The Best Show on Network Television is The Good Place

My favorite network television series is “The Good Place,” which had one of the all-time great twists at the end of the first season and has just completed its even-better second season. Everyone in it is superb, from experienced actors Kristen Bell and Ted Danson to newcomers Jameela Jamil (in her first professional acting role), Manny Jacinto, William Jackson Harper (you can see him on “The Electric Company” and in the movie “Paterson”), and D’Arcy Carden.

While we wait impatiently for the third season (that last episode opened up some very intriguing possibilities), here are some thoughtful takes on the show.

In the New York Times, James Poniewozik writes about the series’ refreshing optimism, contrary to the trend of the past few years toward antiheroes.

He says it “avoided falling into easy moralizing by committing to the idea that becoming good is hard work,” including “a running crash course in remedial ethics, with the most madcap name-dropping of the greats of moral thought since Monty Python’s ‘Bruces’ Philosophers Song.’…orality is not something you have; it’s something you do. It’s a muscle that requires exercise. The show shares with dramas like “Breaking Bad” the belief that being good is hard. But it doesn’t believe that being good is futile.”

At Vulture, Josef Adalian writes about the connection between “The Good Place” and “Lost.”

“The Good Place” showrunner Michael Schur says he asked to be set up on a “playdate” with “Lost’s” Damon Lindelof.

The thing that Damon did for me, which I was very grateful for, the greatest thing anyone any writer can do for another writer, which is to say, “Here are, like, 12 pitfalls you’re about to fall into,” which is exactly what I needed. I needed a person who is conversant in the language of science fiction or genre writing, which I am not, to say to me, “Here are some things that are gonna happen that are dangerous. Here’s what’s gonna happen, here’s how to avoid it.” So that was a huge part of how I operated going forward.

He also reveals some details inspired by or in tribute to Lindelof.

My friend and fellow critic Jen Chaney, a big fan of both shows, really drilled down on the connections for Vulture.

There are so many things that make ‘The Good Place’ a rich and delightful experience: the performances delivered by its talented cast, its constant use of inspired puns, the fact that it has created an entire new genre of comedy known as Jacksonville Jaguars Humor. But from the very beginning, ever since creator Mike Schur said that he was partly inspired by ‘Lost’ when he set out to make this series, it has been fascinating to watch the ways in which ‘The Good Place’ uses that ABC series as a touchstone. Some of the parallels between the two shows are obvious. When “The Good Place” began, it was about a group of people who landed in an unknown place and had to learn the rules that governed it while also making their own rules in order to survive, if “survive” is a word that can be used within the context of the afterlife. That’s exactly what happened to the survivors who crashed on the island in “Lost.”

“The Good Place” may just inspire fans to try to be a bit better themselves, and not just to avoid The Bad Place. It might even inspire a few to try some moral philosophy, though if they have been watching the show they have already learned that too much thinking about ethical dilemmas can also be a problem. I guess for the answer to that one, we’ll have to wait for Season Three.