, and that we shouldn t act in
ways contrary to those. This process involves abiding by an imagined social contract thus,
contractualism and so a key part of contractualism is that cooperative imperative. Working together,
supporting each other makes sense, undergirds these rules, and so, the moral of the episode
is the moral of the episode. Episode 7 ends with a sort of affirmation of contractualism
Eleanor stops hiding the truth to protect herself, motivated by the people she knows,
concern for them, knowing what they d do and the way this moral is delivered,
the way Eleanor s sacrifice follows a whole lot of unambiguous pain and suffering on the
part of people who had been decent to her? (Clip CHIDI: Janet, would you please recite
the English alphabet? JANET: A, B, Janet!
ELEANOR: Well, she knows her A B Janets! Clip CHIDI: I hate lying, I always have,
and this is going to eat me up inside, forever. You might be able to shrug this
off ang forget about it, but I never will.) We, too, have come to know these characters,
care about them, feel sympathy for them so once more we feel what Eleanor feels here.
So This isn t some dry philosophical tract, talking about community, co-operation,
social contracts in the abstract in this example, in a bunch of similar cases,
across its four seasons, The Good Place doesn t just talk about morals, feature moral philosophy,
it constructs a space, constructs narratives, in which the unfolding of a story involves the viewer
in the same ethical journey as the characters. Once you start to notice it, you can see this
general dynamic all over the place but you also start to notice episodes playing it a little less
straight. The philosophical side of that episode where we meet Jason is all Hume s bundle theory of
the self and Taoist quotes about the importance of true knowledge of oneself and there seems to be an
irony here, on first watch, it seems like this is the one case in which getting honest with oneself,
working at an authentic self-inquiry is the wrong choice, but well, on second watch,
when you ve seen a bit more of the show? The real moral of the story reveals itself. It turns out
that Jason was right to try and stop being Jianyu, that meaningful progress, enlightenment even,
was always going to be off the cards until he came clean, until he really understood who he was,
what he d done, why he is where he is, and how his mindset led to that position. That s all a
bit vague, I know, but I trust those of you who ve seen the show will understand why. So that
disconnect between the moral and the moral we saw in this episode is resolved, and, in retrospect,
was maybe even a hint toward what would follow. So that s broadly what s going on here but
I want to suggest that a result of this interlinking of the moral and the moral,
The Good Place offers a truly unique, truly important viewing experience. See,
for a lot of people? Watching TV isn t necessarily just watching TV. Television critic John Ellis,
for instance, understands the act of watching television as one with social and psychological
importance for the viewer. For Ellis, watching TV is a process by which viewers work through the
problems of modern existence in popular forms like soaps or telenovelas, in shows which use
humour to channel anxiety and offer narratives of success and failure lived by people very similar
to their regular viewers . We can also see this process in celebrity reality shows displaying
these larger-than-life figures operating outside their zone , dealing with everyday anxieties and
problems, situations that are uncomfortable for them. Programs like this provide a way of working
through, in an entertainment envelope, one of the more fundamental problems of modern existence:
the unsettled and unsettling nature of the modern economy as it undergoes a series of
technological changes, global power shifts, and long depression unlike any in modern times . It
s the mundanity and familiarity of such TV that allows this process can even allow the unfamiliar,
the taboo, to be explored safely. With this in mind, then, The Good Place
would seem to offer a unique experience the serialized-sitcom-dramedy mold,
and moreover the way this familiar foundation is interlinked with what would otherwise be kind of
abstract ethical concerns, solidifies the morals, allows a wide audience, everyday people who ve
never cracked open a philosophy textbook in their lives, to see, to understand, to really grasp in
a tactile way ideas and values which underlie that basic human desire to be good, to live a
good life. So the working through facilitated by The Good Place isn t merely therapeutic,
it s also pedagogic. The watching of it allows viewers to work through problems, experiences,
memories in a rare way, to help them pose and answer questions like, was I right to do this
thing? What do I owe to my community? How should I have acted in the past? How should I act now?
And I think the root of all this is the show s way of tying together the moral and the moral,
of building stories around moral concepts in such a way that the
resolutions of those stories demonstrate that philosophy in simple, involving ways.
So in conclusion? It s not the presence of a cool narrative and some cool philosophy that
lets us work through the moral framework of our lives via the Good Place, that makes the show so
special it s that unique fusion of the two. And this is visible in the examples discussed above,
and, plenty of other episodes besides. I didn t systematically go through the whole show for
this video, partially because that would have taken ages, but mostly because well,
that working through is a personal thing. The fun here is figuring this stuff out yourself.
Anyway, that s this month s Patreon Community Video on The Morals of The Good Place hope you
enjoyed, and I hope the video did a great show justice, because the Good Place really is The
Shirt. Honestly the main reason I ve not talked about it before on this channel is because of
that, because it s so good, and I didn t really know what I could add to it and that probably
would have continued if it hadn t won the Patreon vote so if you want to nudge me into making videos
on other topics, whatever they may be, consider joining up below it really helps support what I
do here and you get plenty of cool benefits. And now that I ve broken the Good Place seal,
who knows? Maybe I ll make another video on this show if the response is good. But like,
comment, subscribe, all that jazz, and I ll see you all next time and as always,
shoutout going to my current Patreon supporters onscreen now,
especially Daneil Goldhorn, Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and WeirdyBeardy.