"I know you're deflecting by making jokes about how hot you are."
"It's not a joke. I'm a legit snack."
Like many of you, probably, I spent my time watching The Good Place finale just weeping.
Bawling my eyes out like there was no tomorrow. It was so powerful, and emotional, but most
of all, it was… satisfying. It managed to tug on each and every one of my heart strings,
and then it just... ended. While wiping away my tears, I felt calm in a way that I haven’t
after watching other shows. That was really the end, these characters’ stories were
really over. It made sense. But why did this show, this *comedy* show nonetheless, make
me feel so much? And why was it uniquely satisfying when it ended? That’s what I want to talk about today.
“Step one: Get a plan. Step two: Do the plan. Yeah, yeah. This is working.”
First off, I think a key driver in the success of The Good Place finale is the fact that
it was planned to be the ending. Far too many shows are dragged on for season after season,
trying to be squeezed for every ounce of content that they can produce, even when they’ve
long since left behind their emotional core. If The Good Place had to run for 10 seasons
instead of 4, the finale might not have the same impact. Those extra 6 seasons would have
to be filled with *something*, and that would likely involve killing off characters or reinventing
them or bringing in new characters who the audience cares less about. All of which would
lessen the emotional impact the finale could have. Plus, the audience could just lose interest
by that point, tired of a show that has abandoned its original premise. But because it only
had 4 seasons, The Good Place was able to propose a concept, work with it, and end it
in a fitting way. They didn’t have to find some wild excuse to drag it out for more seasons,
they just got to tell the story as it was meant to be.
In a similar vein, because they *knew* the show was ending after season 4, they could
give it an ending that it deserved. When shows are cancelled before they even know that they’re
cancelled, [coughing sound] Happy Endings, they can’t have a fitting ending because
they’re trying to set up the next season that they thought they had. Since The Good
Place knew ahead of time that it would be ending, the writers could give all of the
characters the send-off that they deserved. The key is in knowing when the core of your
story has run its course, and then being able to have the time to wrap it up properly. The
Good Place, thankfully, nailed both of these things.
Another reason The Good Place finale was so weirdly satisfying might seem counter intuitive,
but it’s because there was no longer any external conflict. For the first three seasons
and most of the fourth season, The Good Place had external conflicts driving the characters,
whether it was Eleanor trying to hide the fact that she didn’t belong in the Good
Place, or everyone trying to save humanity from being rebooted -- there was always something
or someone to be fighting against.
“On one hand, I would love to get some spiders in this buttholes. On the other hand, there
would be billions of buttholes going completely unspidered.”
But in the finale, the central conflict is gone. The protagonists have won. They’re
in The Good Place, humanity has been saved, and their new system for getting people into
The Good Place is running smoothly. And so the finale is all about internal conflict.
Instead of the finale being the climax of the series, it’s the falling action and
the resolution that comes after the climax. On a show that’s normally about 20 minutes
long per episode, it’s a nearly hour-long reflection on what happens after the end of
the external conflict. It poses the question: “We did it, now what?” And that’s what
makes it all the more powerful. When you’ve spent so long in short snappy episodes fighting
against a visible enemy, a longer episode that slows down and has the main characters
reflect on themselves has a lot more meaning. In a different show, that could have the potential
to be boring, but The Good Place finale is definitely not, and that’s partially because
they still squeeze plenty of jokes and laughs into the last episode
“Shut up! I’m confident now!”
But a lot of it is because of the next point, which is:
Every main character gets nuanced emotional resolution. We’ve been with Tahani, Jason,
Chidi, and Eleanor for a few seasons now, and as an audience we’ve become attached
to them as we’ve seen them grow and change and bond. They’ve all had conflicts with
people in their lives or things about themselves that they’ve wanted to change, and a large
part of getting to the finale was about them changing and coming to terms with those things.
So now that they’re here, in the real Good Place, the finale is about wrapping up everything
that they’ve gone through. Tahani meets with her parents and her sister, and has the
happy relationship with them that she has always wanted. Chidi becomes decisive and
learns from the best philosophers and has a fulfilling relationship with Eleanor and
his family. Jason does all of the fun stuff he has always dreamed of while working on
his relationship with his dad. And Eleanor helps Michael realize his dream
of becoming a human. It’s the pay-off that we’ve been waiting for since this group
of friends got together. The show takes its time and allows us to spend a few minutes
with each of the characters, figuring out what it is that they need before they can
pass on. It even grapples with the idea of what happens to those that we leave behind,
when Chidi is ready to move on before Eleanor. It’s heartbreaking in some ways, and heartwarming
in others. We can understand that people would get bored after an infinity of being happy
and doing everything that they could possibly want, but we still don’t want to say goodbye,
and we certainly don’t want the characters to have to say goodbye to each other. So the
ending is bittersweet, but it offers a level of emotional resolution that others shows
don’t by having the characters hash out these things between each other, wrapping
up every last loose end before they say their goodbyes. Not to mention that while they’re
saying goodbye to each other and working through their emotions about saying goodbye, we’re
also saying goodbye to them. It’s rare in a show for you to get to say goodbye to the
characters, because most of the time, they don’t know when they’re going to die.
But with the premise of a portal you walk through when your time in the afterlife is
over, we have time to say goodbye to the characters that we love. So when Eleanor begs Chidi to
stay, you get it. You want Chidi to stay too. This journey is about the characters saying
goodbye but it’s also about the viewer saying goodbye, and that draws you into the story
and keeps you emotionally invested in a way that others shows might not.
“I hate to see you walk through the final door at the edge of existence, but I love to watch you leave.”
“There we go.”
This whole premise, of characters choosing when they want to move on from the afterlife,
is something that is unique to the plot of the Good Place and wouldn’t work in most
other shows, which is the 4th reason the finale works so well. In The Good Place finale, we
get a cosmic happily ever after with these characters that wraps up the story in a way
that would be much more difficult for a story told only with living characters in the real
world. In any regular TV series, the main characters likely end up with some sort of
happy ending. Even if it’s not a typical, “they got married and rode off into the
sunset” type thing, they probably reach some sort of resolution with their conflict
and move on to a more calm existence. But they still have lives after that. There’s
still the potential for things to happen and change in the future, even if the story doesn’t
hint at that. Another series could follow them when they’re all grown up, or follow
their kids, or something along those lines. There’s normally some semblance of hope
that those characters or that story could come back. But The Good Place finale is next-level
in its finality. Eleanor, Chidi, and Jason have ceased to exist. Not even just died,
but completely stopped existing. Tahani is working as an architect, Michael is a human,
and Janet will continue exist forever because she’s not a human, but for all intents and
purposes, the story is over. We can assume that one day, Tahani and Michael will also
step through the portal and stop existing. Janet, as we’re told, experiences the past
and the present as the same, so for her, she still gets to be with her friends even when
they’re not around anymore. And that’s really as final as it can get. There’s no
coming back from passing on after the Good Place. No one’s getting resurrected. Nobody
has any children. This story is done. And I think that’s one factor in why it
feels so satisfying, because you know it really is over.
It’s all of that together that, I think, made The Good Place finale so satisfying.
It ended at the right time, it turned the conflict internal, it gave everyone emotional
resolution that allowed us to say goodbye to them, and it gave them a cosmic sort-of
happily ever after. It’s a unique combination of great storytelling techniques that are
handcrafted to pull all kinds of emotions out of the viewer. I’m still reeling from
it, all this time later, and if you’ve made it this far in the video, I’m sure you are
too. So thank you, to the folks behind The Good Place, for such a satisfying ending.
And now I think the only way I can end this video is with some wise words from Michael:
“Take it sleazy.”
Thanks so much for watching, everyone. In the comments, let me know what your favorite
moment from The Good Place was. And if you enjoyed this video, I’d really appreciate
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“The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.”