The Good Place knows it's a sitcom. It knows that you know it's a sitcom. And it's that self-awareness and knowledge of the sitcom genre's archetypes and plots that make it so good — it constantly blows up its own premise, keeping the audience on their toes with smartly-paced twists and turns about what might happen next. Come season two, I wasn't sure if the story would hold, but they managed to keep the momentum going, and I'm now extremely anxious and excited for what season 3 will bring.
It's not just the writing/plot that shines, though. The set design is wonderfully charming, and the ensemble is great — one would never guess Jameela Jamil, William Jackson Harper, and Manny Jacinto to be relative new hands compared to TV vets Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, but they all have such good chemistry and portray their multifaceted characters well.
One of my favorite things about the show is the philosophical ruminations about "what it means to be a good person". Arguably the show's Central Theme, it's a breath of fresh air in an edgy era of entertainment saturated with unlikable or at least antiheroic protagonists. But the show manages to ask these questions, make you question your own morality, and naturally improve its characters without being overly moralizing and preachy, through — you guessed it — sitcom tropes being utilized to their maximum potential.
All in all, it's one of the smartest half-hour comedies I've had the pleasure of watching, and it's definitely worth a shot.
An intelligent, self-aware show that the TV world needs.
The Good Place knows it's a sitcom. It knows that you know it's a sitcom. And it's that self-awareness and knowledge of the sitcom genre's archetypes and plots that make it so good — it constantly blows up its own premise, keeping the audience on their toes with smartly-paced twists and turns about what might happen next. Come season two, I wasn't sure if the story would hold, but they managed to keep the momentum going, and I'm now extremely anxious and excited for what season 3 will bring.
It's not just the writing/plot that shines, though. The set design is wonderfully charming, and the ensemble is great — one would never guess Jameela Jamil, William Jackson Harper, and Manny Jacinto to be relative new hands compared to TV vets Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, but they all have such good chemistry and portray their multifaceted characters well.
One of my favorite things about the show is the philosophical ruminations about "what it means to be a good person". Arguably the show's Central Theme, it's a breath of fresh air in an edgy era of entertainment saturated with unlikable or at least antiheroic protagonists. But the show manages to ask these questions, make you question your own morality, and naturally improve its characters without being overly moralizing and preachy, through — you guessed it — sitcom tropes being utilized to their maximum potential.
All in all, it's one of the smartest half-hour comedies I've had the pleasure of watching, and it's definitely worth a shot.